September 21, 2021 • 21 mins
In this episode we speak with Liesbet Van der Perre, Technology Lead in the REINDEER project. She informs us about the overarching goals in REINDEER and explains how the project will benefits residents of the EU and the EU itself.
The REINDEER project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No.
101013425.
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Episode Transcript
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Intro (00:01):
This is a Technikon podcast.
Peter Balint (host) (00:06):
The next time you're outside or in a restaurant, take
a look around at the people, I mean. Chances are
a staggering number of them are staring into a mobile device.
And we shouldn't be surprised because these very devices can
do everything for us. From maps to music, cameras to calculators,
(00:28):
our phones never let us down. But with more phones
comes a higher demand for better, faster, smarter and more
efficient connections. And we have not even touched on the
Internet of Things, which will throw millions more devices into
the mix. How can the internet support all of these
connected devices? What is the answer? I'm Peter Balint from
(00:52):
Technikon and today we will explore the REINDEER H2020 project.
Building a robust and low latency network to host our
devices is part of the answer. But let's get away
from the traditional thinking and look at an infrastructure which
depends on more antennas in more places. Joining us today
(01:16):
to fill in the missing pieces is Liesbet Van der Perre from KU Leuven
in Belgium. She is the technology lead in the REINDEER project. Liesbeth,
thank you for coming on today.
Liesbet Van der Perre (01:28):
Well, it's my pleasure.
Peter Balint (host) (01:30):
It's no surprise that connected devices are now ubiquitous, and
when I say connected devices, I'm talking about mobile phones, computers,
household appliances, heating and cooling systems, vehicles, environmental sensors and
the list goes on. And that being the case, our
infrastructure must adapt and this is where REINDEER comes in.
(01:52):
Tell us how your project addresses the growing need for
highly reliable, low latency communication for connected devices everywhere.
Liesbet Van der Perre (02:01):
Well, I think clearly, first of all, we see that
a number of devices is growing by itself, so we
would need a higher capacity. The wireless network needs to
support more and more of these devices. But indeed, as
you already mentioned, there are some services that need to
have a very short reaction time, latency and high reliability.
(02:21):
And for doing that, the REINDEER Project is developing a
new technology which we have named RadioWeaves which brings an
infrastructure that offers that; that first of all, offers a
much higher capacity than what we had before. And moreover,
it allows to react fastly and offer reliably through a
(02:43):
lot of diversity. So the Radio Weaves, as the name suggests,
is weaving a lot of radios, but also computational resources
and other things in infrastructure, in buildings, in all kinds
of object you may have. It's like creating a very
(03:04):
large antenna array where antennas might be spread in different
places and they are somehow connected, interconnected with the network
and by the fact that we have this many arrays,
many antennas, all devices or many devices very, very close
to some of these antennas and that will create a
(03:27):
very good connectivity for these devices. This will create the
possibility to do the redundancy to to have double links ,
to have a sufficient fallback solutions if a link fails.
But also for the very low power devices. If you're
close to an access point to an access level, you
(03:49):
will be able to save a lot of power. So yeah,
we will create higher capacity through these many antennas spread
in the environment. We will also have a reliable infrastructure,
and we will allow reducing energy consumption a lot through
the proximity of the access network to the devices and
(04:11):
that will support a lot of different new applications as well.
So already today we see that there is a need
for higher reliability and reducing energy. But in the future,
this will become even more evident if we more and
more rely on wireless connectivity, for example, for human -robot
interactions in Industry 4.0, but also for making systems that
(04:39):
have no battery at all that we would call energy
neutral devices. You would need a very low power connectivity,
and that's the kind of things we hope we can
show that RadioWeaves is capable of supporting.
Peter Balint (host) (04:54):
OK, so if I'm hearing this correctly and this sounds
like a great solution to a problem that might be upcoming,
antennas and transmissions will be everywhere. Which begs the question
Are there any health risks associated with this kind of environment?
Liesbet Van der Perre (05:09):
Well, I think it's a question we often get. And actually,
there is a little bit of a misunderstanding in the
sense that the closer you are to antennas, the less
power they should transmit so the radiation level of these
antennas will be much, much lower than what you have
today from base stations that are far away. And moreover,
(05:32):
the typical thing is that if you are afraid of radiation,
the last thing you should do is put a smartphone
next to your ear, because that's where a smartphone that
tries to reach a base station that is far away.
