December 21, 2021 • 15 mins
In this Episode, we will speak with Erik Larsson, Professor and Head of the Division for Communication Systems in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Linköping University, about how the REINDEER H2020 Project can help facilitate the idea of embedded antennas by using RadioWeaves technology.
The REINDEER project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No.
101013425.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Intro (00:01):
This is a Technikon podcast.
Peter Balint (00:07):
Integrated antennas. It's probably not something you often think about,
but something which makes sense from a technical and aesthetic viewpoint.
I'm talking about embedding antennas into the everyday objects around us.
Imagine things like furniture and fixtures which have the capability
to send and receive signals from your phone. It would
(00:28):
be a game changer, I'd say. I'm Peter Balint from Technikon,
and today we will look at how the REINDEER project
can help facilitate this idea of embedded antennas by using
RadioWeaves . The REINDEER Consortium consists of nine partners from
four countries, with the goal of developing the RadioWeaves smart
connectivity platform as an efficient, smart, scalable and secure connectivity infrastructure. Today,
(00:53):
we speak with project partner Erik Larsson. He's a professor
and head of the Division for Communication Systems in the
Department of Electrical Engineering at Linköping University in Sweden. Thanks
for coming on the podcast today.
Erik Larsson (01:05):
Oh, thank you for having me.
Peter Balint (01:07):
The term RadioWeaves is a prominent component in REINDEER. In fact,
this term was developed by the partners in the project,
and we have discussed this a bit in a previous podcast.
But give us the big idea here.
Erik Larsson (01:18):
So RadioWeaves, not to be confused with radio waves. RadioWeaves
is a technical term that we have developed in the project,
and that refers to a wireless infrastructure where antennas are
interwoven and integrated into the environment. So, for example, they
could be built into walls in a building or a ceiling,
(01:41):
or even furniture or even other objects, even pieces of art,
for example. So that's where the term comes from. And
RadioWeaves technology is meant to operate at low carrier frequencies .
Quite generally, I mean, wireless of all of CEN generation.
So we know about 5G and 5G is being deployed
(02:01):
on a wide scale. And the academic and R&D community
is looking towards the development of 6G. And in 6G,
the sixth generation, there are really two tracks. One track
is to see how one could use higher carrier frequencies.
Higher carrier frequencies corresponds to smaller wavelengths. And with high carrier
(02:22):
frequencies the advantage is that there is a lot of
spectrum available there, a lot of empty frequencies that could
be used. And the other track is to develop technology
for lower carrier frequencies. Lower typically means below six gigahertz carrier.
Where wavelengths are longer and RadioWeaves technology is developed for
(02:43):
these lower frequencies. So, so the pros and cons here
are really that at that high carrier frequencies, the smaller wavelengths,
there is more spectrum available. On the other hand, the
coverage is less. The waves don't reach as far. At
low carrier frequencies that RadioWeaves is being developed for. So
below six gigahertz wavelengths are longer. So in the order
(03:06):
of a decimeter and the waves tend to reach further,
they penetrate better through different materials. They creep around corners
and so forth. So coverage is a lot better. And
it's also worth keeping in mind that these lower frequencies,
which are the frequencies that have been traditionally used in
(03:27):
wireless most wireless systems, terrestrial mobile radio systems, at least
they remain to be the most valuable. I mean, if
you look at the cost of spectrum licenses, they are
almost a thousand times more expensive per bandwidth unit, per Hertz.
So there was this auction of frequencies a few years
ago where lower frequencies sold for something like $700 per
(03:51):
hertz of spectrum, whereas higher frequencies below or above 30 gigahertz.
They sold for $100. So there is a huge discrepancy
in the value and recognizing that the REINDEER Project and
the RadioWeaves Technologies specifically targets how to best to build
infrastructure that can optimally make use of these highly valuable
(04:17):
low frequency bands below six gigahertz of carrier.
Peter Balint (04:21):
And the way they do this, as you said, is
embedding antennas in the objects around us. So how realistic
is this? If you look at towards the future?
Erik Larsson (04:30):
Right. So that's the vision, right? That way, rather than
building like access points or panels that you can see
on towers, for example, outdoors right on the rooftops of
buildings that we would rather build antenna systems that are
entirely integrated into our buildings and furniture and other things
(04:57):
that we live around and use every day, which has
multiple advantages. I mean one. Of course, is for esthetical
reasons that we don't want the ugly antenna panels all
over the place, and the second is that by spreading
out antennas this way we can also cover much better
(05:20):
the area with wireless coverage and provide much better data
rates and much better reliability of the communication links.
