TIMES – THz Industrial Mesh Networks in Smart Sensing and Propagation Environments
HORIZON-JU-SNS-2022 Jan. 2023 – Dec. 2025
Future wireless networks are envisioned to support novel applications that require similar performance as wired networks in terms of data rate (Tbps), ultra-low-latency (well below 1 ms), sensing (e.g., mm-level localization accuracy), and reliability (e.g., 1 in a billion transmission error). The current 5G approaches have a hard time keeping up with such envisioned applications. TIMES addresses this problem by combining novel radio channel propagation measurements and modeling approaches, spectrally efficient and reliable communications at Terahertz (THz) spectrum bands with intelligent mesh networking protocols and smart sensing and shaping of the propagation environment through reconfigurable meta-surfaces. While the fundamental technologies developed will be applicable to different beyond-5G scenarios, TIMES will focus on an industrial setting, since many of the envisioned applications in this complex scenario (e.g., cooperative robots, predictive maintenance, real-time closed-loop control) require concurrent high performance, reliability, and sensing capabilities. To tackle the challenge, TIMES extends the state-of-the-art on three fronts: 1) Propagation channel measurements and characterization in THz bands, including measurement and modeling of meta-surfaces and electromagnetic leakage in complex scenarios; 2) Developing technological enablers for reliable THz communications (e.g., smart beam management, ultra-massive MIMO, THz-tailored PHY and MAC design, meta-surfaces, and new mesh-based architecture); and 3) Implementation of a THz mesh network prototype, including design and fabrication of both active (transceivers) and passive (meta-surface) nodes, to validate selected technological enablers developed in TIMES.
The TIMES consortium is composed of:
There is a PhD opening in my group to work on THz communications in smart propagation environments.
If you are interested, please get in touch with me: luca.sanguinetti@unipi.it.
INTERCONNECT – Integrated Communications, Sensing and Computing
Funded by University of Pisa Nov. 2022 – Oct. 2024
The ongoing deployment of 5G cellular systems is continuously exposing its inherent limitations, compared to its original promise as an enabler for Internet-of-Everything (IoE) applications. These 5G drawbacks are spurring worldwide activities focused on defining the next-generation wireless system, such as beyond 5G (B5G) and 6G, that can truly integrate far-reaching applications such as autonomous vehicles, extended reality, smart cities and industries, digital twins, and remote health-caring. These emerging IoE applications demand for high-quality wireless connectivity as well as high-accuracy robust sensing capabilities, and scalable and decentralized methods for information acquisition and computing. This calls for an end-to-end co-design of communication, sensing, and computing functionalities, aiming at endowing wireless networks with the native ability to “perceive” the physical world, rather than to “communicate-only”, and to modify their behaviors accordingly. This is further motivated by the intended usage of sub-THz frequencies (in the range of 100 and 300 GHz) for 6G, which aim to facilitate the provisioning of sensing functionality with high-resolution capabilities. The INTERCONNECT project will address the problem of the integration and coexistence of sensing and communication systems wherein the computational resources will be jointly shared by means of tools from artificial intelligence, and machine learning. In detail, the INTERCONNECT project will focus on: electromagnetic modeling of the environment and multi-function antennas; optimized resource allocation and sensing/communication waveform design; design of new computing paradigms making use of multi-modal remote sensing and imaging.
Should you be interested on these topics, please get in touch with me: luca.sanguinetti@unipi.it.