Projects

Project Title: 6G Integrated Communications and Sensing for Mobility Applications - 6G-ICAS4Mobility
Project Period: October 2022 – September 2025

More about ICAS4-Mobility

To this day, communication and radar systems are operated separately, even though they share many technical similarities, such as in signal processing and system architecture. This separation leads to inefficient use of the radio spectrum and suboptimal overall solutions.

The goal of 6G-ICAS4Mobility is to more closely integrate previously separate communication and sensing functionalities (especially radar) as part of the transition to 6G. The focus is on mobile applications in the automotive and drone sectors, as well as on the terminal side with direct communication (“sidelink”) between the participating devices. Various levels of integration are considered and evaluated, ranging from the use of communication capabilities to coordinate different radars to deep integration using a single waveform. By coordinating sensing functionalities across different devices (e.g., vehicles, drones) in conjunction with high-precision time synchronization, bi- or multi-static radars can also be implemented, thereby increasing efficiency and significantly improving environmental detection. Furthermore, a distributed fusion of the environmental images generated by various participants (as a kind of digital twin of the environment) is to be implemented in order to accurately and efficiently capture even complex scenarios. In addition to numerous conceptual studies, four concrete scenarios (including extensive radio channel measurements) are to be practically implemented and comprehensively evaluated as proof-of-concepts.

Project Title: Open6G Hub Germany
Project Period: August 2021 – July 2025

More about Open 6G Hub

The goal is to deliver a global 6G harmonization process and standard that takes German interests into account in line with our societal priorities, thereby strengthening the competitiveness of our companies and our technological sovereignty, as well as the position of Germany and Europe in the international competition for 6G.

Open6G Hub will contribute to the development of end-to-end solutions and an overall architecture for 6G. The project focuses on application areas such as smart cities, manufacturing, and automation.

Project Title: Perceptive Communication Networks with Integrated Sensing for 6th Generation Mobile Communications – KOMSENS-6G
Project Period: November 2022 – November 2025

More about KOMSENS-6G

The goal of KOMSENS-6G is to expand the 6th-generation mobile communication system with an additional core functionality: wireless sensing, hereinafter referred to as “sensing.” Sensing the environment using mobile communication signals is essential and beneficial for future mobile communication systems, both in public spaces and within campus networks. This enables new use cases in areas such as industrial production (e.g., digital twins) and mobility (e.g., traffic monitoring). Additionally, it allows for better optimization of the communication interface. To achieve this goal, all relevant components of the mobile communication system are analyzed and adapted accordingly, so that the sensing functionality itself becomes an integral part of the overall system, i.e., the aim is to achieve deep integration of sensing into the mobile communication system, in contrast to other approaches where sensing functionality is implemented by separate systems (such as automotive radar) and the mobile communication system is used only as a means of data communication between the external sensors.
To integrate sensing into 6G systems, mobile communication systems must be expanded in two directions: The first is the further development of mobile communication systems regarding their ability to distribute information between two or more points efficiently and in accordance with certain specifications. The second, at least equally important functionality—and the core element of this project outline—is the ability to digitally capture the properties of the aforementioned physical systems in real time. Examples include the presence, position, orientation, and motion vector of a drone in the observed airspace or of a robot in a production environment. In addition to implementing the aforementioned use cases, the digital sensing of the environment also enables the mobile communication system to improve its own performance.

Project Title: Coordinated multipoint operation for intgegrated communication and radar sensor technology - JCRS ComP
Project Period: October 2020 - January 2025

More about JCRS ComP

The JCRS-ComP project aims to merge mobile radio systems with radar networks. It enables the integration of radar functions into mobile networks to achieve new applications and efficiency gains. Coordinated multipoint transmission and synchronization will create high-performance JCRS networks that support both communications and radar functions. The project aims to overcome the traditional separation of mobile and radar networks and combine the benefits of both technologies.

Project title: DFG 4 CAD
Project period: April 2022 – April 2025

Testing a variety of traffic scenarios and radio network configurations plays an important role in ensuring the safety and reliability of automated driving. The goal of this project package is to improve the verification and validation of radio technologies to ensure the safety of road users even at higher levels of automation. The package consists of two projects:

One of the projects will adapt current over-the-air (OTA) V2X testing to future test requirements and aims to couple a system-level simulator in vehicular ad hoc networks with an OTA test facility. Particular attention will be paid to modeling and emulating the radio channel under the typical dynamic changes in channel conditions that result from the traffic events that govern the simulations. 
Project 2 will investigate how virtual verification and validation (VVV) of automotive radars can be performed in a way that increases the reliability of environment perception. Likewise, metrics and quality factors for radar-based automated driving are identified and multi-stage VV chains are implemented, ranging from SiL to vehicle-in-the-loop (ViL) to test routes.

Project Title: High-resolution parameter estimation for millimeter wave propagation in dynamic scenarios - HoPaDyn
Project Period: August 2019 - April 2024

Future 5th generation mobile communications systems will use frequencies in the millimeter wave range with bandwidths of several GHz. For reasons of link budget, very large ("massive") antenna arrays will be required. These inevitably have high directivity, and the radiation patterns must be adaptively tracked. To date, no channel models exist for predicting and evaluating the performance of such systems. The aim of this project is the development of a high-resolution parameter estimator based on the maximum- likelihood principle, which solves this task in connection with an antenna array whose architecture is adapted to it. The data model of the parameter estimator must take into account that directions, travel time and Doppler are no longer available in a factorizable form. factorizable form. This overcomes the usual narrowband assumption and requires a consistent description of the array in the time domain, which is accompanied by new design paradigms for the antenna elements and their arrangement in terms of diameter and antenna spacing. In order to meet the special challenges of highly time-varying scenarios, path tracking by Bayesian filters will be applied in the estimation. For this purpose, methods of multi-target tracking in radar will be used, which will be adapted for the estimation task at hand. As a result, advantages are expected, such as a reduced computational effort, a higher accuracy or resolution, and the clarification of ambiguities that may arise, among others, due to the special array design.

