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

无线通信正在以前所未有的方式塑造地球，因为我们生活在一个日益连接，自动化和全球化的智能环境社会中，物理世界与信息世界相连。展望未来10-20年，千兆位无线通信将在我们无线网络社会的演变和发展中发挥更加突出的作用。该项目是在设想每秒千兆位无线通信将为未来智能环境的设计带来根本转变的时候提出的。该项目的结果将引发新兴的智能环境概念，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。特别地，对具有多媒体能力的设备和多媒体内容的广泛可用性和需求已经推动了对超出现有商业标准的能力的高速无线连接的需求。该项目开发的技术将解决与下一代多千兆位无线应用的设计和实施有关的实际问题，这些应用可实现低成本光纤替代移动的回程、最后一英里无线宽带接入、超密集小型蜂窝、低延迟无压缩高清媒体传输以及云无线接入。未来网络社会的挑战和基本限制只能通过探索低干扰高速无线链路的破坏性潜力来掌握，以实现智能和可持续的环境。该项目的结果将对推动移动的和无处不在的计算的最新技术产生直接影响，以实现每秒数千兆位的数据速率，支持云计算和触觉互联网等新的无线平台来处理大量数据，从而将万物互联（IoE）作为连接数千亿人、物体和服务的真正网络化社会。特别是，在这个项目中开发的概念，算法和理论将解决有关频谱的不平衡的时间和地理变化的实际问题，沿着带宽饥渴的移动的应用程序，如视频流与高清晰度电视（HDTV）和超高清视频（UHDV）的快速增长。尽管无线信道损伤极大地影响了无线网络的带宽效率，但在该学科最近进行的研究中，特别是在第五代（5G）蜂窝的微波和毫米波频段中，尚未考虑到它们的影响。该项目的目标是通过有效的发射机和接收机设计来提高下一代5G在微波和毫米波段的带宽效率，这些设计利用大规模多输入多输出（MIMO）和异构小小区部署，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，这个项目不是基于任何理想化的假设，关于无线信道，这与现有的工作在这一领域是独一无二的。所提出的研究肯定会提出一些根本的设计挑战，这些挑战远非微不足道，它们植根于不同的学科，包括信息论，随机控制理论，顺序统计，大型系统分析，自动决策和普适计算。工业合作伙伴将参与整个项目，以确保我们的工作的工业相关性。

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.