Project: Connectivity and signal processing for smart systems

New applications are introducing new requirements that challenge the performance offered by wireless technologies. It is sufficient to think to autonomous driving and aerial robotics which require ultra reliable ultra low latency connectivity, or IoT and smart grids which introduce the challenge of serving a massive amounts of nodes per unit area. Current research directions consider the exploitation of new spectrum, including mmWave and visible light spectra, the deployment of small cells, the exploitation of the spatial dimension with massive antenna systems (massive MIMO). Furthermore, different radio interfaces will be simultaneously used in the same access network. This will create an unprecedented presence of interference which will decrease performance. From a research perspective, this situation offers the opportunity to rethink the fundamentals and develop new insights on interference characterization and modeling, on transmission techniques (including optimal time/frequency/space waveforms and coding), and interference mitigation techniques (new detection and decoding algorithms). In addition, the hybridization of technologies, for instance hybrid radio and power line communications, is also offering high opportunities to provide improved connectivity in smart systems.