Short range radio research in Twente

The research and education by the Telecommunication Engineering Group at the University of Twente is dedicated to physical layer topics in communications. Three research tracks have prominence: Short Range Radio, Microwave Photonics, and Electromagnetic Compatibility. Arjan is active in the Short Range Radio division, and will briefly outline the interests and activities of this group. Furthermore he will present some results of the research that he did during his short sabbatical in Belfast last year. This concerns the performance analysis of a frequency offset modulation scheme using wideband noise carriers. The main advantage of such a scheme is that it enables fast receiver synchronization without channel adaptation, while providing robustness to multipath fading and in-band interference. This is important for low-power wireless systems with bursty traffic, such as sensor networks. In the talk a semi-analytical framework for evaluating its bit error rate performance in wideband frequency-selective fading channels will be described. Some numerical results will be presented, based on channel models developed in the IEEE 802.15.4a channel modeling subgroup. These illustrate that the considered system can be designed with a lower fading margin than a narrowband system

Locating the information: applications, technologies and future aspects

In today’s world, the demand for information is growing rapidly with respect to the human curiosity to explore the inside and the outside of our planet. In a simple analogy, the human body has thousands of sensors called receptor neurons to obtain information such as temperature or pressure from the environment. Similarly, recent developments in electronics and wireless communications lead engineers to the design of small-sized, low-power, low-cost sensor nodes which have the ability to communicate with each other over short distances and collect the information that is gathered

Localization in smart dust sensor networks

Our research goal is to design a robust localization system that offers good accuracy even in the harsh indoor and outdoor environments by handling problems in the physical layer. In this respect, localization based on ultra-wide band (UWB) technology with time-based ranging is a good candidate because of the fine delay resolution that is provided by UWB signals

Traffic control in coherence-multiplexed networks

Coherence multiplexing (CM) is a relatively unknown form of optical CDMA, which is particulary suitable in medium bit rate, short-range optical networks like LANs. The main purpose of the technique is to allow multiple users to transmit through a common optical fiber simultaneously. When this number is too large, however, the BER will become unacceptably high. Therefore a protocol is needed to control the traffic. In this paper several protocols are presented. An adapted version of synchronous TDMA, two new protocols and a central control unit will be proposed and discussed. Finally, the protocols will be compared with respect to performance and practical implementation aspects

Coherence-Multiplexed Optical RF Feeder Networks

An optical RF feeding system for wireless access is proposed, in which the radio access points are distinguished by means of coherence multiplexing (CM). CM is a rather unknown and potentially inexpensive optical code division multiple access technique, which is particularly suitable for relatively short-range applications with moderate transmission bandwidth requirements. Subcarrier multiplexing (SCM) can possibly be used on top of CM, either as single-channel or multichannel SCM. The performances of the resulting distribution networks are analyzed, incorporating the effect of chromatic dispersion, optical beat noise, shot noise, thermal noise, and—in the case of multichannel SCM—intermodulation distortion. The results of the IEEE 802.11b standard for wireless LAN.\u

Generalization and performance improvement of a coherence multiplexing system

Usually a coherence multiplexing system uses delay-filters at the transmitter and receiver to perform the code. An extension to other filter types is described. Using a continuous source the signal-to-beat noise ratio is proportional to the square of the inverse of the number of simultaneous users. A further extension is made by using a pulsed source and by replacing the filters by banks of filters. Each element of each filter bank also comprizes a unique delay. In that case the SNR can be made proportional to the inverse of the number of users, so that more users can be handled simultaneously

Coherence Multiplex System Topologies

Coherence multiplexing is a potentially inexpensive form of optical code-division multiple access, which is particularly suitable for short-range applications with moderate bandwidth requirements, such as access networks, LANs, or interconnects. Various topologies are known for constructing an optical transmission system in which several channels are coherence-multiplexed in one optical fiber. In this paper, the parallel array, the intrinsic reference ladder (IRL), and the discontinuous series system topologies will be further considered and compared with respect to code orthogonality requirements, theoretical performance, and some practical implementation aspects. A modification to the IRL system is proposed, resulting in a significant improvement in the theoretical performance