O projeto mobilizador nº 46078 - Smart Farm tem como objetivo facilitar a transição para agricultura digital das explorações agrícolas, independentemente da sua dimensão, por via de : Conceber e desenvolver soluções acessíveis com base nas tecnologias, para a aplicação em horti, fruti e viticultura; Dinamizar práticas de agricultura sustentável, preditiva, autónoma e geradoras de elevado valor acrescentado, na região oeste, e a nível nacional e internacional. Soluções inteligentes para uma agricultura sustentável, preditiva e autónoma.

1. Design a m-MIMO system using large and dense constellations, Nyquist filtering close to the minimum band for high spectral efficiency and non linear amplifiers (NLAs) for high power efficiency, while maintaining low complexity.2. Design a transmitter able to deal with large constellations by splitting them as sum of Offset Quadrature Phase-Shift Keying (OQPSK)-type signals with a reduced dynamic range leveraged by MM techniques specially designed to control the outer and inner envelope of each OQPSK bandwidth-limited signal, guaranteeing a ring shape (close to an empty circumference) of the final IQ transition diagram allowing for the use of NLAs.3. Design of low-complexity m-MIMO architectures for joint amplification, BF and/or SM that are compatible with low-cost, power-efficient NLAs.4. Design of receivers using FDE that tackle the effects of the transmitter’s impairments (e.g. nonlinear amplification and MM distortion, correlation between antenna elements), the multipath characteristics of the mm-Wave channel and, most important, able to separate SM’s data streams.

The support for sub millisecond extreme low latency (ELL) is an open issue for the emerging cellular Machine-Type Communication (MTC) networks, currently not supported by cellular networks. ELL is required for vehicular safety, autonomous driving applications and for other MTC that have arisen with the advent of the Internet of Things, and for new human-initiated (HI) communications, such as tactile Internet applications. This project addresses the design of the last mile of a wireless communication network capable of supporting end-to-end ELL for thousands of MTC and HI devices per access node with improved energy efficiency. A capillary network of small cells will be considered. The project will focus on the design of new physical (PHY) and medium access control (MAC) layer protocols, and of network services, to support MTC ELL communications. Several components will be integrated:- Spectral efficient PHY-layer modulation schemes (MS) with reduced out-of-band (OOB) spectral leakage, that do not require synchronous reception and minimize MTC initial transmission delay; - Asynchronous Multiple MultiPacket Reception (MPR) techniques, to maximize the capacity to handle load peaks, reducing the initial contention delay;- Advanced sensing techniques that estimate the number of devices transmitting concurrently;- Interference management (IM) through a radio resource management (RRM) service, which combines base station (BS) and device sensing;- Coarse-synchronized MAC protocols designed to support a fast initial transmission and optimized subsequent ones, using the RRM service’s information;- Power saving (PS) mechanisms compatible with ELL;- Cloud-based radio access network (C-RAN), to support a flexible on-demand implementation of spatial based MPR techniques, capable of satisfying the strict ELL requirements.The research team is organized into a PHY layer group and a MAC (and upper) layers group, which in the past collaborated in the design of cross-layer projects. Lu...

Broadband wireless systems require high power and spectral efficiencies, and transmission over severely time-dispersive channels. Developing on the concept of Linear Amplification with Non- Linear Components (LINC), the main technical objective of the project is to design, implement and validate a new set of digital transmission techniques with high power and spectral efficiency for future wireless broadband systems to be employed in the uplink of mobile systems or in satellite communications. Our main goal is to design signals with low Peak-to-Average Power Ratio (PAPR) or even quasi-constant envelope and high spectral efficiency, employing amplification techniques based on low- cost, highly efficient grossly NonLinear (NL) amplifiers (e.g., class D and E amplifiers), which are simpler and have higher amplification and output power then quasi-linear amplifiers. Since a grossly NL amplifier is only suitable for signals with quasi-constant envelope, we will develop new signal designs and/or transmission techniques compatible with grossly NL amplifiers.This research project combines theoretical development (including signal and receiver design), CMOS implementation of key components (with emphasis on matched amplifiers and output power combination with minimum losses) and FPGA-based implementation for an overall system’s proof of concept, for the most promising techniques.

The main objective of SAAS is to develop an UAV remote control system that is mostly independent of a specific vehicle model or design and that makes use of the available terrestrial wireless networks. The individual challenges and objectives to be addressed are:• Real-Time Video Transmission and Control using Terrestrial Wireless Networks: Investigate the possibility of transmitting real time video and control commands with adequate quality for a pilot to control and make decisions on the vehicle course using the available radio networks (GSM, UMTS, HSDPA, Wi-Fi, LTE).• Semi-autonomous Flight Control: Develop autonomous control capabilities for the aircraft to perform its self-rescue in the case of loss of radio connection and that can also allow a reduced piloting workload.• Remote Visualization and Control Application: Implement an application for tablet PCs that enables the visualization of the video captured by the aircraft cameras together with other telemetry information and allows the pilot to command the aircraft (either using the touchscreen, the accelerometers or an additional attached joystick).• Prototype Implementation and Flight Tests: Implement a prototype using a small rotary-wing aircraft (possibly a tricopter/quadcopter) and evaluate the performance in terms of video reception, control, and autonomy capability.

