Photonics-assisted High-capacity Cell-free Networks for 6G
- Reference number
- SM21-0047
- Start and end dates
- 220101-230430
- Amount granted
- 553 267 SEK
- Administrative organization
- Ericsson AB
- Research area
- Information, Communication and Systems Technology
Summary
Objectives: - Create a strong partnership between KTH Applied Physics Department and Ericsson for 6G research. - Study the essential communication-theoretic grounds and algorithms for cell-free networks. - Experimentally validate the advantages of the proposed photonic-assisted testbed and its advanced functionalities for an indoor cell-free network. - Determine the main challenges of the proposed hardware implementation to provide guidelines on a minimum viable product (MVP). - Disseminate project results in high-impact international journals and conferences. As of today, within Ericsson several conceptual activities have been carried out on this topic, thus we already have several developments and insights that combined with KTH’s laboratory resources and researchers’ expertise will provide the perfect environment for our timely research. We will study the fundamental properties and parameters of analog radio-over-fiber (ARoF) systems that will serve as the foundation to characterize in a precise manner the proposed photonics-assisted communication system. Subsequently, we will experimentally validate the performance advantages of the proposed system and its compliance with current mobile communications technical specifications. Finally, we will refine our experimental findings and provide guidelines considering hardware limitations, implementation aspects and cost constraints.
Popular science description
Although the fifth generation (5G) of mobile networks is just becoming available, planning is already underway for the next generation. Humankind is moving towards a connected society. To cope with this new society requirements, high speed networks and universal connectivity are a must. This enables very needed new use cases in education, transportation, healthcare, and others, which were highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, although current 5G mobile networks have set a good precedent for the new applications forecasted in future 6G networks, still many improvements are needed. The next generation of mobile networks must improve many aspects such as power consumption, zero delay communications, coverage, and support future multimedia applications demanding massive amounts of data, for example, smart factories internet of things (IoT) and eXtended Reality (XR) applications. To increase the capacity of mobile communication systems, it is preferred that the antennas of a base station are as close as possible to the mobile users in an unobstructed environment to minimize the transmission losses. To achieve this, a new network deployment strategy that is distributed in space is needed. Cell-free networks are networks where the base station antennas are distributed geographically over the cell in contrast to traditional networks where the antennas are all located in a single array in the center of the cell. From a performance standpoint, a cell-free network typically performs better than a traditional system, however it is more complex and expensive to implement. This project tackles the problem of realizing a practical and cost-efficient implementation of cell-free networks. In order to do so, we rely on the convergence of optical and wireless technologies to improve the aspects where existing technology falls short. This project aims to experimentally validate a centralized architecture based on an analog fiber-optic solution for 6G distributed antenna networks. Consequently, since all the digital signal processing is centralized in a central unit, each distributed antenna unit has low complexity significantly reducing the power consumption and increasing its capabilities.