Project SPECTRA

Abstract

As highlighted in the European Commission Work Programme, energy efficiency and flexibility in the use of spectrum resources are two major research challenges for the development of future wireless communications technologies. To address these challenges, SPECTRA project will develop a multi-band cognitive radio technology. New techniques for the global efficiency of wireless systems will be developed in the following four directions:

• the spectral efficiency thanks to the use of cognitive radio techniques in wireless systems,
• the minimization of electronic component number in wireless systems,
• the energy optimization for wireless communication terminals by optimizing architecture design and algorithms implementation,
• the minimization of the generated interference in the environment by selecting the adequate band which will guarantee the shortest transmission distance and the minimum power while preserving the Quality of Service.

The innovation and impact brought by SPECTRA project are in the combination of innovative approaches on Radio Frequency (RF) front-end and base band components design with new cognitive radio algorithms integrated into a demonstrator platform. Thanks to the developed platform, medium term (2013-2020) application scenarios will be validated. The major outcome of SPECTRA project is a proof-of-concept able to communicate cognitively in real time, which corresponds to concrete needs today in Europe. SPECTRA project will address the minimization of the ICT environmental impact in general since it addresses the minimization of the number of electronic components and the energy optimization in wireless communication terminals. In order to minimize the electronic components, SPECTRA will use a Software Designed Radio (SDR) approach to design a flexible and agile architecture for the RF including antennas, the Analogue to Digital conversion and the digital base band processing. SPECTRA also propose Baseband/RF co-design techniques for the energy minimization in wireless communication terminals. Considering the current ICT challenges, SPECTRA project, by designing and validating new techniques for spectrum and energy efficiency in wireless communications is expected to have a significant impact on future wireless mobile systems. Moreover, all those techniques will be demonstrated, and thanks to medium term application scenarios.