Tutorials

ISWCS’07 will provide six tutorials on 16 October 2007.

T1: Multipath Characterization of Antennas and Mobile Terminals for Diversity and MIMO Systems

The reverberation chamber has for many years found application in the EMC area. Recently, we have shown that it with great advantage can be used also for antenna measurements as it emulates effectively an isotropic multi-path propagation environment. The lecture will give the basic theory of reverberation chambers, and show how the chamber can used to measure radiation efficiency, free space radiation impedance, and diversity gain of antennas; total radiated power and receiver sensitivity of mobile phones and other wireless or mobile terminals (GSM, CDMA, DECT, Bluetooth, UMTS); and channel capacity of MIMO antenna systems. The chamber is the only known measurement instrument for realistically measuring diversity gain and channel capacity; the alternative being to drive measurement instruments around in an actual urban environment. A major advantage with this new measurement method is that the measurements fast and easily can be performed when the antenna or phone is located in different talk positions relative to a head phantom or other environments.

The reverberation chamber with antenna measurement procedures have been commercialized by the company BluetestAB (www.bluetest.se).

Per-Simon Kildal received the Ph.D. and Doc­tor Technicae degrees from the Norwegian Institute of Technology (NTH) in 1982 and 1990. From 1979 to 1989, he was SINTEF research institute in Norway. Since 1989, he has been a Professor at Chalmers Uni­versity of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden. Kildal is Fellow of IEEE since 1995, and he has done several services to the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society. He has authored more than 200 papers in IEEE or IEE journals and conferences, concerning antenna theory, analysis, design and measurement. His textbook Founda­tions of Antennas - A Unified Approach (Lund, Sweden: Studentlitteratur, 2000) has been well received.Kildal has done the electrical design and analysis of two very large antennas: The 120-m long and 40-m wide cylindrical parabolic reflector antenna of the EISCAT Scientific Association, and the Gregorian dual-reflector feed of the 300-m diameter radio telescope in Arecibo. Kildal is the originator of the concept of soft and hard surfaces through which he and his coworkers preceded much of the recent research on electromagnetic bandgap surfaces and metamaterials. The last seven years Kildal and his group at Chalmers have pioneered the development of the reverberation chamber into an accurate measurement tool for characterizing antennas and wireless terminals subject to Rayleigh fading.Kildal has founded two companies: COMHATAB (www.comhat.com) and BluetestAB (www.bluetest.se).

Jan Carlsson (M’98) was born in Sweden, on May 6, 1962. He received the M.S.E.E. and Ph.D. degrees from Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg, Sweden, in 1986 and 1998, respectively. From 1986 to 1990, he was an EMC-Engineer with Ericsson Radar Electronics AB, Mölndal, Sweden. Currently he is the Head of Research at the EMC Department, SP Swedish National Testing and Research Institute, Borås, Sweden. He is also an Adjunct Professor of Computational Electromagnetics in the Department of Signals and Systems, Chalmers University of Technology. His research is in the area of computation techniques for electromagnetic problems as well as new measurement techniques involving reverberation chamber, especially for applications in EMC and antennas. He is one of the authors of the EMMA Handbook (EMC handbook issued by the Swedish Defence Material Administration). Jan Carlsson has many years experience as a lecturer of different short courses, including both EMC and new measurement techniques for antennas. From 2002-2004 he was the Chairman of the Swedish EMC Chapter. He is currently a Member of the Swedish National Committee for Radio Science (SNRV), Section E, and Applied Computational Electromagnetics Society (ACES).

T2: Ultra-Wideband Technology and its Standardization for Wireless Personal Area Networks

