Wireless communication and energy networks have enabled a plethora of novel applications in the last years. Both make use of the same and unique RF medium, but have been so far designed independently from each other. This visionary project conducted at Imperial College under the supervision of the PI Dr. Bruno Clerckx aims at challenging the current design by designing and proving the feasibility of a disruptive wireless network technology that wirelessly transfers energy jointly with information in wireless networks (shortly denoted as JWIET for Joint Wireless Information and Energy Transfer). The project will create a new paradigm shift in future capacity and energy efficient wireless communication and energy networks, by viewing them as a single network designed under a unified framework and by overcoming the energy constraint of wireless devices through the transfer of energy. Contrary to current wireless communication networks, interference is viewed as a source of energy that is to be harvested rather than mitigated. However, because interference in a wireless network influences dynamically the information rate and the amount of energy to harvest, finding the fundamental performance limits and effective interference management techniques is challenging and unexplored so far. In the last two years, Dr. Clerckx has successfully addressed this problem in a two-user and K-user narrowband MIMO interference channel and broadcast channels, under the assumption of an ideal energy harvester for which the RF-to-DC energy conversion efficiency is 100% irrespectively of the input waveforms. This project aims at extending and leveraging past achievements to solve the problem of JWIET in 1) wideband channels, and 2) in the presence of realistic RF energy harvesters accounting for actual RF circuitry and the fact that the RF-to-DC energy conversion efficiency of RF energy harvesters depends on the input waveforms. To put together this novel wireless network solution in a credible fashion, this project focuses on 1) identify theoretic rate-energy trade-offs for general wideband MIMO interference and broadcast channels accounting for realistic RF energy harvester models, 2) investigate the associated transmission strategies, 3) validate the feasibility of JWIET through experiment. The project and its experiment will be performed in partnership with National Instruments and Vodafone. The project demands an interdisciplinary study and it is to be conducted in a unique research group with strong track records in wireless communication, signal processing, numerical analysis, and JWIET. With the above and given the novelty and originality of the topic, the research outcomes will be of considerable value to design future wireless networks supplied by wireless energy transfer and give the industry a fresh and timely insight into the development of practical JWIET system, advancing UK's research profile of both RF energy transfer and communication in the world. Its success would change the broad ICT/Engineering landscape in developed but also emerging markets with applications in a large number of sectors, e.g. building automation, healthcare, telecommunications, smart grid, structural monitoring, consumer electronics, etc.

Data rate for exchanging mobile information among people, machines and things has been exponentially increasing over the past decade. These data rates are empirically linked to radio spectrum availability. The exorbitant auction prices, e.g., £2.3 Billion for 4G spectrum in the UK, highlights the strength of the competitive market forces but also the scarcity of this precious resource. Driven by the scarcity of spectrum, the UK communications regulator (Ofcom) has made an innovative licence-exempt spectrum sharing on the ultra-high frequency (UHF) TV bands in January 2016, which is the first of its kind worldwide. These spectra of 320MHz bandwidth have enabled the transition from research on cognitive radio theory into practical applications. Furthermore, the millimetre-wave (mm-wave) spectrum on 28GHz, 39GHz, 60GHz with at least 1GHz bandwidth are being considered to be further unitised to cope with high data rate wireless applications and services demanded by users. The satellite and radar applications are co-existing in these mm-wave spectra, and thus any licence-exempt use of this spectra must first ascertain that the spectra to be used is not already in use by the so called "primary users". Therefore, sensing from several hundreds of MHz bandwidth in UHF to GHz bandwidth in mm-wave to gain a clear access to these spectra is critical, while resulting in formidable and complex challenge on the Nyquist-rate analog-to-digital sampling. This fellowship project proposes a new approach to design GHz bandwidth sensing (GBSense) systems to overcome the bottleneck of Nyquist-rate sampling by developing sub-Nyquist sampling algorithms and repurposing the existing expertise of smart antennas and reconfigurable transmission lines. The GBSense offers new creative and implementable possibilities over a framework of real-time experimental platform without requiring Nyquist-rate sampling. The GBSense gives users access to a flexible hardware platform and application software that enables real-time over the air GHz bandwidth signal sensing, analysis and communication at both sub-6GHz and mm-wave frequency bands. It will also interface with a low-cost computing unit, e.g., Raspberry PI, where sub-Nyquist algorithms are hosted, for enabling better human-computer interaction and advance the current knowledge in sub-Nyquist sampling theory and bring a new set of challenges to both software and hardware engineers. Results will be disseminated to both software and hardware academic researchers, industry and the public through workshops, change-led competitions, open-source plans and outreach activities.

