The fifth generation of telecommunication technology (5G), in combination with other technologies like artificial intelligence, internet-of-things (IoT), and more will change the way we live and interact today, in industries as well as in societies.

5G has promised to provide wider network coverage, reliable network connections and faster data transfer. In contrast to mobile network technologies so far, the long-term perspective of 5G is tremendous. With the rapid increase in the number of connected devices and machines, a new era of information-driven applications and ecosystems has emerged. 5G will enable this growth along with the amount of data generated by it, introducing an era of Massive IoT.

Over the next few years, 5G will provide faster network connection through enhanced mobile broadband services especially at high frequency or millimeter wave (mmWave) bands.

Besides the improvements to the existing features of mobile networks, 5G will support mission critical control usage scenarios. These scenarios, such as remote control for critical infrastructure, drones, robots and vehicles, require a stable connection with an extremely low latency.

In order to increase the efficiency of the radio spectrum used by such technologies, researchers work to accurately model the radio channel between the transmitting and receiving antennas. The radio channel is the medium through which the wireless signal propagates, and is responsible for the changes of the characteristics of the signal arriving at the receiver.

The phenomenon of multipath propagation describes the multitude of received signals resulting from several interactions with the physical objects in the environments. Such interactions happen through different propagation mechanisms like reflection, diffraction, and scattering. Thus, channel modelling aims to make a mathematical representation of the effects the communication channel has on the wireless signals characteristics, that is called fading. Using accurate channel models, realistic evaluation of the overall performance is possible in the design of communication systems, as well as optimizing link performances and data rates.

"In my research, I focused on one hand on channel modeling for inter-vehicle communication, and on the other hand on channel modeling for indoor applications, such as sensing people in an industrial space",  Marwan explains.

In vehicular communications, the scattering environment changes rapidly due to the mobility of the vehicles, the relative low height of the antennas and the large number of scatterers potentially located around the transmitter and receiver. Consequently, the underlying fading process in these channels is time and frequency selective, and its statistical properties do not remain constant (stationary) for long time duration and frequency bandwidth.

On the other hand, wireless propagation in indoor industrial environments is challenging. While typical indoor environments (e.g. residential and office) experience dispersive fading, highly metallic environments can have dispersion at much higher levels. Highly reflective environments are characterized by rich electromagnetic scattering, time and angular dispersion, and can exhibit features of a complex reverberant cavity.

“The main aim of my research is the modelling of wireless radio channels for different scenarios and applications related to 5G future networks, that will help develop more efficient and robust communication and sensing solutions”, Marwan tells.

“The first part is dedicated to studying the behavior of wireless channels for vehicular communications with a focus on stochastic modelling of propagation parameters for the non-stationary fading process“, Marwan continues.

“The goal of the second part is to investigate the indoor propagation channel in highly reflective industrial scenarios. The reverberant characteristics of such environments are modelled based on the theory of room electromagnetics, and exploited for human sensing applications to highlight their importance and utility”, Marwan concludes.

Read a more detailed summary or the entire PhD

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PhD Title: Wireless Radio Channel Modelling for Vehicular and Indoor Applications

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Contact:  Marwan Yusuf, Wout Joseph, Emmeric Tanghe

Marwan was born in Cairo, Egypt. He received the B.Sc. degree in Electronics and Communications Engineering from Ain Shams University in 2010. He received the M. Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering from Istanbul Medipol University (Turkey) in 2016 where he was a Research Assistant in the Communications, Signal Processing, and Networking Center (CoSiNC). His scientific work focused on physical layer security for wireless channels.

Since January 2018, he has been a Doctoral Researcher in the Department of Information Technology at Ghent University (INTEC) where he works on measurement-based modelling of indoor and outdoor wireless propagation with emphasis on vehicular communication channels, mmwaves and human sensing.

He is the author/coauthor of more than 10 conference papers and 10 journal papers in the top tier.

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Editor: Jeroen Ongenae - Illustrator: Roger Van Hecke