Final Report Summary - WINDOW (Towards Pervasive Indoor Wireless Networks)
Towards Pervasive Indoor Wireless Networks (WiNDOW) is a Marie Curie International Research Staff Exchange Scheme (IRSES) project under FP7. It was executed by a consortium that comprises of four partners, i.e. University of Sheffield (USFD), UK, Linkoping University (LiU), Sweden, Harbin Institute of Technology Shenzen Graduate School (HITSZ), China, and Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST), China. The project has a four-year duration and lasted from 1 October 2012 – 30 September 2016.
In cellular networks, it is estimated that 2/3 of the calls and 90% of data services take place indoors. Smart buildings, e-health, assisted living applications also rely on quality in-building wireless communications. Thus, pervasive indoor wireless communications are very important.
Before the project started in October 2012, there were many challenges faced by the academia and industry to achieve high quality pervasive indoor wireless communications, for example, it was not well understood how various indoor wireless networks would interfere each other, how traffic models looked like in smart homes/buildings, which new frequency bands could be used to meet exponential traffic growth indoors and how to make use of various wireless technologies with consideration of energy consumption, and so on.
Hence, the main objectives of the project are as follows:
• To characterise material properties (permittivity, permeability, transmission, reflection loss, etc) for new and existing building/insulation materials that are used in Europe and China for frequencies up to 65GHz
• To investigate indoor and indoor-outdoor wireless propagation channels
• To investigate how different indoor wireless networks will interfere each other and the interference to and from wireless networks in the neighbourhood
• To identify new frequency bands that can be used to meet the exponential traffic growth indoors
• To investigate traffic models for indoor networks, e.g. in smart homes/buildings
• To investigate how to reduce energy consumption of indoor wireless networks
• To explore the synergy of complementary competences at the project partners and establish and/or strengthen the long-term collaborations between them.
In this project, the partners adopt a methodology that combines both theoretical research and practical verification by experiment and simulation. The project has advanced the state of the art of indoor wireless communications. Some of the project achievements are listed as follows:
• Characterised over 20 typical building materials that are used in Europe and China for frequencies up to 65GHz.
• Contributed to the development of a world leading ray-based indoor and joint indoor-outdoor radio propagation model;
• Carried out extensive radio channel measurement in typical indoor classroom/laboratory, indoor to outdoor, and outdoor to indoor scenarios to verify the accuracy of the radio propagation models.
• Modelled how different indoor wireless networks will interfere with each other and the interference to and from wireless networks in the neighbourhood. Moreover, a protocol for interference management has been developed for indoor wireless networks. Interference mitigation techniques based on time, frequency, power, and spatial have been studied.
• Developed indoor traffic models based on semi-Markov and N-modal Gaussian mixture models; carried out measurements to verify the accuracy of these models.
• Developed an energy efficiency model with statistical QoS constraints for indoor MIMO-OFDM mobile multimedia communication systems.
• Designed a sub-channel grouping scheme by using the channel-matrix SVD method, which simplifies the multichannel optimization problem to a multitarget single-channel optimization problem.
• Derived a closed-form solution of energy-efficiency optimization for MIMO-OFDM mobile multimedia communication systems.
• Developed a novel algorithm to optimize the energy efficiency in MIMO-OFDM mobile multimedia communication systems.
• Explored the synergy of complementary competences between the project partners and established and/or strengthened the long-term collaborations between them.
The project contributed to 74 publications in total, including 40 journal and 34 conference papers.
In cellular networks, it is estimated that 2/3 of the calls and 90% of data services take place indoors. Smart buildings, e-health, assisted living applications also rely on quality in-building wireless communications. Thus, pervasive indoor wireless communications are very important.
Before the project started in October 2012, there were many challenges faced by the academia and industry to achieve high quality pervasive indoor wireless communications, for example, it was not well understood how various indoor wireless networks would interfere each other, how traffic models looked like in smart homes/buildings, which new frequency bands could be used to meet exponential traffic growth indoors and how to make use of various wireless technologies with consideration of energy consumption, and so on.
Hence, the main objectives of the project are as follows:
• To characterise material properties (permittivity, permeability, transmission, reflection loss, etc) for new and existing building/insulation materials that are used in Europe and China for frequencies up to 65GHz
• To investigate indoor and indoor-outdoor wireless propagation channels
• To investigate how different indoor wireless networks will interfere each other and the interference to and from wireless networks in the neighbourhood
• To identify new frequency bands that can be used to meet the exponential traffic growth indoors
• To investigate traffic models for indoor networks, e.g. in smart homes/buildings
• To investigate how to reduce energy consumption of indoor wireless networks
• To explore the synergy of complementary competences at the project partners and establish and/or strengthen the long-term collaborations between them.
In this project, the partners adopt a methodology that combines both theoretical research and practical verification by experiment and simulation. The project has advanced the state of the art of indoor wireless communications. Some of the project achievements are listed as follows:
• Characterised over 20 typical building materials that are used in Europe and China for frequencies up to 65GHz.
• Contributed to the development of a world leading ray-based indoor and joint indoor-outdoor radio propagation model;
• Carried out extensive radio channel measurement in typical indoor classroom/laboratory, indoor to outdoor, and outdoor to indoor scenarios to verify the accuracy of the radio propagation models.
• Modelled how different indoor wireless networks will interfere with each other and the interference to and from wireless networks in the neighbourhood. Moreover, a protocol for interference management has been developed for indoor wireless networks. Interference mitigation techniques based on time, frequency, power, and spatial have been studied.
• Developed indoor traffic models based on semi-Markov and N-modal Gaussian mixture models; carried out measurements to verify the accuracy of these models.
• Developed an energy efficiency model with statistical QoS constraints for indoor MIMO-OFDM mobile multimedia communication systems.
• Designed a sub-channel grouping scheme by using the channel-matrix SVD method, which simplifies the multichannel optimization problem to a multitarget single-channel optimization problem.
• Derived a closed-form solution of energy-efficiency optimization for MIMO-OFDM mobile multimedia communication systems.
• Developed a novel algorithm to optimize the energy efficiency in MIMO-OFDM mobile multimedia communication systems.
• Explored the synergy of complementary competences between the project partners and established and/or strengthened the long-term collaborations between them.
The project contributed to 74 publications in total, including 40 journal and 34 conference papers.