The advent of the first mobile phones in the 1980s marked the beginning of mobile communications for commercial purposes. Now, thirty years later, wireless connectivity has become a fundamental part of our everyday lives and is increasingly being regarded as an essential commodity like electricity, gas and water. This unparalleled success means that we are today facing the imminent shortage of radio frequency (RF) spectrum: It is predicted that the amount of data sent through wireless networks will increase by a factor of 10 during the next five years. Moreover, data from Qualcomm demonstrates that the spectrum efficiency (number of bits transmitted per Hertz bandwidth) is saturating. Therefore, the US Federal Communications Commission has warned that a "spectrum crisis" is looming. The proposed work in this EPSRC Fellowship is aimed at providing radical new solutions to this fundamental and far reaching challenge. A key pillar of the proposed work is the extension of the RF spectrum to include the infrared as well as the visible light spectra. The recent advancements in light emitting diode (LED) device technology now seems to let the vision of using light for high speed wireless communications become a reality. Using light has many key advantages as compared with RF. The available spectrum is vast, the visible light spectrum is 10,000 times larger than the RF spectrum; it is free as it is not subject to government regulations; it is more secure than the radio frequency spectrum the signals of which can be intercepted outside a premise; it can achieve three orders of magnitude higher data density per unit area. Compared to the infrared spectrum, the visible light spectrum has additional advantages. First, it is not power-limited due to eye-safety concerns. Second, it can serve two purposes at the same time: illumination and high speed data transmission, resulting in a better use of energy. However, while several hundred megabit per second (Mbps) have been demonstrated for a single link using an off-the-shelf white LED, 1 gigabit per second (Gbps) and room coverage is still an open issue. In addition, there is little research for multi-user networked OWC systems. Also, the effects of dimming on the achievable data rates are not well understood. In addition, there are environments and scenarios where the use of light is difficult or not possible such as when there is heavy blockage between transmitters and receivers, or when terminals move with high speeds. In those situations, it will still be more appropriate to use the RF spectrum. To sum up, there are potential large overall performance improvements when wireless systems can select their transmission medium autonomously and in a dynamic as well as self-organising fashion. A second essential pillar of the proposed research is to overcome the RF spectrum efficiency saturation of current cellular systems while at the same time reducing the energy consumption. A key to solving this issue is to successfully tackle interference in wireless networks which occurs when multiple communication links in close vicinity use (or reuse) the same bandwidth or frequency. On the one hand frequency reuse is beneficial since the more often transmission resources are used per unit area, the higher the spectrum efficiency. On the other hand, intensive frequency reuse results in the aforementioned interference issues. Radically new approaches will be followed that include interference already in the design of a new wireless air-interface. In the past, wireless air-interfaces were optimised for single transmission links, and performance degradations due to interference in a system deployment were mended subsequently, but existing solutions are either impractical or sub-optimum. We will investigate a new air-interface that is based on the recent successful demonstrations of and world-wide research on the concept of spatial modulation which was originally proposed by the applicant.

The global telecommunications market has become tremendously competitive due to the emergence of new Asian players and saturation of traditional products (e.g., mobile broadband), which has decelerated the growth of the EU's telecommunications market. Thus, without dramatic innovation to open up new markets, EU's telecommunications industry is at risk. However, new markets such as industry 4.0 and autonomous driving demands extremely high data rates which can only be provided at mmWave frequencies. To successfully overcome mmWave challenges, a closely integrated, skilled and multi-disciplinary team is needed to co-create innovative technology and applications. The ETN for MIllimeter-wave NeTworking and Sensing for Beyond 5G (MINTS) offers the first training program on mmWave networks that covers the full stack from physical layer to application. MINTS is an inter-sectoral and interdisciplinary cluster of excellence formed by electrical engineers and computer scientists aiming at innovative solutions for future mmWave networks and has pooled leading members of large EU initiatives (5G PPP), EU projects (ERC, H2020), and major telecommunications manufacturers (NOKIA, Sony, NEC), operators (e.g., Italtel, Proximus) and prototype providers (NI). MINTS lays the foundation for resilient mmWave networks by enhancing physical-layer robustness via dynamic multi-beamforming techniques (WP1) and leveraging the directionality and broad communication bandwidth of mmWave systems for accurate environmental sensing (WP2). MINTS addresses the networking issues of dense mmWave systems through advanced interference control and secure algorithms (WP3) and devises application-specific solutions for emerging application of mmWave communications, including industry 4.0, V2X and augmented reality (WP4). The 15 ESRs in MINTS benefits from a comprehensive soft-skills training (WP5) and a tailored dissemination and exploitation strategy (WP6) which will boost their careers.

Depletion of natural resources combined with the extending footprint of mankind has led to a shift in importance of research and development topics. In the 1970s and 1980s process yield was primarily targeted, but emphasis is now focussed on resource efficiency as a primary objective. Routes for resource efficiency have to be identified and implemented to provide a more environmental and resource-oriented technology in near future. MIGRATE is planned as an ETN, gathering top-level research and development capabilities from academia and industry as well as direct application possibilities with the focus set on thermal aspects of gas flows in microstructured systems. Within MIGRATE, a number of ESR projects will cover different aspects of enhanced heat transfer and thermal effects in gases, spanning from modelling of heat transfer processes and devices, development and characterization of sensors and measurement systems for heat transfer in gas flows as well as thermally driven micro gas separators to micro-scale devices for enhanced and efficient heat recovery in automotive, aeronautics and energy generation. This unique combination of university research, SME and world leading industrial stakeholders will contribute in a significant way to the increase of knowledge about micro scale gas flow heat transfer problems as well as to industrial applications of highly efficient miniaturized devices. A characteristic of MIGRATE is the high degree of applicability and the intense training. About 30% of the beneficiaries are from private sector. Thus, ESR projects will be developed in both directions, fundamental academic knowledge as well as direct application in industrial environment. The training of the ESRs is set in the same way to provide a broad variety of skills, reaching from classical academic research to IPR management and all-day-business in a company, being summarized under the aspect of resource efficiency and environmental-friendly technological approaches.

The objective of this proposal is to develop and demonstrate a scalable, thermally-enabled 3D integrated optoelectronic platform that can meet the explosion in data traffic growth within ICT. The Thermally Integrated Smart Photonics Systems (TIPS) program will heterogeneously integrate micro-thermoelectric coolers (μTEC) and micro-fluidics (μFluidics) with optoelectronic devices (lasers, modulators, etc.) in order to precisely control device temperature and thus device wavelength compared to commercially available discrete technology. Data traffic is projected to increase sharply (40-80× by 2020) and this is driving an increase in network complexity and the requirement for scalable optoelectronic integration. A major bottleneck to this large scale integration is thermal management. Active photonic devices generate extremely high heat flux levels (~1 kW/cm2) that must be efficiently removed to maintain performance and reliability; furthermore, active photonic devices must be controlled at temperature precision better than ±0.1°C. Today’s thermal technology is at the limit and cannot scale with growth in the network. As a comparison, electronics produce lower heat flux levels (~100 W/cm2) and have a less restrictive temperature requirement of ≤ 85±2°C. Integration of thermal management onto optoelectronic devices has not been addressed to date in academic or industrial investigations and therefore presents a significant knowledge gap that must be filled to enable impact and ensure the EU is at the forefront of optoelectronic technology. While the end goal is driven by telecom or datacom industrial requirements there are many scientific knowledge gaps that will be filled by the TIPS consortium. The application space for a thermally-integrated smart optoelectronic solution is large and spans multiple communication length scales from long reach to inter/ intrachip communications as well as other applications like sensors that seek to leverage silicon photonics platforms