Centre for Wireless Communications

University of Oulu Wireless Communications Research Seminar

University of Oulu Department of Communications Engineering (DCE) with Centre for Wireless Communications (CWC) are organizing a public seminar offering a concise view on the latest results of joint research projects conducted with industry partners.

The seminar presents research trends and emphasis areas for acquiring insight to developments related to the mobility enabling technologies in the near future.

The programme will consist of invited talks from research partners and presentations by University of Oulu experts on the research areas of the seminar.

Date and Time: 16 February, 2012 at 8:00-16:00

Venue: University of Oulu, Lecture Hall L 4 (Savonsali), Linnanmaa

The seminar is open to all interested and for pre-registered participants it is free of charge, including coffee and lunch.

On line registration at http://www.webropolsurveys.com/S/575E67EE1F654EB0.par

Seminar home page containing programme details will be open soon at www.cwc.oulu.fi/researchseminar2012

CWC Faculty Members elected as IEEE Fellows

FiDiPro Professor Ryuji Kohno and Docent Ian Oppermann have received the Fellow status of the IEEE, world’s leading professional association for the advancement of technology. The IEEE grade of Fellow is a distinction reserved for select IEEE members, conferred by the board of directors upon a person with an extraordinary record of accomplishments in any IEEE field of interest.
Ryuji Kohno, who is a professor at Yokohama National University in Japan, received this recognition for his contributions to spread spectrum and ultra wideband technologies and applications, and Ian Oppermann, who is currently directing the Commonwealth Scientific & Industrial Research Org. (CSIRO) ICT Centre in Australia, for his contributions to mobile communication systems.
For a full list of the IEEE Class of 2012 Fellows, visit the IEEE website.

Time to apply for Master's Programme in Wireless Communications Engineering

The application period for the Master's Degree in Wireless Communications Engineering (WCE) has opened today and will last until January 31st, 2012. More information and links to the application form here. Learn more about the programme at WCE Home Page.

Prof. Matti Latva-aho appointed to the Finnish Academy of Technology

Head of department, Professor Matti Latva-aho has been invited into TTA, Finnish Academy of Technology, as of 11 October 2011. Another appointed member from the University of Oulu is Professor Olli Silvén. In addition, two University of Oulu alumni, CEO Pekka Koponen and Managing Partner Tero Ojanperä, were appointed as members. The goal of the TTA is to promote research in engineering fields and thus to support the Finnish industry and utilisation of the natural resources of the country in a sustainable way. TTA is founded in 1957. Administratively, it operates within the Technology Academy Finland, which awards e.g. the Millenium Technology Prize.

Virtual Institute for Wireless Communications launched with strong CWC contribution

Development of futuristic wireless communications technologies is the focus of the new WIFIUS Virtual Institute launched by US National Science Foundation, Tekes and Finnish Academy.

In this Finnish-US co-operation the Centre for Wireless Communications plays a key role. The planning of activities was coordinated from Oulu and five of the proposed six projects will be conducted here.

"Considering the continuation of our long and succesful history in developing wireless communications technology, this new opening surely is promising and will support our efforts to find solutions for future challenges", says Matti Latva-aho, Head of Department of Communications Engineering at the University of Oulu.

Beside the University of Oulu, Aalto University, Tampere Technical University and VTT are participating in the activities.

Watch the WIFIUS presentation HR

Read more about WIFIUS in TEKES press release.

WIFIUS is one of three global projects of the USA virtual institute model. More about the SAVI (Science Across Virtual Institutes) in NSF press release

CWC receives EU funding for swapping staff - A boost to top research of cognitive radio in medical ICT

Centre for Wireless Communications of the University of Oulu has been chosen to participate in a researcher mobility programme. This provides university researchers with an opportunity to visit five significant technical universities outside EU.

The funding was granted from the EU FP 7 Marie Curie Actions . The proposals were selected by open competition with strict criteria. This is the first time ever University of Oulu got supported by IRSES (International Research Staff Exchange Scheme) -programme. Selection of CWC was based on long-term experience in international project work and excellent transnational networks.

-Qualification for the programme is a sign of international appreciation for the research conducted by CWC, says the responsible leader of the project, Jari Iinatti, professor at the department of Communications Engineering.

The new international exchange programme sharpens and speeds up the research aiming at the development of wireless technologies for health and well being. It contributes to CWC's Medical ICT project portfolio and also implements the University of Oulu research strategy.

The main goal of the joint project called ConHealth (Cognitive-Networks-Enabled Transnational Proactive Healthcare) is to utilize the cognitive radio in health care data transmission solutions.

According to the project manager Matti Hämäläinen from CWC, the project unites research universities in the field of ICT in order to creating test environment and productizing innovations.

