Let's take a look into the future: urban living spaces have significantly improved in quality. The air in the park is better, and there are no more car exhaust fumes. The temperature is pleasant because fewer parking spaces are needed than in the past, leaving more room for green spaces that regulate the climate better. The streets are mainly populated by autonomous vehicles: buses, taxis, delivery services, cars. Traffic is heavy, but it flows quickly. How is this possible? Prof. Alexander Kölpin has been working on making this scenario a reality since January in a massive, interdisciplinary project, which is itself part of an even larger tech offensive in Hamburg. But first things first.
Pioneer_6G, the project coordinated by Prof. Kölpin, aims to optimize traffic in urban neighborhoods with the help of innovative mobile communications technology. “The better and faster autonomously controlled vehicles communicate with each other, the smoother the traffic,” explains Kölpin. ”But expanding the sensor horizon of each vehicle exclusively by means of car-to-car communication is too slow. A decentralized calculation for all vehicles in the vicinity, connected via extremely fast and reliable mobile communications, would be better.” The problem is that the further away a car (or cell phone) is from the mast, the worse the network and the slower and less reliable the data traffic.
In the current 5G network, a transmitter is always connected to a radio cell. If I go for a walk while talking on the phone, the cell phone switches to a different radio cell after a while. Kölpin's idea for 6G is to track precise radio spots for each transmitter. This saves energy and increases reliability and data throughput at the same time. However, this would require numerous small antennas. They enable very accurate location of the transmitters because the time differences in arrival at reference points can be compared. This method is called “trilateration.”
Sound waves of an orchestra
The core idea for Kölpin's project and the possible new 6G standard comes from acoustics: because all waves have the same physical properties, trilateration also works with musical instruments. In acoustic wave field synthesis, for example, an orchestra is recorded by a large number of microphones on the walls of a room. Depending on the distance to the individual instruments, the sound reaches the microphones fractions of a second earlier or later. If the recording is now played back from the same number of speakers with the same measured delays, the orchestra appears to be acoustically located in the room with the same precision as before – even though the musicians have long since gone home. Alexander Kölpin was able to experience this in the acoustics laboratory at the University of Erlangen while he was working on his postdoctoral thesis.
This experience gave Pioneer_6G the idea of using electromagnetic wave field analysis in the same way to determine the location of a road user with centimeter precision. A new radio standard could use the same principle as in the acoustics example to steer the best possible reception to exactly the right place. The radio connection would then no longer be tied to a fixed cell, but would move dynamically along the road with the user. This would make it possible to reliably transmit large amounts of data in a short time, calculate the optimal traffic flow, and send only the information that each vehicle needs back to it.
Further information
https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/hawicc-hanseatic-wireless-innovation-competence-center/
Read the entire article in the current issue of spektrum (in German)
