Overview of the Construction of Communication Technology Innovation Platform (3rd-Stage Project of Program 985)
Southeast University (SEU) boasts such disciplines as Information and Communication Engineering, Electronic Science and Technology, Computer Science and Technology and Mathematics, which comprise the ten sub-disciplines of the “communication and information system”, “signal and information processing”, “electromagnetic field and microwave technology”, “electronic circuit and system”, “information security”, “physical electronics”, “microelectronics and solid-state electronics”, “computer technology and application”, “applied mathematics” and “computational mathematics” (including 4 national key disciplines, 1 discipline as “priority of priorities” of Jiangsu Province, 2 provincial-level key disciplines as well as 3 disciplines with the doctoral program and post-doctoral research center). In addition, the School of Information Science and Engineering boasts 2 national key laboratories (National Mobile Communication Laboratory and National Millimeter Laboratory), National Engineering Technology Research Center of Integrated Circuits, 3 key laboratories of Jiangsu Province and the Ministry of Education, 2 engineering technology research centers, as well as an array of outstanding professionals lead by 3 academicians and over ten members of “National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars” (NSFDYS), “Cheung Kong Scholar Program” of the Ministry of Education and “Recruitment Program of Global Experts”. All those help to establish a development-oriented national laboratory of communication technology featuring the integration of disciplines and an array of international and domestic top-notch talents.
SEU has assumed a series of major and key research projects in the field of wireless communication, including projects of National Program 973, National Program 863 and the Science Fund for Creative Research Group of National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), national key and difficult projects, beforehand research projects for the national defense, as well as the projects of international and Chinese governments in collaboration with enterprises; and it has won 3 national science-and-technology-related awards as well as dozens of relevant awards at provincial and ministerial levels. Outstanding research achievements include: the completion of the R&D of China’s first GSM, CDMA, 3G mobile communication system and relevant chips as well as 4G experimental system, the major project of future mobile communication known as “FuTURE Program” (2nd- stage) as part of National Program 863 led by SEU and in collaboration with another six universities of China and relevant enterprises both at home and abroad, as well as a major project known as the “fundamental theoretical and technological research on future mobile communication” funded by NSFC.
SEU, in collaboration with multiple universities and research institutes of China as well as international and domestic enterprises, has taken the lead in completing the second stage of the major project of future mobile communication known as “FuTURE Program” included in National Program 863. Figure 1 shows China’s first B3G mobile communication experimental network. In-depth and all-round studies have been made on such key technologies as to improve future mobile communication in terms of its transmission rate, system capacity, spectrum efficiency and power efficiency. Such technologies include the coordination-based distributed wireless network and upper layer protocol technology, wideband multi-carrier transmission and multiple access technology, MIMO wireless transmission technology that may fully explore space resources, channel compilation technology and iteration reception technology that approximate channel capacity, as well as new antenna and radio frequency technology.
Major breakthroughs as follows have been made:
1. SEU has been the first to propose the use of the coordination-based distributed radio engineering framework to solve the effectiveness of the frequency spectrum and power faced by the new-generation mobile communication system; and it has had a comprehensive mastery of the theoretical modeling of the coordination-based distributed wireless system, effectiveness analysis of power and the frequency spectrum, coordination-based distributed multi-antenna structure and selective switching technique, resource allocation and multiplexing technique, and QoS guarantee technique and so on, as well as designed and realized the upper layer protocol that may reflect the main characteristics of coordination-based distributed wireless network.
2. SEU has proposed to GMC/OFDM mixed transmission framework to realize the extensive coverage and flexible allocation of radio resources as required by the new-generation cellular mobile communication; it has also put forward the duplex mode that supports FDD and TDD as well as the united framework technology of the mixed multi-access modes of FDMA, TDMA, SDMA and IDMA, fully mastered such key techniques as the design and realization of the GMC/OFDM system, timing and frequency synchronism and channel estimation, etc.. The general multi-carrier technique known as GMC, which is specifically created for the research subject, applies to the uplink transmission.
3. Extensive and in-depth studies have been made in the modeling of the MIMO channel, analysis of the channel capacity and system performance, channel estimation and tracking, space-time coding and optimal reception that are involved in the MIMO wireless transmission technology. In addition, the extensively applicable MIMO transmission technology with environment self-adaptation has been introduced, which may automatically perceive and adapt to the environment of mobile subscribers and thus determine the number of data flow to send, modulation order, code rate and space precoding matrix and so on; therefore systematic solutions are found to problems concerning the application of MIMO technology in complicated situations.
