CWC, University of Oulu

January 11, 2010

The first phone call over a cognitive radio network

On Monday 11 January 2010 the first phone call over a cognitive radio network in the history of mankind was made using CWC's cognitive radio network CRAMNET (Cognitive Radio Assisted Mobile Ad Hoc Network) which has been developed solely by CWC researchers.

The demonstration proved CWC’s capability to build a cutting edge cognitive radio networks on top of open source research platforms. The cognitive radio network call was be made using a regular GSM cellular phone and received with a VoIP software running on a laptop connected to CWC’s CRAMNET. Thus, the call flow is a unique blend of old and new technologies comprising of GSM network, internet and CWC’s CRAMNET.

CWC’s demonstration highlights the possibility of using cognitivity to achieve opportunistic communication with very little compromise on quality of service. The bandwidth efficiency, capacity and flexibility of a network can be dramatically increased using cognitive technology which can be combined in a flexible manner with existing technologies.

For further details on the demonstration, please see these brochures:
CRAMNET 1
CRAMNET 2
CRAMNET 3

January 11, 2010

Tadashi Matsumoto and Hsiao-Hwa Chen for IEEE Fellows

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has elected Professor Tadashi Matsumoto for IEEE fellowship. Fellow, the highest grade of IEEE members, is a title not received by many: Only 0,1 percent of the voting members may be recommended for the Fellow status per year.

Also elected as Fellow was Professor Hsiao-Hwa Chen from National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan, for his contributions to radio resource allocation in code division multiple wireless systems. Chen, who finished his dissertation in 1991 for the telecommunications laboratory, is the first alumnus of the University of Oulu to receive the highly regarded IEEE Fellow nomination. He was supervised by Prof. Juhani Oksman in his doctoral studies.

Reward for a hard work

Attaining the status of a Fellow requires extraordinary record of accomplishments in one of the fields of IEEE interest. Prof. Matsumoto was elected for his vast contributions to signal processing for wireless communications, which he has intensely pursued since his arrival to CWC.

“I moved alone to Oulu to work for CWC in March 2002. Living in a foreign country alone is really tough, but I made a promise to myself at that time: I would never give up until I get the IEEE Fellowship. Luckily, I have had very excellent students and colleagues, and friendly neighbours. Without their help, I could not have achieved this honourable grade”, professor Matsumoto reminisces.

“However, being awarded this grade does not mean the completion of my efforts in research work. On the contrary, I will continue working with my colleagues in CWC as well as my students in JAIST with renewed vigor!” Currently, University of Oulu and Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST) have a dual doctor degree programme, effective as of August 26, 2009. Professor Matsumoto is supervising students of the both universities.

The current work of Prof. Matsumoto is also strongly related to signal processing for wireless communications. Lately he and his team have been putting more focus on information theory and coding for networks. Especially distributed source and channel coding have been emphasized recently in the research work.

Paradigm shift

The newly elected Fellow is certain of the way the wireless communications should evolve in the future.

“Future wireless communication systems have to be eco-friendly. Presently, the cellular communication systems amount 3% of the total CO2 emissions in the world. This is equivalent to the amount emitted by the airliners!”

To create highly eco-friendly wireless communication systems, it is mandatory to follow the direction indicated by Shannon as well as recent advances in information theory. Such close-limit achiving technologies shall reduce the power consumption to a minimum level and increase the spectrum efficiency to a maximum level.

The Fellow status will help professor Matsumoto in pursuing this paradigm shift towards more environmentally friendly wireless communications:

“It is not only a honorary title: The status of Fellow in project application documents will make it more likely in practice that the proposed projects are accepted, thus making it easier for me to research these important subjects. Another important responsibility of IEEE Fellow is to nominate other Fellows: The more Fellows are included in the research consortium, the higher the acceptance ratio of the project proposal.

For more information on IEEE Fellow programme:
www.ieee.org/web/membership/fellows/index.html

Jaakko Seppälä

November 19, 2009

Oxygen of the wireless world

In his doctoral thesis to be defended on 20 November 2009, M.Sc. Mehdi Bennis attacks the problem of spectrum scarcity in cellular networks. According to Bennis “spectrum is the oxygen of the wireless world. Hence if we were to enjoy those gigabytes of data rates everyone is talking about, sharing the spectrum is a necessity! Sharing the spectrum must be intelligently coordinated between wireless operators. This requires smarter ways to handle the spectrum utilization.”

In his thesis work, Bennis presents five alternative views on radio resource management architecture. His main conclusion demonstrates that sharing the spectrum on a short-term basis leverages the capacity gains of the overall network. By borrowing tools from game theory, hierarchy is introduced between operators improving thereby the overall efficiency of a network.

Spectrum sharing is already a reality and operators have started sharing their networks. However, the expected benefits of this type of optimization proposed by Mr. Bennis may alter the manner operators handle the spectrum. As more spectrum is freed, more opportunities for higher data rates will also become available for the regular customer.