That's kind of the highest radiation levels you can get.
So already, by bringing the entrance in the network much
closer to you, you'll have to transmit less power and
(05:53):
less radiation, so the proximity will reduce the required radiation
levels a lot. And if we know that even in
free space, radiation should go up with the distance to
the square, but with a lot of obstacles, it's much higher.
And nowadays, with windows becoming super isolating, it becomes more
and more difficult to get the waves through the windows.
(06:17):
This no longer is a sustainable solution to have, like
the base stations outside radiating into indoor environments. We should
know that today, more than 80 percent of wireless communication
actually comes from indoor, and very often it goes to outdoors.
So I often compare it to reading a book when
(06:38):
it's dark. You might decide to switch on the lights
in your house, or you might decide to try to
do it with the street lights. And you will immediately
understand that the last thing either requires very close by
or very intense street lighting compared to a lamp in house.
So we are a bit saying, OK, let's try to
(06:59):
keep the wireless as short as possible. And overall, by
doing that, we can be much more energy efficient. We
need less transmit power and consequently also the radiation levels
will go down. We should note as a second remark
here that we focus in the REINDEER projects on below
(07:21):
six gigahertz frequencies or below 10 gigahertz frequencies; these are
the conventional frequencies we use today as well for Wi-Fi,
for 4G, etc. So some people say we will go
up in frequency and 5G. This will become more of
a problem at the higher frequencies. Well, this is not
the focus of REINDEER and I also think actually that
(07:43):
even the millimeter wave domain is not yet a very
domain to be worried of. It's it's still not ionizing,
but still the frequencies that we're here looking at are
the normal frequencies I would say we're using today as
well and that are not creating any health risks that
are being shown to day.
Peter Balint (host) (08:04):
OK, so bottom line with that is that the antenna
transmissions you would get inside your house are not even
comparable to what's existing outside already. It's a whole different ballgame.
Liesbet Van der Perre (08:14):
It's a whole different ballgame. And moreover, your devices need
to transmit much less, and that is the radiation levels
which are higher so the devices in your neighborhood, because
typically you are extremely close to your devices. And those
radiation levels will be much lower than if you need
to transmit to base stations that are much further away.
Also to the fact you could say that the whole
(08:36):
RadioWeave would be a very good listener. By doing that,
you would not have to shout so much. So it's
it's a bit naive comparison, but I think it's absolutely holds.
If you have very good listeners, then that you don't
need to to put so much energy in the in
the in the transmission.
Peter Balint (host) (08:54):
Yeah, that's a that's a great analogy. Yeah. And interestingly,
with REINDEER, we're not just talking about antennas buried in
a wall, but actual computational resources which would be available
in the structures around us. What kind of application could
we see that that may use this kind of service?
Liesbet Van der Perre (09:16):
Well, we see that, for example, in environmental monitoring, there
is a lot of data that's being collected that never
should go really far where you could say it could
be sufficient to just monitor that everything is fine and
you should not actually transfer any data any further. So
there could be these kind of things that could be
(09:37):
very close to the device. But also, there's a lot
of data that should not go outside of of the campus,
I would say. For example, think about a factory or
a hospital, even where you might be -or a logistic
place where you might be tracking and tracing goods and people.
For example, wheelchairs get lost all the time in hospitals
(10:00):
and other expensive equipment you want to track and trace them.
There is no need to have this tracking and tracing
done somewhere far away in the cloud. It's neither very
good for privacy. And moreover, it's absolutely not energy efficient.
So if you can bring the algorithms and computational resources
(10:20):
that are much nearer to these devices and you could
detect what is happening, where it's happening, and you can
calculate it's very close to the devices, you should not
go over the whole backend of the network. It will
save a lot of bandwidth, it will save a lot
of energy because everything that requires long -range transmission also
(10:42):
requires energy. And as discussed already in the beginning here,
it allows us to have much faster reactions. If you
have the calculations really nearby, you could have a much
faster reaction times. So, yes, having computational resources and still
be a big server, some for some things. So there
(11:03):
will be tradeoffs between central and distributed computing. Having this
distributed computing capabilities and its nearby proximity computing allows to
bring much more algorithmic processing of the data interpretation of
the data and also to avoid that everything needs to
(11:23):
be done in the in the cloud far away for
doing this.
Peter Balint (host) (11:27):
So it's the idea of sort of having everything done
in a very close proximity to the operator without having
to send data out. This makes sense.
