IISC RESEARCHERS DEVELOP ADVANCED 6G TECHNOLOGY
In
the rapidly advancing world of communication technology, the development of
advanced antennas that can power the next-generation 6G technology is critical.
The Indian Institute of Science (IISc) has been working on designing such
antennas to enhance vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications, which allow for
seamless communication between vehicles and other infrastructure.
The team of researchers, led by Debdeep Sarkar, Assistant Professor at the Department of Electrical Communication Engineering, has been working on developing full-duplex communication antennas that can reduce self-interference and facilitate faster and more bandwidth-efficient movement of signals across the communication network. This is essential for applications that require almost instantaneous relay of commands, such as driverless cars.
Traditional
radio transceivers are half duplex, which means that they either use signals of
different frequencies for sending and receiving or there is a time lag between
the signal transmitted and the signal received. This time lag is necessary to
prevent interference, as the signals going back and forth should not cross
paths with each other. Full-duplex systems, on the other hand, allow for
simultaneous transmission and reception of signals of the same frequency,
resulting in faster and more efficient data transfer.
However,
full-duplex systems require the elimination of self-interference, which can be
done in two ways - passive and active. Passive cancellation is done without any
additional instrument, by just designing the circuit in a certain way. Active
cancellation, on the other hand, relies on additional components like signal
processing units to cancel out the self-interference. The components needed for
active cancellation can make the antenna bulky and expensive, which is not
ideal.
The IISc team has developed an antenna that relies on passive interference, allowing it to operate as a full-duplex system. The antenna consists of two ports, either of which can act as transmitter or receiver, and is isolated from each other by electromagnetic tools called metallic vias. These vias are holes drilled into the metal surface of the antenna which disrupt the electric field, allowing for the cancellation of most of the interference passively.
"We
are eliminating all the conventional techniques for self-interference
cancellation, and we are integrating a very simple structure that can be
installed in a car,” says Jogesh Chandra Dash, an IoE-IISc postdoctoral fellow
who worked on the project.
The
antenna developed by the IISc team has several advantages over traditional
antennas. Firstly, it eliminates the need for active interference cancellation
components, which makes it cost-effective and compact. Secondly, it relies on
passive interference cancellation, which makes it simpler to design and
integrate into existing devices. Finally, it is optimized for full-duplex
operation, which facilitates faster and more efficient data transfer.
In
the immediate future, the team plans to optimize their device so that it can
entirely remove passive interference and reduce the overall size of the
antenna. Once this is achieved, the antenna can be easily installed onto a
vehicle, facilitating the transmission and reception of data at very high
speeds. This will bring driverless operation as well as 6G mobile connectivity
closer to reality.
The development of advanced antennas is crucial to the realization of next-generation communication technologies like 6G. The IISc team's work on full-duplex communication antennas that rely on passive interference cancellation is a significant step towards the development of cost-effective and efficient communication systems that can power the future of V2X communications.
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