A radio communication system is classified into the ultra-wideband (UWB) category when it occupies a frequency bandwidth of more than 20% of its central frequency or larger than 500MHz. Since its commercial use was approved by FCC in 2002, UWB has gathered tremendous interests in both academic researches and industrial developments. A number of standardization bodies including IEEE802, ECMA, and ISO have worked on UWB based standards. Besides FCC, regulatory authorities in Japan, EU, and other countries or areas issued their own UWB regulations. These activities have been accelerating the commercialization for UWB. Among a number of distinguished characteristics, UWB is essentially able to provide high data-rate communications and high precision ranging because of its nature of ultra wide-band occupancy in frequency domain and extremely narrow pulse in time domain. This tutorial gives an overview on UWB related issues including technology, standardization, and regulation. More attentions are put on its applications in wireless personal area networks (WPAN) including both communications and ranging issues. Standardization activities on high-rate UWB and low-rate UWB are reviewed. Emphasis will be put on IEEE 802.15.4a, which is a UWB standard approved in March 2007 as an alternative PHY for low-rate WPAN. Main features and parameters of IEEE 802.15.4a will be described in detail. Recently, body area network (BAN) was proposed as a new standard candidate and is studied within IEEE 802.15.MBAN. In which, UWB is also considered as a competitive technology. A brief guidance on IEEE 802.15.MBAN will be given in this tutorial. 

Huan-Bang Li received the B.S. degree from NorthernJiaoTongUniversity, Beijing, China in 1986. He received the M.S. and the Dr. of Eng. degrees from Nagoya Institute of Technology, Nagoya, Japan in 1991 and 1994 respectively. He joined the Communications Research Laboratory (CRL), Japan in 1994 (now, National Institute of Information and communications Technology: NICT). He is now a senior researcher of NICT. His research interests include mobile satellite communications, coding, modulation, UWB, medical ICT, etc.. From 1999 to 2000, he was a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University, CA, USA. He currently serves as the vice chairman of IEEE 802.15.MBAN. He received the Young Engineer Award and the Excellent Paper Award of IEICE Japan in 1996 and 1998, respectively, and the Distinguished Patent Award from the Ministry of Science and Technology Agency of Japan in 2000.

T3: From Cognitive Radios to Cognitive Wireless Networks

This tutorial starts by giving a quick historical background on the cognitive radios. We describe what is meant by spectrum agile radios and by full cognitive radios ("Mitola Radios"). The main emphasis on the tutorial is to show what are the implications and the current research results on building cognitive wireless networks. The current work has been mostly cognitive radio and game theory specific. In this tutorial we outline how cognitive techniques can be used to build out full cross-layer and network wide optimization methods. The tutorial illustrates how concepts from multi-objective optimization and machine learning can be used to shape the design of cognitive and self-configuring networks. The tutorial is emphasizing the architectural concepts and emerging new methodologies. The tutorial also provides attendees with knowledge of the most important concepts and open research questions in this emerging field. As such it is also suited for beginning graduate students.

Petri Mähönen is currently a full professor and holds Ericsson Chair of Wireless Networks at the RWTHAachenUniversity in Germany. Before joining to RWTH Aachen in 2002, he was a research director and professor at the Centre for Wireless Communications and the University of Oulu. He has studied and worked in the United States, United Kingdom and Finland. He has been a principla investigator in several international research projects, including initiating and leading several large European Union research projects. Dr. Mähönen has published more than 150 papers in international journals and conferences and has been invited to deliver research talks at many universities, companies and conferences. He is a senior member of IEEE and ACM, and fellow of RAS. He is inventor or co-inventor for over 20 patents or patent applications. In 2006, he was awarded Telenor research prize. He has been particularly active in cognitive wireless network research. He has been serving in different roles in relevant cognitive communications domain conferences, such as DySPAN, CogNet and CrownCom. He has been also guest-editor for several special issues in the field. He is currently also a research area coordinator and one of the principal investigators for a newly formed Ultra High Speed Mobile Information and Communication (UMIC) research cluster at RWTH, which is one of the German national excellence clusters established in 2006. One of the research domains in UMIC cluster is also cognitive radio network technologies. His present research interest include cognitive wireless networks, embedded intelligence, mathematical physics inspired analysis methods, performance evaluation of comple networks and future (wireless) network access technologies.