Data rate for exchanging mobile information among people, machines and things has been exponentially increasing over the past decade. These data rates are empirically linked to radio spectrum availability. The exorbitant auction prices, e.g., £2.3 Billion for 4G spectrum in the UK, highlights the strength of the competitive market forces but also the scarcity of this precious resource. Driven by the scarcity of spectrum, the UK communications regulator (Ofcom) has made an innovative licence-exempt spectrum sharing on the ultra-high frequency (UHF) TV bands in January 2016, which is the first of its kind worldwide. These spectra of 320MHz bandwidth have enabled the transition from research on cognitive radio theory into practical applications. Furthermore, the millimetre-wave (mm-wave) spectrum on 28GHz, 39GHz, 60GHz with at least 1GHz bandwidth are being considered to be further unitised to cope with high data rate wireless applications and services demanded by users. The satellite and radar applications are co-existing in these mm-wave spectra, and thus any licence-exempt use of this spectra must first ascertain that the spectra to be used is not already in use by the so called "primary users". Therefore, sensing from several hundreds of MHz bandwidth in UHF to GHz bandwidth in mm-wave to gain a clear access to these spectra is critical, while resulting in formidable and complex challenge on the Nyquist-rate analog-to-digital sampling. This fellowship project proposes a new approach to design GHz bandwidth sensing (GBSense) systems to overcome the bottleneck of Nyquist-rate sampling by developing sub-Nyquist sampling algorithms and repurposing the existing expertise of smart antennas and reconfigurable transmission lines. The GBSense offers new creative and implementable possibilities over a framework of real-time experimental platform without requiring Nyquist-rate sampling. The GBSense gives users access to a flexible hardware platform and application software that enables real-time over the air GHz bandwidth signal sensing, analysis and communication at both sub-6GHz and mm-wave frequency bands. It will also interface with a low-cost computing unit, e.g., Raspberry PI, where sub-Nyquist algorithms are hosted, for enabling better human-computer interaction and advance the current knowledge in sub-Nyquist sampling theory and bring a new set of challenges to both software and hardware engineers. Results will be disseminated to both software and hardware academic researchers, industry and the public through workshops, change-led competitions, open-source plans and outreach activities.

Today, hardly a week passes by without major incidents of cybercrime, which are constantly encroaching on the security and privacy confidence of each connected individual and the Nation as a whole. The increasingly prevalent wireless information exchanges face even greater challenges as the information is broadcast in open medium and the portable communication devices, e.g. mobile phones and laptops, are unlikely to be equipped with costly and power-hungry cryptographic solutions, especially in the coming quantum era. The physical-layer wireless security has long been regarded as a promising complementary or alternative as it requires little computation capability while endowing systems quantum-immune security. However, to date this is achieved by radiating a significantly more amount of energy in the form of orthogonal artificial noise (AN). This power penalty can be huge, e.g. in some typical application scenarios more than twice as much as the energy is radiated. This, unfortunately, is contrary to the global urgent needs of cutting energy consumption of wireless communication systems and their associated carbon footprint, rendering the current physical-layer wireless security solutions impractical. This project will be the first systematic study of the physical-layer wireless security under the energy awareness context. We propose to recover the energy penalty of the physical-layer security solutions without compromising security performance. This ambitious vision becomes achievable when a co-design approach, involving transmitter architecture, digital baseband, RF frontend and signal waveforms, is employed. This will require major innovations that currently lie beyond state-of-the-art, which include (a) system architecture- and modulation-aware AN synthesis; (b) non-linear power amplifier-friendly AN synthesis; (c) digital/analogue hybrid modulation and precoding security scheme; and (d) system-level demonstration of physical-layer security solutions. We are not aware of any other research programme that has systematically studied hardware-aware optimum signal waveform synthesis for energy efficient physical-layer wireless security systems. The partnerships with Toshiba Research Europe (TRE), Ampleon, National Instruments (NI) and Winspread have been specifically established to ensure the successfully delivery of the research programme in every stage. In particular, (a) TRE will provide wireless threat assessment in various application scenarios to ensure the planned research is aligned with the society needs; (b) TRE and Ampleon will provide power amplifier samples and expertise on accurate non-linear power amplifier modelling and characterisation; (c) NI will guide the system integration and demonstration using its USRP platform; (d) Winspread will facilitate small-scale trial of the developed technology through its commercial 4G LTE base-stations. This two-year research programme will be highlighted through two high-impact practical demonstrators. We firstly intend to show a real-time wireless high-definition video secure wireless transmission in laboratory multipath environment using a bespoke designed physical-layer air interface. The power efficiency improvement will be sufficient to recover the power penalty suffered in the current benchmark physical-layer security solutions. In order to further promote the research outcomes onto the global stage, we plan to integrate the develop security technology onto commercial WiFi and 4G-LTE base-stations.