CLAVIER Laurent, IMT Lille Douai
New vision of Network Co-Existence: Shaping Interference
Abstract.

Co-Existence issues are a major concern in coming generations of wireless systems. Especially when using ISM bands, many networks share the same bandwidth but their physical/MAC layer characteristics or application requirements may significantly differ. Their impact on other networks is then difficult to assess and those concurrent networks cannot design their communication strategy taking a priori this interference into account. Indeed, communication systems are designed assuming Gaussian noise. We show that the Gaussian assumption for interference is neither supported by theory nor by measurements and that this can result in catastrophic performance degradation. The question of a more accurate and general model then arises. This however is complex because interference can exhibit a very impulsive nature and its dynamicity depends on the symbol duration, the packet length and the coding design of both the interfering and the desired networks. We propose a framework based on alpha-stable distributions and copulas to address this question. It allows to include the Gaussian case but also very impulsive situations, as well as slow varying interferer sets and rapid changes in this set. This helps to identify parameters in the network that can control the impact that one network can have on another network. In this way, we suggest that a system includes in its definition certain rules of good conduct that allow other networks to better guard against the interference it generates while sharing the same frequency band.

Biography.

Laurent Clavier received the engineering degree from ENSEEIHT in Toulouse, France, in 1993 and the M.Sc. degree in Signal-Telecommunication-Image-Radar from University of Rennes in 1994. In 1997, he received his PhD degree in signal processing in TELECOM Bretagne in Brest, France and the HDR degree from Lille University, France, in 2009. He is, since October 2011, Professor in Mines-Telecom institute (IMT Lille Douai). He makes his research in IEMN (UMR CNRS 8520 – Institut d’Electronique de Microélectronique et de Nanotechnologie) and in IRCICA (USR CNRS 3380 – Institut de Recherche sur les composants logiciels et matériels pour l’Information et la Communication Avancée). His research activities concern digital communications and the physical layer of wireless networks, more specifically energy autonomous sensor networks. He is particularly interested in the interference model and impact in ultra-dense wireless networks. He is responsible of the research axis « Telecommunication Circuits and Systems » in IEMN. He is a steering committee member of the COST action CA-15104 IRACON « Inclusive Radio Communications Networks for 5G and beyond ».

Claude Oestges, Université catholique de Louvain, ICTEAM UCLouvain
Channel Dynamics in Mobile-to-Mobile Communications: Recent Results and Challenges
Abstract.

Mobile-to-mobile (M2M) communication networks have emerged as a powerful solution to enhance the quality of data service with low energy consumption. However, the inherent dual mobility generates non-stationarity properties of the propagation channel, implying that accurate dynamic models are required for system design and network simulation. On the one hand, peer-to-peer and wireless body area networks typically consist of transceiver nodes placed on or in the vicinity of the human body and encompass a large number of applications, such as cooperative communications, e-health, remote monitoring, sports and entertainment. Understanding the radio channel behaviour is critical to develop efficient body-centric communications systems, especially with cooperative techniques. On the other hand, vehicle-to-X communications have received a significant attention in the recent years for road safety based on intelligent transportation systems. As a result, the IEEE 802.11p standard was developed for dedicated short range communications. For vehicle-to-vehicle channels, the non-stationarity stems from the dynamic change of the environments around both mobile terminals. The V2P channels are defined as a direct link between moving vehicles and a wide set of road passengers, e.g. pedestrians, bicyclists, etc. Two major approaches can include channel dynamics: the tapped delay line model, including birth-death processes, and the geometry-based stochastic modelling. In this communication, we summarize recent results focusing on the characterization and modelling of M2M channel dynamics, including non-stationary behaviours. To this end, we rely on recent results on indoor peer-to-peer, body-centric and vehicle-to-pedestrian transmissions.

Biography.

