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Fakultät für Elektrotechnik und Informationstechnik

CNI at High-profile Event on NRW's Digitalization Strategy

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CNI has been invited to present its latest 5G research results at the Digitalkonferenz.NRW. Following the invitation of Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia Armin Laschet and Minister of Economics and Digital Affairs Prof. Dr. Andreas Pinkwart, over 500 guests from politics, business, science, culture and society came together to discuss the digital strategy for North Rhine-Westphalia with the state government on October 26, 2018.

At our booth we presented a 5G mmWave antenna tracking system, implementing a mmWave link at 28 GHz between a fixed base station equipped with a highly directional and electrically steerable pencil beam antenna and an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). Beamforming and pencil beam antennas are expected to become a major component of 5G mmWave New Radio networks. While spatial separation and high gains are anticipated benefits, the suitability of those new antenna types in highly dynamic scenarios, such as the use on UAVs, requires appropriate real–time steering capabilities and needs to be proven in practice. In our testbed, a rail system is customized to generate precisely reproducible mobility trajectories of the UAV. In case the antennas are aligned within a given error margin, a stable air–to–ground highspeed connection (up to 3 Gbps) can be observed during the flight experiments.

Further information can be found in the press release of the state government, WDR news report and on the CPS.HUB NRW project website.

More information on first research results can be found in the following publication:

K. Heimann, J. Tiemann, S. Böcker, C. Wietfeld, "On the Potential of 5G mmWave Pencil Beam Antennas for UAV Communications: An Experimental Evaluation", In 22nd International ITG Workshop on Smart Antennas (WSA 2018), VDE Verlag GMBH Berlin und Offenbach, März 2018.