Peter Balint (05:29):
So another term that comes up quite a bit if
you look at the website for REINDEER is energy neutral devices.
What does that mean, exactly?
Erik Larsson (05:38):
It's energy neutral devices refers to building wireless devices that
don't need a power supply or a battery to operate.
But rather, it would harvest the electrical power that they
need from some source. And that source could be well,
could be solar cell could be the harvest from vibrations
(06:02):
or from something that's moving. Or it could be the
harvest energy from the actual radio waves themselves. And the
concepts they we're developing in reindeer are all based on
harvesting radio frequency energy so that the infrastructure would supply
this this energy. By, well, beamforming is the technical term,
(06:23):
but it really means that these antennas that are integrated
in the environment around us, they they will transmit the
energy in such a way that these devices can, can
receive it and make use of it. And devices, in turn,
could be anything from like small sensors to smart glasses.
(06:44):
You could think of, like every little mouse trap out
there would have would have the ability to communicate and
and report back if it if it caught anything right
without relying on the battery that needs to be charged
or replaced, or or without relying on on grid connectivity
in particular. So that is what energy and neutral refers to.
Peter Balint (07:07):
I see so really a great advantage when we're talking
about something that's really, truly wireless and not requiring any
kind of external power source.
Erik Larsson (07:18):
Right.
Peter Balint (07:19):
OK. And when we spoke offline, you mentioned the idea
of extreme quality of service, which is something that REINDEER
could yield. What's that all about?
Erik Larsson (07:28):
So quality of service quite generally refers to, different things.
One is data rate - how many bits per second, can we transfer? The
other is latency. Like when I send something, how long
does it take before the intended receiver has successfully decoded
(07:49):
what I sent? And the third is really reliability or coverage.
And coverage is the maybe, I mean, these are intertwined, obviously,
because if you don't have coverage and latency would be
like infinite, right? But coverage is really the difficult thing
in wireless. And there's always been even in the like
early days of mobile telephony, the difficulty is always a
(08:10):
cover like the cell borders, where when you're far from
any tower. And now speaking of reliability, then when we
make cell phone calls, then we might be or at
least we would being like trained to be to be
used to accept a coverage of maybe, let's say, 95 percent,
so that in a few percent of the cases, the
(08:30):
cell doesn't work and you need to redial or you
need a mobile [inaudible] and hope you get better coverage there.
With emerging applications, now with like mobile broadband and so forth,
then we probably want a little higher reliability. If we
well play games or something over the internet, then we
(08:50):
don't quite accept that the link goes up and down
and so on. And with applications that we foresee in REINDEER,
and that RadioWeaves technology will be able to support then
where we are targeting realiabilites , which are extremely close
to 100 percent. So not 95 percent, not 99 percent,
but rather like ninety nine point nine nine nine something percent.
(09:14):
And this technology might be things that are super critical.
I mean, like controlling a robot arm, for example, in
the factory, right? I mean, if the if the link breaks,
this robot might destroy some property or it might hit
someone or or it causes an accident, or it cost
the whole the whole production line to a stall. So
(09:34):
extreme quality of service really refers to making wireless as
robust as if we had a wired connection with a cable.
Peter Balint (09:44):
Yeah, that makes sense, and I think that's something we
could all look forward to. Is this this higher level
of service? For sure? And getting back to the REINDEER
project and how it's functioning so far, what kind of
challenges have you seen or do you anticipate with REINDEER?
Erik Larsson (10:00):
So I mean, there are always challenges in a big project, right?
But let's stay with the technical challenges since I think
those are the important and the interesting ones. Now, in
terms of building and deploying RadioWeaves technology on a large scale, eventually,
I think one of the main challenges that will be
(10:20):
to actually build the electronics and to make it power
efficient enough and like build the actual circuitry in such
a way that it can be integrated into the environment
the way, the way we invision. But on the prototyping stage,
the research and development problems that there are really hard
and they we're targeting now in the project are are
mainly focusing on like how to interconnect so many antennas
(10:45):
so we can think of, like deploying hundreds or even
thousands of antennas that would be spread out over a
large room could be tens of meters in size. How
do we organize the signal processing? How do we how
do we interconnect this antenna units? I mean, would they
be in some mesh topology or would they be on
(11:06):
a linear like a stripe topology or a tree topology
or something else? Should each antenna also have some capability
of performing digital processing and computation? And if so, which
unit should do what? How should we shuffle the data
around and so forth? So that's a major challenge. And
(11:28):
another challenge is to to synchronize these antennas. I mean,
for RadioWeaves technology to work then all the antennas need
to operate phase coherently together, which means that in principle,
they need to agree on that on a global phase reference.