Project title: Polarimetric Ultra-Wideband MiMo-Radar for IED-Detection and High-Resolution Imaging Acronym - Medici Polaris
Project period: 2014 - 2017

More about Medici Polaris

Due to decades of guerrilla warfare in Colombia, the country is littered with landmines. The project aims to support mine clearance.
The main objective of MEDICI-POLARIS is to investigate a method, which is able to improve the signal-to-clutter ratio (SCR) for GPR operation. In order to increase the SCR, and to eliminate the overlaying surface reflection, an adaptive radar system, which performs an automatic re-arrangement of the wave radiation direction to an optimal incident angle, is investigated. Since the knowledge of the effective soil permittivity is inevitable, contact free soil permittivity estimation methods will be also investigated. This project is supported by the DFG and Colciencias.

Project Title: Meteracom 2
Project Period: April 2022 – April 2025

More about Meteracom

The ability to make measurements and to evaluate these measurements in an appropriate way is crucial for the further development of THz communication systems. However, metrology at THz frequencies is still immature. Therefore, the Meteracom 2 research group aims to improve the accuracy of measurement systems in different project areas. Our department is involved in three subprojects:

A1: Extension of the two main measurement systems of THz communication: channel sounding and optical sensing, towards new technologies, approaches and scenarios.

A2: Improve a sounder architecture that overcomes the limitations of the previous setup and enables ambitious metrological assessments of THz radio systems.

Project Title: Integrated Telematics for Next Generation 5G Vehicular Communications - ITN-5VC
Project Period: October 2020 - January 2025

The project aims to implement advanced communications and autonomous driving capabilities in vehicles. To do this, the problems associated with integrating multi-band, multi-antenna communications, including mmWave, with radar heads and other wireless sensors will be investigated. The goal is to ensure that transmission chains and radiation systems are efficiently reused and deliver the required performance.

Project Title: Fraunhofer Competence Center Thuringia for 6th Generation Mobile Communications
Project Period: March 2021 - December 2023

The "Fraunhofer Competence Center Thuringia for 6th Generation Mobile Communication" addresses the most important technology candidates for meeting future challenges for reliable communication in the field of sixth generation mobile technology, which is an essential pillar of the digital transformation. Reliable communications is a critical enabler for the digitization of society. The project includes the investigation of key technologies that are essential to implement the emerging requirements for a 6G mobile network. This is, on the one hand, millimeter-wave/terrahertz technology for frequencies from 50 GHz to 360 GHz to increase the reliability of transmission for critical applications and the data throughput for communication between terminals, to increase the terminal density in networks and to increase the accuracy of localization. On the other hand, artificial intelligence methods for communication and localization (radar) and their embedding in 5G and 6G network architectures are investigated.

Project Title: Beamforming Antenna Test Platform for Mobile Satellite Communications and 5G - BATmobil5G
Project Period: January 2021 - October 2023

Planned extension of the SOTM test facility for electronically steerable beamforming antenna arrays in the millimeter wave range. The development and integration of a sensor array enables the acquisition of the antenna patterns of antennas with time-varying characteristics as well as the measurement of occurring interferences in real time.

Project title: Cooperative perception and situation recognition in mobility and logistics using passive radar - KoSiMolo
Project period: 2017 - 2019

The public mobile communications networks of the 5th generation (5G) will play a key role in the digitization of data processes in mobility and logistics as well as for future intelligent transportation systems. The course for this is currently being set at full speed in international standardization bodies. While previous mobile networks (GSM, UMTS, LTE) were trimmed to maximum capacity and data rate for fast Internet access, one of the most serious innovations (perhaps even the most decisive) of 5G will be the introduction of data services that allow real-time control and regulation of a wide range of processes in industry, traffic and daily life. This will shift the focus of network use away from simple end-to-end communication or data transfer to cooperation between participants. The interdisciplinary KoSiMolo research group is dedicated to this topic and is thus making a significant contribution to the development of innovative technologies for the key objective of "sustainable and intelligent mobility and logistics" in Thuringia.

Project Title: Shared Communication and Sensor Technology for 6th-Generation Wireless Systems

Project Period: January 2025 to December 2027

More about GKS-6G

Project Title: Digital Twin Representation of Radio Channels (D-TRaCe) 

Project Period: January 2026 - December 2028

More about D-TRaCe

Project Title: Huawei Thz
Project Period: January 2022 - December 2024

The aim of the project is to carry out channel measurements for the characterization of near- and mid-range mobile wireless communication channels in the sub-THz frequency range (100 – 300 GHz), with a special focus on industrial and commercial scenarios. Since future mobile communication systems will profit from the presence of multiple available frequency bands (sub-6, millimeter-wave, and sub-THz), multi-band measurements will be performed, which is an essential step for evaluating of prospective use cases.
For the envisaged coexistence of sensing and communications in future mobile communication systems, an additional focus for possible future concurrent sensing applications (e.g. indoor localization) will be considered for the planning of the proposed measurement campaigns. For this, basic investigations of possible propagation measurement techniques which can be used for channel modeling for concurrent communication and sensing applications, will be undertaken and implemented in the measurements.