Digital Transmission Concepts for Underground Communications UsingMagnetic Induction

• Applicant: Professor Wolfgang Gerstacker
• Subject Area: Electronic Semiconductors, Components and Circuits, Integrated Systems, Sensor Technology, Theoretical Electrical Engineering
• Term: from 2011 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 188424568

• Final Report Year: 2018

Final Report Abstract

In this project, we investigated and optimized various methods related to communication and signal processing in MI-WUSNs. We started with the information transmission and analyzed the potential of a single MI link in the underground environment in terms of channel capacity. The proposed optimization strategies have been employed for a network design, such that we were able to maximize the network throughput. Specific problems of signal transmission via a single MI link deployed in the underground medium have been addressed. The use of active relays for the enhancement of the system performance has been studied using various relaying techniques including full-duplex relaying. For this, a maximum ratio combining receiver has been utilized, which was the first step in the direction to a magnetic underground MIMO system. A distributed magnetic MIMO system deployed in a conductive environment has been considered for information transmission and showed promising gains. Also, we considered a distributed magnetic MIMO scheme for charging of the nodes’ batteries. The localization of a silent target node has been discussed. In further works, we addressed: • optimal orientation of coils in MI-WUSNs, which minimizes the interference for the bottleneck link; • topology and deployment optimization with respect to network throughput, if multiple passive relays are employed for signal transmission; • selection of modulation scheme for the individual links of MI-WUSNs (methods extended); • throughput maximization under assumption of practical signal processing components (combination of methods from our studies); • automatic disaster detection (based on channel estimation method; • beamforming for wireless power transfer from a single node equipped with multiple coils to multiple nodes equipped with a single coil each; • signal design for simultaneous information and power transfer to multiple power receivers and a dedicated information receiver. These works provided a deeper understanding of some aspects that were important for the project. Also, the recent achievements in the area of MI-WUSNs have been summarized. This provides an overview of the existing works in this area including the results of this project. The focus of the future work in the area of MI-WUSNs may lie on a multiobjective optimization, which would incorporate all the considered tasks including channel estimation, data gathering, localization, and charging. However, such an optimization problem is hard to solve and remains an open issue for future investigations.

Publications

• (2018) Survey on Advances in Magnetic Induction-Based Wireless Underground Sensor Networks. IEEE Internet Things J. (IEEE Internet of Things Journal) 5 (6) 4843–4856
  Kisseleff, Steven; Akyildiz, Ian F.; Gerstacker, Wolfgang H.
  
• “Channel capacity of magnetic induction based wireless underground sensor networks under practical constraints,” in Proc. IEEE WCNC, April 2013
  S. Kisseleff, W. Gerstacker, R. Schober, Z. Sun, and I. Akyildiz
  
• “Throughput of the magnetic induction based wireless underground sensor networks: Key optimization techniques,” IEEE Transactions on Communications, vol. 62, pp. 4426–4439, December 2014
  S. Kisseleff, I. Akyildiz, and W. Gerstacker
  
• “Transmitter-side channel estimation in magnetic induction based communication systems,” in Proc. of IEEE BlackSeaCom, May 2014
  S. Kisseleff, I. Akyildiz, and W. Gerstacker
  
• “Digital signal transmission in magnetic induction based wireless underground sensor networks,” IEEE Transactions on Communications, vol. 63, pp. 2300–2311, June 2015
  S. Kisseleff, I. Akyildiz, and W. Gerstacker
  
• “On capacity of active relaying in magnetic induction based wireless underground sensor networks,” in Proc. of IEEE ICC, June 2015
  S. Kisseleff, B. Sackenreuter, I. Akyildiz, and W. Gerstacker
  
• “Distributed beamforming for magnetic induction based body area sensor networks,” in Proc. of IEEE Globecom, December 2016
  S. Kisseleff, I. Akyildiz, and W. Gerstacker
  
• “Efficient charging of access limited magnetic induction based wireless underground sensor networks,” IEEE Transactions on Communications, vol. 64, pp. 2130–2142, May 2016
  S. Kisseleff, X. Chen, I. Akyildiz, and W. Gerstacker
  
• “Localization of a silent target node in magnetic induction based wireless underground sensor networks,” in Proc. of IEEE ICC, May 2017
  S. Kisseleff, X. Chen, I. Akyildiz, and W. Gerstacker
  
• “Magnetic induction based simultaneous wireless information and power transfer for single information and multiple power receivers,” IEEE Transactions on Communications, vol. 65, pp. 1396–1410, March 2017
  S. Kisseleff, I. Akyildiz, and W. Gerstacker