Mobile Phone Standard

Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits

TEROPP: Technologies for TERminals in OPPortunistic applications

Cognitiv_Radio

The development in the wireless communication world demands a complex and costly infrastructure to provide the always growing amount of services. The existing frequency spectrum is limited and extremely regulated, so that the individual can only use very little of the spectrum (although a large part of the frequency spectrum remains unused most of the time). Especially here bottlenecks arise. In the current generations of terminals already possibilities for the use of different transmission paths are implemented – however, based on the existing standards such as GSM, UMTS or WLAN and the frequency channel planned for it.
The challenge in the TEROPP project is to compile technical solutions for efficient access and for an efficient use of spectral resources in mobile applications of communications.
To make architectures and technologies available for terminals with cognitive radio the following institutes are involved in this Fraunhofer-Carnot joint project: Fraunhofer IIS in its function as coordinator as well as Fraunhofer HHI and Fraunhofer FOKUS together with six French Carnot institutes (GET-Telecom, CEA-LETI, CEA-LIST, C3S, IEMN, UTT).
On the German side the main focus in research and development of future mobile communications networks are addressed:

  • Reconfigurability in cognitive radio network
  • Optimization of an embedded computer platform
  • Co-Design and optimization of very wide-band front end modules

Building Blocks of a terminal using opportunistic radio 
Building Blocks of a terminal using opportunistic radio

The following block diagram displays the substantial functional modules for fulfilling this task. For the examination of the available spectrum a frequency-agil environmental sensor is needed which is the main task of Fraunhofer IIS.
This sensor provides information to assist the frequency management system for its evaluation, which resources are actually available and can be used accordingly. Of course, this functionality must be supported by broad- or multi-band receipt and transmission stages. For this purpose also an appropriate antenna is necessary.