Read the full thesis (http://herkules.oulu.fi/isbn9789514260582)

October 29, 2009

World class dissertation by a worldly man
Wireless network researcher Kaveh Ghaboosi got the doctor’s hat in three years

The Facts:
Kaveh Ghaboosi
– Born 4th july 1979 Teheran, Iran
– Done research at Centre for Wireless Communications on the subject “Intelligent Medium Access Control for the Future Wireless Networks”
– Public defence of doctoral dissertation 29th October 2009
– The dissertation compares existing wireless device MACs in simulations and by mathematical analyses. Based on the results, several enhancements for the protocols are proposed and also a completely novel MAC is developed
– The proposed scheme can be used for future single- and multi-channel systems to achieve higher throughput and lower delay compared to the existing solution
–Moreover, the added features in the proposed mechanisms are relatively easy to implement on top of the existing standard, therefore, a new product can be made out of it with small effort

Lively, even shrill laughter reaches far from the coffee room. It is not hard to make research scientist Kaveh Ghaboosi smile. And there’s a good reason for that: The suit to wear in the public defence has been acquired, the preparations for the doctoral dinner have been made and coffee and pulla is raining from all the researcher colleagues. The worldwide scientific community is interested in Kaveh’s brainchilds.
”A month ago I visited Japan to tell about my research. For some reason beyond me I fell madly in love with Spanish language there and started studying it right away! I must’ve spoken a bit too much with Spanish researchers.”
It is apparent that Ghaboosi is likewise interested in the worldwide scientific community – and the world itself.
“The best thing about this job is experiencing new, exciting cultures. I have had the privilege of visiting fifteen different countries in the course of my research, from France to Thailand. But in my opinion Finland is the best country to live in.”

Many Iranian technical students apply for a job or studies in United States, since Iran and the neighboring areas do not offer enough opportunities in that field of study. Over five million Iranian immigrants actually live in the states. Some end up elsewhere, too: Ghaboosi switched the forty-degree-celcius-plus summers of Teheran mountainside to the pancake flats of Oulu partly because of practical reasons, partly because of the sense of adventure.
“Lately, visa issues concerning Iranians have been getting harder. One of my friends had to apply for a visa to the States eight times before he succeeded”, the researcher tells.
”I thought about going there myself, but I also remembered Oulu. During my studies one of my scientific papers had been accepted for a conference by CWC. I e-mailed a job application half-seriously, to which prof. Latva-aho replied ‘Welcome! Finland is nice, but the finnish ladies are really beautiful!’ That was pretty much all I knew about Finland at the time, but then again – did I really have to know more?”

Professor Matti Latva-aho developed into not only the supervisor of Ghaboosi’s doctoral studies, but also a close friend.
“The Persian character goes together really well with the Finnish mentality for some reason”, says Latva-aho, who has in addition to supervising the research, spent time with the young Iranian on ski tracks.
“Unlike many western countries, in which acquaintances are so often based only on potential benefit and need, Kaveh’s culture cultivates lifelong friendships. This has had a definite impact on the high quality of Kaveh’s dissertation, since our cooperation has functioned just brilliantly”
Latva-aho commends especially both the analytical part of his protegé’s thesis and the research done on cognitive MAC techniques.
"These chapters truly make Kaveh's dissertation world class work."

The cosmopolitan Ghaboosi does not have to mull over the challenges in his dissertation any more, but is now facing another kind of problem to solve.
“My family is scattered, since my sister studies in Sweden, I’m here and my parents live alone back home. This is not typical in Iran, where close family relations are cherished. I miss home, but I’d still also like to see new cultures, travel, get to know new people.”
Whatever happens, the man has a clear view of what is a researcher’s life:
“Without collaboration ph.D. doesn’t make sense. Communicating is worth your time… always.”

Jaakko Seppälä, Centre for Wireless Communications
jaakko.seppala@ee.oulu.fi

September 29, 2009

And the winner is…

Researchers from CWC have won the first place in the international WINCOOL 2009 demo contest held in Beijing, China. Research scientist Hannu Tuomivaara, research manager Matti Raustia and research assistant Markku Jokinen grasped the gold medal with their demonstration of “Distributed TDMA MAC Protocol with OLSR Routing”. The victorious performance was rewarded with a sum of 2000 US dollars.

A part of ACM International Workshop on Wireless Network Testbeds (WinTECH), this year’s demo competition had a wide topic area of wireless systems from physical to application layer. The real catch was, the contest was especially restricted to operational prototypes: No Powerpoint slides or videos were allowed – it had to be the real thing.

WARP boards galore

The victorious research team implemented their distributed TDMA MAC and multi hop OLSR routing on wireless open-access research platform (WARP) boards running Linux. WARP board, a highly customizable wireless platform with an FPGA and up to four radio cards is especially well suited for prototyping PHY/MAC/NET-layer network designs.

The development of WARP technology was started in 2006 by Rice University, a close research partner of Centre for Wireless Communications. CWC was one of the first research institutes to adopt the technology, which is now encompassed by the likes of NASA, Nokia and Motorola. CWC has conducted numerous novel implementations on the board, not the least of which is the in-house designed software architecture, which enables running Linux and utilizing various routing protocols on WARP.

The results are convincing: The CWC Team WARP finished ahead several distinguished research group including the runner-ups from RWTH Aachen University presenting Reconfigurable Framework for Adaptive OFDM Transmission. Among the competitors were also teams from the Italian University of L’Aquila, Chinese Academy of Science and University of Pennsylvania, USA.

Genuinely novel

But, the triumphant display of technological talent had more going for it than just running a protocol on a flexible platform. The work is also scientifically notable: “We achieved something genuinely novel with our performance: A dynamic TDMA MAC which needs no master in the network, enables late-entry of nodes, network merging, and time-slot reuse… It is the kind of tech of which there is only a handful of related publications available”, tells Matti Raustia, the manager of the research team.

He sees many uses for the Linux enriched WARP board in the near future.
“The methods we demonstrated may be used to develop new security related waveforms. Also, with the Linux operating system and easy-to-use graphic control software we used on the board, WARP will make a fine software defined radio platform.”

We shall see Team WARP hot in action the next time in November with a demonstration featuring distributed spectrum sensing, opportunistic spectrum usage and an adaptive physical layer. This will be the first version of CWC’s cognitive radio network demonstration.

