We have developed and set-up a new 4-channel Alphasat beacon receiver station. It is one of only three European stations with capabilities to measure the 19.7 GHz and 39.4 GHz satellite beacons and their cross-polar components and with capabilities to track satellites in geosynchronous orbit. The station has been custom developed and established in the scope of a PECS project for European Space Agency. The purpose is to analyse the measured data and to investigate the atmospheric impacts on radio wave propagation. Up to now, these effects were rather unexplored, especially at Q-band (39.4 GHz). The results will enable the engineers to develop efficient communication technology at high frequency bands and hence enable high satellite communication throughputs in the order of terabits/s. The potential customers of such systems could be the global companies such as O3b, OneWeb, SpaceX, LeoSat, Qualcomm, Google and Airbus. The results are already being analysed in the scope of the international European group ASAPE (Group of the AlphaSat Aldo Paraboni propagation Experimenters).
F.08 Development and manufacture of a prototype
COBISS.SI-ID: 28966439We upgraded our VESNA development sensor platform, which is distinguished by a high processing capability, low power consumption and compatibility with a wide range of communication technologies, to incorporate new sensing and processing modules, so that it also supports the Linux operating system and more advanced onboard processing of the acquired data. With this, the platform has become even more generally applicable and adaptable for use in research, development or end products. In the past year, we used the platform with a new expansion module SNE-ESHTER for UHF spectrum sensing to participate in a UK national TV White Spaces trial in London as part of demonstration campaign of secondary use of UHF band, and we presented the same setup also to representatives of the Slovenian regulator AKOS. VESNA sensor platfrom also forms the core of an open sensor network testbed LOG-a-TEC, which enables the detection and analysis of occupancy of radio spectrum in the ISM and UHF frequency bands. The two original testbed clusters located in the city of Logatec were upgraded in the past year so that they are available for remote experimentation using common tools of the Fed4FIRE testbed federation, thus achieving even closer integration with the European FIRE/FIRE+ initiative. This testbed is one of the unique tools of the research programme and used for experimental research in the areas of radio environental charaterization and Internet of Things.
F.08 Development and manufacture of a prototype
COBISS.SI-ID: 28226087We complemented the LOG-a-TEC testbed with a new cluster located at the Jožef Stefan Institute, based on a new architecture supporting fully reconfigurable wireless sensor network. The proposed architecture is able to reconfigure and support easy experimentation and testing of standard protocol stacks (i.e. uIPv4 and uIPv6) as well as non-standardized clean-slate protocol stacks (e.g. configured using RIME). The parameters of the protocol stacks can be remotely reconfigured through an easy to use RESTful API. Additionally, we are able to fully reconfigure clean-slate protocol stacks at run-time. The architecture enables easy set-up of the network by using a protocol that automatically sets up a multi-hop network (i.e. RPL protocol) and it enables reconfiguration and experimentation by using a simple, RESTful interaction with each node individually. The reference implementation of the architecture uses a dual-stack Contiki operating system with the ProtoStack tool for dynamic composition of communication services. The physical layout of the testbed has been carefully planed so as to support experimentation in dense communication environments and advanced localization experimentation, thus complementing and enhancing the capabilities of the original two clusters in the city of Logatec.
F.08 Development and manufacture of a prototype
COBISS.SI-ID: 29100327Open source tool for radio coverage calculation GRASS-RaPlaT developed for the Telekom Slovenije d.d. has been upgraded by evolutionary algorithm, which enables tool application for the optimization of wireless telecommunication networks. Modular approach of the GRASS-RaPlaT tool containing a set of radio propagation models enables optimisation of the heterogeneous wireless telecommunication networks consisting of cellular mobile systems (GSM, UMTS, LTE, LTE-a, WiMaX), wireless access points (WiFi), satellite telecommunication systems, telecommunication system for public protection and disaster relief, telecommunication system via stratospheric platforms and aerial platforms in the form of helium balloons/kites flying couple above the earth surface. Acceptable computing speed of the evolutionary algorithm integrated in the GRASS-RaPlaT tool has been achieved by parallelization and execution on a cluster of computers. The upgraded tool GRASS-RaPlaT is applied, among other projects, also in the FP7 project ABSOLUTE for optimization of heterogeneous telecommunications network comprising of the LTE terrestrial base stations and the LTE base stations on low altitude platforms. The aim of the optimization process was to determine the parameters of the wireless network which maximize the area covered with the radio signal and the capacity of the network, while minimizing the network impact on neighboring wireless telecommunication systems. An easy to install user-friendly version of GRASS-RaPlaT tool is openly accessible from the JSI website.
F.07 Improvements to an existing product
COBISS.SI-ID: 28521767During the past year, members of the programme group were collaborators in the FP7 projects , CREW, SUNSEED, Fed4FIRE and PROASENSE, and in the ESA PECS project SatProSi-Alpha. Members of the programme group were also national representatives or management committee members in the COST Actions COST IC1101, COST IC1104 and COST IC1004. In 2015, the FP7 ABSOLUTE and FP7 CREW were successfully concluded. The result of participation in international projects is the transfer of the expert knowledge and new scientific achievements in the fields of wireless communications, cognitive radio and sensor networks to the national environment. The knowledge transfer is carried out through projects for the Slovenian companies, through the educational and mentoring activities within the Jozef Stefan International Postgraduate School and through professional workshops. The knowledge acquired in the scope of the concluded FP7 project ABSOLUTE has been transferred by advanced radio planning of Slovenian wireless mobile network for public safety communications. The advantages of an emergency network planned for Ljubljana region by applying evolutionary algorithms and using LTE base stations on low altitude platforms have been shown to Slovenian experts.
F.02 Acquisition of new scientific knowledge
COBISS.SI-ID: 28642599