14 November 2019 at imec, Leuven.
The Future of Wireless Technology
The workshop will be a combination of plenary presentations, live-demonstrations, and industry booths. And we finish wit a lively debate on the future of wireless technology.
Location
imec 1 auditorium, Kapeldreef 75, 3001 Leuven.
Programme: Presentations and Demos
| 12:30 | Registration and sandwich lunch Free demo visit |
| 13:15 | Introduction – 10 years wireless community Kris Hermus, Coordinator Wireless Community & Innovation Program Manager, imec slides |
| 13:30 | Beyond 5G: wireless communication in 2035 Michael Peeters, Program Director Connectivity, imec The traffic in today’s networks, 4G, 5G, mobile or otherwise, seems to be following nicely the exponential expectations projected each year. Unfortunately, not only the individual endpoint throughputs are increasing, but the number of endpoints and their capabilities is skyrocketing as well. Moreover, capacity as a KPI is being complemented by reliability and latency as use-cases branch out beyond the traditional human-centric communications and entertainment into e.g. industrial automation, AR/VR and autonomous vehicles. In this talk we take a look at how new network capacity, reliability and latency requirements can drive technology choices for the next 10 years and beyond. |
| 14:00 | AI approach to battling spectrum scarcity in 5G-networks Steven Latre, Professor, imec-IDLab-UAntwerp slides (members only, login required) Spectrum scarcity is a well known problem. From the weak WiFi connection at your favorite coffee shop to issues in emergency communications or wireless industrial processes, the problem is strongly present in day-to-day situations. To encourage research teams worldwide to look for solutions, DARPA launched the Spectrum Collaboration Challenge. Team SCATTER, existing of researchers from imec and Rutgers University, participated in this open competition with the goal to develop spectrum radio networks, which share the spectrum without planning, learn how to adapt across multiple degrees of freedom and collaboratively optimize the total spectrum capacity. After three years, team SCATTER reached the finals of the competition, bringing an innovative solution to the spectrum problem by using artificial intelligence to learn how the other teams use the spectrum and determine how to respond. In the finals of this competition, team SCATTER ranked 6th out of more than 30 competitors, originally. In this talk, we will give you a sneak peak in what team SCATTER’s special sauce was and how we will go forward with this solution, to be able to integrate it into an actual solution. |
| WIRELESS TECHNOLOGIES FOR (INDOOR) POSITIONING | |
| 14:30 | Trends and evolutions for wireless indoor positioning Eli De Poorter, Professor, imec-IDLab-UGent We give a short overview of the technological innovations behind wireless indoor positioning solutions, such as novel ranging and localisation protocols, and approaches for high-precision localization (based on UWB technology). |
| 14:50 | High-Accuracy Distance Measurement for standard Bluetooth Low Energy radios Jac Romme, Senior Researcher, imec-NL @ Holst Centre slides (members only, after login) We present imec’s algorithm for high-accuracy distance measurement (HADM), that is compatible with standard narrowband radios for Bluetooth or Zigbee. Thanks to state-of-the-art signal processing, our solution is very robust to multi-path, achieving <30 cm accuracy in typical indoor environments. This opens perspectives for many more services than traditional ranging approaches based on signal-strength (such as Bluetooth beacons) which are limited to a few meters of accuracy. Since imec is an active contributor to the Bluetooth SIG, we are confident that our multi-carrier phase-based measurement ranging procedure will be fully compliant with the next version of the 2.4GHz Bluetooth Low Energy standard. |
| 15:10 | SHYN, the first wearable for seamless 3D indoor and outdoor tracking Geert Claeys, Co-Founder, epic.blue slides (members only, after login) epic.blue has built a wearable solution that provides seamless indoor & outdoor positioning without the need for GPS or other pre-installed infrastructures (like Bluetooth or UWB beacons). SHYN was developed to guarantee the safety of every worker and to boost their operational excellence. It solves the Nr°1 Location Intelligence challenge by ensuring accurate and real-time location data, even in high-stress GPS-denied environments. |
| 15:25 | Coffee break & (Guided) Demo Tour |