Claude Oestges received the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain), Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, respectively in 1996 and 2000. In January 2001, he joined as a post-doctoral scholar the Smart Antennas Research Group (Information Systems Laboratory), Stanford University, CA, USA. From January 2002 to September 2005, he was associated with the Microwave Laboratory UCLouvain as a post-doctoral fellow of the Belgian Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique (FRS-FNRS). Claude Oestges is presently Full Professor with the Electrical Engineering Department, Institute for Information and Communication Technologies, Electronics and Applied Mathematics (ICTEAM), UCLouvain. He currently chairs COST Action CA15104 IRACON (2016-2020). He is the author or co-author of three books and more than 200 journal papers and conference communications, and was the recipient of the 1999-2000 IET Marconi Premium Award and of the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society Neal Shepherd Award in 2004 and 2012.

Andreas Czylwik, University Duisburg-Essen
Optoelectronic concepts for extreme wideband radio communications
Abstract.

Radio communications with extreme bandwiths require also correspondingly high carrier frequencies. An effective method to create high carrier frequencies up the terahertz frequency range is utilizing optoelectronic mixing of semiconductor laser signals. Since today semiconductor lasers with linewidths significantly less than 1 MHz are available, the generated electrical RF signals show also low phase noise.

The optoelectronic RF signal generation has the advantage that it even works in frequency ranges where no amplifiers are available. The optoelectronic mixing is carried out by combining two laser signals with a 3 dB coupler and detecting the combined (sum) signal with high-speed photodiodes or photoconductors. Signal modulation may be performed by modulating one of the laser signals with Mach-Zehnder modulators. The nonlinear modulation characteristic of the Mach-Zehnder modulators need to be compensated if high-order modulation schemes are applied. Ideal compensation of the nonlinear transmission characteristic of the modulators is difficult since they show both linear and nonlinear distortions. And even if an almost perfect compensation using a Volterra series based approach is carried out, the clipping behaviour of the modulators cannot be compensated.

Due to the high carrier frequencies, even for small distances between transmitter and receiver, high antenna gain is necessary. In order to track line-of-sight in case of moving or portable terminals, adaptive beamforming should be used. Beamforming concepts which utilize multiple signal sources have the advantage that more transmit power compared with single source solutions is available.

Biography.

Andreas Czylwik studied Electrical Engineering at the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany, from 1978 to 1983. In 1988 he received the Dr.-Ing. degree and in 1994 the Habilitation degree, both from the Technical University of Darmstadt and both in the field of optical communications.

From 1994 to 2000 he was with the research and development center (Technologiezentrum) of Deutsche Telekom in the Department of Local Area Broadband Radio Systems. In 2000 he became a full professor at the Technical University of Braunschweig heading the research group of Microcellular Radio Systems. Since 2002 he has been with University Duisburg-Essen heading the Chair of Communication Systems. His research interests are mainly in the field of radio communications on link and system level with special focus on adaptive multicarrier MIMO techniques. Several research activities focus on utilizing high frequency (up to THz) electromagnetic waves with applications in the field of extreme wideband communications and radar systems.

He is also interested in the application of radio systems in the field of technical security systems. Since 2014, he is chairman of EUSAS, the European Society for Automatic Alarm Systems.

Alister Burr, University of York, UK
Radio Access networks for 5G and beyond
Abstract.

To provide the bandwidth and the massive connectivity required for 5G use cases such as Enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB) and Massive Machine Type Communication (mMTC) will require greatly increased density of access points (APs), and also cooperation between them to avoid mutual interference. Moreover while Massive MIMO (MaMIMO) has also been proposed as a technology for 5G to increase overall capacity it does not solve the interference problem nor the problem of disadvantaged users who are distant from a centralised AP. “Cell-free” or Distributed Massive MIMO (CF/D-MaMIMO) can solve both these issues by distributing the antennas among a much larger number of APs, such that most user terminals (UTs) are much closer to at least one AP, and by performing processing jointly within the network rather than at individual APs, thus in effect abolishing the concept of the cell. This approach of course is also readily compatible with Cloud-RAN technology, where baseband processing is performed at a central location. However it does not scale well in large networks, and suffers from increased latency – whereas many 5G applications expect much reduced latency. In this presentation we therefore describe a new approach we call “Fog Massive MIMO” (F-MaMIMO) in which the processing is also distributed within the network, which is regarded as a “virtualised” radio access network (vRAN), which also makes possible a much more user-centric networking approach. We also consider the effect of imperfect “fronthaul” connections, and the implications of limited “fronthaul” loads, as well as the compatibility of this architecture with millimetre-wave technology.

