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Boffins set to reveal state of play on fully duplex comms - on the same FREQ

One of the things we might get in 5G, so worth a think

A conference at Bristol university is set to reveal the current state of the art on Full Duplex technology, which allows for transmitting and receiving signals on the same frequency at the same time.

The idea that a radio can simultaneously shout and listen has been regarded as both old, established technology and a bonkers debasement of physics. It's one of the more controversial proposals for 5G.

Kumu Networks told The Reg last year that it could double throughputs.

The idea behind the technology owes a lot to noise-cancelling headphones. The transmitter “knows” the signal it is sending and so can cancel that out from the signal it’s receiving. The difference must be what the other side is transmitting.

Simples.

Well, not quite. And that is the meat of the conference. Leo Laughlin, a PhD Student at the University of Bristol, has been researching methods for frequency duplexing and will explain how the necessary technology needs to be size and cost reduced to enable simultaneous transmission and reception from a single antenna. In his talk he shows a prototype full-duplex transceiver which combines Electrical Balance Isolation with active analogue cancellation to provide high transmit-to-receive isolation over wide bandwidths using low cost small form factor technologies.

Dr Samantha Caporal Del Barrio from Aalborg University will look at frequency-reconfigurable antennas, the ultimate goal being a mobile handset which can work on all of the 40 or so 4G frequencies at both FDD (frequency division) and TDD (time division) so that one phone can roam anywhere in the world.

Dr Mir Ghoraishi, from the 5G research establishment at the University of Surrey will look at what radio protocols need to be adopted for the new strange world of full duplex, and Ben Allen, Visiting Fellow from the Department of Engineering Science at the University of Oxford will take a sideways look at full duplex by having signals at the same frequency but using different orbital angular momentum.

The one-day day is being organised by Cambridge Wireless, which now claims to be a brand rather than just about Cambridge. This is A Good Thing as the event is in Bristol. It’s on July 8th and you can find details here. ®

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