Liesbet Van der Perre (11:35):
Yeah, that's definitely fodder for a lot of services that
makes a lot of sense. Think about your vacuum cleaner
robot today. Very often its trajectory is calculated somewhere over
an ocean or two, which is absolutely not needed. This
could be done if you have the resources. It's not
a very complicated thing to calculate. All these things could
(11:56):
run in your own environment. And that is, I think,
in the end, what we need to go for, and
by distributing these resources over the environment in the RadioWeave,
this will become possible. We should also say that the
evolution of of semiconductor technology has made that we can
(12:19):
have this extremely small, powerful computers that don't use a
lot of energy easily integrated in different places. We can
power them over the internet. We don't need extreme energy
supplies for that. So there's a lot of things where
semiconductor technology scaling has helped us to to make things
(12:39):
possible that were not possible in the past and which
also make it possible now to to anticipate or conceive
this kind of RadioWeaves and develop them.
Peter Balint (host) (12:49):
OK, and RadioWeaves . This is a term that's come
from the project. And you mentioned it earlier. This use
of RadioWeaves that provides for -this is another another term
you mentioned earlier -energy neutral devices meaning. They don't need
batteries or a plug. I know you've mentioned this earlier,
but can you touch again on maybe what kinds of
(13:11):
devices we're talking about here?
Liesbet Van der Perre (13:14):
Yes, actually, we are talking here about things we already know RFIDs that
we we have already implemented on many devices where a
device has an ID, they don't need a battery, but
you through sending radio waves to them and their reaction
or their modulation of these radio weaves you see a reaction, well,
(13:38):
we would extend this so that it can become much richer,
that we can have not only longer range for these devices,
that we could exchange more information, but this kind of
energy neutral devices. So they only receive energy from the
radio and they react upon that. We could also see
(14:00):
whether we can add more services to those like, for example,
trying to position them based on an energy neutral device. Today,
if you want to track and trace things, it's either
very complicated or it requires the cooperation of a battery
powered device here, we hope that we could just envisage
(14:22):
stickers like you have today with RFIDs that you could
put on lots of things and that by having such stickers,
we could locate things and track and trace them and
find out basic information about those things on which or
those people, even on which they're glued or they are,
they are attached.
Peter Balint (host) (14:43):
OK, so with devices that that get their energy from
a nearby source such as RadioWeaves. Yes, that's that's definitely
a step in the right direction for saving energy. As
long as we're talking about energy, the EU says that
ICT or information and communications technology accounts for two percent
(15:05):
of today's carbon emissions. And some say that this could
grow to 14 percent by 2040. How does reindeer address
this concern?
Liesbet Van der Perre (15:17):
Well, I think this this anticipation or this prediction has
been something that over the last decade, we have always
been experience and through the innovation in wireless technology, we
have been able and other technology to enable to prevent
that of happening. And I think it's still the case
(15:39):
if we see how the number of devices, but also
the traffic from some of these devices, like expected AR
devices and mobile video everywhere would grow. Yeah, that's what
would happen if we see the energy growing in the
same pace. That's that's simply what would happen. So therefore,
we need to find technologies that can do much better.
(16:02):
And in the past, we've done that like in 5G.
There is, for example, massive MIMO technology that's able to
do much better in energy efficiency. And I think in 6G we
need to come up with the next generation and this
distributed antennas exactly will make the big difference there. I think
the combination of the distributed antennas making things much more
(16:23):
in the proximity, much less obstacles if you find a
antennas nearby, that is one important element in energy efficiency.
Another one is this calculation near to the devices avoiding
the long distance connection. So, we did a calculation and
one thing, for example, is that the margins we nowadays often
(16:44):
need in networks because we still need to reach places
that are difficult to reach. These margins could go down
dramatically if you have more distributed antennas, and by bringing
down those margins, we will be able to once again
have a key step, a significant step in better energy
(17:04):
efficiency to cope with increasing traffic. We really need this
Peter Balint (host) (17:09):
In a project like this -this is a EU funded
project -of course, part of what you have to think
about in the beginning is what kind of impact would
our technology or our efforts have on the EU, in
general and on the people in the EU. And how
would you address these, these two sectors?
