Seamless and Adaptive Wireless Access for Efficient Future Networks (SERAN)

无线通信正在成为我们在生活中使用的普遍技术。在整个社会中，人们正在从台式电脑上使用互联网转向移动的手机、笔记本电脑和平板电脑。这意味着支持我们在线活动的数据传输量正在迅速增加。从许多类型的传感器、仪表和计算机中自动共享和收集数据也有显着增长，有时称为机器对机器通信。移动的网络运营商在建立其网络以满足不断增加的业务负载方面面临重大挑战。他们希望为用户提供丰富而无缝的互联网连接体验，但这必须与其网络的财务和能源成本进行权衡。有三个主要的概念或趋势可以帮助移动的运营商改进其网络。第一个是异构网络的概念，其包括广域大小区或宏小区和短程小小区，其允许网络运营商将高业务需求的区域（诸如办公室或购物中心）作为目标。使用小型小区提供了低成本和低能量的解决方案，以向订户提供高数据速率服务。第二个概念是使用更多无线电频谱以应付交通需求。英国政府最近一直在向网络运营商拍卖更多的无线电频谱，以提高容量。然而，通过使用一组称为毫米波频谱的新的更高频带，可以实现更高的数据速率。缺点是无线电信号传播的距离不如现有的移动的宽带频率远，因此它们可能最适合于短距离小小区。这种情况下的第一个危险是管理大量小区和频率的复杂性变得不可能复杂。第二个主要问题涉及小小区之间的显著干扰的可能性，这限制了它们的效率。这些问题的一个解决方案是所谓的“幻影细胞”。这些系统使用单独的更高功率数据链路来协调所有移动台的活动，从而限制系统的复杂性。这个项目将研究新的想法，以管理异构网络的增长，并以有效的方式使用新的频谱带。这些方法将以简单的方式管理网络资源，并有效地解决干扰问题。它们将产生一个网络，以比今天的移动的网络更节能的方式为用户提供高质量的体验。

Wireless communications is becoming a pervasive technology that we use throughout our lives. Across society, there is a move away from using the internet on desktop computers and towards mobile phones, laptops and tablets. This means that the amount of data transmission to support our online activity is rapidly increasing. There is also significant growth in automatic data sharing and collection from many types of sensors, meters and computers, sometimes called machine-to-machine communications. Mobile network operators face major challenges in setting up their networks to meet the increasing traffic load. They would like to provide a rich and seamless internet connection experience to their subscribers, but this must be traded off against the financial and energy costs of their network.There are three major concepts or trends that can assist mobile operators to improve their networks. The first is the concept of heterogeneous networks which includes both wide area large cells or macrocells and short range small cells that allows the network operator to target areas of high traffic demand such as offices or shopping malls. Using small cells provides a low cost and low energy solution to provide high data rate services to subscribers. The second concept is the use of more radio spectrum to meet traffic demand. The UK government has recently been auctioning more radio spectrum to network operators to boost capacity. However, by using a new set of higher frequency bands called the millimetre wave spectrum, much higher data rates may be achieved. The drawback is that radio signals do not propagate as far as for existing mobile broadband frequencies, so they are probably best suited to short range small cells.The third concept relates to efficient management of radio spectrum with a large number of small cells operating. The first danger in this scenario is that the complexity of managing the large number of cells and frequencies becomes impossibly complex. A second major problem relates to the potential for significant interference between small cells, which limits their efficiency. One solution to these problems are so-called "phantom cells". These use a separate higher power data link to coordinate the activities of all mobiles and thus limit the complexity of the system.This project will study new ideas to manage the growth of heterogeneous networks and and the use of new spectrum bands in an efficient way. These methods will manage the network resources in a simple manner and will tackle interference effectively. They will yield a network that provides a good quality of experience to subscribers in a more energy efficient way than today's mobile networks.