IRSES CoNHealth involves three research intensive universities in the EU (besides University of Oulu the British University of Newcastle upon Tyne and the University of Florencefrom Italy), three universities from China (Tsinghua University , Shanghai Jiao Tong University , Xiamen University), Yokohama National University from Japan and Massachussetts Insitute of Technology (MIT) from the United States.

The partner universities belong to national top universities in wireless communications studies. Besides, the MIT is evaluated as the fourth best university in the world and the best in the field of engineering (according to the 2010 Academic Ranking of World Universities, also known as Shanghai list).

The European Commission funding for the four-year-exchange programme is 420 000 € of which the University of Oulu obtains 60 000 euro €.

Prof. Tad Matsumoto appointed as an IEEE VTS Distinguished Lecturer

Prof. Tad Matsumoto of Center for Wireless Communications (CWC), serving as a Finland Distinguished Professor at CWC, has been appointed as Distinguished Lecturer by IEEE Vehicular Technology Society for the period of July 2011-June 2013.

"It is my great honor to be appointed by the IEEE VTS Distinguished Lecturer Committee (DLC) as a new Distinguished Lecturer for the next two years, starting at July of this year. To be able to fully satisfy the roles and expectations of this position is a big challenge for me, but I feel even encouraged by this appointment because this appointment indeed indicates high societal recognition of our contributions, both in Center for Wireless Communications CWC at University of Oulu, and in Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Japan, to the society. What I must state here is that this appointment is due largely to the academic activities, big efforts, harmonization, and diligence of all my laboratory members. I greatly appreciate my lab members, and would like to promote their world-level techniques through providing lectures in the world under the status of IEEE Distinguished Lecturer."

IEEE Vehicular Technology Society is the forum for engineers, students, and technicians who are in charge of or interested in theoretical and practical issues of techniques/technologies related to “mobility” such as mobile wireless communications, automotives, transportation, and wireless security. The society holds its official international conferences, Vehicular Technology Conference, twice a year, where participants share and exchange their technical and professional information and ideas through not only sessions but also a variety of events such as tutorials and panel discussions.

IEEE VTS also supports local chapters to enhance their activities through providing Distinguished Lecturer (DL) program. The role of the distinguished lecturers is to provide lectures on request basis, requested by the local chapters throughout the world. The distinguished lecturers are appointed by the Distinguished Lecturer Committee (DLC), participated by the board members of the society, from among the world-level experts in specific fields, based on their accomplished records and abilities.

Outstanding EUWB Demonstration Stand

The EUWB project has been awarded the "Best Demonstration Stand" at the Future Network Mobile Summit 2011 in Warsaw.

CWC is the Leader of WP4a, which focuses on Localization and Tracking solutions for low-power networks using EUWB technology. CWC has developed a new, robust and low-complexity localization algorithm for the demonstrator based. The ground-breaking innovation of this contribution, which is dubbed "Distance Contraction" earned CWC a nomination for a Best Paper Award at the Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems and Computers back in 2009, putting that article at the top 5% of that prestigious event. Now, our EUWB partners have incorporated that solution with a new energy-efficient multihop MAC protocol, developed also within WP4a (Lead by CWC), yielding a technology that offers accurate localization over wide areas, suitable to shopping malls, airports and large-retail stores. The low-power, location aware technology developed by EUWB's WP4a is ready to make its entry into the new paradigm of the Internet-of-Things, and contribute to a strong return of Ultra-wideband Technology, pioneered by CWC!

Winner+ is the winner of the Celtic Excellence Award in Gold

Finnish know-how played a fundamental role in Winner+ (Wireless World Initiative New Radio+), that was recognized as a Celtic project worth the gold medal.

The work load of the Finnish project partners - Elektrobit, VTT, Nokia Siemens Networks and Centre for Wireless Communications - was biggest compared to the other participating countries. In Finland the project was financed by the GIGA programme steered by Tekes.

The project achieved outstanding results and had a strong international impact in shaping the technology choices and standards for the fourth generation (4G) wireless communication technologies, that have a huge market potential. This new 4G technology is expected to strengthen the strong position of the European industry in telecommunications field.

WINNER+ started its activities as EU-FP6 project and continued and finalised its work as Celtic project in 2010. CWC was one of the 27 organisations from 9 countries participating in this 13 million euro project.

1st China-Finland Strategic ICT Alliance Workshop in Oulu 28 April, 2011

China-Finland Strategic ICT Alliance aims at developing and fostering research and development cooperation between companies, universities and research institutes between the countries. The alliance has three thematic pillars: core internet, future services and wireless access networks. The workshop to be held on Thursday 28 April presents the research results and agenda of the alliance. The target is to discuss the future prospects and research directions.

The plenary sessions at 9:00-14:30 in University of Oulu Linnanmaa Lecture Hall L6 are open for anyone interested but require pre registration by 21 April via web registration form.

The event will be organized by: University of Oulu (CWC), Tekes (GIGA Technology Program), Aalto University, Tivit Ltd, Tampere University of Technology.

