Wireless Future

Many textbook models of communication systems assume that the transmitter and receiver are synchronized in time, frequency, and phase. Achieving and maintaining such synchronization is an often-overlooked practical challenge. However, the importance of synchronization grows as we plan to use larger antenna arrays and distributed MIMO in 6G. In this episode, Emil Björnson and Erik G. Larsson discuss some fundamental principles of synchronization, including the underlying physical phenomena, pilot signaling for phase synchronization, and reciprocity calibration. We especially discuss how the seemingly simplest angular beamforming can be among the hardest features to support from a synchronization perspective, with a digital array. More technical details in the papers https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.05144 and

https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.11730

Music: On the Verge by Joseph McDade. Visit Erik’s website https://liu.se/en/employee/erila39 and Emil’s website https://ebjornson.com/

Massive bandwidths are available in the sub-terahertz bands, but the coverage of a cellular network exploiting those frequencies will be spotty. The 6GTandem project tries to circumvent this issue by developing a dual-frequency system architecture that jointly uses the sub-6 GHz and sub-THz bands. In this episode, Erik G. Larsson and Emil Björnson are visited by Dr. Parisa Aghdam, Technical Lead of 6GTandem and Research Manager at Ericsson. The discussion starts with potential use cases, such as extended reality services in stadiums and connected factories. The conversation then focuses on hardware aspects, such as how to build a distributed antenna system using plastic microwave fibers and amplifiers so that sub-THz signals can be transmitted from many different locations. You can read more about the EU-funded project and its partners at https://horizon-6gtandem.eu/

Music: On the Verge by Joseph McDade. Visit Erik’s website https://liu.se/en/employee/erila39 and Emil’s website https://ebjornson.com/

Many topics are studied within the 6G research community, from hardware design to algorithms, protocols, and services. Erik G. Larsson and Emil Björnson recently attended the ELLIIT 6G Symposium in Lund, Sweden. In this episode, they discuss ten things that they learned from listening to the keynote speeches. The topics span from integrated sensing, positioning, and localization via machine-learning applications in communications to fundamental communication theory, such as circuits for universal channel decoding and jamming protection. The expected 6G spectrum ranges, energy efficiency in base stations, and new use cases for electromagnetic materials are also covered. You can find slides from the symposium at https://elliit.se/news-and-events/focus-period-lund-2023/ Music: On the Verge by Joseph McDade. Visit Erik’s website https://liu.se/en/employee/erila39 and Emil’s website https://ebjornson.com/

We celebrate the three-year anniversary of the podcast with a live recording from the Wireless Future Symposium that was held in September 2023. A panel of experts answered questions that we received on social media. Liesbet Van der Perre (KU Leuven) discusses the future of wireless Internet-of-Things, Fredrik Tufvesson (Lund University) explains new channel properties at higher frequencies, Jakob Hoydis (NVIDIA) describes differentiable ray-tracing and its connection to machine learning, Deniz Gündüz (Imperial College London) presents his vision for how artificial intelligence will affect future wireless networks, Henk Wymeersch (Chalmers University of Technology) elaborates on the similarities and differences between communication and positioning, and Luca Sanguinetti (University of Pisa) demystifies holographic MIMO and its relation to near-field communications. Music: On the Verge by Joseph McDade. Visit Erik’s website https://liu.se/en/employee/erila39 and Emil’s website https://ebjornson.com/

It is easy to get carried away by futuristic 6G visions, but what matters in the end is what technology and services the telecom operators will deploy. In this episode, Erik G. Larsson and Emil Björnson discuss a new white paper from SK Telecom that describes the lessons learned from 5G and how these experiences can be utilized to make 6G more successful. The paper and conversation cover network evolution, commercial use cases, virtualization, artificial intelligence, and frequency spectrum. The latest developments in defining official 6G requirements are also discussed. The white paper can be found here:https://www.sktelecom.com/en/press/press_detail.do?idx=1575 The following news article about mmWave licenses is mentioned: https://telecoms.com/521670/south-korea-cancels-skts-28-ghz-5g-licence/ The IMT-2030 Framework for 6G can be found here: https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-R/study-groups/rsg5/rwp5d/imt-2030/Pages/default.aspx Music: On the Verge by Joseph McDade. Visit Erik’s website https://liu.se/en/employee/erila39 and Emil’s website https://ebjornson.com/

