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"BROADBAND AIR INTERFACES" CLUSTER
The continued increase in demand for all types of wireless services is fuelling the need for higher capacity and data rates. It is clear that provision of these high data rates requires the development of new broadband air interfaces. This has spurred an explosion of research dealing with access techniques and signal processing schemes in order to use efficiently the scarce radio spectrum while providing a good performance so that wireless users enjoy the same quality of service they get used to with wired accesses.
It is likely however that there is not and there will not be a single broadband air interface. Although integration at the network level or at the physical level through reconfigurability is an objective, we will have air interfaces needing to provide high mobility communications, while some will aim to low mobility and others at very low range etc.
Furthermore it is likely that different requirements will arise for the up and downlinks, while even with a specific system in mind (e.g. cellular) there are still various options to be considered concerning either the multiple access technique (DS-CDMA, MC-CDMA, OFDM , .) and related signal processing techniques.
This openness and diversity concerning the future wireless systems has led to a significant amount of research either within IST or at a worldwide level. This cluster aims to compare and discuss the results obtained by the different projects dealing with physical level techniques. A result might be a clarification about their merits and weaknesses and then help to understand what should be the preferential applications for the different access and signal processing techniques studied.
Involved projects