The overarching goal of the “5G-HyprMesh” joint project is to address security vulnerabilities associated with non-cellular 5G technologies, focus on the physical layer of 5G Mesh (NR+) systems and the Network layer (5G Core and Mobile Edge). The project also deals with the resilience of the entire 5G network. These technical achievements are concieved through the implementation of a proof of concept Telematics platform demonstrated with telematics boxes based on the NR+ mesh.

This project is an expended continuation of MOVEit (see below), now with 3 full PhD positions, a planned duration of 3 years and a focus on 6G technologies.

This project proposal addresses the 2020 Call issued by the European Interest Group for Connecting and Coordinating Research and Technology Development with Japan (EIG-Concert Japan) on “ICT for Resilient, Safe and Secure Society,” with a concept centered on physical-layer security to overcome the threats of post-quantum computing. The project brings together three high-ranking Japanese Universities, the Turkish National Research Council (TUBITAK) and the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) under the leadership of Jacobs University to develop software, hardware and wireless communications solutions to the post-quantum security problem via the exploitation of properties of the wireless channel such as reciprocity, multipath scattering and temporal/spatial/frequency coherence.

This project investigates technologies to enable massive numbers of mobile users with fast mobility (e.g. vehicles) to communicate with each other as well as infrastructure at high data-rate and ultra-low latency. Core techniques employed are advanced compressive-sensing based techniques (including Frame Theory and sparse signal processing), combined with optimization theory (including fractional programing, bilinear programming, discreteness-aware regularization and deep unfolding), employed to the fast acquisition of channel estimates, minimization of outage probability, minimization of symbol detection error, non-coherent modulation/demodulation and more. In the course of the 3 years the project, 16 patents and various conference and journal publications were produced, with more submitted and awaiting final publication.

This project, run in collaboration with the University of Electro-Communications (UEC) in Tokyo, Japan, investigates the development and application of stochastic learning and other optimization methods to advance wireless communications systems, in particular with regards to issues appearing at high frequency bands such as mmWave, including hardware imperfections (of RF chain components as well as antenna arrays), path blockage, fronthaul limitations, etc. The project has lead to vigorous collaboration with Japanese colleagues from UEC Tokyo, resulting in various joint articles published and submitted to IEEE journals and international conferences (see Complete List of Publications).

This project ran both at Ristumeikan University in Japan and Jacobs University Bremen in Germany, and was funded under the “Kakken” grant framework of type C (individual grant). The project focused on mechanisms to mitigate interference caused by non-linearity of channels in full-duplex systems. The project was successfully concluded with several articles published in the area of full-duplex radio, including conferences and journal articles (see Complete List of Publications). A highlight of our contribution to the project is that a best-paper award (see A229 in CLP) was obtained for a conference article produced under this project published at the Radio and Communications Symposium in Japan.

This project ran both at Ristumeikan University in Japan and Jacobs University Bremen in Germany, and was funded under the SCOPE program of the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, counting also with the participation of UEC Tokyo and the Japanese National Institute for Information and Communications Technology (NICT). The project focused on non-ortoghogonal multiple-access (NOMA) schemes for next generation wireless systems and produced several articles, the last and most significant of which is article A260 (see Complete List of Publications), published in the IEEE Access journal, which has already attracted 1142 full-text views in IEEExplore. The key contribution of the project was the development of a new Frame-Theoretical method for the systematic and scalable design of NOMA schemes, which was shown to achieve the capacity of the multi-user interfering (overloaded) channel. The result led to the granting of highest honors (“Ausgezeichnet” distinction) the Ph.D. student Andrei Stoica, now co-founder of WIOsense GmbH& Co.KG.

This project, funded by the Fukyu Telecommunications Advancement Foundation of Tokyo, aimed at the Development of indoor positioning technologies for the Internet of Things (IoT) applications. The project was conducted as a Germany-Japan collaboration, with Ritsumeikan University and CGC Software of Osaka as Japanese partners, and Jacobs University Bremen, ZigPos GmbH of Dresden as German partners. The project partially funded the development of a series of enhanced variations of the Super Multidimensional Scaling (SMDS) algorithm, including the Cholesky MDS, the Complex-Domain SMDS and the Turbo SMDS, published in several IEEE international conference and journal articles (see Complete List of Publications). The new positioning algorithms were implemented and tested in hardware, demonstrating to achieve significantly better performance than previously existing methods. The result led to the granting of highest honors (“Ausgezeichnet” distinction) to the Ph.D. student Alireza Ghods, now co-founder of NATIX GmbH.

HIGHTS was a relatively large project focused entirely on the development of highly accurate (target of < 25cm error) and robust (target performance achieved at least 70% of the time) cooperative localization systems, aiming primarily to enable advanced autonomous connected driving and smart-mobility IoT applications. In order to reach its objectives, the project worked not only on positioning algorithms themselves, but also on accurate ranging technologies (including UWB and mmWave) as well as on V2X communications. The consortium, lead by Jacobs University, counted with the Bosch, CEA-Leti, Institute Eurecom, Chalmers University, TASS, German Aerospace Center (DLR), Ibeo Automotive Systems, Objective Software, ZigPos, BeSpoon, InnoTec21 and FB Consulting. The project produced a large number of patents and scientific articles, both on the part of various partners as well as our own research group (see Complete List of Publications). Besides the graduation of 3 Ph.D. students, a highlight of our contribution to the project was the best-paper award received at the IEEE ISWCS (see article A204 in CLP) by the Ph.D. student Samip Malla, now with Apple Germany.

