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INESC TEC makes communications in Space more efficient
In January 2015, INESC TEC started working on European project SCREEN (Space Cognitive Radio for Electromagnetic Environment maNagement), where the goal is to take cognitive radio to Space, thus exploring the benefits that this technology has already demonstrated on land. The project has a total budget of about one million euros.
Cognitive radio is a wireless form of communication where the transmitter can detect, in an intelligent way, the channels that are being used and those that are not, making it possible to instantaneously use the vacant channels. Involving INESC TEC’s Centre for Telecommunications and Multimedia (CTM), this project will analyse, develop, implement and test cognitive radio algorithms. SCREEN’s most innovative aspect is the implementing and testing component. Even though some of the basic technologies for the project are not new, incorporating all stages of a radio transmitter in a cognitive system has never been done in all its extension.
The key technology for cognitive radio is the Software-Defined Radio (SDR), which provides the necessary flexibility to reconfigure the communication parameters in an autonomous way, and without changing the transmitter’s hardware. The consortium, which involves Tekever ASDS (coordinator, Portugal), Munich Innovation Group GmbH (Germany) and Avanti Communications Ltd (United kingdom), besides INESC TEC, will be using SDR and for implementation and testing.
Ultimately, the project will use the research results which have already been used on land at all levels (technological, market and regulatory), and capitalise this previous work in different projects, avoiding the duplication of efforts. The system to be developed will operate on S-band, which is underexplored and has a strong potential for future niche applications in multiple satellite missions. The goal is to improve the performance, efficiency and versatility of space communications.
INESC TEC will be responsible for developing spectrum analysis techniques,
for simulating and implementing cognitive radio algorithm, laboratory tests,
and communication and dissemination activities. The CTM team involved
in the project is composed of Henrique Salgado, Luís Pessoa, João Canas
Ferreira and José Machado da Silva.
The INESC TEC researchers mentioned in this article are associated with the following partner institutions: INESC Porto and FEUP.
INESC TEC, February 2015
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