Ultra-high-capacity density communications

Future cellular systems will be required to deliver wireless communications to dense urban areas in excess of 10-100 Gbps/km2. This requires new technically challenging solutions to deliver low cost infrastructure.

This includes use of mm-wave and THz frequencies, ultra-small cell base stations, heterogeneous systems, novel wireless backhaul/fronthaul links, cloud radio access networks, software defined networking and network function virtualisation.

Over the past few years we have undertaken many collaborative and focused projects looking at the access and backhaul/fronthaul segments. This has included applying advanced physical layer techniques such as physical layer network coding, distributed MIMO, which have been integrated with novel higher layer techniques. Using our Labview Communications driven USRP testbed we are providing proof-of-concept demonstrations of our innovations.

We have pioneered the use of artificial intelligence in cellular systems, applying reinforcement learning and transfer learning to radio resource and topology management, delivering energy efficient solutions. We have extensively designed novel backhaul/fronthaul architectures exploiting the mm-wave bands. Our latest work is investigating cell-less architectures.