Univ.-Prof. Dr.-Ing. Del Galdo, Giovanni

In this article, we propose an evolved system design approach to ultra-wideband (UWB) radar based on pseudo-random noise (PRN) sequences, the key features of which are its user-adaptability to meet the demands provided by desired microwave imaging applications and its multichannel scalability. In light of providing a fully synchronized multichannel radar imaging system for short-range imaging as mine detection, non-destructive testing (NDT) or medical imaging, the advanced system architecture is presented with a special focus put on the implemented synchronization mechanism and clocking scheme. The core of the targeted adaptivity is provided by means of hardware, such as variable clock generators and dividers as well as programmable PRN generators. In addition to adaptive hardware, the customization of signal processing is feasible within an extensive open-source framework using the Red Pitaya® data acquisition platform. A system benchmark in terms of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), jitter, and synchronization stability is conducted to determine the achievable performance of the prototype system put into practice. Furthermore, an outlook on the planned future development and performance improvement is provided.

For effective Computer Vision (CV) applications, one of the difficult challenges service robots have to face concerns with complete scene understanding. Therefore, various strategies are employed for point-level segregation of the 3D scene, such as semantic segmentation. Currently Deep Learning (DL) based algorithms are popular in this domain. However, they require precisely labeled ground truth data. Generating this data is a lengthy and expensive procedure, resulting in a limited variety of available data. On the contrary, the 2D image domain offers labeled data in abundance. Therefore, this study explores how we can achieve accurate labels for the 3D domain by utilizing semantic segmentation on 2D images and projecting the estimated labels to the 3D space via the depth channel. The labeled data may then be used for vision related tasks such as robot navigation or localization.

Digital field recordings are central to most precision agriculture systems since they can replicate the physical environment and thus monitor the state of an entire field or individual plants. Using different sensors, such as cameras and radar, data can be collected from various domains. Through the combination of radio wave propagation and visible light phenomena, it is possible to enhance, e.g., the optical condition of a fruit with internal parameters such as the water content. This paper proposes a method to correct sensor errors to perform data fusion. As an example, we observe a watermelon with camera and radar sensors and present a system architecture for the visualization of both sensors. For this purpose, we constructed a handheld platform on which both sensors are mounted. In our report, the radar is analyzed in terms of systematic and stochastic errors to formulate an angle-dependent mapping function for error correction. It is successfully shown that camera and radar data are correctly assigned with a watermelon used as a target object, demonstrated by a 3D reconstruction. The proposed system shows promising results for sensor overlay, but radar data remain challenging to interpret.

A parallel receiver architecture for multiple input multiple output (MIMO) channel sounding application is presented with a software-defined radio (SDR)-based field-programmable gate array (FPGA) implementation. The receiver covers phase coherent reception via shared local oscillator (LO) and reference clock, a timing scheme synchronous to the antenna switching at the transmitter, and an integrated automatic gain control (AGC) in all receive channels. It is built with SDRs (NI USRP-2955, X310 series with TwinRx daughterboards). The use of these off-the-shelf hardware components reduces the costs of the sounding system. The FPGA implementation together with the system parameters of the chosen hardware allows a minimum AGC update interval of approx. 44.38 μs. Our setup demonstrates the applicability of state-of-the-art SDRs as a sounding system for continuous acquisition of the time variant, space, and frequency selective radio propagation channel.

Non-coherent transmission from multiple transmission-reception-points (TRPs), i.e., base stations, or base station panels to a user equipment (UE) is exploited in 5G New Radio (NR) to improve downlink reliability and cell-edge throughput. Ultra reliable low-latency communications (URLLC) and enhanced Mobile BroadBand (eMBB) are prominent target use-cases for multi-TRP or multi-panel transmissions. In Third-Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Release 17 specifications, multi-TRP-based transmissions were specified for the physical downlink control channel (PDCCH) specifically to enhance its reliability and robustness. In this work, a comprehensive account of various multi-TRP reliability enhancement schemes applicable for the 5G NR PDCCH, including the ones supported by the 3GPP Release 17 specifications, is provided. The impact of the specifications for each scheme, UE and network complexity and their utility in various use-cases is studied. Their error performances are evaluated via link-level simulations using the evaluation criteria agreed in the 3GPP proceedings. The 3GPP-supported multi-TRP PDCCH repetition schemes, and the additionally proposed PDCCH repetition and diversity schemes are shown to be effective in improving 5G NR PDCCH reliability and combating link blockage in mmWave scenarios. The link-level simulations also provide insights for the implementation of the decoding schemes for the PDCCH enhancements under different channel conditions. Analysis of the performance, complexity and implementation constraints of the proposed PDCCH transmission schemes indicate their suitability to UEs with reduced-capability or stricter memory constraints and flexible network scheduling.