Periodic Reporting for period 1 - MINTS (Millimeter-wave Networking and Sensing for Beyond 5G) Reporting period: 2019-11-01 to 2021-10-31 Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project The global telecommunications market has become tremendously competitive due to the saturation of traditional products (e.g. mobile broadband). However, new markets such as industry 4.0 and autonomous driving demand extremely high data rates which can only be provided at mmWave frequencies. To successfully overcome mmWave challenges, a closely integrated, skilled and multi-disciplinary team has been formed to co-create innovative technology and applications. The ETN for Millimeter-wave NeTworking and Sensing for Beyond 5G (MINTS) offers the first training program on mmWave networks that covers the full stack from physical layer to application. MINTS is an inter-sectoral and interdisciplinary cluster of excellence formed by electrical engineers and computer scientists aiming at innovative solutions for future mmWave networks.The context and overall objectives for the MINTS projects relate to making mmWave sensing and networking feasible by overcoming path-loss limitations by exploiting dense deployments. The potential of mmWave technology (30 GHz to 300 GHz, but usually also frequencies above 10 GHz are included) for future mobile networks led to a significant investment in research and also motivated the European Commission to recommend opening up parts of the mmWave spectrum for broadband services. This is not only important for ubiquitous mobile broadband services, but is a key requirement for the forthcoming industry 4.0 vehicle-to-everything (V2X), augmented reality (AR) and similar new applications. At the same time, enabling communications at mmWave frequencies remains challenging. The mmWave radio propagation behaviour is characterized by high path loss and penetration loss, which limits the native communication range of mmWave signals to a few meters. Highly directional beam-forming antennas can mitigate the impact of path loss and increase the communication range, but this in turn requires fast and precise beam alignment which in itself is challenging in dynamic mobile environments. Preliminary studies on mmWave communications and early trials have thus primarily focused on showing the feasibility of multi-Gbps data rates in low-density scenarios with limited dynamics such as fixed point-to-point links. There is an urgent need to enable efficient and robust mmWave networks and applications on top of such links.The primary goal of this ETN is to train ESRs to co-create the required mmWave algorithms and protocols together with the novel use cases mmWave technology is supposed to enable. Specifically, providing continuous and reliable connectivity in extremely dense and highly mobile scenarios is an open challenge, and understanding how to tune a mmWave network towards a specific future application with its particular mix of throughput, latency and resilience requirements is still in its infancy. In addition, the large available bandwidth at mmWave frequencies enables highly accurate environment sensing and localization, adding important new network capabilities that can support such use cases. The high diversity of the requirements of these different application scenarios (in terms of latency, mobility, resilience, etc.), together with new sensing capabilities, call for adaptive and tailored network solutions rather than use case-agnostic one-size-fits-all designs. Therefore, the overall aim of MINTS is to provide a concerted effort to: 1)building up a highly skilled labour force in the mmWave technology sector;2)mitigating the impact of network dynamics and density on the performance and resilience of mmWave networks; and3)advancing mmWave technology in order to leverage it in emerging EU and international markets. Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far As a first achievement, a workforce was established. 15 ESRs were recruited to engage in 15 research projects focusing on the physical layer, sensing layer, networking layer and application layer. Second, techniques to mitigate impact of network dynamics, exploiting density, and achieve mmWave sensing were proposed. All students working on the 15 projects started the research and obtained their first published results as listed below. MINTS lays the foundation for resilient mmWave networks by enhancing physical-layer robustness via dynamic multi-beamforming techniques. The physical layer research focuses on (1) Efficient channel estimation and beam training with (partial) CSI, (2) Machine learning-enabled fast and hybrid mmWave beam tracking and (3) Fully digital massive MIMO mmWave communication for mission-critical applications. Here, a quantized digital beamforming algorithm for mmWave systems enhanced with Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) was already presented. Also, a full-stack comparison for channel models for networks above 100 GHz in indoor scenarios was completed. In addition, MINTS leverages the directionality and broad communication bandwidth of mmWave systems for accurate environmental sensing. The sensing research focuses on (4) Advanced localization and mapping techniques, (5) Exploiting mmWave radio for indoor and outdoor environmental sensing, and (6) Fully digital massive MIMO mmWave positioning. Main results include deep learning based accurate indoor user tracking and accurate mmWave localisation with imperfect training data. MINTS addresses the networking issues of dense mmWave systems through advanced interference control and secure algorithms. The networking layer focuses on (7) Efficient network control for large and highly dense mmWave deployments, (8) Ultra-dense cell-free mmWave deployment, (9) Resilient multi-RAT techniques to reduce link failure rate, (10), Prediction-based mobility management for resilient mmWave networking. Main results there are the implementation and evaluation of an IEEE 802.11ay model in the network simulator ns-3, and user association methods for dense mmWave cell-free networks. Finally, MINTS devises application-specific solutions for emerging applications of mmWave communications, including industry 4.0 V2X and augmented reality. The application layer is working on (11) MAC/Physical layer security of mmWave networks, (12,13) Interference-aware and robust communication and sensing for industry 4.0 (14) Context-and content-awareness in V2X communication, and (15) Real-time high-throughput AR. The main result at application layer is a physical layer latency management mechanism for mmWave IEEE 802.11ay. Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far) Related to the impact, there were several results for dissemination, science communication and valorisation. There are 7 published papers to date, and many more submitted. The majority of these results are supported by experimental evaluation leveraging the mmWave and sub-6GHz testbed facilities developed within the consortium. The team participated in events such as “Science is Wonderful”, and a first video with title “Beyond 5G networks: how will our future look like” was created. A first patent application was also filed. MINTS Consortium
