The Communications Research Centre (CRC) served as a collaborative partner in the IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference, held in Ottawa from September 6 to 9, 2010. In the wake of the four day VTC2010-Fall, General Chair Dr. Halim Yanikomeroglu shared the positive feedback he received with the CRC.

"One very senior member of the IEEE community wrote me stating, ‘This is the best VTC I have attended since 1999,'" Yanikomeroglu proudly reported in a note to some CRC executives after the event.

The Carleton University professor went on to thank CRC for the great support it provided to the organization of the conference that attracted over 600 international delegates. Involvement extended from President Veena Rawat's service on the advisory committee, to the support of research staff who volunteered on-site.

"Alex's plenary speech was a pivotal event in the conference," said Yanikomeroglu, referring to the remarks of Dr. Alex Vukovic, Vice-President of CRC's Terrestrial Wireless Systems Research branch. His talk, "Wireless Communications for Intelligent Transportation Systems," was one of four plenary presentations.

Intelligent transportation systems (ITS) encompass efforts to add information and communications technology to transport infrastructure and vehicles. The resulting wireless systems must be built to compensate for the many factors inherent in motion.

Vukovic's speech centered on potential ITS applications, challenges of implementation of ITS, as well as potential solutions based on cognitive femtocells - technology CRC is developing. Femtocells are small cellular base stations that ease the drain on capacity when multiple mobile devices are used locally.

CRC researchers chaired several components of the conference, including Li Li who co-chaired the Ad Hoc and Sensor Networks track. Over a dozen papers presented throughout the packed program were authored or co-authored by CRC experts, including Andre Brandao, whose paper was presented at the Green Wireless Communications and Networks Workshop.

A group of delegates added a tour of CRC to their agendas. Demonstrations included channel sounding, CRC's cognitive radio learning platform, its coverage prediction software and 2D-to-3D conversion capabilities.

"I talked with one of the CRC tour attendees who said the tour was just awesome," noted Yanikomeroglu.

Mobile channel sounding measurements

CRC research scientist Dr. Yvo de Jong demonstrated a channel sounding system and data processing method designed to estimate key channel characteristics of the 4.9 GHz band, which is designated for public safety communications. The equipment includes a transmitter housed in a trailer that remains fixed for the experiment, and a receiver housed in a vehicle that can capture continuous measurements while mobile. A four-sided antenna array mounted on the roof of the vehicle measures multipath characteristics including Doppler shift and direction-of-arrival, while a panoramic video camera, mounted on top of the antenna, captures images of the environment.

After the measurements are captured inside the vehicle, de Jong crunches the numbers in his office and cross references them with the panoramic images for a more complete picture of the data. A loss in signal, for example, could coincide with passing an obstacle along the route.

De Jong showed VTC visitors results from measurements taken on the CRC campus in a configuration resembling an emergency situation, with a command-post vehicle parked outside a building and a mobile unit driving along a road in front of that building.

CRC-Coral: a cognitive Wi-Fi networking system

CRC research manager Dr. John Sydor walked visitors through the workings of Coral - CRC's cognitive radio learning platform available for license. An ensemble of hardware and software, Coral is a unique combination of cognitive radio and Wi-Fi technologies that enables sensing of Wi-Fi environments widely used today.

"The platform is amenable to being manipulated," says Sydor, explaining the workings of Coral to fellow researchers - one of Coral's target audiences. Periodically, the network management station polls the network nodes and returns this information to the database. When the database flags interference, for example, the network management station informs the cognitive engine, which can compute new parameters for the wireless network. The application programming interface tweaks different controls in the network to minimize interference and optimize bandwidth.

Companies exploring new products that optimize the operation of a wireless network can also capitalize on Coral. Its network configurations and applications are numerous: mesh or relay configurations; rural, sensor or enterprise networking applications. The technology allows investigation of issues that are important to future cellular and wireless access systems.

Other stops on the tour

The ability of CRC-COVLAB software to calculate coverage anywhere in the world impressed the group of international visitors. Once provided with parameters specific to the transmission of the signal, such as transmitter locations and frequency, COVLAB can overlay coverage prediction with information from multiple databases, including population, topography and morphology.

In response to countless requests for channel sounding services over the years, research scientist Dr. Robert Bultitude worked with an Ottawa equipment manufacturer to develop a low-cost system, so systems organizations can employ their own channel sounder for scenario-specific measurements to verify and support system modelling and problem identification. VTC visitors saw the system used for dynamic sounding of all three links in a relay channel configuration, set up to provide in-fill in the shadow area behind a building.

In CRC's Advanced Television Evaluation Laboratory, visitors were introduced to CRC's 2D-to-3D conversion capabilities. They also previewed next generation 3D-TV that does not require special glasses.