And that requires the se antennas to calibrate relative to one
(11:51):
another periodically. So that's another major technical challenge that has
to be solved, and it has to be solved in
a way that doesn't cost like too much resources. It's
like we can't afford to redo this calibration, let's say
too often, and it has to be solved in a
way that's super robust. I mean, we are targeting reliability
(12:12):
up to ninety nine point nine and nine and nine
percent then we can't afford anything to go wrong more
or less. So these are really the core technical challenges
that the project is addressing in order to, let's say,
achieve a prototype of the technology.
Peter Balint (12:31):
OK, so you mentioned prototype . Is there. A prototype planned
for REINDEER ?
Erik Larsson (12:36):
There is prototyping work planned. Yes, then of course, prototyping
that can be done in a project like this will
always be on a proof of concept stage and then
it's difficult to tell. I mean, how long will it
take before RadioWeaves technology is adopted and deployed wide scale?
(12:59):
This is difficult. It's a tough call to make and
to predict. And I think looking back at the massive
MIMO story that I had the privilege to be part of,
then that happened much faster than what I at the
time imagined that it would. I mean, that took like
(13:21):
less than 10 years from the point where massive MIMO
was a wild academic idea until it became a mainstream
research topic in academia until it became a mainstream topic
in the 5G standardization, till it became the main underpinning
core physical layer technology and 5G, which is now being
(13:43):
commercially deployed on a wide scale worldwide. And who knows,
maybe RadioWeaves will go the same path so that we'll
see it in actual action commercially deployed in 10 years.
This is really hard to tell me, and I'll, of course,
hope and love that to happen and there aren't really any
(14:03):
reasons for why it could not happen. But it's difficult
to tell with factors that interplay here in the commercial world.
Peter Balint (14:12):
Well, if it does happen, and it moves forward quickly,
like massive MIMO, then will be in good shape because
this technology, I think, is is a real game changer.
So I want to say thank you for taking the
time to talk with us today briefly about REINDEER. It's
a quite a pivotal project in this new world of
(14:33):
communication that we're moving into, and you still have some
time left with the with the project, so we wish
you the best success. And again, thanks for sharing what
you know today.
Erik Larsson (14:45):
Indeed, thank you so much for having me.
Peter Balint (14:49):
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 one zero one
zero one three four two five.
This is a Technikon podcast.
Peter Balint (00:07):
Integrated antennas. It's probably not something you often think about,
but something which makes sense from a technical and aesthetic viewpoint.
I'm talking about embedding antennas into the everyday objects around us.
Imagine things like furniture and fixtures which have the capability
to send and receive signals from your phone. It would
(00:28):
be a game changer, I'd say. I'm Peter Balint from Technikon,
and today we will look at how the REINDEER project
can help facilitate this idea of embedded antennas by using
RadioWeaves . The REINDEER Consortium consists of nine partners from
four countries, with the goal of developing the RadioWeaves smart
connectivity platform as an efficient, smart, scalable and secure connectivity infrastructure. Today,
(00:53):
we speak with project partner Erik Larsson. He's a professor
and head of the Division for Communication Systems in the
Department of Electrical Engineering at Linköping University in Sweden. Thanks
for coming on the podcast today.
Erik Larsson (01:05):
Oh, thank you for having me.
Peter Balint (01:07):
The term RadioWeaves is a prominent component in REINDEER. In fact,
this term was developed by the partners in the project,
and we have discussed this a bit in a previous podcast.
But give us the big idea here.
Erik Larsson (01:18):
So RadioWeaves, not to be confused with radio waves. RadioWeaves
is a technical term that we have developed in the project,
and that refers to a wireless infrastructure where antennas are
interwoven and integrated into the environment. So, for example, they
could be built into walls in a building or a ceiling,
(01:41):
or even furniture or even other objects, even pieces of art,
for example. So that's where the term comes from. And
RadioWeaves technology is meant to operate at low carrier frequencies .
Quite generally, I mean, wireless of all of CEN generation.
So we know about 5G and 5G is being deployed
(02:01):
on a wide scale. And the academic and R&D community
is looking towards the development of 6G. And in 6G,
the sixth generation, there are really two tracks. One track
is to see how one could use higher carrier frequencies.
Higher carrier frequencies corresponds to smaller wavelengths. And with high carrier
(02:22):
frequencies the advantage is that there is a lot of
spectrum available there, a lot of empty frequencies that could
be used. And the other track is to develop technology
for lower carrier frequencies. Lower typically means below six gigahertz carrier.
