One of the main objectives of the Centre Tecnològic de Telecomunicacions de Catalunya (CTTC) is to stimulate the technological innovation. Therefore, the CTTC is developing a portfolio of patents in order to transfer the developed technology to the industry.
The CTTC has issued the following patents:
1. METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR ESTIMATING DIRECTIONS-OF ARRIVAL IN LOW POWER OR LOW SAMPLE SIZE SCENARIOS. (WO 2007/101451 A1).
This invention presents a system and a methodology for estimating the directions of arrival of one or several radio signals. The typical mechanisms used in this kind of detection need a minimum power level. The proposed solution, permits to considerably decrease the value of this threshold, that is, it allows the correct estimation of the directions of arrival of the signals with lower power. Besides, the invented method is especially useful in situations in which the number of available observations is small. To sum up, the patented system allows to improve the reception of signals when conditions are deficient. The author of this patent is Dr. X. Mestre, coordinator of the radio communications area of the center.
2. RESIDUAL CARRIER FREQUENCY OFFSET ESTIMATION AND CORRECTION IN OFDM MULTIANTENNA SYSTEMS. (WO 2008/052573 A1).
This invention focuses on the frequency offset estimation and correction in multicarrier systems, more particularly, in Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) systems with multiple antennaa at both the transmitter and the receiver. The proposed method exploits the whole capabilities of the information contained in the OFDM frame, and not only the preamble of the data frame. The authors of this invention are Dr. Antonio Pascual, and the researchers L. Ventura y X. Nieto.
3. METHOD FOR LOGICAL DEPLOYMENT, UNDEPLOYMENT AND MONITORING OF A TARGET IP NETWORK. (WO 2008/046429 A1).
This patent discloses a method for simplifying the task of logical deployment to configure a target IP network topology, which is to be physically deployed on a background IP network. Furthermore, this method allows real time monitoring on the network elements previously deployed in the target IP network, being able to alert the administrator when any element involved in the IP network (a node, process in a node, or an interface between nodes) fails or goes wrong. Moreover, the invention provides an intuitive and user-friendly mechanism for automatically configuring and reconfiguring multiple IP network topologies, involving configuration issues such as number of nodes and link connectivity, as well as remotely configuring the execution of processes at each node (i.e. routing or signalling processes). The authors of this invention are F.Galán and Dr. R. Muñoz, coordinator of the optical network area of the centre.
4. METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR ROBUSTLY TRANSMITTING THE MINIMUM POWER IN MULTI-USER AND MULTI-ANTENNA COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEMS WITH IMPERFECT CHANNEL KNOWLEDGE. (WO 2008/000284 A1).
The patent presents a method and system for robustly transmitting the minimum power from a transmitter of a base station to the mobile users attached to the base station, while guaranteeing a certain quality of service per user. Minimizing the total transmitted power has multiple advantages. Apart from the fact of lowering the energetic resources consumption, there is less electromagnetic radiation in the environment and the total system interference level is minimized. Previous designs of minimum power linear transmission architectures assume that both the transmitter (at the base station) and the user receivers (mobile terminals) have perfect knowledge of the channel state information. However, in a practical scenario, this assumption is not realistic, mainly for wireless systems where the fluctuations of the channel can be fast. The presented design is robust to the uncertainty in the channel estimate. The authors of this invention are Dr. M. Payaró, Dr. A. Pascual and Dr. M. A. Lagunas, director of the centre.
5. METHOD FOR ESTIMATING THE TIME OF ARRIVAL IN ULTRA WIDEBAND SYSTEMS. (WO 2008/034466 A1).
This patent relates to the estimation of the time-of-arrival (ToA) of signals transmitted through a wireless medium, which is based on a frequency domain approach. More precisely, the present invention relates to the estimation of the ToA of signals in ultra wideband (UWB) systems. Previous solutions are based on time domain approaches and rely on measurements of the propagation time undertaken by the signal when travelling between a target; node and a reference node. However, this approach suffers from (a) practical limitations of maximum likelihood solution due to the requirement of very high sampling rates and (b) large estimation time of correlation-based approaches due to the required search over a large number of bins. The presented patent solves both problems. The authors of this invention are Dr. M. Nájar, Dr. M. Navarro, and Dr. C. Ibars, coordinator of the access Technologies area of the centre.
6. METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR MEASURING QUALITY OF NETWORKING NODES. (WO 2008/125146 A1).
This patent presents a method that allows obtaining a characterization of the quality of a certain node and an assessment of its suitability to a planned deployment, prior to the use of said node in a real network scenario, based on carrier sense measurements. Thus, the present invention is useful to aid configuration and calibration processes for network deployment. Moreover it defines and accurately determines the values of two quality metrics to characterize respectively the accuracy of a node in carrier sensing and the ability of said node to cope with a given workload of concurrent incoming and outgoing communication traffic. A testing controlled scenario is provided for allowing the knowledge of these two quality metrics separately, detecting the presence of the maximum value measured for concurrent workload of the node under test in the measurement of the accuracy of said node in carrier sensing. The authors of this invention are M. Portolés, Dr. A. Krendzel, and Dr. J. Mangues, coordinator of the IP Technologies area of the centre.
7. POWER ALLOCATION METHOD IN MULTIANTENNA SYSTEMS UNDER PARTIAL CHANNEL KNOWLEDGE. (WO 2009/000329 A1).
This patent proposes a method for allocating a minimum downlink power from a transmitter of a cellular multi-user multi-antenna communications system. That minimum amount of power is dependent on a predetermined quality of service requirement per user and on the power of the interfering signals. The system requires a partial knowledge of the channel, although it is robust to said assumed uncertainty in said partial channel state information. The authors of the patent are Dr. Ana Perez and Dr. Nizar Zorba.
8. BEAMFORMING TECHNIQUE FOR BROADBAND SATELLITE COMMUNICATIONS. (WO 2009/036814 A1).
In the last years, investment in satellite communications has focused on spreading the satellite signal to vast terrestrial areas, on reducing the price of satellite and receivers and on reducing interference. Typical satellite services do not suffer from substantial limitation of bitrate. However, nowadays there is a need of using advanced digital applications via satellite, which implies the need of increasing the bitrate capacity of the satellite channel. The present invention aims to solve the above-mentioned problems by means of a method of assigning precoding gain which optimizes the satellite scenario characteristics and multiuser diversity, providing a high system performance while requiring a low complexity design. to in a satellite system under the control of a single terrestrial gateway. A scheduler in the gateway runs a multibeam opportunistic beamforming (MOB) technique, wherein the satellite antennas radiation pattern, the channel Line of Sight (LOS) information and the multiuser diversity are incorporated in the design process of the precoder. The invention presented in this patent aims to achieve an improvement in the rate of transmission without increasing its complexity. The current method applies MIMO techniques (use of multiple antennas in both transmission and reception, Multiple-Input / Multiple-Output) for the the user segment of the forward link (FL) and precoding of the radiation beam in the transmitte depending on the radiation pattern of the satellite antennas and on the line of sight channel characteristics. The authors of this patent are Dr. Nizar Zorba, Dr. Marc Realp, and Dra. Ana Pérez-Neira.
The CTTC has issued the following patents:
1. METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR ESTIMATING DIRECTIONS-OF ARRIVAL IN LOW POWER OR LOW SAMPLE SIZE SCENARIOS. (WO 2007/101451 A1).
This invention presents a system and a methodology for estimating the directions of arrival of one or several radio signals. The typical mechanisms used in this kind of detection need a minimum power level. The proposed solution, permits to considerably decrease the value of this threshold, that is, it allows the correct estimation of the directions of arrival of the signals with lower power. Besides, the invented method is especially useful in situations in which the number of available observations is small. To sum up, the patented system allows to improve the reception of signals when conditions are deficient. The author of this patent is Dr. X. Mestre, coordinator of the radio communications area of the center.
2. RESIDUAL CARRIER FREQUENCY OFFSET ESTIMATION AND CORRECTION IN OFDM MULTIANTENNA SYSTEMS. (WO 2008/052573 A1).
This invention focuses on the frequency offset estimation and correction in multicarrier systems, more particularly, in Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) systems with multiple antennaa at both the transmitter and the receiver. The proposed method exploits the whole capabilities of the information contained in the OFDM frame, and not only the preamble of the data frame. The authors of this invention are Dr. Antonio Pascual, and the researchers L. Ventura y X. Nieto.
3. METHOD FOR LOGICAL DEPLOYMENT, UNDEPLOYMENT AND MONITORING OF A TARGET IP NETWORK. (WO 2008/046429 A1).
This patent discloses a method for simplifying the task of logical deployment to configure a target IP network topology, which is to be physically deployed on a background IP network. Furthermore, this method allows real time monitoring on the network elements previously deployed in the target IP network, being able to alert the administrator when any element involved in the IP network (a node, process in a node, or an interface between nodes) fails or goes wrong. Moreover, the invention provides an intuitive and user-friendly mechanism for automatically configuring and reconfiguring multiple IP network topologies, involving configuration issues such as number of nodes and link connectivity, as well as remotely configuring the execution of processes at each node (i.e. routing or signalling processes). The authors of this invention are F.Galán and Dr. R. Muñoz, coordinator of the optical network area of the centre.
4. METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR ROBUSTLY TRANSMITTING THE MINIMUM POWER IN MULTI-USER AND MULTI-ANTENNA COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEMS WITH IMPERFECT CHANNEL KNOWLEDGE. (WO 2008/000284 A1).
The patent presents a method and system for robustly transmitting the minimum power from a transmitter of a base station to the mobile users attached to the base station, while guaranteeing a certain quality of service per user. Minimizing the total transmitted power has multiple advantages. Apart from the fact of lowering the energetic resources consumption, there is less electromagnetic radiation in the environment and the total system interference level is minimized. Previous designs of minimum power linear transmission architectures assume that both the transmitter (at the base station) and the user receivers (mobile terminals) have perfect knowledge of the channel state information. However, in a practical scenario, this assumption is not realistic, mainly for wireless systems where the fluctuations of the channel can be fast. The presented design is robust to the uncertainty in the channel estimate. The authors of this invention are Dr. M. Payaró, Dr. A. Pascual and Dr. M. A. Lagunas, director of the centre.
5. METHOD FOR ESTIMATING THE TIME OF ARRIVAL IN ULTRA WIDEBAND SYSTEMS. (WO 2008/034466 A1).
This patent relates to the estimation of the time-of-arrival (ToA) of signals transmitted through a wireless medium, which is based on a frequency domain approach. More precisely, the present invention relates to the estimation of the ToA of signals in ultra wideband (UWB) systems. Previous solutions are based on time domain approaches and rely on measurements of the propagation time undertaken by the signal when travelling between a target; node and a reference node. However, this approach suffers from (a) practical limitations of maximum likelihood solution due to the requirement of very high sampling rates and (b) large estimation time of correlation-based approaches due to the required search over a large number of bins. The presented patent solves both problems. The authors of this invention are Dr. M. Nájar, Dr. M. Navarro, and Dr. C. Ibars, coordinator of the access Technologies area of the centre.
6. METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR MEASURING QUALITY OF NETWORKING NODES. (WO 2008/125146 A1).
This patent presents a method that allows obtaining a characterization of the quality of a certain node and an assessment of its suitability to a planned deployment, prior to the use of said node in a real network scenario, based on carrier sense measurements. Thus, the present invention is useful to aid configuration and calibration processes for network deployment. Moreover it defines and accurately determines the values of two quality metrics to characterize respectively the accuracy of a node in carrier sensing and the ability of said node to cope with a given workload of concurrent incoming and outgoing communication traffic. A testing controlled scenario is provided for allowing the knowledge of these two quality metrics separately, detecting the presence of the maximum value measured for concurrent workload of the node under test in the measurement of the accuracy of said node in carrier sensing. The authors of this invention are M. Portolés, Dr. A. Krendzel, and Dr. J. Mangues, coordinator of the IP Technologies area of the centre.
7. POWER ALLOCATION METHOD IN MULTIANTENNA SYSTEMS UNDER PARTIAL CHANNEL KNOWLEDGE. (WO 2009/000329 A1).
This patent proposes a method for allocating a minimum downlink power from a transmitter of a cellular multi-user multi-antenna communications system. That minimum amount of power is dependent on a predetermined quality of service requirement per user and on the power of the interfering signals. The system requires a partial knowledge of the channel, although it is robust to said assumed uncertainty in said partial channel state information. The authors of the patent are Dr. Ana Perez and Dr. Nizar Zorba.
8. BEAMFORMING TECHNIQUE FOR BROADBAND SATELLITE COMMUNICATIONS. (WO 2009/036814 A1).
In the last years, investment in satellite communications has focused on spreading the satellite signal to vast terrestrial areas, on reducing the price of satellite and receivers and on reducing interference. Typical satellite services do not suffer from substantial limitation of bitrate. However, nowadays there is a need of using advanced digital applications via satellite, which implies the need of increasing the bitrate capacity of the satellite channel. The present invention aims to solve the above-mentioned problems by means of a method of assigning precoding gain which optimizes the satellite scenario characteristics and multiuser diversity, providing a high system performance while requiring a low complexity design. to in a satellite system under the control of a single terrestrial gateway. A scheduler in the gateway runs a multibeam opportunistic beamforming (MOB) technique, wherein the satellite antennas radiation pattern, the channel Line of Sight (LOS) information and the multiuser diversity are incorporated in the design process of the precoder. The invention presented in this patent aims to achieve an improvement in the rate of transmission without increasing its complexity. The current method applies MIMO techniques (use of multiple antennas in both transmission and reception, Multiple-Input / Multiple-Output) for the the user segment of the forward link (FL) and precoding of the radiation beam in the transmitte depending on the radiation pattern of the satellite antennas and on the line of sight channel characteristics. The authors of this patent are Dr. Nizar Zorba, Dr. Marc Realp, and Dra. Ana Pérez-Neira.
