NSERC/C-COM Industrial Research Chair in Intelligent Antenna and Radio Systems for Next Generation Millimeter-Wave Mobile Communications

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Unlimited demand on information bandwidth and connectivity requires revolutionary changes in radio technologies, communication systems, and networks. Next generation radio networks with 100 to 1000 times more bandwidth, which will connect everything to everything with no delay, will extend the global reach of the digital economy to every corner of this world (in the ocean, deep in the sky, and remotest villages). This vision is way beyond the capabilities of the current technologies. A radical solution to this problem is to exploit much higher frequency bands such as millimeter-wave and terahertz, which can provide ultra-broad information bandwidth. Despite its extreme communication bandwidth, commercial (mass market) exploitation of millimeter-wave spectrum is quite limited due to the cost, small radiated power, poor sensitivity of the current devices, and complexity of the radio and antenna technologies. Millimeter-wave attenuation in the air and common objects (building material and human body) is another difficulty. To address these challenges, one of the most promising solutions is the intelligent massive multi-antenna systems, wherein radiations from a large number of small identical low-cost/low-power antenna modules, are properly combined in space to generate a high power emission in desirable direction and much less radiation and interference in unwanted directions.The built-in intelligence in such modular radio/antenna system minimizes the power consumption and maximizes the performance. The objective of the proposed IRC program is to investigate and to develop a new modular and low-cost intelligent antenna and radio technology for next generation millimeter-wave (mmW) communication and sensing applications. A significant advantage of the proposed technology is its "scalability". This simply means that the complex active antenna systems with various shapes and sizes, for different applications, can all be made from the same low-power intelligent active antenna module, which can be mass-produced to minimize the cost. A comprehensive working prototype of such system will be developed during this IRC program