Periodic Reporting for period 1 - ANTERRA (Antenna Systems Experts for 6G Non-Terrestrial Networks)
Reporting period: 2022-10-01 to 2024-09-30
Our society is on the brink of a new age with the development of new visionary concepts such as internet of things, autonomous driving, and coverage everywhere. This stimulates the use of new deployment concepts, such as Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTN), to support the wireless communication evolution. For 6G, a key use case which stands unaddressed by prior telecommunication generations, is that of coverage everywhere. A major candidate to solve this issue, is to deploy a network of satellites in an NTN configuration, which is front hauled by a high-gain gateway cell in order to serve rural and remote areas which up until now is lacking coverage. Here, especially novel energy efficient antenna systems are required to track fast moving satellites while meeting the cost targets of the consumer market. One of the major reasons for not addressing this thus far is the lack of expertise about non-terrestrial communication in the classical (terrestrial) telecommunication industry, which underpins the urgent need for a cross-disciplinary industrial doctorate network.
ANTERRA establishes a unique and well-structured training network with leading R&D labs from European industries, universities and technology institutes in the domain of antenna systems for terrestrial as well as non-terrestrial applications. The 15 researchers form a research team that is embedded in leading industrial and academic R&D labs. The programme strongly enhances the employability and career prospects of the researchers by offering a high-quality consortium with in-depth training in the technical areas as well as a comprehensive set of transferable skills relevant for innovation and long-term employability. The researchers are now in the transition phase towards their 18 months employment at their industrial secondment locations. In this way, the outcome of the research directly benefits the European industry, while the researchers gain experience in an industrial work environment. Moreover, the researchers are jointly developing a satcom demonstrator to strengthen their multi-disciplinary systems engineering skills. Here, they have completed the system definition phase where they worked out the system requirements and are now entering the design phase.
ANTERRA establishes a unique and well-structured training network with leading R&D labs from European industries, universities and technology institutes in the domain of antenna systems for terrestrial as well as non-terrestrial applications. The 15 researchers form a research team that is embedded in leading industrial and academic R&D labs. The programme strongly enhances the employability and career prospects of the researchers by offering a high-quality consortium with in-depth training in the technical areas as well as a comprehensive set of transferable skills relevant for innovation and long-term employability. The researchers are now in the transition phase towards their 18 months employment at their industrial secondment locations. In this way, the outcome of the research directly benefits the European industry, while the researchers gain experience in an industrial work environment. Moreover, the researchers are jointly developing a satcom demonstrator to strengthen their multi-disciplinary systems engineering skills. Here, they have completed the system definition phase where they worked out the system requirements and are now entering the design phase.
All researchers are well underway in their individual research projects. Twelve publications disseminating the first outcome of the research have thus far been published. Many more impactful publications are to be expected in the second part of the project when the researcher further mature in their field and become true experts in their domains.
For the joint demonstrator project, the researchers have completed a systems engineering course and received support from a systems engineering expert from Fraunhofer IEM for the completion of the system definition phase. In that phase, they worked out the system requirements and defined a high-level system architecture such that they are now entering the design phase well in time.
For the joint demonstrator project, the researchers have completed a systems engineering course and received support from a systems engineering expert from Fraunhofer IEM for the completion of the system definition phase. In that phase, they worked out the system requirements and defined a high-level system architecture such that they are now entering the design phase well in time.
With ANTERRA, necessary breakthroughs in Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTN) communication systems can be achieved, which results in a competitive advantage in the coming decades for the DCs on the job market and for the European wireless industry as a whole. For example, DC3 is currently working on a competitive waveguide antenna solution for low-earth orbit satellites. This antenna solution is based on a patent of beneficiary Thales Alenia Space (TAS) and is competing with a different concept that is currently being developed by a third party. The researcher and his supervisors are confident that the ”ANTERRA solution” will bring TAS a technological advantage over their competitors in the area of waveguide-based antenna arrays.