Research Areas
SweWIN is a research center that develops new competencies, research results, and innovations in wireless technology. The center consists of KTH, RISE, Ericsson, Saab, ABB, Cellmax, Beammwave, and Northern Waves. The activities are funded by the partners and by Vinnova, Sweden's innovation agency.
The activities are divided into six core areas, each led by a professor at KTH with renowned expertise in that field:
1. Radio electronics and antennas: Lead by Prof. Oscar Quevedo-Teruel
2. Physical layer and network architecture: Lead by Prof. Emil Björnson
3. Resource management and orchestration: Lead by Assoc. Prof. Cicek Cavdar
4. Resilience and security: Lead by Prof. Mikael Skoglund
5. Learning and optimisation: Lead by Prof. Carlo Fischione
6. Wireless functional safety: Lead by Adjunct Prof. Zhibo Pang
The center's budget funds activities in all six areas, and thanks to the active collaboration between the partners, the output will be much greater than in conventional single-partner projects.
Overall research vision
Our society is going through a rapid digital transformation, motivated by increased resource efficiency, reduced costs, and optimised processes and services. Wireless connectivity is the necessary backbone of the digitised society and industry—the means to transport data, collaborate, automate, and control. Yet, it is often taken for granted, even when the surrounding world is quickly transforming. The 5G standard provides the blueprint for wireless communication networks that are vastly more capable in terms of achievable data speeds and localisation/sensing accuracy than any foreseeable future service will require, but the performance only reaches those levels in ideal circumstances that cannot be guaranteed everywhere. For example, coverage holes exist in both urban and rural areas of the world, service disruptions occur due to power outages, jamming, and traffic congestion.
Our vision is that 5G is the last wireless technology generation focused on performance metrics such as data speeds and network capacity. We envision that three new metrics will dominate future development: sustainability, resilience, and availability. A sustainable design influences all system aspects, from radio-frequency hardware, via the network infrastructure, to software algorithms, orchestration, and applications. Energy efficiency in both wireless transmission and computations is crucial, as well as the use of sustainable materials and manageable operational and application costs. Moreover, new networks must be resilient and robust by design, so the digitised society and industry can be built around functional safety; that is, relying on low and predictable communication latency, stable quality-of-service for data transfer and wireless sensing, and continued operation under both intended and unintended disturbances (e.g., power outages, component failures, and intrusion attempts).
Finally, a fairness-centric design will help bridge the growing digital divide by ensuring that future networks can guarantee the availability of sufficient connectivity to people and companies worldwide, from urban cities to the countryside in developing countries. There is likely no one-size-fits-all solution, but cost-efficient and safe technology must be developed for a plethora of real-world scenarios where insufficient wireless connectivity will otherwise become a reality and widen the digital divide. The components of this vision can only be realised through a joint effort that involves a mix of competencies and know-how, from a variety of academic disciplines and from industrial stakeholders either involved in designing future wireless technology components or requiring reliable and tailored wireless technology when digitalising their business and applications. To prevent wireless connectivity and sensing from being the weakest links of the digital transformation, these competencies must become widely available, and the 5G and 6G technologies must evolve with commercial and societal needs at the core.
The SweWIN competence center is designed to address these challenges with the critical goal of influencing the development of 6G communication technology and other future wireless technologies to make them sustainable, resilient, and fair. The center will initially run from 2024 to 2028, with a potential five-year extension.