SSF Strategisk Mobilitet 2021
Dr. Rafael Puerta has received a grant from The Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (Project No. SM21-0047).
Title of project is: Photonics-assisted High-capacity Cell-free Networks for 6G
SSF Strategic Mobility 2021 - Press
Project Description
Although the fifth generation (5G) of mobile networks is just becoming available, planning is already underway for thenext generation.
Humankind is moving towards a connected society. To cope with this new society requirements, high speed networks anduniversal connectivity are a must. This enables very needed new use cases in education, transportation, healthcare, andothers, which were highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, although current 5G mobile networks have set agood precedent for the new applications forecasted in future 6G networks, still many improvements are needed. The nextgeneration of mobile networks must improve many aspects such as power consumption, zero delay communications,coverage, and support future multimedia applications demanding massive amounts of data, for example, smart factoriesinternet of things (IoT) and eXtended Reality (XR) applications.
To increase the capacity of mobile communication systems, it is preferred that the antennas of a base station are as close aspossible to the mobile users in an unobstructed environment to minimize the transmission losses. To achieve this, a newnetwork deployment strategy that is distributed in space is needed. Cell-free networks are networks where the base stationantennas are distributed geographically over the cell in contrast to traditional networks where the antennas are all located ina single array in the center of the cell. From a performance standpoint, a cell-free network typically performs better than atraditional system, however it is more complex and expensive to implement.
This project tackles the problem of realizing a practical and cost-efficient implementation of cell-free networks. In order todo so, we rely on the convergence of optical and wireless technologies to improve the aspects where existing technologyfalls short. This project aims to experimentally validate a centralized architecture based on an analog fiber-optic solutionfor 6G distributed antenna networks. Consequently, since all the digital signal processing is centralized in a central unit,each distributed antenna unit has low complexity significantly reducing the power consumption and increasing its capabilities.
Publications supported in part by the SSF Strategisk Mobilitet 2021 (Project No. SM21-0047) :
Recent publications are listed below:
Peer-reviewed conference papers:
1. R. Puerta, O. Ozolins, A. Djupsjöbacka, V. Bobrovs, S. Popov and X. Pang, "5G/NR Conformance Testing of Analog Radio-over-fiber Fronthaul Links," in IEEE International Topical Meeting on Microwave Photonics (MWP), 2022, pp. 1-4. PDF
2. R. Puerta, M. Han, M. Joharifar, R. Schatz, Y. Sun, Y. Fan, A. Djupsjobacka, G. Maisons, J. Abautret, R. Teissier, L. Zhang, S. Spolitis, M. Wang, V. Bobrovs, S. Lourdudoss, X. Yu, S. Popov, O. Ozolins and X. Pang, "NR Conformance Testing of Analog Radio-over-LWIR FSO Fronthaul link for 6G Distributed MIMO Networks," in Optical Fiber Communication Conference (OFC) 2023, paper Th2A.32. PDF
3. R. Puerta, M. Joharifar, M. Han, A. Djupsjöbacka, V. Bobrovs, S. Popov, O. Ozolins and X. Pang, "Experimental Validation of Coherent Joint Transmission in a Distributed-MIMO System with Analog Fronthaul for 6G," in European Conference on Networks and Communications (EuCNC) & 6G Summit, 2023, pp. 585-590. PDF
4. O. Haliloglu, H. Yu, C. Madapatha, H. Guo, F. E. Kadan, A. Wolfgang, R. Puerta, P. Frenger, and T. Svensson, "Distributed MIMO Systems for 6G," in European Conference on Networks and Communications (EuCNC) & 6G Summit, 2023, pp. 156-161. PDF