Biography.

Alister Burr received the BSc degree in Electronic Engineering from the University of Southampton, U.K in 1979 and the PhD from the University of Bristol in 1984. Between 1975 and 1985 he worked at Thorn-EMI Central Research Laboratories in London. In 1985 he joined the Department of Electronics at the University of York, U.K, where he has been Professor of Communications since 2000. His research interests are in wireless communication systems, especially MIMO and Massive MIMO, cooperative systems, physical layer network coding, and iterative detection and decoding techniques. He has published more than 150 papers in refereed international conferences and journals, and is the author of “Modulation and Coding for Wireless Communications” (published by Prentice-Hall/PHEI). He has held a Senior Research Fellowship by the U.K. Royal Society, and also received the J. Langham Thompson Premium from the Institution of Electrical Engineers. He has also held a visiting professorship at Vienna University of Technology, and given more than 15 invited presentations, including at the First International Conference on Turbocodes and Related Topics, and keynotes at the first WCNC event (later IEEE WiCom), Wuhan, China, and at the ATOM Workshop, Kuala Lumpur, May 2016. He was chair, working group 2, of a series of European COST programmes including IC1004 “Cooperative Radio Communications for Green Smart Environments”, and has also served as Associate Editor for IEEE Communications Letters, Workshops Chair for IEEE ICC 2016 and TPC co-chair for IEEE PIMRC 2018.

Prof. Narcis Cardona, Universitat Politecnica de Valencia
Networks beyond 5G in the presence of connected humans
Abstract.

The most relevant changes in the next generation of mobile and wireless communication systems will come from the de-concentration of the elements nowadays integrated in a single user terminal, the smartphone. Security, privacy, flexibility, usability, and commodity among other aspects, will make more convenient to separate the user identity (nowadays in the sim cards), the RF terminal, the human interfaces and the IoT entities around and inside the human body. So far the evolution of human-machine and human-environment interfaces takes place independently of the evolution of the wireless network technologies. New peripheral devices like those of virtual reality, biometrics, tactile internet, remote control, or any other IoT linked devices, are simply integrated in the mobile terminals payload, and networks adapt to the new traffic profiles, but always with the mobile user terminal being the intermediate and final edge of the connectivity services. In addition, wireless networks in the human body environment, including in-body devices, were one of the missing scenarios in the definition of 5G current standard, and are an open area for research when 6G starts being discussed. This talk contains a review of the results of the European ITN projects WIBEC and WaveComBE, on the performance of wireless medical devices for in-body communications and the effect of human body on the RF signals, mainly in UWB and mmWave frequency bands. Finally, the talk identifies which should be the optimal connectivity services for a wireless network of any kind to accommodate, in the most optimal and secure manner, the future “connected humans”.

Biography.

Alister Burr received the BSc degree in Electronic Engineering from the University of Southampton, U.K in 1979 and the PhD from the University of Bristol in 1984. Between 1975 and 1985 he worked at Thorn-EMI Central Research Laboratories in London. In 1985 he joined the Department of Electronics at the University of York, U.K, where he has been Professor of Communications since 2000. His research interests are in wireless communication systems, especially MIMO and Massive MIMO, cooperative systems, physical layer network coding, and iterative detection and decoding techniques. He has published more than 150 papers in refereed international conferences and journals, and is the author of “Modulation and Coding for Wireless Communications” (published by Prentice-Hall/PHEI). He has held a Senior Research Fellowship by the U.K. Royal Society, and also received the J. Langham Thompson Premium from the Institution of Electrical Engineers. He has also held a visiting professorship at Vienna University of Technology, and given more than 15 invited presentations, including at the First International Conference on Turbocodes and Related Topics, and keynotes at the first WCNC event (later IEEE WiCom), Wuhan, China, and at the ATOM Workshop, Kuala Lumpur, May 2016. He was chair, working group 2, of a series of European COST programmes including IC1004 “Cooperative Radio Communications for Green Smart Environments”, and has also served as Associate Editor for IEEE Communications Letters, Workshops Chair for IEEE ICC 2016 and TPC co-chair for IEEE PIMRC 2018.