More information on the contest on Wintech 2009 netpage at www.winlab.rutgers.edu/WINTECH2009

Jaakko Seppälä, CWC

September 11, 2009

CWC receives another FiDiPro Nominee

CWC receives funding from Tekes’ FiDiPro funding programme in order to invite Dr. Kamya Yekeh Yazdandoost from Yokohama National University to work in Oulu.

FiDiPro – the Finland Distinguished Professor Programme – is a joint funding programme run by Tekes and the Academy of Finland which enables Finnish research groups to invite top class international researchers to work in Finland for a period of two to five years.

Whereas previously the programme has been open only to researchers at professorial level, this year Tekes for the first time has funded gifted individuals at the start of their careers, under the FiDiPro Fellow banner.

FiDiPro Fellow Dr. Kamya Yekeh Yazdandoost

Dr.Yazdandoost is an expert in an interdisciplinary field between medicine and information communications technology. He is one of the key persons in Prof. Ryuji Kohno’s laboratory in Japan.

His FiDiPro project is called "Wireless Body Area Networks for Health and Medical-care (WiBAN-HAM)". The subject of his research work is the design and development of novel solutions targeting wireless body area networks for health and medical-care applications to be used in the healthcare facility and home. The research focuses on realizing a number of areas including a channel model for tissue implanted device and onbody sensors for wireless body area networks.

"It is vital that this country obtains top class international researchers, particularly when their expertise is targeted at important areas for Finland," says Veli-Pekka Saarnivaara, Director General of Tekes.

August 28, 2009

Dual Degree Agreement signed with the Japan Institute of Advanced Technology (JAIST)

A new chapter has started in the success story of co-operation between CWC and Japan Institute of Advanced Technology (JAIST). On August 26 President Takuya Katayama of JAIST and Rector Lauri Lajunen of the University of Oulu signed an agreement on starting a new doctoral exchange programme between the academies.

The programme allows for doctoral students to complete a dual degree by studying both in Oulu and Nomi, Japan. Focusing extensively on iterative receivers and distributed decision-making algorithms, the research subject of the programme is a specialty of our visiting FiDiPro Professor, renowned Tadashi Matsumoto.

Prof. Matsumoto himself shall work on distributed networks in the DIDES project at CWC until 2012, and it was agreed upon that two members of Matsumoto’s research group shall be the first students to enroll to the new exchange from Oulu. Rector Lauri Lajunen and Director Ari Pouttu of CWC estimate that the number of doctoral exchange students will rise to a steady three to five partakers per year.

President Katayama and other personnel of JAIST were treated to Nordic hospitality and a full house of cutting-edge research on their six day visit to Oulu. Demoing the rich range of research topics including human-robot interaction, ubiquitous computing and printed electronics in addition to the wealth of communications innovations could well spark more inter-academy co-operation ideas for future. The visit culminated in a ceremony of mutual gift-exchanging and contract signing.

Jaakko Seppälä, CWC

June 11, 2009

Juho Antikainen receives an award for best diploma thesis

IEEE Student Branch Oulu awarded the prize for the best master thesis compiled in the Department of Electrical and Information Engineering of University of Oulu during 2008. The award recipient is Master of Science in Technology Juho Antikainen. The title of the thesis is “Requirements and Application-specific Instruction Set Processor Design for MIMO Detector”. The thesis proposed an efficient programmable implementation for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communications based on multiple antennae. The design is based on transport triggered architecture (TTA) computation paradigm. It was shown to yield higher rates than other previously known programmable MIMO detector implementations and values comparable to those achieved by hardware solutions.

“The results achieved in the study have been presented in international scientific conferences and publications. The developed techniques will be further studied and evolved in research projects of the University of Oulu. The thesis is a proof of the writer’s mature thinking and capability to solve problems independently, and thus deserves well to be awarded”, says the Chair of the Awards Committee, Professor Markku Juntti.

June 5, 2009

Professor Anthony Ephremides shared his wisdom

A renowned specialist in Wireless Networks and Energy Efficient Systems, professor Anthony Ephremides from the University of Maryland lectured in University of Oulu on June 4. The title of the lecture was “Cooperation at the Network Level”.

The subject revolved around the methods and benefits of increasing network-level cooperation. A lot of benefits have been reaped at the physical layer with help of “distributed” MIMO on and relaying. So why not do something like that at the network level too? Now that is the question. If you hunger for more information on the topic, please refer to the link in the end of this news piece.

The event was a part of professor Ephremides’ Distinguished Lecturer Tour which extends to University of Lisbon, Portugal and University of Piraeus, Greece. Professor Ephremides’ appearance in Finland was brought to you by the reliable and punctual IEEE Finland Communications Society Chapter. As our own Harri Saarnisaari, Ph.D and the chairman of the Chapter says: “For information on more quality lecturers to come, check out our web page at www.cwc.oulu.fi/IEEE_COM19”

For further details about the lecture and the fascinating person of prof. Anthony Ephremides, see lecture info.

June 5, 2009

Specifications, situation awareness and smoke sauna

A multinational group of communications specialists flocked together at the WOLF meeting hosted by CWC from 26th to 29th of May. The European Defense Agency (EDA) funded project WOLF (Wireless Robust Link for Urban Force Operations) is focused on enhancing the wireless communication robustness and situation awareness capabilities, which in turn will lead to better survivability of units in urban operations.

CWC with its long history of fruitful co-operation with the Finnish Defence Forces was in no bad company here: The project consortium comprises of companies with a strong background in military tactical communications such as aerospace and defence information system specialist THALES, Swedish Defence Research Agency FOI, the Military University of Technology in Poland. Also French SAG, TNO from the Netherlands and several other companies belong to the consortium.

The three-day visit was not all meetings and specification grinding for the partakers from France, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Italy and Germany. A dinner accompanied by smoke sauna and a dip into ice cold water at the scenic cove of Villa Salmenranta was an unforgettable experience for the foreign visitors.

