CTTC and UPC team up and win the IEEE MTT-S power amplifier linearization competition at IMS2015
CTTC and UPC team up and win the first prize of the Power Amplifier (PA) Digital Pre-distortion (DPD) Linearization Design Competition organized by the IEEE MTT-S
A team made up by David López, Researcher at CTTC’s PHYCOM department, and Teng Wang, student at EETAC School, both of them pursuing a PhD at Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) under the supervision of Prof. Pere L. Gilabert and Prof. Gabriel Montoro, obtained the highest score in the Power Amplifier (PA) Linearization Through Digital Pre-distortion (DPD) Linearization international competition. The event took place in the frame of the Student Design Competitions organized by the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (MTT-S) during the International Microwave Symposium (IMS) held in Phoenix, AZ on 17-22 May 2015.
During the competition, each team had to provide and experimentally evaluate their own digital linearization algorithms and techniques to compensate for the severe distortion that a Gallium-Nitride (GaN) PA was introducing to a realistic 40 MHz OFDM-like burst-signal showing substantial memory effects at the output of the PA. To that end, the participants could design and test their linearization strategies before the contest by employing a remote-controlled measurement setup (called Weblab) equivalent to that used in the final competition (in which 15 min. were given to tune and train the predistorter and additional 15 min. were devoted to apply the DPD coefficients to the challenging final test signal provided by the organizers and perform measurements to get the final score). The scoring system was targeting 27 dBm mean power at the PA output, 50 dB adjacent channel leakage ratio (ACLR) and the maximum achievable normalized mean square error (NMSE) value.
The IMS is the premier annual international meeting for technologists involved in all aspects of microwave theory and practice and hosts the largest RF/Microwave commercial exhibition in the world. The technical program of IMS2015 featured 75 technical sessions and 2 poster sessions, and the exhibition had 904 booths from a total of 620 companies.
This work was partially funded by the Generalitat de Catalunya under the grant 2014SGR1151 awarded to the Communication Technologies Group at CTTC.
Researchers from CTTC are awarded for Best paper in IET Microwaves, Antennas & Propagation
S. Kim, B. Cook, T. Le, J. Cooper, H. Lee, V. Lakafosis, R. Vyas, R. Moro, M. Bozzi, A. Georgiadis, A. Collado, M.M. Tentzeris, Inkjet-printed Antennas, Sensors and Circuits on Paper Substrate , IET Microwaves Antennas and Propagation, July 2013 .Abstract: Inkjet-printing is a very promising technology for the development of microwave circuits and components.
Inkjet-printing technology of conductive silver nanoparticles on an organic flexible paper substrate is introduced in this study. The paper substrate is characterised using the T-resonator method. A variety of microwave passive and active devices, as well as complete circuits inkjet-printed on paper substrates are introduced. This work includes inkjet-printed artificial magnetic conductor structures, a substrate integrated waveguide, solar-powered beacon oscillator for wireless power transfer and localisation, energy harvesting circuits and nanocarbon-based gas-sensing materials such as carbon nanotubes and graphene. This study presents an overview of recent advances of inkjet-printed electronics on paper substrate.
The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) has one Premium Award available per journal to recognise the best research papers published during the last two years.
Senior Researcher, Apostolos Georgiadis awarded by Samsung Global Research Outreach
Title: High Efficiency Multiple Energy Harvesting System for Next Generation Battery (eNHANCE).
Abstract: Harvesting energy from our surroundings is an exciting technology alternative in order to meet the energy needs for Wearable /portable devices and sensor networks. The project will develop an energy harvester capable of simultaneously harvesting the available energy from light and microwave radiation at indoor application scenarios. The direct application of the proposed platform is that of an indoor battery-less, energy autonomous wireless sensor. The results of this work will provide a foundation, an enabling technology to explore ambient energy harvesting for ‘zero-power’ wireless sensors, implementing the notion of Internet-of-Things.
Keywords that best capture the principal focus of proposed research: Solar antenna, rectenna, energy harvesting, ambient energy, M2M, Internet of Things, wireless sensing, autonomous sensors, embedded microcontroller, inkjet printing, 3D printing.
CTTC researchers, David Calero and Enric Fernández, receive a Best Paper Award at the IAIN 2015
David Calero and Enric Fernández, researchers from the Geomatics Division of the CTTC have received recently the SADEK AWARD for the best paper presented at the IAIN World Congress 2015, Prague.
Their paper, entitled “Characterization of Chip-Scale Atomic Clock for GNSS navigation solutions”, is about these new, low cost and small size, high precision clocks which open new possibilities when integrated with a GNSS receiver. Hence, the study focus on its effects on the navigation solutions offered by high-end GNSS receivers on a variety of situations (e.g. low sattelite visibility, holdover recovering…
EURASIP Best PhD Thesis Award 2015
Javier Arribas, Senior Researcher at CTTC, was awarded with the EURASIP Best PhD Thesis Award 2015 for his contributions to the field of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS). The distinction is awarded by the prestigious European Signal Processing Association (EURASIP). The Thesis is publicly available:
J. Arribas,”GNSS Array-based Acquisition: Theory and Implementation”, PhD Dissertation, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain. June 2012. Supervisor: Dr. Carles Fernández-Prades.
This Dissertation addresses the signal acquisition problem using antenna arrays in the general framework of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) receivers. GNSSs provide the necessary infrastructures for a myriad of applications and services that demand a robust and accurate positioning service.
The Thesis pursues a twofold objective: it proposes novel array-based acquisition algorithms using a well-established statistical detection theory framework and it demonstrates both their real-time implementation feasibility and their performance in realistic scenarios.