4. SEU has solved the difficulties related to the complexity and long time delay of the iteration reception technique, and introduced the soft information retaining iteration technique and double-turbine iteration reception technique, so that the system performance optimization and complexity in realization are balanced, with all relevant modules of the receiver forming bicirculating iterative computations that successively approximate the extremity.
5. SEU has realized the clock synchronization and control synchronization of the far-end terminal and near-end terminal by solving RoF technical difficulties in the frequency band of 3.5GHz; in addition, it has also mastered the implementation techniques of the base station multichannel radio frequency subsystem, the miniaturized mobile station multichannel radio frequency front end, the dual-polarized orthogonal linear array base station antenna, as well as of the micro-strip CoCo terinal antenna and substrate integration waveguide slot antenna.
Based on breakthroughs in the above-mentioned techniques, SEU has improved the GMC/OFDM general technology scheme with studies on the realization of RoF MIMO cellular system community structure and relevant methods of radio resource allocation and handover, general multi-carrier wireless uplink transmission technique and OFDM wireless down-link transmission technique under the FDD mode, OFDM wireless uplink and down-link transmission techniques under the TDD mode, as well as of the mixed multi-access modes with FDD and TDD as the major modes. In addition, it has established the complete technology innovation system which can meet the technical demand of Beyond 3G and which take the distributed wireless network, GMC/OFDM technology, MIMO transmission technology with environment self-adaptation as well as the iteration reception technology featuring channel capacity approximation as the core.
SEU has successfully developed the field testing system of Beyond 3G cellular mobile communication network based on the GMC/OFDM framework, which may support a peak data rate of 100 Mbps within the bandwidth of 17.28 MHz. The testing system has adopted the internationally advanced ACTA open hardware platform structure which supports the complete connection between boards with a backboard rate of 2.5Gbps and meets the design requirement of such hardware as with a transmission rate of 1Gbps. Furthermore, the testing system has adopted the united technical framework which may support FDD and TDD modes at the same time.
The FDD link technical proposal, TDD technical proposal as well as the distributed wireless network and up layer protocol technology of the project passed the third-party link performance simulation testing and network performance simulation testing organized by Xi’an Jiaotong University respectively in 2004 and 2005; and the FDD system and TDD system developed in the project respectively passed the field test at SEU and Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications in June, 2006. Results of the simulation and field testing show that, with the developed core techniques and general technology scheme verified, the research subject has fulfilled or even over-fulfilled the required indicators.
The project in question, which has covered all aspects of technologies key to the new-generation mobile communication, has obtained over 100 core technical patents (30 more than expected), symbolizing that China has owned a relatively complete range of intellectual property rights in terms of the new-generation mobile communication technology. More than 500 papers have been published, thus making China an influential player in pioneering research on the new-generation mobile communication. Over ten 3GPP LTE proposals of the hundred ones submitted through RITT have been adopted―precious experience for China in preparation for participating in the international standardization of the new-generation mobile communication.
The major breakthroughs in key technologies, the establishment of the technology system as well as the successful development of the open testing system symbolize that China has reached the internationally advanced level in the R&D of the new-generation mobile communication, thus laying a solid foundation for China to further carry out the 3rd stage work of “FuTURE Program” and compete for the international standardization of the new-generation mobile communication.
In the national major special project known as the “new-generation wideband wireless mobile communication network”, SEU took the lead in 8 research subjects and participated in over 20 ones in total from 2008 to 2010. In 2009, SEU, in collaboration with Tsinghua University, Hangzhou Dianzi University and so on, took the lead in “fundamental research on the integrated circuits of silicon-substrate MMW and sub-millimeter waves”, a project included in National Program 973.
As required by Program 985, the funds for the research platform of the national laboratory and those for the development of school strong disciplines totals 82 million RMB including 72 million RMB for the 3rd stage of Program 985 and 10 million RMB from Jiangsu financial expenditure. The project goes smoothly at present; the central funds of 2010 (18 million RMB) and 2011 (13 million RMB) have been appropriated into account and finished, and the central funds and corresponding provincial funds of 2012 (28.2 million RMB), which has also been appropriated into account, is been carried out as scheduled.