DOWNLOAD PROGRAM HERE

Top notch opportunity for students and researchers interested in strengthening their core competencies: Wireless Information Theory Summer School in Oulu

Centre for Wireless Communications (CWC)is pleased to announce Wireless Information Theory Summer School to be held on 27-29 July in Oulu, Finland.

The three-day course is organized in cooperation with BeFemto and Earth projects as well as Infotech and GETA doctoral schools.

The program includes lectures and workshops and a social event. The speakers belong to the sharp top portion of the cutting-edge researchers on the summer school scope. This unique opportunity to collect such a team of global experts opened with the flagship conference of IEEE Information Theory Society (ISIT 2011) being arranged in St. Petersburg. More information and registration available at Wireless Information Theory Summer School homepage

CWC researchers unbeatable in the best demo contest

Centre for Wireless Communications (CWC) research group was presented the first prize at MOBICOM2010 conference in Chicago. The winning entry successfully demonstrated a mobile phone connection utilizing cognitive radio. The team consisting of Research Manager Matti Raustia, Research Scientists Hannu Tuomivaara, Markku Jokinen and Raghavendra Sathuanarayana won over 30 other entries submitted by top research groups from all over the world (e.g. Rice University, University of Illinois, Stanford University, University of California and ETH Zürich). CWC grasped the gold medal for the second year running.

Hard work bears fruit

The success is a product of many years of pioneering software defined radio (SDR) and cognitive radio development at the CWC. The latest demonstrations highlight the possibility of using cognitivity to achieve opportunistic communication with very little compromise on quality of service. In the beginning of this year the first ever phone call over cognitive network was made with the CWC demo platform.

Ahead for a brighter future

The demonstrated technologies are indeed used to develop next generation mobile systems that will be introduced only in a couple of years. Together with some partners CWC plans a project building a national test environment for cognitive radio networks. The aim of this project is to reoccupy the position Finland used to hold as the trailblazer for the wireless communication technology.

Young Researcher's Encouragement Award to Valtteri Tervo

CWC researcher and postgraduate student Valtteri Tervo has received the IEEE VTS Japan 2010 Young Researcher's Encouragement Award. It was presented at the 2010 IEEE 72nd Vehicular Technology Conference, held 6-9 September in Ottawa, Canada.

The reward was granted to Tervo in recognition of his outstanding paper "Joint Source-Channel Coding Using Multiple Label Mapping". The winning paper proposes a novel source coding technique which totally removes the error propagation problem appearing in conventional near limit source coding techniques.

"I really appreciate that the VTS Japan branch has acknowledged our research. The technique will be further developed towards practical scenarios in cooperation between Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology and the University of Oulu", promises Tervo, who is one of the dual degree doctoral students of these two academies.

The exchange programme allows for doctoral students to complete a dual degree by studying both in Oulu and Nomi, Japan. Supervisor to the dual degree students is CWC visiting FiDiPro Professor, renowned Tadashi Matsumoto.

Wireless solutions for urban transit environment

Train positioning and communications in the urban transit environments is being investigated as a joint research project of GE Transportation and the Center for Wireless Communications (CWC).

The objective of this collaboration that started on 12 April 2010 is to combine CWC's expertise of radio systems in challenging environments with GE Transportation's expertise in the metro signaling market. Together, the collaboration will yield an innovative, low power solution that can communicate between the train-borne equipment and the wayside equipment, providing positioning information while achieving a reliable communications channel in challenging radio propagation environment.

The future system aims e.g. at increasing railroad safety and at providing highly accurate information for passengers. Combining a number of different technologies and techniques, an accuracy of positioning that is much less than competing technologies will be achieved.

First students of the new international 2-year MSc degree programme in Wireless Communication Engineering (WCE) selected

The Department of Electrical and Information Engineering at the University of Oulu offers an international 2-year MSc degree programme in Wireless Communication Engineering (WCE). The programme starts for the first time in the autumn of 2010.

171 candidates from 29 different countries from all over the world applied for the programme. 40 students were selected and they already should’ve received the acceptance letter.

The applicants for the programme were expected to possess sufficient basic knowledge in mathematics, programming skills, signal theory, radio engineering, radio channels, signal processing, and modulation methods. One ranking criteria was the applicants’ previous experience on these areas.

Timo Rahkonen, deputy leader of the department of Electrical and Information Engineering is satisfied: “This was a very good start. The amount and quality of the applicants surprised us positively. Our expectations of finding 20 suitable students first year were surpassed”.

The newly selected students of the WCE programme will start their studies this autumn.

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

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

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)

World class dissertation by a worldly man

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

Wireless network researcher Kaveh Ghaboosi got the doctor’s hat in three years

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 protege’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

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

CWC receives another FiDiPro Nominee

CWC receives funding from Tekes’ FiDiPro funding programme in order to invite Dr. Kamya Yekeh Yazdandoost from National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) 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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.