Liesbet Van der Perre (17:30):
Well, first, the EU I think we have been a pioneer
in wireless communication in Europe, in R&D, definitely for many,
many decades. And you see, we have strong companies in
the wireless communication domain, but we also have very strong
research groups. We want to maintain this position. Wireless communication,
I think, is strategic to have in your own hands.
(17:53):
It's been very much in the political and other tables recently.
So I think it's for different reasons important to stay
at leadership technologically, but also to to keep there the
possibility to have our own technology is an important one
for Europe. I think next to that for the European people,
(18:15):
I think the recent pandemic has shown how much we
can rely on on ICT. I would not say we
are dependent because that would sound very negative. I just
think it's very positive if we would have the same
kind of pandemic situation 20 years ago, imagine what would
have happened with working with teaching even still staying in
(18:39):
contact with your friends and family. I think the disaster
would have been so much bigger than what it has now.
So we are so much relying on on wireless communication
as a part of that because of all the easy
aspects of not needing the wires and so on that
we cannot underestimate how in the future it may as
(19:03):
well continue playing this role with new applications we see,
which will require more wireless connections. Think about the ageing
society and most of all, that people prefer to age independently.
The more we can support people with technologies that can
help them, for example, to age independently, the more I
(19:27):
think is going to really benefit Europe. But it's not
only in in this kind of comfort zone. I think
also fewer in things like entertainment, with gaming, but also
with mixed reality situations, tourism. Maybe if you can't go
(19:47):
to places in person, we can still visit them remotely.
And so I think there's a lot of these entertainment
related applications as well that people will be happy to see.
And then maybe as a last point, I would say
that very often in the past, we've seen that we
think we are developing a technology for a certain application,
but then sometimes people are so creative they do something
(20:10):
else with it. Think about short message services. I don't
think we expected that would be a killer application for
mobile networks. And now everyone is chatting on the on
the on the mobile networks all the time. So I
do not think that is something we had foreseen.
Peter Balint (host) (20:25):
Well, that's what technology is all about innovation and adaptation. Yeah,
it sounds like your efforts in REINDEER are well-defined and
well underway, and we'll learn more in future episodes where
we examine some of the use cases you're working on.
Thanks for this overview of REINDEER today.
Liesbet Van der Perre (20:44):
Thank you.
Peter Balint (host) (20:47):
For more information about REINDEER, visit reindeer-project.eu. The REINDEER Project
has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research
and Innovation Programme under grant agreement number 101013425.
This is a Technikon podcast.
Peter Balint (host) (00:06):
The next time you're outside or in a restaurant, take
a look around at the people, I mean. Chances are
a staggering number of them are staring into a mobile device.
And we shouldn't be surprised because these very devices can
do everything for us. From maps to music, cameras to calculators,
(00:28):
our phones never let us down. But with more phones
comes a higher demand for better, faster, smarter and more
efficient connections. And we have not even touched on the
Internet of Things, which will throw millions more devices into
the mix. How can the internet support all of these
connected devices? What is the answer? I'm Peter Balint from
(00:52):
Technikon and today we will explore the REINDEER H2020 project.
Building a robust and low latency network to host our
devices is part of the answer. But let's get away
from the traditional thinking and look at an infrastructure which
depends on more antennas in more places. Joining us today
(01:16):
to fill in the missing pieces is Liesbet Van der Perre from KU Leuven
in Belgium. She is the technology lead in the REINDEER project. Liesbeth,
thank you for coming on today.
Liesbet Van der Perre (01:28):
Well, it's my pleasure.
Peter Balint (host) (01:30):
It's no surprise that connected devices are now ubiquitous, and
when I say connected devices, I'm talking about mobile phones, computers,
household appliances, heating and cooling systems, vehicles, environmental sensors and
the list goes on. And that being the case, our
infrastructure must adapt and this is where REINDEER comes in.
(01:52):
Tell us how your project addresses the growing need for
highly reliable, low latency communication for connected devices everywhere.
Liesbet Van der Perre (02:01):
Well, I think clearly, first of all, we see that
a number of devices is growing by itself, so we
would need a higher capacity. The wireless network needs to
support more and more of these devices. But indeed, as
you already mentioned, there are some services that need to
have a very short reaction time, latency and high reliability.
