Cognitive/UWB/DSA/AdvancedTechnology Radio Projects in Europe

CROWN (Cognitive Radio Oriented Wireless Networks)
http://www.fp7-crown.eu

6 partners co-ordinated by Queen's University of Belfast and funded under the FP7 FET-Open scheme (May 2009 - April 2012). In addition to Queen's University, the partners are:

Athens Information Technology - Greece;
Eurecom - France;
Darmstadt University of Technology - Germany;
Infineon Technologies SAS - France; and
QinetiQ - UK.

Contact:
Dr Tharm Ratnarajah (Project Coordinator)
E-mail: T.Ratnarajah@ecit.qub.ac.uk
Phone: +44 (0)28 9097 1890
Fax: +44 (0)28 9097 1702
Postal Address:
The Institute of Electronics, Communications and Information Technology (ECIT)
Room R/00/20
Queen's University Belfast
NI Science Park
Queen's Road
Queen's Island
Belfast, Northern Ireland BT3 9DT

The Flemish Cognitive Radio Research Cluster

Described in a May 2009 powerpoint by Filip Louagie, this consists of:

The Intec Broadband Communication Networks research group. Established in 1992 and now with about 100 members, IBCN is largely responsible for education in networking and software engineering in University of Ghent's Faculty of Engineering. Contact

Studies on Media, Information and Telecommunication (SMIT) Research Centre at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Founded in 1990, this is now part of the Interdisciplinary Institute for Broadband Technology, organized by the Flemish government in 2004 to stimulate ICT innovation. SMIT specialises in social scientific research on media and ICT, with an emphasis on innovation, policy and socio-economic questions. Contact: Hans De Canck, Project Coördinator, tel.+32 2 629 1665 / 1628, email smit@vub.ac.be

Performance Analysis of Telecommunication Systems (PATS) Research Group at the University of Antwerp. Contact: PATS Research Group, University of Antwerp, Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Middelheimlaan 1, B-2020 Antwerpen, Belgium, phone: +32 (0)3 265.39.03, fax: +32 (0)3 265.37.77, e-mail: pats@ua.ac.be

IMEC. Founded in 1984 by the Flemish government as a microelectronics research laboratory in Leuven, IMEC now has a staff of 1,650 and representative offices in 4 foreign countries. Contact: IMEC, Kapeldreef 75, B-3001 Leuven, Belgium, phone: +32 16 28 12 11, fax: +32 16 22 94 00, e-mail: Katrien.Marent@imec.be

SOCRATES: Self-Optimization and Self-Configuration in Wireless Networks
http://www.fp7-socrates.org/

This FP7-funded consortium includes Ericsson AB and Nokia Siemens Networks-Poland/Germany), Vodafone, Atesio (an SME developing support tools for mobile network planning and operations) and three research organisations (IBBT, TNO, and TU Braunschweig). The aim is to develop self-organisation methods to enhance the operation of wireless access networks, by integrating network planning, configuration and optimisation into a single, mostly automated process requiring minimal manual intervention.

Contact:
Prof. Dr. Hans van den Berg, Project Coordinator
TNO
The Netherlands
Tel: +31 15 2857031
Fax: +31 15 2857349
Email: J.L.vandenBerg@tno.nl

EUWB
http://www.euwb.eu/

Successor to the PULSERS project which ended in September 2008, this is a consortium with 21 partners (7 industrial firms, 7 Universities, 3 R&D Institutes and 4 SMEs) pursuing a 3-year project funded by FP7 at a level of 20.7 million euros. The aim is to "upgrade" and "integrate" UWB technologies "in four prominent application scenarios" that European Industry finds interesting: heterogeneous networks (headed by Telefonica), the home environment (headed by Philips), public transport (headed by EADS) and the automobile (headed by Bosch). EUWB Working Party 9 focuses on "Regulations and Standardisation." Working Party 2 deals with Cognitive UWB Radio.

Contact:
Volker Schreiber
Project Coordinator
GWT-TUD GmbH
Chemnitzer Str. 48b
D-01187 Dresden
Germany
Phone: +49 351 8734 1110
FAX: +49 351 8734 1722
Mobile: +49 172 3449426
Email: euwb@gwtonline.de

SENDORA (SEnsor Network for Dynamic and cOgnitive Radio Access)
http://www.sendora.eu/

"SENDORA project develops a new approach of Cognitive Radio called Sensor Network aided Cognitive Radio in which a sensor network assists the cognitive radio actuation by monitoring the spectrum use... the SENDORA project ([funded by FP7 and] started in January 2008 for 3 years)... WP3 is dedicated to spectrum sensing, that is, the design of new robust spectrum sensing algorithms, whose detection power will be enhanced by processing data from several sources in order to perform distributed detection of the primary licensed users. WP4 addresses the cognitive actuation. The objective is to achieve an improved understanding of the cognitive radio control actuation loop that will become a key module of the radio terminal. WP5 is dedicated to the collaborative communications within the sensor network. Novel physical layer cooperative transmission techniques will be designed, by modifying various approaches like Virtual Beamforming, Amplify & Forward, Decode & Forward, Compress & Forward..."
Partners: EURECOM, KTH (Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm), Linkopings University, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, University of Rome, Telenor, Thales, Helsinki University of Technology, University of Valencia.
Contact: info@sendora.eu