Where wavelengths are longer and RadioWeaves technology is developed for
(02:43):
these lower frequencies. So, so the pros and cons here
are really that at that high carrier frequencies, the smaller wavelengths,
there is more spectrum available. On the other hand, the
coverage is less. The waves don't reach as far. At
low carrier frequencies that RadioWeaves is being developed for. So
below six gigahertz wavelengths are longer. So in the order
(03:06):
of a decimeter and the waves tend to reach further,
they penetrate better through different materials. They creep around corners
and so forth. So coverage is a lot better. And
it's also worth keeping in mind that these lower frequencies,
which are the frequencies that have been traditionally used in
(03:27):
wireless most wireless systems, terrestrial mobile radio systems, at least
they remain to be the most valuable. I mean, if
you look at the cost of spectrum licenses, they are
almost a thousand times more expensive per bandwidth unit, per Hertz.
So there was this auction of frequencies a few years
ago where lower frequencies sold for something like $700 per
(03:51):
hertz of spectrum, whereas higher frequencies below or above 30 gigahertz.
They sold for $100. So there is a huge discrepancy
in the value and recognizing that the REINDEER Project and
the RadioWeaves Technologies specifically targets how to best to build
infrastructure that can optimally make use of these highly valuable
(04:17):
low frequency bands below six gigahertz of carrier.
Peter Balint (04:21):
And the way they do this, as you said, is
embedding antennas in the objects around us. So how realistic
is this? If you look at towards the future?
Erik Larsson (04:30):
Right. So that's the vision, right? That way, rather than
building like access points or panels that you can see
on towers, for example, outdoors right on the rooftops of
buildings that we would rather build antenna systems that are
entirely integrated into our buildings and furniture and other things
(04:57):
that we live around and use every day, which has
multiple advantages. I mean one. Of course, is for esthetical
reasons that we don't want the ugly antenna panels all
over the place, and the second is that by spreading
out antennas this way we can also cover much better
(05:20):
the area with wireless coverage and provide much better data
rates and much better reliability of the communication links.
Peter Balint (05:29):
So another term that comes up quite a bit if
you look at the website for REINDEER is energy neutral devices.
What does that mean, exactly?
Erik Larsson (05:38):
It's energy neutral devices refers to building wireless devices that
don't need a power supply or a battery to operate.
But rather, it would harvest the electrical power that they
need from some source. And that source could be well,
could be solar cell could be the harvest from vibrations
(06:02):
or from something that's moving. Or it could be the
harvest energy from the actual radio waves themselves. And the
concepts they we're developing in reindeer are all based on
harvesting radio frequency energy so that the infrastructure would supply
this this energy. By, well, beamforming is the technical term,
(06:23):
but it really means that these antennas that are integrated
in the environment around us, they they will transmit the
energy in such a way that these devices can, can
receive it and make use of it. And devices, in turn,
could be anything from like small sensors to smart glasses.
(06:44):
You could think of, like every little mouse trap out
there would have would have the ability to communicate and
and report back if it if it caught anything right
without relying on the battery that needs to be charged
or replaced, or or without relying on on grid connectivity
in particular. So that is what energy and neutral refers to.
Peter Balint (07:07):
I see so really a great advantage when we're talking
about something that's really, truly wireless and not requiring any
kind of external power source.
Erik Larsson (07:18):
Right.
Peter Balint (07:19):
OK. And when we spoke offline, you mentioned the idea
of extreme quality of service, which is something that REINDEER
could yield. What's that all about?
Erik Larsson (07:28):
So quality of service quite generally refers to, different things.
One is data rate - how many bits per second, can we transfer? The
other is latency. Like when I send something, how long
does it take before the intended receiver has successfully decoded
(07:49):
what I sent? And the third is really reliability or coverage.
And coverage is the maybe, I mean, these are intertwined, obviously,
because if you don't have coverage and latency would be
like infinite, right? But coverage is really the difficult thing
in wireless. And there's always been even in the like
early days of mobile telephony, the difficulty is always a
(08:10):
cover like the cell borders, where when you're far from
any tower. And now speaking of reliability, then when we
make cell phone calls, then we might be or at
least we would being like trained to be to be
used to accept a coverage of maybe, let's say, 95 percent,
so that in a few percent of the cases, the
(08:30):
cell doesn't work and you need to redial or you
need a mobile [inaudible] and hope you get better coverage there.
