Workpackage 2 - Radio Communications

Current und future services and contents in home networks put diverse demands on the underlying transmission technology. Due to the trade-off between data rate and coverage range inherent to radio systems, only a mixture of different radio technologies trimmed to the different classes of applications can fulfil all the requirements to the desired extent. In order to avoid inefficient and cumbersome solutions with coexistence problems as experienced today, OMEGA will integrate various appropriate radio devices into a converged heterogeneous radio network, which meets the customer’s demands with respect to quality of service, reliability, throughput, ubiquity, and self-configuration. For this purpose, improving the coexistence and cooperation between the different systems is a necessity for reliable communication within the home network. Convergence at the radio layer will consequently be a key concept to be investigated by the project.

The considered radio technologies comprise state-of-the-art systems like WLAN (IEEE 802.11n), emerging systems based on WPAN UWB (WiMedia) and systems at development stage like WPAN 60GHz (IEEE 802.15.3c, IEEE 802.11vht60, ECMA TC48).

In addition to the crucial aspect of convergence at the radio layer, the work package focuses on cross-layer algorithms to make efficient coexistence possible and achieve the required performance. We envisage a collection of devices that are aware of each other and cooperate to realize interference mitigation (using such techniques as directionality, multi-user MIMO, link adaptation, advanced power management) and efficient spectrum sharing, drawing from concepts in self-organizing systems and distributed scheduling.

In order to provide very high data rates for future ultra-high rate applications, adaptations and enhancements of the PHY and MAC layers considered in OMEGA will be specified. In this context, current and forthcoming standardization activities will be studied and contributions made where appropriate.

The scenarios developed in WP1 will be used to define the most relevant hybrid (converged) devices that are necessary to construct heterogeneous Home Area Networks and that enable the most promising services. Coexistence will be achieved on system and hardware level. Technology issues such as hardware-software co-design will be investigated. The most promising designs will be prototyped and then integrated into to the OMEGA platform.