Marina Petrova works as a chief research scientist at the Department of Wireless Networks at the RWTHAachenUniversity. She graduated in Electronics and Telecommunications engineering from the University of St.Cyril and Methodius, Skopje, Macedonia. Her research interest are focused on cognitive wireless networks, cognitive radios and adaptive wireless systems technologies. The topic of her Ph.D. thesis work at the RWTH Aachen has been also the multi-parameter optimization methods for cognitive radio networks. As part of her research work she has participated in the several international cooperative projects and industry projects in the field of wireless communications and cognitive radios. In Aachen she has also lead the research work that has been done towards the prototype implementation of gnuRadio based cognitive resource manager for cognitive radios. He has also served in technical program and organizing committees of conferences, among those IEEE DySPAN, IEEE Crowncom, the leading conferences in the field of cognitive radios and networks.

T4: Multiuser Communications

Multiuser communication is developed using single-user communication methods as building blocks. The tutorial addresses the multiple-access channel, the broadcast channel, as well as more complicated multiuser setups. The availability of various amounts of channel state information at different sides of the multiuser channel is decisive and its various implications are explained. The often fuzzily defined notion of "multiuser diversity" is classified into different effects corresponding to different fading conditions. The overall aim is to give a systematic view of multiuser communications.

Ralf R. Müller received the Dipl.-Ing. and Dr.-Ing. degree with distinction from University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in 1996 and 1999, respectively. From 2000 to 2004, he directed a research group at Forschungszentrum Telekommunikation Wien (ViennaTelecommunicationsResearchCenter) in Vienna, Austria and taught as an adjunct professor at Vienna University of Technology. Since 2005 he has been a full professor at the Department of Electronics and Telecommunications at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim, Norway. He held visiting appointments at Princeton University, U.S.A., Institute Esurecom, France, the University of Melbourne, Australia, The University of Oulu, Finland, The National University of Singapore, and Babes-BolyaiUniversity, Cluj-Napoca, Romania. Dr. Müller received the Leonard G. Abraham Prize (jointly with Sergio Verdú) for the paper ”Design and Analysis of Low-Complexity Interference Mitigation on Vector Channels” from the IEEE Communications Society. He was presented awards for his dissertation ”Power and Bandwidth Efficiency of Multiuser Systems with Random Spreading” by the Vodafone Foundation for Mobile Communications and the German Information Technology Society (ITG). Moreover, he received the ITG award for the paper ”A Random Matrix Model for Communication Via Antenna Arrays” as well as the Philipp-Reis Award (jointly with Robert Fischer). Dr. Müller has published some 100 papers on multiuser communications in international journals and conferences and served as an associate editor for the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory from 2003 to 2006.

T5: Introduction to ITS (Intelligent Transportation Systems) Communication Solutions

Cooperative vehicle-infrastructure systems will allow vehicles to cooperate directly with other nearby vehicles, and with the immediate roadside infrastructure, thus sharing information on the latest traffic information for greater safety, efficiency and a better environment. Each equipped vehicle will be able to connect and communicate via local ad hoc networks of vehicles and roadside equipment in the vicinity, and also via an always-on network connection to access a wide range of journey support and other services. The pre-requisite is a harmonised technology for vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication and networking. CVIS will develop a multi-channel terminal capable of connecting with a wide range of potential carriers, including cellular networks (GPRS, UMTS), mobile wireless local area networks (WLAN, or Wi-Fi), short range microwave beacons (DSRC) or infra-red (IR). This will be based on the new international “CALM” (ISO) standards, ensuring full interoperability between different makes of car and of traffic management systems.

The tutorial will give an introduction to the CALM (Continuous Access Long and Medium range (see http://www.calm.hu/ for further reference) standard and its implementation in the CVIS project (Co-operative Vehicle-Infrastructure Systems, - a 6. FW EU Integrated Project, involving more than 50 partners (http://www.cvisproject.org/) and summarize current status, both in the development of the standard and in the project. The main focus in the tutorial will be the communication aspects (not so much attention will be paid to the CVIS applications.)

(Picture missing) Runar SØRÅSEN is a Sivilingeniør/M.Sc in Electronic Engineering from the NorwegianUniversity of Science and Technology (NTNU). Currently he is Technical Project Manager at Q-Free's R&D department, participating in the European research project CVIS, and in several related national research projects. Runar has 10 year experience from the semiconductor industry, both as design engineer and project manager. He was Senior Design Engineer in Atmel Corp. from 2001 to 2006, developing analog periferi for microcontrollers.

