SURFACE objectives

A real need of emerging and future wireless communication system is a unified formulation of the air interfaces to be implemented by reconfigurable architectures, taking into account that there is not a unique best interface, but that the choice has to result from a trade-off among different objectives. Therefore, this project aims at studying and evaluating the performance of a novel generalised air interface capable of self-reconfiguring in order to satisfy global network QoS (Quality of Service) requirements, based on channel and traffic knowledge. The project considers Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) technologies as an option and develops a general framework that includes as specific cases standardised access technologies like DS-CDMA, MC-CDMA and OFDM to develop a physical layer, completely reconfigurable to match the global instantaneous, but imperfect, channel state, mobility, traffic information and terminal capabilities. This ambitious general objective will be pursued by the fulfilment of the following specific targets:

System Requirements Objectives

  Specification of global QoS requirements of the services to be supported by the self-configurable air interface.

  Definition of the strategy for channel state information estimation and prediction.

Research Objectives

  Identification of general procedures for air interface reconfiguration including transmission technology, multiplexing, waveform generation and receiver architecture optimised for a MIMO point to point transmission (single-user) for arbitrary channel state and under single-user QoS requirements. This requires statistical characterisation of the MIMO channel in relevant scenarios and modelling of the imperfect channel knowledge at the transmitter and receiver sides.

  Generalisation of the previous procedure for a multi-user configuration, including scheduling, both in the uplink (multiple-access) and downlink (broadcast) channels under multi-user QoS requirements.

  Extension of the analysis to network level including advanced radio resource management techniques.

Technological Development Objectives

  Development of complexity vs. performance effective transmission and reception architectures able to exploit the unified air interface identified above, accounting for the QoS requirements of future wireless services in a heterogeneous network environment using acceptable common signalling and data representation.

  Detailed performance evaluation of the proposed architectures when integrated in the whole network. This entails link and system level simulations.

  Development of an Air Interface Emulator, a proof-of-concept which shows the impact that the introduced underlying communication technologies would have on the end-to-end QoS.

  Hardware optimisation and achievable complexity evaluation of the proposed solutions anticipating implementation in DSP and FPGA technologies.

  Feasibility of incorporating the proposed SURFACE concept into future wireless and cellular systems regarding standardisation, production, deployment and operation. Identification of a roadmap for utilisation of the concept.