The applied research addressed by the proposed project is focused on the development and evaluation of algorithms and estimators inthe context of navigation and coordinated positioning.

The main objectives of the project are to design, implement and validate techniques exploring BSs collaboration for future wireless systems. The aim is to design practical multicell transmission and reception techniques to improve the user’s fairness and throughput, namely at the cell-edges. The specific objectives include:• Design multiuser linear precoding techniques for downlink of multicell MIMO-OFDM based networks. • Design multiuser detection techniques for uplink of multicell MIMO SC-FDMA based networks. • Assessment and validation of the proposed downlink and uplink algorithms under realist scenarios, trough a link level simulator based on LTE specification.• Development of an FPGA based testing infrastructure allowing to experimentally show the feasibility of the proposed algorithms. Only some selected downlink precoding algorithms will be tested in this infrastructure. • Attract students for a career in R&D in the field of telecommunications. • Promotion of research collaborations between research groups within the Institute for Telecommunications.

Future satellite communications systems face a challenge to provide higher bitrates, together with improved QoS (quality of service) guarantees, to more GT (ground terminals). Moreover, this should be achieved with higher spectral and power efficiencies, with less energy.This project considers future very high bitrate LEO (Low Earth Orbit) satellite systems with satellite MPR (multipacket reception), compatible with low-cost portable GTs. A cross-layered approach is proposed: a physical layer team will handle the signal design, the synchronization and estimation issues, and the receiver design, including MPR development; a data link layer team will handle the Multiple Access control protocol design and the scheduling algorithm to support different QoS (Quality of Service) classes, and the interaction with the network layers. Both teams will be involved in the design and test of the cross-layering features involving both layers, required to provide guaranteed QoS, even during satellite handover.In this project we will develop OQPSK-type schemes with reduced envelope fluctuations and high power and spectral efficiencies and compatible with an efficient and low cost power amplification. To further improve the overall system power efficiency we also consider schemes with spectral overlapping between different frequency channels. With respect to the receiver design, the main goal is an efficient multipacket detection technique able to cope with collisions, already shown by the research team to allow significant improvements in personal area networks. We will consider turbo frequency-domain equalizers suitable to cope with time-dispersion effects and able to handle spectral overlapping between frequency channels. Hybrid ARQ/FEC (Automatic Repeat reQuest/Forward Error Correction), namely with packet combining, will be proposed to handle fading for the most demanding QoS classes and control packets. To cope with Doppler effects, suitable synchronization and channel estimati...

Main Objective:i) to propose a streamlined optical access and radio network architecture with extended range, simplified implementation and deployment;ii) to develop combined fibre and radio transmission centralised impairment compensation extending the FTTH range to > 100 km;iii) to enable single, end-to-end management architecture along the FTTH access network of the complete photonic and radio access paths; iv) to provide converger OFDM-baseband, medium-range WiMAX and short-range UWB and cellular LTE on a conventional wavelength division-duplexed (WDD) and a reflective-electroabsorption transceiver (R-EAT) based network architecture;v) to demonstrate the feasible network operation with signals (UWB) in the 60 GHz radio band;vi) to create an open house showroom in order to shown the approach benefits to the general public.

DEvelopment and evaluation of algorithms and estimators in the context of navigation and coordinated positioning.

This project deals with UWB-based ad hoc networks. The physical layer objective is the development of signal processing schemes to improve the performance (for both impulse radio and continuous-wave transmission techniques). The MAC layer considers asynchronous data transmission and structured/unstructured architectures. It will study broadcast/unicast performance, considering cross-layering optimizations. The objectives include the definition of an abstraction suitable for the network layer for supporting differentiated levels of quality of service, and its concrete implementation, supported on different resource reservation mechanisms. The network layer objectives include the analysis of the behavior of ad hoc routing algorithms and service location services, and their optimization introducing cross-layering tuning at the MAC and physical layer. An important objective is to take advantage of the complementary competences of the teams involved in the project, leading to relevant contributions to the specification UWB-based ad hoc networks and to stronger skills, in both teams.

This project aims at building a satellite ground station at the Ku band that can be remotely controlled and accessed through a dedicated server to all authorized users using a simple web browser connected to the internet anywhere in the world. Authorized users can request and collect data (telemetry, images, etc) from its database for post-processing. This equipment can be used for a great variety of experiments not previously possible at this location and can be an important factor to increase the cooperation amongst national and international researchers and institutions, namely with ESA. Its location and features are unique and can be of strategic importance for the development of national research and industry in this field.

B-BONE main objective is to further enhance UMTS capacity, transmission rates, RAN and Core network functionalities, considering both FDD and TDD modes, so as to accommodate digital broadcasting/multicasting (multimedia) type services.

SEACORN provides a fundamental contribution to the evaluation and development of Enhanced UMTS networks. It covers several aspects starting from the definition and characterisation of services and user profiles, including the modelling of the user's behaviour with respect to mobility and multimedia activity, and finally considering the optimisation of the networks from both points of views: the operator's and manufacturer's view of limiting the infrastructure and maintenance costs and the user's view of being provided with high quality services