(02:21):
And for doing that, the REINDEER Project is developing a
new technology which we have named RadioWeaves which brings an
infrastructure that offers that; that first of all, offers a
much higher capacity than what we had before. And moreover,
it allows to react fastly and offer reliably through a
(02:43):
lot of diversity. So the Radio Weaves, as the name suggests,
is weaving a lot of radios, but also computational resources
and other things in infrastructure, in buildings, in all kinds
of object you may have. It's like creating a very
(03:04):
large antenna array where antennas might be spread in different
places and they are somehow connected, interconnected with the network
and by the fact that we have this many arrays,
many antennas, all devices or many devices very, very close
to some of these antennas and that will create a
(03:27):
very good connectivity for these devices. This will create the
possibility to do the redundancy to to have double links ,
to have a sufficient fallback solutions if a link fails.
But also for the very low power devices. If you're
close to an access point to an access level, you
(03:49):
will be able to save a lot of power. So yeah,
we will create higher capacity through these many antennas spread
in the environment. We will also have a reliable infrastructure,
and we will allow reducing energy consumption a lot through
the proximity of the access network to the devices and
(04:11):
that will support a lot of different new applications as well.
So already today we see that there is a need
for higher reliability and reducing energy. But in the future,
this will become even more evident if we more and
more rely on wireless connectivity, for example, for human -robot
interactions in Industry 4.0, but also for making systems that
(04:39):
have no battery at all that we would call energy
neutral devices. You would need a very low power connectivity,
and that's the kind of things we hope we can
show that RadioWeaves is capable of supporting.
Peter Balint (host) (04:54):
OK, so if I'm hearing this correctly and this sounds
like a great solution to a problem that might be upcoming,
antennas and transmissions will be everywhere. Which begs the question
Are there any health risks associated with this kind of environment?
Liesbet Van der Perre (05:09):
Well, I think it's a question we often get. And actually,
there is a little bit of a misunderstanding in the
sense that the closer you are to antennas, the less
power they should transmit so the radiation level of these
antennas will be much, much lower than what you have
today from base stations that are far away. And moreover,
(05:32):
the typical thing is that if you are afraid of radiation,
the last thing you should do is put a smartphone
next to your ear, because that's where a smartphone that
tries to reach a base station that is far away.
That's kind of the highest radiation levels you can get.
So already, by bringing the entrance in the network much
closer to you, you'll have to transmit less power and
(05:53):
less radiation, so the proximity will reduce the required radiation
levels a lot. And if we know that even in
free space, radiation should go up with the distance to
the square, but with a lot of obstacles, it's much higher.
And nowadays, with windows becoming super isolating, it becomes more
and more difficult to get the waves through the windows.
(06:17):
This no longer is a sustainable solution to have, like
the base stations outside radiating into indoor environments. We should
know that today, more than 80 percent of wireless communication
actually comes from indoor, and very often it goes to outdoors.
So I often compare it to reading a book when
(06:38):
it's dark. You might decide to switch on the lights
in your house, or you might decide to try to
do it with the street lights. And you will immediately
understand that the last thing either requires very close by
or very intense street lighting compared to a lamp in house.
So we are a bit saying, OK, let's try to
(06:59):
keep the wireless as short as possible. And overall, by
doing that, we can be much more energy efficient. We
need less transmit power and consequently also the radiation levels
will go down. We should note as a second remark
here that we focus in the REINDEER projects on below
(07:21):
six gigahertz frequencies or below 10 gigahertz frequencies; these are
the conventional frequencies we use today as well for Wi-Fi,
for 4G, etc. So some people say we will go
up in frequency and 5G. This will become more of
a problem at the higher frequencies. Well, this is not
the focus of REINDEER and I also think actually that
(07:43):
even the millimeter wave domain is not yet a very
domain to be worried of. It's it's still not ionizing,
but still the frequencies that we're here looking at are
the normal frequencies I would say we're using today as
well and that are not creating any health risks that
are being shown to day.
Peter Balint (host) (08:04):
OK, so bottom line with that is that the antenna
transmissions you would get inside your house are not even
comparable to what's existing outside already. It's a whole different ballgame.
Liesbet Van der Perre (08:14):
It's a whole different ballgame. And moreover, your devices need
to transmit much less, and that is the radiation levels
which are higher so the devices in your neighborhood, because
typically you are extremely close to your devices. And those
radiation levels will be much lower than if you need
to transmit to base stations that are much further away.
Also to the fact you could say that the whole
(08:36):
RadioWeave would be a very good listener. By doing that,
you would not have to shout so much. So it's
it's a bit naive comparison, but I think it's absolutely holds.