May 4, 2009

Software defined radios advance on a broad front

As multinational co-operation is increasing, it has become important to ensure interoperable communications between military and civil operators. Large crisis management and disaster relief operations may find a myriad of military and civilian organisations, even from various countries, operating together.

As co-operation of this scale will most likely be unrehearsed and has to be improvised on the spot, there must be a way to establish communications between the different parties reliably and quickly.

To meet this end, software defined radio technologies are developed to replace and complement the existing radio equipment with a fully interoperable and reconfigurable radio system.

Centre for Wireless Communications has realised this need well in advance. A long time active member in the worldwide SDR forum, CWC is currently researching SDR issues on a broad front. The four projects CWC is currently participating in – ESSOR, ETARE, EULER and WOLF – take different points of view at software defined radios with a heavy emphasis on the security aspect.

Better security through new waveforms

While the EULER project concentrates on future broadband radio systems of the so called blue light forces (police, frontier guard, fire department etc.), the research in ESSOR (European Secure Software Radio Programme) addresses military radios. The main scope is to provide architecture of SDR for military purposes and a military high data rate waveform compliant with such architecture.

The WOLF project focuses on military equipment as well, providing innovative solutions to increase survivability of forces in urban operations.

The main objective of ETARE (Enabling Technology for Advanced Radio in Europe) is to develop advanced waveform technologies in Europe that could be included in the future for operational waveform definition, at national or coalition level. The resulting technologies will enable, e.g., higher data rates and better security.

Jaakko Seppälä, CWC

April 29, 2009

Cutting edge technology for athletics of tomorrow

The infamous ski tunnel of Vuokatti is just way-out. As if the idea of skiing on actual snow in the middle of summer wasn’t bizarre enough, the tunnel has lately evolved into a veritable vision of cyberpunk. Envisioned and conducted by CWC Kainuu, the HILU project supplements the age old concept of keeping fit with imaginative high tech instruments on, under, and all around the skiers.

As a brisk skier advances on the snowy trail, wireless sensors on skis, poles and the skier’s body record force, acceleration and heart rate data. A central unit on the skier then sends them to a server for analyzing via a wireless access points in the tunnel. In addition, the twenty-four access points continuously pinpoint the skiers by RSSI measuring. All this information can be used to plot a real-time chart of the locations and statuses of the sportsmen and -women.

Thanks to this piloting research work done in collaboration with Rex, Atomic, Peltonen, VTT and others, the system could be from the modest one-kilometer tunnel to the vast surrounding outdoor sports areas. Not only helpful in monitoring the performance of athletes, it would also improve safety as the medical condition of a lone exerciser in the middle of woods could be observed.

According to Juha Isoaho, the fresh research manager of CWC Kainuu, this is just the beginning.

Real-time motion tracking

Measuring the performance of athletes with wireless devices is a young area of study: There are a lot of untapped resources in the field. The technology can also be used for optimising sports equipment. This is demonstrated by measuring friction and slide of skis and waxes with the help of wireless technology as a part of the HILU project.

But why limit the research on skiers and skiing only? Wireless sensors could be used for observing the coordination of a hockey player’s hands and skates real-time for instance. Coach would surely appreciate something like that.

So, expanding the field of application is the goal, and when it comes to finding new areas for serious sport research, CWC Kainuu is situated in the best possible place: Vuokatti sees national teams from 40 countries throughout the year training for various sports. Winter or summer event, Vuokatti can cater for all.

A number of CWC Kainuu’s upcoming projects are sports related whilst other are to do with the heavy and specialised vehicle industry featuring forestry equipment manufacturer Ponsse, mining industry specialist Normet and tractor manufacturing colossus Valtra.

Since its inception in 2006, the Kainuu unit of CWC has more than doubled its staff of researchers and things are looking up with an increasing need for research from the growing number of partner companies.

Jaakko Seppälä, CWC

March 19, 2009

CWC to play important role in modernising European emergency radio systems

A three-year project of developing the next generation emergency radio system for the EU countries kicks off in the end of March. Project EULER, or European Software defined radio for wireless in joint security operations, is a major undertaking of 19 partners including Thales Communications, EADS Secure Networks, Saab Communications and CWC.

The 15,5 million euro project is mainly funded by 8,7 million euros from the EU, whilst the companies invest the rest. The software defined radio (SDR) research aims not only at improving the data rate and other characteristics of the existing emergency radio systems, but also at enhancing security and tightening co-operation between European security networks.

“This research will give well-grounded results for selecting the best possible specifications for the new system”, informs Dr. Timo Bräysy, the coordinator of the project at CWC. Thus, the main object of EULER is to lay out the foundation and define a new standard for the future Europe-wide security and emergency radio network.

CWC has the important role of dissemination and standardisation activities in the project: As EULER comes closer to its end and the actual of conception of the first devices is near, the EULER consortium will propose based on its research results, which specifications should be adopted for the SDR system to be used in the whole of Europe. Several employees from CWC will participate in the project to ensure that the required versatility and the high standards of security are met.

In order to make the best use of already available resources, the consortium will investigate basing the new standard on WiMAX technology. Several aspects, data security being the most critical, need to be addressed.

Speed, versatility and European co-operation

Currently, many of the European countries rely on the ageing TETRA standard. TETRA, which was finalised in 1995, forms the basis of several nations’ emergency radio networks, including the Finnish emergency services’ telecommunications network VIRVE.

Although viable for speech communication, TETRA lacks the capacity for high speed data transfer, such as device-to-device real-time video, which could be a life-saving feature in emergency situations. Also, as any hardware defined system, TETRA system is inherently rigid and limited to communicating with other devices of the same specifications.

