Next generation cellular mobile networks

Energy efficiency and flexibility in the use of the radio spectrum resources are two major research challenges for the development of future wireless communications technologies.

On the one hand, many electromagnetic spectrum measurements reflect a great temporal and geographical variability in the usage of most assigned spectral bands, which, under fixed spectrum assignment policies are sporadically used. This fact, together with the limited amount of available radio spectrum, is spurring interest in Cognitive Radio techniques. Cognitive Radio is a promising concept that allows unlicensed (or secondary) users access to licensed bands in an opportunistic manner, as long as interference with licensed (or primary) users does not degrade the Quality-of-Service for the primary users.

On the other hand, data rates in wired and wireless networks are rising by a factor of roughly 10 every 5 years. However, this growth is produced at a cost of an enormous increase of power consumption of the equipment of cellular networks, duplicating power consumption every 4-5 years. Increasing the energy efficiency of network elements has thus become a key challenge of mobile networks operators.

To address these challenges, SPECTRA project (in which Wellness Telecom is involved) will develop a multi-band cognitive radio technology. New techniques for the global efficiency of wireless systems will be developed in the following four directions:

• the spectral efficiency thanks to the use of cognitive radio techniques in wireless systems,

• the energy optimization for wireless communications by optimizing architecture design and algorithms implementation,

• the minimization of the generated interference in the environment by selecting the adequate band which will guarantee the shortest transmission distance and the minimum power while preserving the Quality of Service.

The work of the project will be focused on three scenarios addressing commercial low-power femtocell scenarios, future relay-based cellular networks and professional and fast-deployable networks, expecting important improvements on power consumption, spectral efficiency and link reliability.

Funded by: Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Commerce within the National Plan for Research, Science, Development and Technological Innovation 2008-2011.
Reference Number: TSI-020400-2010-0080.

Funding Agencies: