Ultrawide Bandwidth:
A Paradigm for Tomorrow’s Networking Applications
![UWB Workshop
The workshop will be free of charge to encourage the participation of students and young researchers, and give them the opportunity to follow talks from the experts in the field. We look forward to seeing you in Ferrara.
Why: UWB is an emerging technology with several applications. Experts in the field will report on current research activities ranging from devices to systems, networks and applications.
When: June 10, 2008
Where: Aula Magna at University of Ferrara, via Savonarola 9/11, Ferrara, Italy
Associated Event: concurrently with the workshop, Prof. Moe Win will receive a Laurea Honoris Causa from the University of Ferrara, Italy. Your presence at the ceremony would be greatly appreciated.
Workshop Program (abstracts below)
10:00 Welcome - eWings S.r.l., sponsor of the event, will report on its experience in developing a UWB chipset Download
10:15 Norman C. Beaulieu, “UWB Receiver Designs for Multi-User Interference Environments” Download
11:00 Laurea H.C. Ceremony - Moe Z. Win Lectio Doctoralis, “Challenges in UWB Systems and Networks for New Services and Applications” Download
12:00 Lunch (offered by eWings)
13:30 Lajos Hanzo, “The Joint Source and Channel Coding Saga and Flawless Wireless Multimedia Communications” Download
14:15 Marco Chiani, “Coexistence of Ultra-Wideband and Other Wireless Systems: the Path Towards Cognitive Radio” Download
15:00 Coffee Break (offered by eWings)
15:15 Luc Vanderdorpe, “Wireless Cooperative Networks” Download
16:00 Andrea Conti, “UWB-Based Localization: Theoretical and Experimental Results” Download
16:45 Conclusions
17:00 End
Registration: your registration is required for a proper organization. click here
Sponsor: The sponsor of the event is eWings S.r.l.
Hotels: a list of hotels with special rates for the workshop follows (to reserve a room send an email indicating the participation to the UWB workshop at University of Ferrara)
Hotel Carlton
Piazza Sacrati - 44100 Ferrara, Italy
+390532211130
info@hotelcarlton.net
www.hotelcarlton.net
Hotel Europa
Corso Giovecca 49 - 44100 Ferrara, Italy
+390532205456
info@hoteleuropaferrara.com
www.hoteleuropaferrara.com
Hotel Duchessa Isabella
Via Palestro 70 - 44100 Ferrara, Italy
+390532202121
info@duchessaisabella.it
www.duchessaisabella.it
How to reach us: Flag on Google Maps.
Two options are available to reach Ferrara by plane: the first is from Guglielmo Marconi Airport in Bologna, the second is from Marco Polo Airport in Venice.
Both Bologna and Venice are very well connected by train (about 40mins - 1hour).
From Highway A13 the suggested exit is Ferrara Sud
Help: For any assistance please send an email by clicking here
Workshop Abstracts
Norman C. Beaulieu, University of Alberta, Canada
“UWB Receiver Designs for Multi-User Interference Environments”
Ultra-wide bandwidth (UWB) wireless is a license-free replacement for cables and wires, able to transmit at extremely high data rates over short distances, sometimes aptly called “Bluetooth on steroids”. The principles and structures of time-hopping (TH) ultra-wide bandwidth (UWB) wireless systems are recalled, before questioning the suitability of the conventional matched filter (correlator) digital receiver for TH-UWB applications where multiple access interference may be a dominant transmission impairment. Insights into the performance of the matched filter TH-UWB receiver are gained from study of examples of the simulated probability density function of the TH-UWB multiple access interference. Some new TH-UWB receiver designs are proposed based on examining the characteristics of the simulated multi-user interference density functions. Soft-limiting and zonal receiver structures are intuitively motivated and shown to outperform the conventional matched filter UWB receiver by many dB's in signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). A p-order metric receiver is also proposed and its superior performance established. The improved receiver performances are explained using maximum likelihood (ML) receiver design principles. The application of the new signal detection structures in modified Rake receiver designs for multipath fading UWB channels is explored. Recent preliminary results for an UWB receiver currently under study that is based on an alpha-stable interference model will also be presented.
Moe Z. Win, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
“Challenges in UWB Systems and Networks for New Services and Applications”
Ultrawide bandwidth (UWB) transmission systems have gained significant interest in the scientific, commercial and military sectors over the last decade. A 2002 ruling by the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) allows for coexistence of UWB systems with traditional and protected radio services, and enables the potential use of UWB transmission without allocated spectrum. Wide bandwidth provides fine delay resolution, robustness against fading, and superior obstacle penetration, making UWB technology a viable candidate for reliable communications and accurate positioning in challenging environments, such as urban canyons and forests. UWB transmission systems potentially allow low-cost production and reuse of already populated spectra; and hence they are currently under consideration for communications and localization in a wide variety of applications. With its low probability of detection and anti-jam capabilities, UWB also has applications in military and homeland security operations. This talk will present a brief technical overview of UWB communication networks with particular emphasis on recent advances in UWB system design and analysis.
Marco Chiani, University of Bologna, Italy
“Coexistence of Ultra-Wideband and Other Wireless Systems: the Path Towards Cognitive Radio”
Cognitive Radio (CR) is an emerging approach for a more flexible usage of the precious radio spectrum resources.
We present the main issues and the potentiality of UWB technology to realize the CR paradigm. In particular we discuss the coexistence of UWB (both OFDM and impulse radio) and narrowband Wireless Communication Systems, as well as the current research activity within some European projects on UWB.
Lajos Hanzo, University of Southampton, UK
“The Joint Source and Channel Coding Saga and Flawless Wireless Multimedia Communications”
This light-hearted, yet research-oriented presentation is based on the Wiley/IEEE Press monographs [1,2], arguing that Shannon’s information-theoretic visions were formulated in the context of ideal lossless entropy encoders, which may have a high codeword length and associated high coding delay. Under idealistic Gaussian channel conditions Shannon formulated his source- and channel-coding separation theorem. However, losslessly entropy-coded multimedia message become undecodable in the presence of transmission errors, regardless of the index or position of the corrupted bits. Hence all source-encoded bits have an equally high error sensitivity. By contrast, practical lossy multimedia source codecs exploit the psychoacoustic and psychovisual masking properties of the human ear and eye and hence achieve significantly higher compression ratios than entropy codecs. Nonetheless, they often still exhibit residual redundancy, which manifests itself in terms of a correlated source-encoded messages that exhibit unequal bit sensitivity. This unequal bit sensitivity justifies the employment of unequal-protection joint source and channel coding, exchanging extrinsic information across the entire turbo-transceiver. Furthermore, realistic dispersive fading channels tend to inflict bursty, rather than randomly distributed transmission errors. This light-hearted keynote address will highlight a range of radical research advances in joint source and chanel coding as well as wireless transmissions in the interest of approaching the Shannonian predictions not only for transmissions over benign Gaussian, but also over hostile fading channels.
REFERENCES
[1] L. Hanzo, F.C.A. Somerville, J.P. Woodard: Voice and Audio Compression for Wireless Communications, John Wiley and IEEE Press, 2007
[2] L. Hanzo, P. Cherriman, J. Streit: Video Compression and Communications: H.261, H.263, H.264, MPEG4 and Proprietary Codecs as well as HSDPA-Style Adaptive Turbo-Transceivers, John Wiley and IEEE Press, 2007
Luc Vanderdorpe, Université Catholique de Louvain
“Wireless Cooperative Networks”
The background and the motivation for cooperation in wireless networks will first be reviewed. Distributed space-time codes will be introduced. Then emphasis will be put on frequency selective channels over which OFDM (orthogonal frequency division multiplexing) is used.
A MAC (multiple access scenario) with two cooperating users will first be considered. Assuming channel state information at the receiver side only, an efficient space-time-frequency code iwill be discussed and analyzed.
Then considering a source-relay-destination scheme with OFDM and with a relay operating in decode-and-forward mode, it will be shown how the rate can be optimized for different constraints on the power. In this scenario it is assumed that perfect channel state information is available everywhere.
Andrea Conti, University of Ferrara
“UWB-Based Localization: Theoretical and Experimental Results”
The need for accurate positioning has attracted significant interest in recent years, especially in cluttered environments where signals from satellite navigation systems are not reliable. Positioning systems based on ultrawide bandwidth (UWB) technology have been considered for these environments due to the property of UWB signals to resolve multipath and penetrate obstacles. However, localization techniques based soley on ranging typically lack accuracy and reliability in dense cluttered environments, due to line-of-sight (LOS) blockage and excess propagation delays through materials. Theoretical bounds and implementation aspects for ranging are thus investigated and then extended to localization.
We consider positioning in a typical indoor environment scenario, where ranging is subject to estimation error and excess delay. Beacons are deployed in known locations, and one or more target nodes wish to determine their positions. We first characterize and derive models for the range estimation error and the excess delay based on measured data from real ranging devices. These models are used in various multi-lateration algorithms to determine the position of the target. We investigate how the position accuracy is affected by the number of beacons and by the availability of priori information about the environment and network geometry. We also examine the case where multiple targets are present in the same environment and cooperate by measuring ranges not only from the beacons but also from each other. An iterative multi-lateration algorithm that incorporates information gathered through cooperation is then proposed with the purpose of improving the position estimation accuracy. Using numerical results, we demonstrate the impact of cooperation on the positioning accuracy. It is shown that, depending on the geometric configuration of the nodes, cooperation is not always advantageous.](UWB%20Workshop_files/shapeimage_2.png)