If you have very good listeners, then that you don't
need to to put so much energy in the in
the in the transmission.
Peter Balint (host) (08:54):
Yeah, that's a that's a great analogy. Yeah. And interestingly,
with REINDEER, we're not just talking about antennas buried in
a wall, but actual computational resources which would be available
in the structures around us. What kind of application could
we see that that may use this kind of service?
Liesbet Van der Perre (09:16):
Well, we see that, for example, in environmental monitoring, there
is a lot of data that's being collected that never
should go really far where you could say it could
be sufficient to just monitor that everything is fine and
you should not actually transfer any data any further. So
there could be these kind of things that could be
(09:37):
very close to the device. But also, there's a lot
of data that should not go outside of of the campus,
I would say. For example, think about a factory or
a hospital, even where you might be -or a logistic
place where you might be tracking and tracing goods and people.
For example, wheelchairs get lost all the time in hospitals
(10:00):
and other expensive equipment you want to track and trace them.
There is no need to have this tracking and tracing
done somewhere far away in the cloud. It's neither very
good for privacy. And moreover, it's absolutely not energy efficient.
So if you can bring the algorithms and computational resources
(10:20):
that are much nearer to these devices and you could
detect what is happening, where it's happening, and you can
calculate it's very close to the devices, you should not
go over the whole backend of the network. It will
save a lot of bandwidth, it will save a lot
of energy because everything that requires long -range transmission also
(10:42):
requires energy. And as discussed already in the beginning here,
it allows us to have much faster reactions. If you
have the calculations really nearby, you could have a much
faster reaction times. So, yes, having computational resources and still
be a big server, some for some things. So there
(11:03):
will be tradeoffs between central and distributed computing. Having this
distributed computing capabilities and its nearby proximity computing allows to
bring much more algorithmic processing of the data interpretation of
the data and also to avoid that everything needs to
(11:23):
be done in the in the cloud far away for
doing this.
Peter Balint (host) (11:27):
So it's the idea of sort of having everything done
in a very close proximity to the operator without having
to send data out. This makes sense.
Liesbet Van der Perre (11:35):
Yeah, that's definitely fodder for a lot of services that
makes a lot of sense. Think about your vacuum cleaner
robot today. Very often its trajectory is calculated somewhere over
an ocean or two, which is absolutely not needed. This
could be done if you have the resources. It's not
a very complicated thing to calculate. All these things could
(11:56):
run in your own environment. And that is, I think,
in the end, what we need to go for, and
by distributing these resources over the environment in the RadioWeave,
this will become possible. We should also say that the
evolution of of semiconductor technology has made that we can
(12:19):
have this extremely small, powerful computers that don't use a
lot of energy easily integrated in different places. We can
power them over the internet. We don't need extreme energy
supplies for that. So there's a lot of things where
semiconductor technology scaling has helped us to to make things
(12:39):
possible that were not possible in the past and which
also make it possible now to to anticipate or conceive
this kind of RadioWeaves and develop them.
Peter Balint (host) (12:49):
OK, and RadioWeaves . This is a term that's come
from the project. And you mentioned it earlier. This use
of RadioWeaves that provides for -this is another another term
you mentioned earlier -energy neutral devices meaning. They don't need
batteries or a plug. I know you've mentioned this earlier,
but can you touch again on maybe what kinds of
(13:11):
devices we're talking about here?
Liesbet Van der Perre (13:14):
Yes, actually, we are talking here about things we already know RFIDs that
we we have already implemented on many devices where a
device has an ID, they don't need a battery, but
you through sending radio waves to them and their reaction
or their modulation of these radio weaves you see a reaction, well,
(13:38):
we would extend this so that it can become much richer,
that we can have not only longer range for these devices,
that we could exchange more information, but this kind of
energy neutral devices. So they only receive energy from the
radio and they react upon that. We could also see
(14:00):
whether we can add more services to those like, for example,
trying to position them based on an energy neutral device. Today,
if you want to track and trace things, it's either
very complicated or it requires the cooperation of a battery
powered device here, we hope that we could just envisage
(14:22):
stickers like you have today with RFIDs that you could
put on lots of things and that by having such stickers,
we could locate things and track and trace them and
find out basic information about those things on which or
those people, even on which they're glued or they are,
they are attached.
