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

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.

This project is planned to have wider impact in several ways. These include impact on the industrial supporters of the project, the wider communications industry, on the researchers funded by the project and finally on the community in general.

The project will impact directly on the industrial supporters of the project by setting up and maintaining a regular dialogue on project progress and results. Six monthly progress meetings will be arranged and an advisory board of industrialists will be established to monitor progress and provide steering of the research programme. On an annual basis, strategic review workshops will be held to discuss project progress and researchers from other major research programmes will be invited to attend to present their work and provide feedback. The project will also involve several targeted technical workshops to discuss specific research themes and promote interaction between the project researchers and industrial supporters.

The project website will be used to reach out to the wider industrial community and project participants will also be involved in outreach events, such as those organised by Cambridge Wireless and Knowledge Transfer Networks in the UK. The project researchers will also exploit opportunities to present their work to relevant international groups, such as the World Wide Research Forum or the Wireless Innovation Forum. Routes to patent and then fund commercialisation of significant research results and findings will be established, with advice from the industrial advisory board.

The post doctoral researchers on the project will be trained to build their knowledge and experience. They will participate in presentation and writing skills training as required in order to deliver their findings effectively to both academic and industrial audiences. They will also be encouraged to participate in University training on research funding, entrepreneurship and other skills that will benefit their future careers. The researchers will also work closely with each other and will be encouraged to work with other academic and industrial collaborators when opportunities arise. The three funded post-doctoral researchers will also assist with supervising four PhD students who will participate in the project.

In order to reach out to the wider non-scientific community, the researchers will be encouraged to become STEM ambassadors so that they can encourage school children to get involved in science and engineering. Researchers from the project will also participate in Science fairs by organising events about the project or participating in more general events and demonstrations.