Enabling High-Speed Microwave and Millimetre Wave Links (MiMiWaveS)

随着我们生活在一个日益互联、自动化和全球化的智能环境社会中，无线通信正以前所未有的方式塑造着地球，在这个社会中，物理世界与信息世界联系在一起。展望未来10-20年，多千兆无线通信将在非有线网络社会的演进和发展中发挥更加突出的作用。这个项目是在每秒千兆比特的无线通信被设想为未来智能环境设计带来根本性转变的时候提出的。该项目的成果将引发智能环境的新兴概念，从纳米级控制或操纵的智能材料，到大规模部署传感器和监控系统的智能城市。特别是，多媒体设备和多媒体内容的广泛可用性和需求推动了对高速无线连接的需求，超出了现有商业标准的能力。该项目开发的技术将解决有关设计和实现下一代多千兆无线应用的实际问题，实现低成本光纤替代移动回程、最后一英里无线宽带接入、超密集小蜂窝、低延迟未压缩高清媒体传输和云无线接入。未来网络社会的挑战和基本限制只能通过探索智能和可持续环境的低干扰高速无线链路的破坏性潜力来掌握。该项目的成果将对推进移动和无处不在计算的最新技术产生直接影响，以实现每秒千兆比特的数据速率，支持云计算和触觉互联网等新型无线平台处理大量数据，从而巩固万物互联（IoE），使其成为连接数千亿人、物体和服务的真正网络化社会。特别是，本项目开发的概念、算法和理论将解决有关频谱时间和地理变化不平衡的实际问题，以及带宽消耗大的移动应用（如高清电视（HDTV）和超高清视频（UHDV）视频流）的快速扩散。尽管无线信道损伤极大地影响了无线网络的带宽效率，但在该学科最近开展的研究中，特别是在第五代（5G）蜂窝的微波和毫米波频段，并没有考虑到它们的影响。该项目的目标是通过有效的发射器和接收器设计，利用大规模多输入多输出（MIMO）和异构小蜂窝部署，提高在微波和毫米波频段运行的下一代5G的带宽效率，同时考虑到信道估计误差、相位噪声和载波频率偏移等损伤的影响。因此，该项目不是基于任何关于无线信道的理想假设，这与该领域的现有工作相比是独一无二的。拟议的研究当然提出了几个基本的设计挑战，这些挑战远非微不足道，它们根植于不同的学科，包括信息论、随机控制理论、顺序统计、大系统分析、自动决策制定和普适性计算。工业合作伙伴将参与整个项目，以确保我们的工作与工业相关。

Wireless communications has been shaping the planet in an unprecedented way as we live in an increasingly connected, automated, and globalised society of smart environments where the physical world is connected with the information world. Looking 10-20 years ahead, multi-gigabit wireless communications will play an even more prominent role in the evolution and development of our unwired networked society. This project is proposed at a time when gigabit per second wireless communications is envisioned to bring a fundamental shift to the design of future smart environments. The results of this project will trigger the emerging concept of smart environments, ranging from smart materials controlled or manipulated at the nanoscale, to smart cities with massive deployment of sensors and monitoring systems. In particular, the widespread availability and demand for multimedia capable devices and multimedia content have fuelled the need for high-speed wireless connectivity beyond the capabilities of existing commercial standards. The technologies developed in this project will address practical issues concerning the design and implementation of next generation multi-gigabit wireless applications enabling low cost fibre replacement mobile backhauls, last mile wireless broadband access, ultra-dense small cells, low latency uncompressed high-definition media transfers, and wireless access to the cloud. The challenges and fundamental limits of future networked societies can only be mastered by exploring the disruptive potential of low-interference high-speed wireless links for smart and sustainable environments.The results of this project will have immediate impact on advancing the state-of-the-art in mobile and ubiquitous computing for multi-gigabit-per-second data rates, supporting new wireless platforms such as cloud computing and tactile Internet to handle large quantities of data and thus to underpin the Internet of Everything (IoE) as a truly networked society connecting hundreds of billions of people, objects, and services. In particular, the concepts, algorithms, and theory developed in this project will address practical issues concerning the unbalanced temporal and geographical variations of the spectrum, along with the rapid proliferation of bandwidth-hungry mobile applications, such as video streaming with high definition television (HDTV) and ultra-high definition video (UHDV). Even though wireless channel impairments greatly impact the bandwidth efficiency of wireless networks, their effects have not been taken into consideration in the recent research carried out in this discipline, especially in the microwave and millimetre-wave bands for fifth generation (5G) cellular. The objective of this project is to improve the bandwidth efficiency of next generation 5G operating in the microwave and millimetre-wave bands through effective transmitter and receiver designs that exploit massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) and heterogeneous small cell deployment, while taking into account the effects of impairments, such as channel estimation error, phase noise, and carrier frequency offset. As a result, this project is not based on any idealistic assumptions regarding the wireless channel, which compared to existing work in this field is unique. The proposed research certainly raises several fundamental design challenges far from trivial, that have their roots in diverse disciplines, including information theory, stochastic control theory, sequential statistics, large system analysis, automated decision making, and pervasive computing. Industrial partners will be engaged throughout the project to ensure industrial relevance of our work.