EULER addresses both these problems: With rapid advances in processing power and algorithms of handheld telecommunication devices, efficient and fast data transfer solutions can be implemented without compromising security or stability. Also, as a software defined radio system (SDR), the new standard could be made interoperable not only with other SDR’s of the same specification but with a myriad of other systems, including old TETRA networks.

This ‘4G’ approach of not replacing, but bringing together various co-existing networks would mitigate the costs and alleviate the problems of transferring into a new system as well as increase interoperability with countries that still have to rely on old equipment.

Interoperable emergency networks continent-wide would be imperative in effectively organising help in case of large crises spanning several nations, such as pandemics or natural disasters.

Jaakko Seppälä, CWC

March 2, 2009

Professor Ece Yaprak started her work at CWC

Professor Ece Yaprak from Wayne State University, Michigan US, funded by the Fulbright-Nokia Grant in Electronics & Information, started her work at CWC in January 2009 and will stay in Finland for 4 months. Prof. Yaprak’s research interests lie in embedded networking, network engineering and wireless sensor networks. At Wayne State University, Prof. Yaprak works in the division of engineering technology, where she is one the 8 faculty members. Since her arrival in Oulu, Prof. Yaprak has spent her time exploring CWC and is very impressed by the ongoing research projects. She was particularly surprised to see the number of researchers working at CWC and the high quality of research CWC conducts.

Prof. Yaprak has previously participated in research projects e.g. within NASA and Navy Fellowhip Programmes. Her passion not only lies on research which she usually concentrates on in summer time, but also in teaching. She has received several “Excellence in Teaching” awards, thus CWC can already anticipate some interesting guest lectures during this spring. Her courses at Wayne State are mainly laboratory courses, “hands on” type of courses. She also received a NSF-DUE “Course, Curriculum and Laboratory Improvement Program” Grant, and hopes to return home with a lot of new ideas on how to further improve teaching in the field of ESN.

Prof. Yaprak expects to deepen her knowledge on wireless sensor networks and wishes to have time to publish during her stay in Oulu. She is interested in projects exploring Publish/Subscribe communication infrastructure. Prof. Yaprak wishes to come back to Oulu next year. Not even the cold and snowy winter can scare her. According to Prof. Yaprak the weather in Detroit is not that much different from the one in Oulu. The only disadvantage being in Finland is the remoteness of her family; she especially misses her recently born grandchild.

February 9, 2009

Strategic Research Agenda for Wireless Connectivity, Networks & Communication

CWC together with several companies, research institutes and universities has drafted and published the first version of Strategic Research Agenda (SRA) for Wireless Connectivity, Networks & Communication to motivate discussion on the future radio related research. The purpose of this Wireless Connectivity, Networks & Communication strategic research agenda (SRA) is to guarantee the maintenance and enhancement of the top technological expertise also in the future. The SRA document was handed to Dr. Kari Tilli, Director at Tekes, the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation in Helsinki today. The SRA document will be updated and new versions are open to contributions from all the interested parties in the field.

The smart environments of the future are envisioned to wirelessly connect trillions of devices. At the same time, the climate change and increasing energy cost call for particularly power and energy efficient solutions for the wireless access. Therefore, novel design of wireless networks and related radio technologies is a necessity. To guarantee the competitiveness of the Finnish ICT industry, service provides and application users, investments in the long term research and medium and shorter term development are needed.

This strategic research agenda contains several themes to achieve the targets stated in the mission. The fundamental themes elaborated to a higher level of detail in this document include but are not limited to
   * network topologies and architectures
   * cognitive and cooperative networks
   * spectrum sharing and channel access
   * ubiquitous connectivity
   * fundamentals behind multiple radio technologies
   * transceiver technologies
   * antenna technologies for future radio access networks
   * layerless communications
   * radios as sensors and actuators
   * radio channel modeling

The key rationale for this Research Agenda is fundamentally to create technology and services that will enable economic growth and prosperity for Finland. Good technology resulting from research, if pulled through with appropriate business applications, will result in economic growth, and prosperity for a wide range of Finnish industries, not only the communications or ICT industry.

The SRA draft is now available [here].

December 4, 2008

Two major projects to be funded by Academy of Finland

Academy of Finland has granted research funding for two major research projects run by CWC.

"Opportunistic Wireless Communication Systems" is a three-year project led by Prof. Matti Latva-aho starting on 1 January 2009. The amount of funding granted for the project is 405 000€. The objective of the project is to explore different alternatives for opportunistic spectrum usage policies and techniques for future wireless networks and to develop sufficient theoretical tools for analyzing them. One fundament question in the analysis is related to the modeling principles of e.g. radio channel models, mobility models and traffic models for flexible heterogeneous wireless networks. The project has three closely related themes: 1) spectrum sensing methodology for cognitive radios, 2) radio resource management in flexible wireless networks and 3) channel and traffic modeling for broadband heterogeneous wireless networks.

"Beamforming and Radio Resource Management in Co-Operative Wireless Networks" is a four-year project led by Prof. Markku Juntti starting on 1 January 2009. The project will be run with a total funding of 440 000€. The project considers opportunistic co-operative wireless networks. Particular emphasis is on linear beamforming and radio resource management theory, analysis and solutions. Both base station or infrastructure and user cooperation are considered. The objectives of the project include achieving deep theoretical understanding on the capacity of the co-operative wireless cellular networks, linear transmit/receive beamforming design and optimization, estimates of transceiver complexity, and design guidelines of heterogeneous wireless networks based on the co-operation paradigm.

Doctoral student positions are open for both projects.