This project was a quite large EU project which brought togethers various Industrial heavy weights such Ericson, Alcatel-Lucent, Telecom Italia, ST Microelectronics, Gemalto, Swisscom and Philips with top Academic and R&D partners such as CEA-Leti, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, University of Oulu, Instituto Superiore Mario Boella and the University of Luxembourg, as well as various SMEs, all under the leadership of Jacobs University Bremen (as technical director), to build a first true realistic implementation of the Internet of Things in Europe. Due to its large size, the formal coordination of the project was executed by Inno AG (a professional project management corporation), while we acted as the project’s Technical Director. BUTLER’s concept was to transform the IoT into a system that, as the name suggests, cares for the very whim of its users. To that end, the project push forward three distinct and fundamental areas of technologies, namely, ubiquitous wireless, embedded security, and context-awareness, contributing to several new related concepts including long-range radios (LoRa), low energy (LE) radios (e.g. Bluetooth LE), machine-to-machine (M2M) communications, and much much more. The project was a pioneer in advancing all such “enabling technologies” for the IoT and had an enormous impact in Europe, producing large amounts of scientific works (including many patents and publications), training dozens of Ph.D. candidates, and leading to the launch of several start-ups. A personal highlight were the three best-paper awards received for articles published based on work carried out under this project.

Similarly to BUTLER, EARTH was another flagship and pioneering EU project. The project’s concept was conceived as a result of work on low-power communications systems and on wireless localization, and grew out of the realization that despite the efforts to save power in such distributed wireless systems, the vast majority of wireless data traffic originates and/or ends are cellular devices, which in turn have an enormous energy consumption and carbon footprint. A powerful consortium was then put together around that idea, with partners including Ericson, Alcatel-Lucent, DoCoMo, Telecom Italia, NXP, CEA-Leti, University of Surrey, TU Dresden, Intituto Superior Técnico de Lisboa and of course the University of Oulu. The project focused on and sought to address the problem – until then largely neglected – of reducing the energy consumption and carbon footprint of wireless technologies. As part of its work, the project identified that the most important factor in the energy consumption and carbon footprint of cellular systems is in fact the cooling systems required to maintain equipment at operational temperature. This led to tremendous work done in reducing the complexity of various blocks such as multiuser receiver algorithms, scheduling protocols and RF-chain components.

This project has a history on the preceding FP6 Projects PULSERS I and II (see below). To elaborate, PULSERS was originally designed as a three-phase series of projects to develop the fundamental blocks (phase 1), optimize and expand applications (phase 2), and finally implement and demonstrate (phase 3) in large scale UWB technologies. In great part due to the success of the first two phases, not enough was left of scientific value to be pursued in phase 3, such that instead the group decided to focus on UWB as an enabling technology for emerging “intelligent/smart domains.” Within this concept, the main contribution was to put together and lead the group of partners focusing on low-power and low-complexity wireless localization based on UWB technologies, which did an outstanding job. In particular, the Workpackage 4 on wireless localization and tracking technologies, was commended at the final review of the project for having done (quoting directly from the final evaluation report) “excellent work on thee investigation of new low complexity/low power localization and tracking techniques” and for having “one of the best outcomes in terms of technical publications.” In addition to the University of Oulu, the project counted with the contribution of partners such as Bosch, Philips, Thales, TES Electric, EADS, Telefónica, CEA-Leti, Università di Bologna, Universidad de Zaragoza, Universität Duisburg-Essen, Leibniz Universität Hannover and Ilmenau Technische Universität Ilmenau. The success our the localization team of EUWB led to the launch of two start-ups in the area, BeSpoon (www.bespoon.xyz) and ZigPos (www.zigpos.com).

PULSERS II was a very large project which continued on the steps of the preceding PULSERS I (see below) in developing UWB technologies. The project counted with the participation of various Industry blue-chip companies such as Bosch, Philips, Thales, EADS and Telefónica, as well as various top European universities and R&D Centers such as CEA-Leti, University of Oulu, Università di Bologna, Universidad de Zaragoza, Universität Duisburg-Essen, Leibniz Universität Hannover and Technische Universität Ilmenau, as well as several SMES, and succeeded in demonstrating the viability of UWB as a core technologies for the IoT, defending the technology on technical grounds from a largely politically-motivated resistance that existed at the time and which almost “killed” UWB technology. In that sense, besides numerous publications and patents, it can be said that PULSERS helped “save” UWB technology.

Leadership of PULSERS within the University of Oulu, coordinating the research work on various aspects of UWB technology, from algorithms to chip design, with a particular aim of designing and implement (on chip) complete UWB transceiver architecture which simultaneously required low power consumption and satisfied the tough spectral density regulations imposed on UWB technology at the time. The project counted with the participation of various large European companies such as ST Microelectionics, Mitsubishi, Robotiker, Philips, Thales, EADS, Sennheiser, Freescale and Telefónica, as well as various European R&D centers and universities such as VTT Finland, CEA-Leti, University of Oulu, Università degli Studi di Roma, Universidad de Zaragoza, Universität Karlsruhe, TU Ilmenau and TU Dresden, together with several SMEs.