Periodic Reporting for period 1 - REINDEER (REsilient INteractive applications through hyper Diversity in Energy Efficient RadioWeaves technology)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2021-01-01 al 2022-06-30
Wireless connectivity is getting integrated in ever more and diverse applications. It has become an essential resource, and people and applications will increasingly depend on (future) wireless networks, integrating richer services. In particular, the REINDEER project considers four application domains: Adaptive robotized factories, warehouses, and logistics, immersive entertainment for crowds of people, care environments, hospitals, and assisted living, and smart homes. In these domains, interactive applications are envisioned that require a high reliability and operate in ‘real-time’ and ‘real-space’, where the difference between the physical and the virtual world go unnoticed.
The REINDEER project develops novel RadioWeaves technology to enable these applications that raise the specifications drastically and also require novel functionality with respect to previous networks. This includes precise position information, and the possibility to interact with energy-neutral devices, that get powered through wireless transfer. The RadioWeaves technology is a smart connectivity platform realized as a fabric of distributed radio devices and computing resources, that offers consistently excellent service and is scalable to seemingly infinite network capacity at unprecedented energy efficiency. The interconnected distributed resources cooperate to dynamically serve heterogeneous applications. The project co-designs algorithms, architectures, and protocols for efficient deployment and operation of these distributed wireless networks. It thereby aims to achieve an unprecedented energy efficiency and bring an improvement of at least two orders of magnitude, to sustain the expected growth in mobile data while reducing the carbon footprint. A further objective is to realize an experimental proof of the main technological concepts.
The REINDEER project develops novel RadioWeaves technology to enable these applications that raise the specifications drastically and also require novel functionality with respect to previous networks. This includes precise position information, and the possibility to interact with energy-neutral devices, that get powered through wireless transfer. The RadioWeaves technology is a smart connectivity platform realized as a fabric of distributed radio devices and computing resources, that offers consistently excellent service and is scalable to seemingly infinite network capacity at unprecedented energy efficiency. The interconnected distributed resources cooperate to dynamically serve heterogeneous applications. The project co-designs algorithms, architectures, and protocols for efficient deployment and operation of these distributed wireless networks. It thereby aims to achieve an unprecedented energy efficiency and bring an improvement of at least two orders of magnitude, to sustain the expected growth in mobile data while reducing the carbon footprint. A further objective is to realize an experimental proof of the main technological concepts.
To ensure relevance of the results for future applications, the project has started with a broad and in-depth analysis of use cases in the four focus application domains. The derived quantitative specifications further drive the R&D in the project.
Main technological results relate to efficient distributed architectures, trading-off local versus global connectivity and computing. Implementation bottlenecks are identified, showing that interconnect and memory accesses are becoming the main challenge, while architecture-aware algorithms can result in feasible signal processing complexity.
Many key functionalities in multiple antenna systems relying on coherent operation, become difficult to establish in distributed architectures. This specifically applies for synchronization and calibration. For both, and for precoding and detection of data, novel solutions have been developed since the beginning of the REINDEER project. Moreover, dedicated initial access schemes are developed to efficiently support sporadic traffic, as expected in many novel applications connecting a massive number of devices.
The ambition to interact with energy-neutral devices is addressed with RadioWeaves technology developing novel methods to detect and power these devices. Beyond conventional simulation models, the project characterises real-life environments that may generate complicated responses, a.o. due to reflections.
The project provides a user-friendly website with ample information (https://reindeer-project.eu/) and has been actively creating project-related content, for example podcasts and blog posts, and sharing via social media channels. REINDEER has disseminated its vision and results towards the broad R&D community at several events. The team has realized scientific papers on specific results, many of them already published and other still under review. Several patents have been filed on innovative solutions for distributed access architectures and algorithms for efficient operation in these architectures.
Main technological results relate to efficient distributed architectures, trading-off local versus global connectivity and computing. Implementation bottlenecks are identified, showing that interconnect and memory accesses are becoming the main challenge, while architecture-aware algorithms can result in feasible signal processing complexity.
Many key functionalities in multiple antenna systems relying on coherent operation, become difficult to establish in distributed architectures. This specifically applies for synchronization and calibration. For both, and for precoding and detection of data, novel solutions have been developed since the beginning of the REINDEER project. Moreover, dedicated initial access schemes are developed to efficiently support sporadic traffic, as expected in many novel applications connecting a massive number of devices.
The ambition to interact with energy-neutral devices is addressed with RadioWeaves technology developing novel methods to detect and power these devices. Beyond conventional simulation models, the project characterises real-life environments that may generate complicated responses, a.o. due to reflections.
The project provides a user-friendly website with ample information (https://reindeer-project.eu/) and has been actively creating project-related content, for example podcasts and blog posts, and sharing via social media channels. REINDEER has disseminated its vision and results towards the broad R&D community at several events. The team has realized scientific papers on specific results, many of them already published and other still under review. Several patents have been filed on innovative solutions for distributed access architectures and algorithms for efficient operation in these architectures.
The overall project results confirm the potential of RadioWeaves technology to improve wireless network performance-related KPIs. The REINDEER distributed platform can provide superior connectivity, both regarding capacity and other Quality-of-Service parameters such as reliability, at unprecedented energy efficiency,
We thereby adhere to the double strategic priority and ambition of Europe as expressed by:
- The Green Deal for making the EU’s economy sustainable and its
- The Strategy for Data aiming to available for use in the economy and society, while keeping the companies and individuals who generate the data in control.
The REINDEER project supports this double ambition and the potential impact will ultimately be found through the applications it will enable. These include the generation of new services, they may improve health care, and support sustainable cities. The architectures hosting distributed resources can drastically lower the total energy consumption of applications, at the expense of local compute engines. The secondary effects that dominate the ecological impact can serve different Sustainable Development Goals by enabling remote operation and support, for example for independent ageing.
We thereby adhere to the double strategic priority and ambition of Europe as expressed by:
- The Green Deal for making the EU’s economy sustainable and its
- The Strategy for Data aiming to available for use in the economy and society, while keeping the companies and individuals who generate the data in control.
The REINDEER project supports this double ambition and the potential impact will ultimately be found through the applications it will enable. These include the generation of new services, they may improve health care, and support sustainable cities. The architectures hosting distributed resources can drastically lower the total energy consumption of applications, at the expense of local compute engines. The secondary effects that dominate the ecological impact can serve different Sustainable Development Goals by enabling remote operation and support, for example for independent ageing.