| Demo 1: High-Accuracy Distance Measurement for standard Bluetooth Low Energy radios imec-NL Live demo of phase-based ranging with standard Bluetooth Low Energy radios. Demo 2: OpenWiFi – An open-source fully customizable Wi-Fi implementation on SDR imec-IDLab-UGent OpenWiFi provides an open-source full stack real time SDR Wi-Fi implementation on FPGA with embedded ARM. The implementation uses the Linux network stack, so it is fully compliant with standard Linux Wi-Fi tools and commercial Wi-Fi clients. The solution is ideal for prototyping high demanding use cases with very strict requirements which cannot be met by off-the-shelf Wi-Fi devices. Demo 3: SHYN, the first wearable for seamless 3D indoor & outdoor tracking epic.blue Demonstration of SHYN, epic.blue’s wearable solution that provides seamless indoor & outdoor positioning without the need of GPS or other pre-installed infrastructures (beacons, ultra-wide band,…). Demo 4: Locate your assets with shr-loc by Engie M2M – Sigfox Operator Engie M2M Locate your assets everywhere with shr-loc; our brand new end-to-end solution. Discover how we are able to provide with accurate indoor and outdoor position without using GPS or extra infrastructures and how we reach ultra-long battery lifetime. Demo 5: NXP NxH3670, an ultra low power 2.4GHz audio streaming solution NXP Semiconductors The NXH3670 is NXP’s proprietary 2.4 GHz wireless audio streaming solution designed for gaming and communication headsets and features ultra-low audio latency and industry-lowest power consumption. The NXP NXH3670 audio streaming solution is a highly integrated, single-chip ultra-low-power 2.4 GHz wireless transceiver, embedding both an Arm® Cortex®- M0 microcontroller and an embedded CoolFlux® DSP. The Arm® Cortex®- M0 microcontroller runs the protocol stack. The CoolFlux® DSP runs the audio processing including sample rate conversion and audio (de)compression. Measuring only 7.25 mm2, the BLE 4.2 certified device is targeted at robust, high-quality wireless audio streaming at very low latency, targeting applications such as gaming and communications headsets, as well as soundbars, wireless microphones, and wireless speakers. The NXH3670’s efficient streaming protocol reduces the power consumption to 8.5 mW, which allows for exceptional battery life. | |
| FUTURE STANDARDS FOR WIRELESS COMMUNICATION | |
| 16:00 | The future of personal area networking Jeroen Hoebeke, Professor, imec-IDLab-UGent slides (members only, after login) Overview of current and future standards (ZigBee, Bluetooth (Mesh) Networking, and many others). Strategies for reliable and low power (multi-hop) mesh networking. |
| 16:20 | The future of low-power long-range (LPWA) networking (for IoT) Jeroen Famaey, Professor, imec-IDLab-UAntwerp slides (members only, after login) Overview of current and future standards (unlicensed technologies, licensed technologies (cellular IoT)). The road towards batteryless IoT communication. GPS-less localisation, network scalability, multi-modal LPWA devices. |
| 16:40 | The future of WiFi communication and sensing Andre Bourdoux, Principal member of technical staff, imec slides (members only, after login) Wi-Fi technologies have gone through a steady evolution from the original 2Mbit/s 802.11-1997 standard to the more recent 802.11ad and 802.11ac standards capable of multi-Gbps transmission. This quest for higher performance is seemingly never ending and new evolutions are in the making. We will briefly sketch the history of 802.11 technologies and then go in more details on the technological approaches followed to achieve extreme performances in the new standards. We will also discuss Wi-Fi-based wireless sensing, a new paradigm which makes it possible to monitor the environment by opportunistically exploiting the existing Wi-Fi transmissions. |
| 17:00 | WiFi HaLow, a revolution in wireless connectivity for IoT Marleen Boonen, CEO & Founder, Methods2Business slides Traditional Wi-Fi has serious weaknesses for IoT, it is too power hungry, has limited range (50m) and limited connectivity and a poor penetration through walls and obstacles. Also, alternative technologies, like LoRa, SigFox, NB-IoT, … cannot meet all the requirements. Wi-Fi HaLow is designed to solve this gap. In contrast to “regular” Wi-Fi, it goes down in frequency into the sub-GHz ISM bands and uses narrower-band channels to reach 10x greater distances (up to 1km) and to penetrate better through building materials and other obstacles. Further it introduces all kind of new concepts in the MAC and PHY to ensure a fair and robust access to thousands of various clients in the network. Sensors can operate for several years on a single battery and with the highest level of wireless security and native IP support. In 2016, Methods2Business (M2B) and imec provided the first 802.11ah PoC implementation. Today M2B is a key player in the Wi-Fi CERTIFIED® HaLow™ program of Wi-Fi Alliance. In 2020, the company will bring the world’s first Wi-Fi HaLow chips on the market for clients and access points. |
| 17:15 | Plenary discussion – Panel Debate |
| 17:30 | Walking dinner & free demo visit |
| 19:00 | End of the workshop |
Registration
Please complete the registration form below.
Registrations can be cancelled until November 7, 2019. After this date the complete registration fee will be charged. Please send an email to wireless-community@imec.be to cancel your registration.
No Fields Found.