November 21, 2008

Award of the Best Doctoral Thesis to Dr. Tech. Codreanu

The Finnish Association of Graduate Engineers TEK and Engineering Society in Finland, TFiF, have granted the award of the best doctoral thesis in the field of engineering to Romanian Dr.Tech. Marian Codreanu for his thesis entitled "Multidimensional adaptive radio links for broadband communications". The award sum is 7500 €.

In his thesis, Dr. Tech. Codreanu focused on multiple antenna technology and its applications to broadband wireless communications systems. In particular, new advanced multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) transceiver structures which adapt the transmission parameters to the radio channel variations are proposed in his thesis.

Two fundamental aspects of these adaptive MIMO transmission schemes were addressed. First, the theoretical performance limits of MIMO schemes were studied in the context of general multiuser cellular communication systems. The second challenge was to derive practical transceiver structures which achieve high data rates close to the theoretical predicted performance limits. New transceiver optimization methods were derived, where different network-centric objectives (such as throughput, fairness, spectral efficiency, operator revenue, etc.) are optimized subject to user-centric constraints (such maximum transmitted power, minimum quality of services, etc.).

The results of the thesis can be applied to increase the performance of future communication systems, such as 4G and beyond. The results on the theoretical performance limits have also an immediate practical application, as they can serve as benchmarks for evaluating the performance of any practical transceiver structure.

In the criteria for the award, Dr. Tech. Codreanu's work is acclaimed for his efficient numerical methods for the theoretical estimation of the channel capacity. In addition, he has managed to develop practical transceiver structures and optimization algorithms to support the R&D for future mobile systems. It is also stated that Dr. Codreanu knows his topic extremely well and has succeeded in working in cooperation with companies as well as with international research partners.

The research work for the thesis was carried out at CWC where Dr. Tech. Marian Codreanu works as research scientist. The supervisor of the thesis was Prof. Matti Latva-aho from CWC, who received the same award in year 1999.

September 24, 2008

Award for Internationalisation Granted to CWC

The University of Oulu has granted the Centre for Wireless Communications a recognition award for internationalisation. The reasons for giving the award are that throughout the existence of CWC, it has been determinedly developing into a genuinely international science community and a world-class performer. Researchers and doctoral students are recruited though an international application process and the unit has its own doctoral study programme run in English. Approximately one quarter of the unit's staff are foreigners and there are five professors out of which three receive funding from the Finland Distinguished Professor programme. CWC's actions in executing the university's strategic internalisation goals are exemplary.

September 5, 2008

Cooperation on Medical ICT Deepens

Centre for Wireless Communications (CWC) hosts the first Finnish-Japanese coordination meeting, International Workshop on Medical ICT (IWMICT 2008). Altogether 30 guest including professors, doctors and researchers of technology and medicine take part in the workshop.

Three Japanese organisations have recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding with University of Oulu conserning medical ICT. The Japanese organisations are Yokohama National University, National Institute of Communications Technology (NICT) ja Center for Future Medical Social Infrastructure Based on Information Communications Technology (MICT).

IWMICT 2008 participants include, for example, professor Shinsuke Watanabe, Vice President and Executive Director of Yokohama National University; professor Kimio Okada, Vice President of Yokohama City University; and DSc Yuichi Matsushita, Vice President of National Institute of Communications Technology (NICT).

The cooperation between University of Oulu and Japanese partners is fostered and deepened during the workshop. In addition, information is distributed on the ongoing and future research activities of the partner organisations. One of the main targets of IWMICT 2008 is to focus on the challenges related to the Global Center of Excellence programme financed by the Japanese government. Furthermore, the workshop participants discuss about possibilities to organise international double DSc degrees, as well as researcher and lecturer exchange.

Medical ICT research at the University of Oulu is concentrated in the department of electrical and information engineering: CWC, computer engineering laboratory, optoelectronics and measurement technology laboratory; and in the faculty of medicine: department of medical technology. The research subjects include sensors, signal processing and communication system solutions.

August 13, 2008

Radio Channel Measurements for Galileo Satellite Services

CWC is currently running an extensive radio channel measurement project to characterise the propagation effects of Galileo satellite signals.

Researchers from CWC and EB were in Graz, Austria, in order to run the first experiments for the C-band measurements. The second set of measurements are scheduled for Sep 22 – Oct 3 in Graz and in Vienna, after which the 4G lab will start the painstaking number crunching, to reveal the mysteries of the channel. In this process the exact angles, delays and amplitudes of the multi-reflected receive signal will be extracted. Inspection of the temporal variability of these results leads to a radio propagation model, and this will be used to repeat the signal propagation in computer simulations.

The effort aims to characterise the satellite-to-indoor channel at C-band (5 GHz). In addition the shadowing of the vegetation will be studied and modelled. The satellite at high elevation angle is simulated by a helicopter. The TX unit in the helicopter is sending a 200 MHz spread spectrum signal at 5.2 GHz while the RX is located in various types of buildings. The vegetation effects are measured by placing the RX in a van. The project results in a set of parameterised channel models.

The measurement campaign is conducted in co-operation with Joanneum Research from Austria and the University of Vigo in Spain as part of the Global Navigation Satellite System program (GNSS evolution) of the European Space Agency (ESA).

Galileo Satellite Services

June 6, 2007

CWC Postgraduate Study Programme

CWC strengthens its postgraduate study programme by establishing the CWC International Doctoral Study Programme. The objective is to attract new Finnish and international postgraduate students to the University of Oulu. Another aim is to offer double degrees in doctoral studies. The programme leader professor Matti Latva-aho considers that CWC has a firm position in offering doctoral training in wireless communications. Currently, CWC has five active esteemed international professors and one third of its research staff is of non-Finnish origin. The research unit employs altogether 90 full-time researchers and lecturers. The new programme that is being lauched aims at increasing the number of visiting professors and at creating an internet portal of the lectures also available widely for audience in the industry. The first new international professors and students begun to work within the framework of the CWC International Doctoral Study Programme on 4 June 2007.