In addition, it introduces a novel software defined GNSS receiver. The proposed software receiver targets multi-constellation/multi-frequency architectures. The so-named GNSS-SDR contributes with several novel features such as the use of software design patterns and shared memory techniques to manage efficiently the data flow between receiver blocks, the use of hardware-accelerated instructions such as intermediate signals or data extraction and algorithms interchangeability.
The concepts proposed in his PhD Thesis were implemented in the CTTC GESTALT GNSS Testbed and gave place to a number of publications in highly ranked scientific journals. The ceremony took place in September in occasion of the EUSIPCO 2015 conference, organized this year in Nice (France).
First prize in 2015 IEEE COMSOC Student Competition
The research work “Emergency Flexible Aerial Relay Nodes for Communication Recovery and D2D Relaying” leaded by Prodromos-Vasilios Mekikis, PhD student in UPC under the supervision of Prof. Luis Alonso, Dean of the EETAC-UPC and Dr. Christos Verikoukis, Head of SMARTECH Department at CTTC, in collaboration with Dr. Angelos Antonopoulos and Dr. Elli Kartsakli, has been selected as a winner of the FIRST PRIZE at the prestigious 2015 IEEE ComSoc Student Competition “Communications Technology Changing the World”.
The work proposes the use of flexible aerial relay (FAR) nodes for communication recovery and device-to-device (D2D) relaying in disasters. The FAR nodes are deployed over specific areas to recover the communication between rescue teams and the emergency operation center (EOC) that handles the crisis. As a proof-of-concept, we have implemented a system that indeed recovers the communication among the involved operation parts and provides real-time information to the EOC. Even one life saved using this system could justify its high impact on humanity!
Enjoy the video of the first prize in the following link: https://vimeo.com/146485906
The work has been carried out in the context of WSN4QoL (GA-2011-286047), COPCAMS (332913), CellFive (TEC2014-60130-P) and AGAUR (2014SGR 1551) projects.
CTTC researchers, receive a Best Paper Award at the GlobalSIP’15
CTTC researchers, M. Calvo-Fullana, J. Matamoros and C. Antón-Haro, receive a Best Paper Award at the GlobalSIP´15.
In this paper, entitled “Sensor Selection in Energy Harvesting Wireless Sensor Networks”, they propose a novel energy harvesting (EH)-aware sensor selection policy. Their goal is to minimize the distortion in the reconstruction of the underlying source subject to the causality constraints imposed by the EH process at the sensor nodes. Besides, they determine the optimal power allocation for a given sensor selection (which admits a two-dimensional directional water?lling interpretation) as the solution of an of?ine convex optimization problem. To that aim, they propose an iterative procedure. Performance is assessed by means of simulations and a lower bound that we also establish.
ESEE gets the second prize in ENF´15 exhibition award
The ESEE project gets the second prize in the European Nanoelectronics Forum 2015 (ENF’15) exhibition award.
The IoTWORLD was one of the main platforms presented in the ESEE stand during the ENF´15. Real time measurements of CO2, humidity and temperature, from different areas of the two CTTC buildings, were presented using the IoTWORLD monitoring interface during the ENF´15. A plethora of attendees visited ESEE stand and expressed their interest in IoTWORLD platform.
E2SG: ENIAC JU 2015 innovation award´s winner
The E2SG – “Energy to Smart Grid” – project is the ENIAC JU 2015 innovation award´s winner. The prize was given during the European Nanoelectronics Forum 2015 (ENF’15). E2SG addresses the transition from a “first order” to a sophisticated solution that addresses smart metering, secure communication and processing of information of consumption and harvesting, highly efficient power conversion and advanced control of power distribution, as key facilitators to enable a truly smart grid.
The unique consortium, 29 partners from 9 countries, includes big industrial players, innovative SMEs and high quality research centres.
Seven patents and four patent applications for semiconductor devices/technology and power conversion were filed, securing the position of future innovation for European players in the smart grid, building and industry automation. The knowledge gained was transferred to standardization groups in the areas of security (TCG, BSI) and semiconductor devices (VDE, IEC). The consortium was able to demonstrate its credibility and disseminate to the wider community via more than 115 contributions, some in premier conferences & events and 36 scientific Journal publications.
CTTC participates to E2SG through the SMARTECH department. The IoTWOLRD testbed has been extensively used in this project. New building blocks that measure and optimize the energy consumption in buildings taking into consideration dynamic pricing and the user´s comfort have been developed during the lifetime of the project.
The IoTWORLD is one of the few platforms that facilitates real time measurements of CO2, temperature, humidity, power consumption in buildings using a multihop network and cloud capabilities.
In addition, the SMARTECH researchers have proposed innovative demand response algorithms that reduce the power consumption in buildings. The results of the work have been published in journals with high impact factor such as IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials, Energy and Applied Energy.
Best Paper Award in the prestigious IEEE Globecom 2015 conference
The research paper “CORE: A Clustering Optimization algorithm for Resource Efficiency in LTE-A Networks” presented in the prestigious IEEE Globecom 2015 conference and authored by the Head of the SMARTECH department Dr. Christos Verikoukis in collaboration with Mr. George Kollias, Dr. Ferran Adelantado and Dr. Konstantinos Ramantas, has been awarded as the best paper of the CQRM symposium.
The paper considers the creation of Device-to-Device (D2D) based clusters of users where intra-cluster communication will be achieved over UL resources for 5G wireless networks. The minimization of the required resources (equivalent to the maximization of the spectral efficiency), is formulated as an integer (binary) linear optimization problem. A low-complexity clustering optimization algorithm for resource efficiency (CORE), is also devised. Simulation results prove that CORE to increases the spectral efficiency and the network’s capacity.
The work has been partially funded by AGAUR (2014SGR 1551) and by CellFive (TEC2014-60130-P) Research Projects.