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Antenna Node Grouping Technology & OAM


Core 5G Network Technology to Lead the Era of IoT

“The pattern/polarization BDMA technology to receive and transmit transmit and receive data with 64 antennas can improve the mobile communication speed experienced by users at least tenfold. This technology is expected to mitigate the frequency shortages faced by mobile network operators in Korea and dominate the scene of the upcoming era of IoT. The KAIST Institute for IT Convergence (KIITC) is planning to improve the completeness of this technology in 2015 and pursue collaborative research with Korean mobile carriers in 2016 for commercialization opportunities. The short-term goal is to develop core technologies to achieve a transmission speed ten times faster than the current LTE system, based on the pattern/polarization technology developed in the antenna node grouping project.”

The Advent of an Era of Mobile Communication Thousand Times Faster than LTE

The era of IoT (Internet of Things) is about to arrive. The technology that draws the most attention in a hyper-connected society, where things and humans are interwoven, is Beam Division Multiple Access (BDMA). Solving the limited transmission speed in the LTE environment, this promising technology advances the 4G mobile system to bring out the 5G network system.

The antenna node grouping technology developed by the research team led by Professor Gil Gye-tae of the KIITC is receiving global attention as a core technology of the 5G knowledge communication technology that has stepped ahead of conventional BDMA technology. Currently, LTE mobile communication provides a maximum of 20-40Mbps download speed for ordinary mobile phones, but when a number of users are involved simultaneously, the speed is divided among the users, resulting in limited download speed for each user.

A number of research efforts are being made around the world to overcome such limitations and achieve a download speed a thousand times faster than the current level. The KIITC also launched a project in 2001 to develop 5G network technology based on a national project grant from the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning.

The pattern/polarization BDMA technology developed by Professor Gil’s team as part of the antenna node grouping project bears greater significance as it is an original technology of KAIST. Much faster transmission speed is expected from a combination of the BDMA technology, using the mobile communication band of 2-6GHz to send and receive data with tens or hundreds of antennas, and the pattern/polarization technology for high-density integration of antennas with different radiation patterns into a single beam sector.

The pattern/polarization BDMA technology divides the entire service area into a number of beam sectors to increase the frequency reuse factors and uses pattern/polarization antennas to integrate 64 antennas into a small space. This technology is able to solve the frequency shortage problem, use wider frequencies in a more efficient manner, and improve the transmission speed. For the past four years, the research team of Professor Gil has also focused on developing the specific technologies necessary to realize pattern/polarization BDMA technology.

Sub-technologies include the following: (1) Joint Pattern Beam Sectorization (JPBS) technology to divide service areas so that a given wireless frequency can be simultaneously used in a number of areas through pattern/polarization antennas and beams; (2) hybrid beamforming technology that integrates beamforming and the Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) technology to improve transmission efficiency by simultaneously sending and receiving data with a number of antennas; and (3) pattern/polarization antenna technology to integrate a number of cells in a small space. Another important technology is the baseband (the frequency of signals for carrier modulation in data communication) modem technology based on the Software Defined Radio (SDR), a software-based wireless communication.
The development of many such core technologies for antenna node grouping is a result of the concerted efforts of the KIITC as a backbone of overall technological research as well as the faculty research teams of the KAIST Department of Electrical Engineering, the KAIST Wireless Power Transfer Project Group, and the researchers of KMW.

The research team of Professor Gil has set a short-term goal of developing core technology to achieve a transmission speed ten times faster the current LTE system. In 2015, which will be marked as the launch year of antenna node grouping technology, the team will upgrade the test bed required to operate the technology and apply the technology to carry out external demonstration and substantiate its utility. The team also plans to build an academia-industry collaboration system with Korean mobile network operators with the goal of commercializing the technology and to outline a system design for BDMA to demonstrate the connection of Wi-Fi and LTE systems with smartphones.

In addition to the antenna node grouping technology, Professor Gil and his team of researchers are also working to develop Orbital Angular Momentum (OAM) technology for wireless backhaul transmission. This technology is still in its initial stage of research, but it is expected to bring about broadband realistic telecommunication in the near future.


Prof. Gil, Gye-Tae
2014 Annual Report


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