The programme has received financial support from the Federation of Finnish Technology Industries in the form of a 200000 euro grant. In addition, the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation has given indirect support for the programme through the 900000 euro funding within Finland Distinguished Professor (FiDiPro) -programme. In 2007, two nominated professors begin to work in CWC at University of Oulu by means of FiDiPro - Prof. Behnaam Aazhang from USA and Prof. Ryuji Kohno from Japan.

March 6, 2007

ISMICT2007

The Second International Symposium on Medical Information and Communication Technology will be organised in Oulu, Finland, from Tuesday 11 December through Thursday 13 December, 2007, consisting of Tutorial and Networking day on 11 December and Symposium on 12-13 December. ISMICT 2007 is a continuation of the first ISMICT event organised in Yokohama, Japan in December 2006. As an answer to the fast growing interest in wireless medical ICT research, the symposium will concentrate on the challenge of achieving ubiquitous and pervasive communications as well as on the process development in healthcare and in welfare environments utilizing wireless solutions.

More Information:
www.ismict2007.org

March 6, 2007

Appointment news

Professor Markku Juntti has been appointed as docent in Rice University, Houston, US. His appointment is a part of extensive collaboration between CWC and Rice University that started in the beginning of 1990.

This collaboration will be progressed this year as professor Behnaam Aazhang of Rice Univerity arrives to work in CWC for a five-year period. His visit is supported by Finnish Distinguished Professor Programme (FiDiPro). FiDiPro is a funding programme jointly launched by the Academy of Finland and Tekes, Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation to recruit foreign professor-level top researchers to Finland for a fixed period of time.

February 15, 2007

Sensinode expands its management team.

Sensinode Ltd. expands its management team to lead the growth phase of the company. Managing director, Zach Shelby is joined by Kari Kukkoaho as COO, and Endale Mitiku as VP, Sales & Marketing. Both Kari and Endale also join the company's board of directors.

Kari joins from Motivon Oy, a wellness techology provider, where he has served as Managing Director. Prior to Motivon, Kari has worked for 20 years in the telecommunications industry for companies such as Telecom Finland (currently TeliaSonera), Mannesmann Mobilfunk GmbH (currently Vodafone, Germany) and Nokia Oyj. Kari has been responsible for product and system development, sales and marketing, business development and development partner co-operation activities at these companies. During his career Kari has been based in Finland, Germany and the US.

Endale joins from Siemens/Infineon Technologies AG, where he most recently served as its regional Director of Marketing & Business Development for Technology IP Core Licensing in the semiconductor industry and global business solutions and development services. Prior to Siemens, He worked at several Silicon Valley companies in California such as IBM, AT&T Bell-Lab, NCR, LSI Logic, Seagate, Ricoh, Hitachi with their global product launch, and supply chain strategy in the APAC & North America Region, including Joint venture project/program development, with OEM customers/partners and distribution channel management.

More Information:
www.sensinode.com

February 8, 2007

University Press: Prof. Tad Matsumoto Received Three Awards in One Year

Prof. Tad Matsumoto of Centre for Wireless Communications (CWC), who has been on leave and staying in Ilmenau Uinversity of Technology, Germany, funded by the MERCATOR German guest professorship program, and just returned to CWC on February 5, received a German state award, State Scientific Award on Advanced Applied Research (Die herausragende wissenschaftliche Leistung auf dem Gebit der Angewandten Forchung). The award ceremony took place in a auditorium hall at Ilmenau University of Technology, Thuringen, Germany, on February 1st, and was TV-broadcasted by a German TV station. The award is for the scientific activities of the group which he has been working together.

Since Prof. Matsumoto's on-leave status started in January 2006, he has received 3 awards, IEEE Japan Council Award for Meritorious Contributions to the Society, IEEE Vehicular Technology James R. Evans Avant Garde Award , and the German State Award described above.

October 25, 2006

Sensinode knows ZigBee

Sensinode Ltd., specializing in low-power wireless technology, brings its first product line called Micro to the market. Sensinode specializes in product development tools, OEM radio modules and engineering services in ZigBee, ultrawideband and related technology, providing inexpensive, compact, and robust ad hoc wireless solutions to the European market. Sensinode is a business-to-business technology provider, accelerating its customers' time-to-market for embedded wireless technology.

Markets for embedded wireless technology such as ZigBee are growing rapidly, especially in industrial control, consumer applications, healthcare and building automation. Market analysis reports for One World Inc. estimate that 127 million new wireless sensors will be sold yearly by 2010. The market share for ZigBee and related standards will also grow rapidly as the industry moves away from old proprietary wireless solutions to new standards.

For example, ZigBee and UWB technology have many applications that can greatly improve healthcare processes. In the health care sector Sensinode is cooperating closely with wireless healthcare provider WHealth Oy and the WILHO consortium.

Sensinode Ltd. is a new successful spin-off from the University of Oulu, Centre for Wireless Communications. Based on years of research on low-power wireless technology for consumer, health care, measurement and automation applications, this know-how is now being offered commercially. The company was founded in January 2006 through the Technopolis Ventures Oulutech incubator. The privately owned corporation is also funded through TEKES, Finnvera and TE-keskus. This August the company's first product line called Micro, shipped to customers around the world.

"Just looking backwards for decades, this concept is something that industry has been waiting for to replace the expensive assembly of wired networks or wireless networks more dedicated to SOHO applications than robust environments." Martti Elsilä, managing director of Technopolis Ventures.