Per Jarle Furnes, born 1968, got a master degree in Microelectronics, NTH - Trondheim in 1991 and has been in Q-Free since 1992. Mr. Furnes has been involved in international standardisation since 1994 and is still active member of working groups within CEN and ISO. Mr. Furnes has hold various positions within the organisation ranging from project management, leading the technology development department responsible for all research and product development programmes inside Q-Free, and currently business development, responsible for new strategies within Q-Free group.

Q-Free (Norway)

Q-Free is a leading supplier of technology and products for electronic toll collection (ETC) systems and has since 1991 delivered products and systems world wide. The company is established in Norway, Trondheim and has daughter companies in Portugal, Greece, Brazil, China, Malaysia and Australia. Q-Free provides products and systems for electronic toll collection (ETC) and manual toll collection (MTC). Q-Free supply stand alone products for integration as well as complete systems for turn key delivery to customers. ETC products and systems comprise single lane DSRC free flow equipment, multilane equipment and on board units. The company had 181 employees, and a turnover of 63.5 M€ in 2005. Q-Free is actively contributing to international standardization work, within ISO, CEN, and ETSI.

T6: RFID Systems

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) has been around for decades and has been generally regarded as a matured technology ready for market adoption and deployment. However, the adoption of RFID has not received the whelming response as the market and players have eagerly anticipated. What went wrong with this technology, despite its advantages over competing technologies? Indeed, RFID is a technology constrained by many differing environmental factors, of which need to be considered, before a successful system can be commissioned. The objective of the tutorial will unravel the technical, marketing and practical aspects underpinning RFID systems. The tutorial will also attempt to provide analysis of the differing technical specifications and applications governing RFID and Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN).

The objective of the tutorial will unravel and discuss the technology, marketing and practical aspects underpinning RFID systems. The tutorial will start off by providing extensive coverage on the different facets of RFID, with strong focus on the standards underlying LF, HF, UHF and active tag. It will then be followed with an in-depth focus and emphasis on HF system. It will also highlight the co-existance of different RFID technologies (LF, HF, UHF and active tags), in today's markets. It will provide a detailed understanding of the technical information unpinning the RFID systems, with special emphasis on HF given that this is the more provened and matured technology. The successful deployment of National Library Board of Singapore, a benchmark in world RFID library deployment, will be discussed and will be used as a case study to illustrate the economics and technical aspects of the potential of RFID systems. The tutorial will also attempt to provide some practical demonstrations on the design of HF circuitries and tuning of antenna, under different environmental influences. The tutorial will also provide differentiating factors between Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) and RFID, both passive and active. It is worth noting that RFID has always been pushed for by the industry and WSN by the academia. However, there has been in increasing interest in WSN by the industry and RFID by the academia. The tutorial will conclude with the ongoing trend and to provide a visionary convergence approach between RFID and wireless sensor networks and ways and applications for its inter-working.

Boon Sain Yeo received the B.Eng and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from University of Glasgow and Imperial College of Science and Technology, respectively. He has been with the Institute for Infocomm Research (I2R, formerly known as Centre for Wireless Communications, NUS and Institute for Communications Research), since 1998. From 2004 – 2005, he was appointed head of Wireless Sensor Networks Laboratory in the Networking Department. Since 2005, he has been seconded to lead the technology division of Wavex Technologies, focusing on wireless development and RFID, and to setup Wavex Innovations, the R&D arm of Wavex Technologies, under a government initiative to help technologically upgrade the small medium enterprise in Singapore. He has participated actively and led a team of hardware engineers in the deployment of the 2nd generation RFID systems to the 22 Regional and Community Libraries for the National Library Board of Singapore (NLB). He was also the project manager for the RFID Smart-Shelf project, which he initiated at I2R. He is also an adjunct Assistant Professor in NUS. His research interests are in technologies relating to wireless systems and network, and operational approaches to optimize telecommunication systems. He has been actively participating in numerous conferences serving as TPC chair, steering committee chair and General co-chair in more than 10 conferences the recent 3-4 years. He is also currently serving as an editorial board member for several reputable journals.