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Cyprus-Israel Collaboration for State–of-the-Art Telecommunication Technology

The KIOS Research Center has recently joined forces with two leading SMEs, RIO Systems of Israel and SignalGeneriX of Cyprus, in the framework of the project entitled “Full-Duplex Radio for LTE Communication Systems (FUPLEX)”. The project is part of the “Bilateral Cooperation” programs funded by the Research Promotion Foundation of Cyprus and the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor of Israel.

The project aims to investigate full-duplex (FD) radio, that is, the ability of wireless terminals to transmit and receive information simultaneously at the same time and over the same frequency band, from both an experimental and a theoretical perspective. The ever expanding world of wireless communications has motivated the need for new technologies to increase data rates and improve the utilization of the radio spectrum. Indeed, some of the requirements for 5G networks are to be able to provide service for up to 100 billion devices and provide data rates of at least 10 Gbps in certain scenarios. The novelty and main results of the FUPLEX project will be a new theoretical and technical framework for the FD radio technology which will help towards this direction. Furthermore, the impact of the project can help advance the state of the art in the area of FD radio.

The implementation of the FD technology will allow access points, such as base stations in cellular networks, as well as WiFi routers, to serve twice the number of devices compared to current standards due to the FD’s ability to transmit and receive over the same frequency and time slot. Moreover, the implementation of FD radio can be beneficial to relay networks. In such networks, repeaters are placed between the transmitter and the receiver, with the purpose of receiving and retransmitting the wireless signal, thus increasing the throughput and coverage of the network. Relaying is used in situations where the installation of wired connections is challenging and/or costly, as for example tunnels. Therefore, given the FD technology’s potential, the performance and efficiency of relay networks can be increased significantly. To this end, the main expected outcome of the project is the development of an FD repeater for Long Term Evolution (LTE) indoor environments which will incorporate sophisticated signal processing techniques and novel antenna designs. The end product is anticipated to be of interest to the public, affecting everyday life by providing an efficient and low-cost solution for improving the wireless network coverage and quality-of-service in indoor environments. This repeater is expected to be ready for commercialization within three years by the two involved industry partners.

The FUPLEX project brings together experts with complementary backgrounds in wireless communication systems. The KIOS research team, led by the coordinator of the project, Prof. Ioannis Krikidis, has a strong theoretical background in communication systems and wireless communications with proven research experience in FD radio. SignalGeneriX, a Cyprus based R&D company, has a long established experience in developing products and processes in Digital Signal Processing and Communications. RIO Systems is based in Israel and has extensive experience in developing integrated circuits and radio platforms and offers an extensive intellectual properties (IP) portfolio facilitating the implementation of new products. This collaboration promises to create a strong scientific relationship between academic and industry partners from the two countries which will help in the rapid and efficient accumulation of knowledge for all interested parties and will result in common future research proposals, as well as the development and commercialization of novel technologies for the telecommunications industry.

The project FUPLEX, protocol no. ΔΙΑΚΡΑΤΙΚΕΣ/ΚΥ-ΙΣΡ/0114/02, is funded by the Research Promotion Foundation of Cyprus under the action “Cyprus – Israel” of the “Bilateral Cooperation” program.