Peter Balint (host) (14:43):
OK, so with devices that that get their energy from
a nearby source such as RadioWeaves. Yes, that's that's definitely
a step in the right direction for saving energy. As
long as we're talking about energy, the EU says that
ICT or information and communications technology accounts for two percent
(15:05):
of today's carbon emissions. And some say that this could
grow to 14 percent by 2040. How does reindeer address
this concern?
Liesbet Van der Perre (15:17):
Well, I think this this anticipation or this prediction has
been something that over the last decade, we have always
been experience and through the innovation in wireless technology, we
have been able and other technology to enable to prevent
that of happening. And I think it's still the case
(15:39):
if we see how the number of devices, but also
the traffic from some of these devices, like expected AR
devices and mobile video everywhere would grow. Yeah, that's what
would happen if we see the energy growing in the
same pace. That's that's simply what would happen. So therefore,
we need to find technologies that can do much better.
(16:02):
And in the past, we've done that like in 5G.
There is, for example, massive MIMO technology that's able to
do much better in energy efficiency. And I think in 6G we
need to come up with the next generation and this
distributed antennas exactly will make the big difference there. I think
the combination of the distributed antennas making things much more
(16:23):
in the proximity, much less obstacles if you find a
antennas nearby, that is one important element in energy efficiency.
Another one is this calculation near to the devices avoiding
the long distance connection. So, we did a calculation and
one thing, for example, is that the margins we nowadays often
(16:44):
need in networks because we still need to reach places
that are difficult to reach. These margins could go down
dramatically if you have more distributed antennas, and by bringing
down those margins, we will be able to once again
have a key step, a significant step in better energy
(17:04):
efficiency to cope with increasing traffic. We really need this
Peter Balint (host) (17:09):
In a project like this -this is a EU funded
project -of course, part of what you have to think
about in the beginning is what kind of impact would
our technology or our efforts have on the EU, in
general and on the people in the EU. And how
would you address these, these two sectors?
Liesbet Van der Perre (17:30):
Well, first, the EU I think we have been a pioneer
in wireless communication in Europe, in R&D, definitely for many,
many decades. And you see, we have strong companies in
the wireless communication domain, but we also have very strong
research groups. We want to maintain this position. Wireless communication,
I think, is strategic to have in your own hands.
(17:53):
It's been very much in the political and other tables recently.
So I think it's for different reasons important to stay
at leadership technologically, but also to to keep there the
possibility to have our own technology is an important one
for Europe. I think next to that for the European people,
(18:15):
I think the recent pandemic has shown how much we
can rely on on ICT. I would not say we
are dependent because that would sound very negative. I just
think it's very positive if we would have the same
kind of pandemic situation 20 years ago, imagine what would
have happened with working with teaching even still staying in
(18:39):
contact with your friends and family. I think the disaster
would have been so much bigger than what it has now.
So we are so much relying on on wireless communication
as a part of that because of all the easy
aspects of not needing the wires and so on that
we cannot underestimate how in the future it may as
(19:03):
well continue playing this role with new applications we see,
which will require more wireless connections. Think about the ageing
society and most of all, that people prefer to age independently.
The more we can support people with technologies that can
help them, for example, to age independently, the more I
(19:27):
think is going to really benefit Europe. But it's not
only in in this kind of comfort zone. I think
also fewer in things like entertainment, with gaming, but also
with mixed reality situations, tourism. Maybe if you can't go
(19:47):
to places in person, we can still visit them remotely.
And so I think there's a lot of these entertainment
related applications as well that people will be happy to see.
And then maybe as a last point, I would say
that very often in the past, we've seen that we
think we are developing a technology for a certain application,
but then sometimes people are so creative they do something
(20:10):
else with it. Think about short message services. I don't
think we expected that would be a killer application for
mobile networks. And now everyone is chatting on the on
the on the mobile networks all the time. So I
do not think that is something we had foreseen.
Peter Balint (host) (20:25):
Well, that's what technology is all about innovation and adaptation. Yeah,
it sounds like your efforts in REINDEER are well-defined and
well underway, and we'll learn more in future episodes where
we examine some of the use cases you're working on.
Thanks for this overview of REINDEER today.
Liesbet Van der Perre (20:44):
Thank you.
Peter Balint (host) (20:47):
For more information about REINDEER, visit reindeer-project.eu. The REINDEER Project
has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research
and Innovation Programme under grant agreement number 101013425.
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