WALTER
http://www.walter-uwb.eu

Started in January 2008, this two-year, FP7-funded project addresses the need for specialized testbeds to measure low level, high data rate radio signals. The aim is to develop a world-wide network of such testbeds to serve the needs of industry, regulators and academic researchers. The 8 partners - from Germany, France, United Kingdom, Spain, Swiss, Italy, Israel and China - include: inno TSD, ETSI, Copsey Telecommunication Ltd., AT4 Wireless, Institute for Protection and Security of the Citizen, CSR, Wisair and TMC.

Strategy manager:
Philippe Cousin, ETSI
Sophia Antipolis
France

Project coordinator:
Franck Le gall
inno TSD
Place Joseph Bermond
Ophira 1 - BP63
Sophia Antipolis Cedex
France 06902
tel +33 492 388 418
fax +33 493 654 135

NEWCOM++
http://www.newcom-project.eu

This is a renewal/continuation of NEWCOM, set up in 2004 as "The Network of Excellence in Wireless COMmunications." NEWCOM++ gathers researchers from 17 major European institutions (universities, private and public R&D organizations)to promote solutions to problems of "The Network of the Future" and "Ubiquitous Network Infrastructure and Architectures." EUWB and NEWCOM++ together steer the EC concertation cluster "Radio Access & Spectrum" (RAS), which provides a platform for information exchanges and cooperation between FP6 and FP7 projects.

Contact:
Prof. Marco Luise, Administrative and Management Director
Istituto Superiore Mario Boella (ISMB)

Demonstrations at SDR-09 in Washington, DC, December 2009

CRaMNET: Opportunistic Cognitive radio for MANET with adaptive PHY and dynamic routing capability
Raghavendra S; Matti Raustia; Tuomo Hänninen - Centre for Wireless Communications University of Oulu (Finland): "In the demonstration set up we are considering 2 primary users (PUs) and 6 secondary users (SUs). The SUs exchange control packets over a common control channel (CCH) which is free from interference by PU. The data transmission happens over an opportunistic traffic channel (OTCH) which is the licensed channel used by PUs and this is selected as a result of spectrum sensing and PHY adaptation by the communicating SU pairs. CRaMNET uses optimized link state routing protocol (OLSR) on the network layer and hence communication between SUs which are several hops away can be realized, however for demonstration purpose we are limiting the maximum hop count to three. The demonstration is visualized by graphical user interface where we can show the network topology and its changes and the whole data transmission process from a projector display. By clicking on nodes we can show information like

* Whether a node is a PU or SU.
* Current state of the node and the packet types received and transmitted.
* Neighboring radio environment information as seen by the node considered.
* Routing table information.
* Throughput.
* Information of critical PHY and MAC parameters of the node considered

We are able to demonstrate user applications using TCP/IP like video conferencing and voice chatting, video transmission, audio transmission, ping etc."

Demonstration of cognitive spectrum sensing technologies
Thierry Dubois - IMEC: "Since the introduction of Opportunistic Spectrum Access as a new communication paradigm, research has focused on the introduction of improved techniques for spectrum sensing, establishing both theoretical foundations and building experimental prototypes proving the feasibility of spectrum sensing. None of the existing demonstrations however focused on the practical design constraints that have to be considered when using those techniques in low-power and low-cost handheld devices. The goal of this demo is to show the feasibility of spectrum sensing using reconfigurable analog building blocks that have been designed to meet power, cost and area constraints of future opportunistic access devices that can access and sense a broad range of frequency bands. For this, spectrum sensing will be demonstrated on a scalable RF front-end that has been designed at IMEC. It has a tuning range from 100 MHz to 6 GHz, and a flexible bandwidth ranging from 700 kHz to 40 mHz that allows to trade-off total sweep time and noise power. The resulting sensing power is < 100mW and frequency switching time is < 5us."

Personal contacts

From the announcement of his 2009 prize from the SDR Forum:
Eric Nicollet - Eric is the embedded SDR architecture specialist with Thales Communications, France. He has been practicing SDR-related topics since early 1998. He is currently involved in several European initiatives and programs on SDR, in all defense (SCORED/ESSOR), safety-of-life (WINTSEC) and commercial (E²R/E3) domains. Eric is a very active member of the SDR Forum representing the European SDR community. Eric has evangelized the capabilities and direction of SDR and Cognitive Radio solutions by being a speaker or panelist at numerous conferences. Eric has also been an author or co-author of numerous papers which support the furtherance or acceptance of SDR and Cognitive Radio technologies.

Cognitive/UWB/DSA/AdvancedTechnology Radio Projects in Europe

Demonstrations at SDR-09 in Washington, DC, December 2009

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