With emerging applications, now with like mobile broadband and so forth,
then we probably want a little higher reliability. If we
well play games or something over the internet, then we
(08:50):
don't quite accept that the link goes up and down
and so on. And with applications that we foresee in REINDEER,
and that RadioWeaves technology will be able to support then
where we are targeting realiabilites , which are extremely close
to 100 percent. So not 95 percent, not 99 percent,
but rather like ninety nine point nine nine nine something percent.
(09:14):
And this technology might be things that are super critical.
I mean, like controlling a robot arm, for example, in
the factory, right? I mean, if the if the link breaks,
this robot might destroy some property or it might hit
someone or or it causes an accident, or it cost
the whole the whole production line to a stall. So
(09:34):
extreme quality of service really refers to making wireless as
robust as if we had a wired connection with a cable.
Peter Balint (09:44):
Yeah, that makes sense, and I think that's something we
could all look forward to. Is this this higher level
of service? For sure? And getting back to the REINDEER
project and how it's functioning so far, what kind of
challenges have you seen or do you anticipate with REINDEER?
Erik Larsson (10:00):
So I mean, there are always challenges in a big project, right?
But let's stay with the technical challenges since I think
those are the important and the interesting ones. Now, in
terms of building and deploying RadioWeaves technology on a large scale, eventually,
I think one of the main challenges that will be
(10:20):
to actually build the electronics and to make it power
efficient enough and like build the actual circuitry in such
a way that it can be integrated into the environment
the way, the way we invision. But on the prototyping stage,
the research and development problems that there are really hard
and they we're targeting now in the project are are
mainly focusing on like how to interconnect so many antennas
(10:45):
so we can think of, like deploying hundreds or even
thousands of antennas that would be spread out over a
large room could be tens of meters in size. How
do we organize the signal processing? How do we how
do we interconnect this antenna units? I mean, would they
be in some mesh topology or would they be on
(11:06):
a linear like a stripe topology or a tree topology
or something else? Should each antenna also have some capability
of performing digital processing and computation? And if so, which
unit should do what? How should we shuffle the data
around and so forth? So that's a major challenge. And
(11:28):
another challenge is to to synchronize these antennas. I mean,
for RadioWeaves technology to work then all the antennas need
to operate phase coherently together, which means that in principle,
they need to agree on that on a global phase reference.
And that requires the se antennas to calibrate relative to one
(11:51):
another periodically. So that's another major technical challenge that has
to be solved, and it has to be solved in
a way that doesn't cost like too much resources. It's
like we can't afford to redo this calibration, let's say
too often, and it has to be solved in a
way that's super robust. I mean, we are targeting reliability
(12:12):
up to ninety nine point nine and nine and nine
percent then we can't afford anything to go wrong more
or less. So these are really the core technical challenges
that the project is addressing in order to, let's say,
achieve a prototype of the technology.
Peter Balint (12:31):
OK, so you mentioned prototype . Is there. A prototype planned
for REINDEER ?
Erik Larsson (12:36):
There is prototyping work planned. Yes, then of course, prototyping
that can be done in a project like this will
always be on a proof of concept stage and then
it's difficult to tell. I mean, how long will it
take before RadioWeaves technology is adopted and deployed wide scale?
(12:59):
This is difficult. It's a tough call to make and
to predict. And I think looking back at the massive
MIMO story that I had the privilege to be part of,
then that happened much faster than what I at the
time imagined that it would. I mean, that took like
(13:21):
less than 10 years from the point where massive MIMO
was a wild academic idea until it became a mainstream
research topic in academia until it became a mainstream topic
in the 5G standardization, till it became the main underpinning
core physical layer technology and 5G, which is now being
(13:43):
commercially deployed on a wide scale worldwide. And who knows,
maybe RadioWeaves will go the same path so that we'll
see it in actual action commercially deployed in 10 years.
This is really hard to tell me, and I'll, of course,
hope and love that to happen and there aren't really any
(14:03):
reasons for why it could not happen. But it's difficult
to tell with factors that interplay here in the commercial world.
Peter Balint (14:12):
Well, if it does happen, and it moves forward quickly,
like massive MIMO, then will be in good shape because
this technology, I think, is is a real game changer.
So I want to say thank you for taking the
time to talk with us today briefly about REINDEER. It's
a quite a pivotal project in this new world of
(14:33):
communication that we're moving into, and you still have some
time left with the with the project, so we wish
you the best success. And again, thanks for sharing what
you know today.
Erik Larsson (14:45):
Indeed, thank you so much for having me.
Peter Balint (14:49):
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 one zero one
zero one three four two five.
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