EXC 89:  Ultra High-speed Mobile Information and Communication (UMIC)

• Subject Area: Electrical Engineering and Information Technology
• Term: from 2006 to 2014
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 24144303

The goal of this cluster of excellence is the interdisciplinary design of systems for "Ultra high-speed Mobile Information and Communication (UMIC)" providing an order of magnitude improvement of the perceived quality of service. Concepts and demonstrators for smart, mobile, broadband, low-cost systems will be developed which support the demanding applications of the next-decade mobile internet. The research programme is structured into four research areas: The "Mobile Applications and Services" area has its focus on demanding key application classes and their interplay with the wireless transport. Representative applications of "Mobile Multimedia Processing and Peer-to-peer Mobile Information Processing" will be developed. The core area "Wireless Transport Platform" comprises the mobile devices and the wireless network architectures. The cognitive radio paradigm will be pursued consistently. Adaptive reconfigurability at the air interface, including multi-hop capabilities, will be provided, balancing between conflicting requirements concerning bit-rates, radio coverage, processing power, and power consumption. The goal is to achieve never seen spectrum efficiency, coexistence abilities, robustness and reliability, throughput capacities, and delay performance. In the research area "RF Subsystem and SoC Design" advanced integrated analog and digital circuits will be developed under the conflicting regimes of flexibility and energy efficiency, taking into account constraints of future technology such as current leakage and soft errors. The extreme complexity can only be handled by integrating large numbers of processors on a single chip. The UMIC approach will require new formal methods and software tools for design, optimisation, verification, and operation of components and systems which will be supported by the research area "Cross Disciplinary Methods and Tools". A test bed for proof of concepts and verification of solutions will be set up. The UMIC challenges with respect to performance will not be solvable on a single layer. The required tremendous leap in innovation can only be achieved by the truly cross-disciplinary approach, which brings together the necessary disciplines ranging from computer science via information theory and communications engineering to complex system-on-chip design.

• DFG Programme: Clusters of Excellence
• Applicant Institution: Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen
• Spokesperson: Professor Dr.-Ing. Gerd Ascheid
• Participating Researchers: Professor Dr.-Ing. Stefan Heinen; Professor Dr. Matthias Jarke; Professor Dr. Joost-Pieter Katoen; Professor Dr. Leif Kobbelt; Professor Dr.-Ing. Stefan Kowalewski; Professor Dr.-Ing. Rainer Leupers, Ph.D.; Professor Dr. Rudolf Mathar; Professor Petri Mähönen, Ph.D.; Professor Dr.-Ing. Jens-Rainer Ohm; Professor Dr. Wolfgang Thomas; Professor Dr.-Ing. Peter Vary; Professor Dr. Berthold Vöcking (†); Professor Dr.-Ing. Klaus Wehrle, Ph.D.