More Information:
www.sensinode.com
Zach Shelby, CEO
zach.shelby

sensinode.com
040-7796297

October 16, 2006

IEEE VTS James R. Evans Avant Garde Award for professor Tadashi Matsumoto

Professor Tadashi Matsumoto from the Centre for Wireless Communications received the esteemed IEEE VTS James R. Evans Avant Garde Award for his meritorious contributions to wireless communication technologies.

Tad participated in the award ceremony during the IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference 2006 Fall on the last week of September 2006 in Montréal, Canada.

April 7, 2006

New technology spin-off, Sensinode Ltd.

Sensinode is a spin-off of the Centre for Wireless Communications, University of Oulu. The technical team consists of experienced wireless embedded and sensing system researchers along with hardware and embedded software developers. The CWC is on the cutting edge of short-range wireless communications, with a long history of research and innovations in wireless networking, embedded communication protocols, wireless sensor hardware, positioning and location, and ultra wide-band techniques.

More information >>

October 24, 2005

CWC public workshop "Towards Super 3G Systems - Baseband and Network Technology Challenges"

Centre for Wireless Communications organizes a public workshop related to the research project MIMO Techniques for 3G System Evolution (MITSE) on Thursday, 8th of December in the University of Oulu.

The theme of of the Workshop is "Towards Super 3G Systems - Baseband and Network Technology Challenges".

More information >>

October 24, 2005

Visiting Lecture by professor Marco Lops

Professor Marco Lops from the University of Cassino, Italy will lecture on tipic "Constant-False Alarm Rate (CFAR) Tests: Theory and Applications" in CWC on 8 December 2005.
More information >>

October 12, 2005

New UMTS and GSM1800 frequencies in CWC

CWC has been granted two pairs of UMTS and GSM1800 frequencies for test purposes. The frequencies shall be used within the GSM/EDGE/WCDMA base station which shall be operated within the campus area. The test network is planned to be operational by the end of October 2005.

September 29, 2005

Research Manager for SRC research area

Mr. Zach Shelby has been nominated as Research Manager for Short Range Communication Systems starting 26.9. The SRC area will continue its excellent research in ultra wideband systems, positioning techniques and ad hoc networks. Under this new leadership research will be strengthened in the areas of wireless embedded and sensor networking, cross-layer protocol optimisation and ultra low-power communications. In addition the group is looking to strengthen its cooperation with Finnish industry as well as with strategic partners abroad.

September 29, 2005

Nokia donates EDGE/WCDMA basestation to CWC

Nokia and CWC together with Department of Electrical and Information Engineering signed a product loan agreement concerning the Nokia Triple-mode UltraSite basestation. The basestation and the 3G test network will be used for department's teaching purposes as well as in various research projects both at CWC and MediaTeam (www.mediateam.oulu.fi). "This opens up great new opportunities to further strengthen the co-operation between Nokia and University of Oulu. We are really looking forward to the future." said Dr. Yrjö Neuvo at the signing seremony.
The contract was signed by Yrjö Neuvo and Antti Hietala from Nokia, Matti Latva-aho from CWC, Juha Röning from the department and Leila Risteli and Hannu Pietilä representing the University.

April 24, 2005

CWC moves to new premises

The Centre for Wireless Communications moves to new premises at the Linnanmaa campus. The new premises are located in the "TF wing" of the Faculty of Technology and in the "Tietotalo 1" building. The removal takes place on 25-26 August 2005. See the map >>

May 26, 2005

CWC 10th Anniversary

During the week of 6 to 10 June 2005, CWC organises two major events to celebrate its 10th anniversary. The International Workshop on Convergent Technologies (IWCT) 2005 runs during the entire week. On Friday 10 June, CWC´s 10th Anniversary Seminar will be organised on the Future Challenges and Possibilities in Wireless Communications Research from CWC Perspective. Invited speakers include Tero Ojanperä, Nokia; Kari Tilli, National Technology Agency of Finland; and Juha Hulkko, Elektrobit. Seminar presentations will be made in Finnish.
More about seminar (in finnish only) >>

February 15, 2005

ASIC

In January, CWC received its first ever ASIC back from the foundry. The chip was designed for low power, low data rate UWB applications (5 Mbps) and was fabricated in 0.35 µm SiGe process.

The ASIC operates with a 33MHz external clock source which can be scaled up to a 533 MHz internal clock leading to a maximum achievable pulse rate of 1 pulse every 2 ns. A long pseudo-random scrambling sequence is applied to the transmitted pulses to smooth the spectrum.

CWC will use this ASIC to explore location and tracking for low power UWB systems. For more information contact ian.oppermann@ee.oulu.fi.

February 2, 2005

NanoIP sensor networking protocol released.

The CWC has released an open source implementation of nanoIP, a minimal sensor networking stack for Linux and microcontrollers.

See the nanoIP www-site for more information..

January 27, 2005

FUTURA-project awarded by Tekes

CWC's three-year-long FUTURA-project was awarded in the final seminar of Tekes' NETS (Networks of the Future) technology programme in Helsinki on 25 January 2005. Altogether six research projects - either academic or industry run - out of a total of 178 NETS-projects were awarded by the National Technology Agency of Finland (Tekes).

As one of the spearhead projects of the NETS-programme, FUTURA-project received praise for its achievements which have a major impact for the realisation of future wireless technology generations. FUTURA-project employed in average 19 full-time researchers in CWC in 2002-2004. The FUTURA project group developed new possible solutions for future wireless radio systems (4G systems) and explored algorithms and suitable network structures for them. The project results were published in approx. 50 journal papers, over 100 conference papers and 12 theses. Also 10 patent applications were made in the project. Solutions found in FUTURA-project are developed further in two continuation projects in CWC.

FUTURA-project
NETS-technology programme

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