The main directions for 6G research have been established and include pushing the communication to higher frequency bands, creating smart radio environments, and removing the conventional cell structure. There are many engineering issues to address on the way to realizing these visions. In this episode, Emil Björnson and Erik G. Larsson discuss the article “The Road to 6G: Ten Physical Layer Challenges for Communications Engineers” from 2021. What specific research challenges did the authors identify, and what remains to be done? The conversation covers system modeling complexity, hardware implementation issues, and signal processing scalability. The article can be found here: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2004.07130 The following papers were also mentioned: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2111.15568 and https://arxiv.org/pdf/2104.15027 Music: On the Verge by Joseph McDade. Visit Erik’s website https://liu.se/en/employee/erila39 and Emil’s website https://ebjornson.com/

The speed of wired optical fiber technology is soon reaching 1 million megabits per second, also known as 1 terabit/s. Wireless technology is improving at the same pace but is 10 years behind in speed, thus we can expect to reach 1 terabit/s over wireless during the next decade. In this episode, Erik G. Larsson and Emil Björnson discuss these expected developments with a focus on the potential use cases and how to reach these immense speeds in different frequency bands – from 1 GHz to 200 GHz. Their own thoughts are mixed with insights gathered at a recent workshop at TU Berlin. Major research challenges remain, particularly related to algorithms, transceiver hardware, and decoding complexity. Music: On the Verge by Joseph McDade. Visit Erik’s website https://liu.se/en/employee/erila39 and Emil’s website https://ebjornson.com/

Research is carried out to obtain new knowledge, find solutions to pertinent problems, and challenge the researchers’ abilities. Two key aspects of the scientific process are reproducibility and replicability, which sound similar but are distinctly different. In this episode, Erik G. Larsson and Emil Björnson discuss these principles and their impact on wireless communication research. The conversation covers the replication crisis, Monte Carlo simulations, best practices, pitfalls that new researchers should avoid, and what the community can become better at. The following article is mentioned: “Reproducible Research: Best Practices and Potential Misuse” (https://arxiv.org/pdf/1905.00645.pdf). Music: On the Verge by Joseph McDade. Visit Erik’s website https://liu.se/en/employee/erila39 and Emil’s website https://ebjornson.com/

Information theory is the research discipline that establishes the fundamental limits for information transfer, storage, and processing. Major advances in wireless communications have often been a combination of information-theoretic predictions and engineering efforts that turn them into mainstream technology. Erik G. Larsson and Emil Björnson invited the information-theorist Giuseppe Caire, Professor at TU Berlin, to discuss how the discipline is shaping current and future wireless networks. The conversation first covers the journey from classical multiuser information theory to Massive MIMO technology in 5G. The rest of the episode goes through potential future developments that can be assessed through information theory: distributed MIMO, orthogonal time-frequency-space (OTFS) modulation, coded caching, reconfigurable intelligent surfaces, terahertz bands, and the use of ever larger numbers of antennas. The following papers are mentioned: “OTFS vs. OFDM in the Presence of Sparsity: A Fair Comparison” (https://doi.org/10.1109/TWC.2021.3129975) , “Joint Spatial Division and Multiplexing”(https://arxiv.org/pdf/1209.1402.pdf), and “Massive MIMO has Unlimited Capacity” (https://arxiv.org/pdf/1705.00538.pdf). Music: On the Verge by Joseph McDade. Visit Erik’s website https://liu.se/en/employee/erila39 and Emil’s website https://ebjornson.com/

A wave of digitalization is sweeping over the world, but not everything benefits from a transformation from analog to digital methods. In this episode, Emil Björnson and Erik G. Larsson discuss the fundamentals of analog modulation techniques to pinpoint their key advantages. Particular attention is given to how analog modulation enables over-the-air aggregation of data, which can be used for computations, efficient federated training of machine learning models, and distributed hypothesis testing. The conversation covers the need for coherent operation and power control and outlines the challenges that researchers are now facing when extending the methods to multi-antenna systems. Towards the end, the following paper is mentioned: “Optimal MIMO Combining for Blind Federated Edge Learning with Gradient Sparsification” (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2203.12957.pdf). Music: On the Verge by Joseph McDade. Visit Erik’s website https://liu.se/en/employee/erila39 and Emil’s website https://ebjornson.com/