The 5G-and-Beyond cellular networks promise UAVs with ultra-reliable low-latency control, ubiquitous coverage, and seamless swarm connectivity under complex and highly flexible multi-UAV behaviours in three-dimension (3D), which will unlock the full potential of UAVs. This so-called cellular-connected UAVs (C-UAVs) system creates a radically different and rapidly evolving networking and control environment compared to conventional terrestrial networks: 1) The UAV-ground BS/user channels enjoy fewer channel variations due to their dominant line-of-sight (LOS) characteristics, which imposes severe air-ground interference to the coexisting BSs/users in the uplink/downlink. 2) Operating in existing cellular networks designed mainly for dominate downlink traffic (e.g., video), the UAVs with high data rate requirement in uplink payload uploading, and ultra-reliable low-latency communication (URLLC) requirement in downlink command and control communication can hardly be satisfied. 3) Maintaining seamless connectivity for mission-centric UAV swarms with 3D high mobility is essential for UAV cooperation but extremely challenging. 4) Controlling a swarm of UAVs to accomplish complex tasks with limited human supervision under the connectivity constraints is of capital importance but challenging. The above challenges can hardly be solved via conventional model-driven approaches, which are limited to performance evaluation or optimisation at one time instant in an offline or semi-offline manner, relying on given ideal probabilistic channel models without time correlation. Meanwhile, the future cellular networks in 5G-and-Beyond moves towards an open, programmable, and virtualised architecture with unprecedented data availability. Both facts mandate a fundamental change in the way we model, design, control, and optimise the C-UAVs system, from reactive/incident driven decoupled networking and control operation to proactive/ data-driven joint network and control design. This project has the ambitious vision to develop artificial intelligence (AI)-powered C-UAVs system with full network automation and conditional control automation, that allow for joint design and optimization of the network operation and the UAVs control in real-time with minimum human supervision and the target of mission completion under the long-term quality of service (QoS) guarantees. The project will engage with the end-users to exploit the C-UAVs applications in surveillance and emergency services in urban areas. Our results on network automation and control automation will directly benefit the telecom manufacturers (e.g., Ericsson AB, Toshiba Europe, AccelerComm), and broader UAV industries (e.g., Airborne Robotics, Thales, Northrop Grumman) internationally with foreseeable industrial impact. The NGMN and CommNet will facilitate the dissemination of the research outcomes nationally and internationally. The development, implementation, and testing of our proposed solutions serve as a platform towards the commercialisation of our research outcomes, putting the UK at the forefront of the "connected aerial vehicles" revolution.

Future wireless systems are expected to constitute an ultra dense wireless network, which supports billions of smart wireless devices (or machines) to provide a wide varieties of services for smart homes, smart cities, smart transportation systems, smart healthcare, and smart environments, etc., in addition to supporting conventional human-initiated mobile communications. Therefore, the communication technologies employed in future wireless communication systems are expected to be capable of coping with highly diverse service requirements and communication environments, both of which also have time-varying nature. However, the legacy wireless systems, such as LTE/LTE-A, have been primarily designed for human-initiated mobile communications, which rely on strict synchronisation guaranteed by a substantial signalling overhead. Explicitly, due to this overhead legacy systems are inefficient for device-centric mMTC. Furthermore, they are unable to support the massive connectivity required by the future mMTC networks, where devices heavily contend for the limited resources available for communications. This project is proposed at the time, when myriads of smart wireless devices of different types are being deployed and connected via the Internet, which is expected to be the next revolution in the mobile ecosystem. To fulfil these objectives, a new design paradigm is required for supporting the massive number of wireless devices having diverse service requirements and unique traffic characteristics. In this project, we propose to meet the challenges of future mMTC by investigating and designing novel non-orthogonal multiple access, flexible duplexing, and adaptive coherent-noncoherent transmission schemes, as well as new waveforms that are tailored for the future mMTC systems. We aim for alleviating the strict synchronism demanded by the legacy wireless systems, and for significantly improving their capabilities, network performance as well as the lifetime of autonomous mMTC nodes. The novelties of this project are summarized as follows. 1. New non-orthogonal sparse code multiple access (SCMA) schemes will be developed for mMTC systems, where the number of devices exceeds the number of available resource-slots, resulting in an over-loaded or a generalized rank-deficient condition. 2. Novel multicarrier waveforms will be designed for future mMTC in order to maximize spectrum efficiency by minimizing the overhead for achieving synchronisation as well as for reducing the out-of-band radiation. 3. By jointly exploiting the resources available in the time, frequency and spatial domains, we will design noncoherent, partially-coherent and adaptive coherent-noncoherent transmission schemes, in order to strike the best possible trade-off among overhead reduction, energy and spectral efficiency, latency and implementation complexity in practical mMTC scenarios. 4. We will investigate the full potential of the multicarrier-division duplex (MDD) scheme and, especially, its applications to future mMTC by synergistically combining it with novel multicarrier waveforms, non-orthogonal SCMA techniques and other high-efficiency transmission schemes developed within the project. 5. Furthermore, the key techniques developed in the project will be prototyped and integrated into the 5G Innovation Centre (5GIC) test bed facilities at the University of Surrey. This will allow us to demonstrate the viability of our new design approaches, as well as to accelerate knowledge transfer and commercialisation. The proposed research will be conducted jointly by the 5GIC at the University of Surrey and Southampton Wireless (SW) at the University of Southampton, led by Xiao, Tafazolli, Yang & Hanzo. The research and commercial exploitation of the project will be further consolidated by our partnership with experienced academic and industrial partners.

The properties of light are already exploited in communications, the Internet of Things, big data, manufacturing, biomedical applications, sensing and imaging, and are behind many of the inventions that we take for granted today. Nevertheless, there is still a plethora of emerging applications with the potential to effect positive transformations to our future societies and economies. UK researchers develop cutting-edge technologies that will make these applications a reality. The characteristics of these technologies already surpass the operating wavelength range and electronic bandwidth of our existing measurement equipment (as well as other facilities in the UK), which currently forms a stumbling block to demonstrating capability, and eventually generating impact. Several important developments, relating for example, to integrated photonic technologies capable of operating at extremely high speeds or the invention of new types of optical fibres and amplifiers that are capable of breaking the traditional constraints of conventional silica glass technology, necessitate the use of ever more sophisticated equipment to evaluate the full extent of their capabilities. This project aims at establishing an open experimental facility for the UK research community that will enable its users to experiment over a wide range of wavelengths, and generate, detect and analyse signals at unprecedented speeds. The new facility will enable the characterisation of signals in time and will offer a detailed analysis of their frequency components. Coherent detection will be possible, thereby offering information on both the amplitude and phase characteristics of the signals. This unique capability will enable its users to devise and execute a range of novel experiments. For example, it will be possible to experiment using signals, such as those that will be adopted in the communication networks of the future. It will make it possible to reveal the characteristics of novel devices and components to an extent that has previously not been possible. It will also be possible to analyse the response of experimental systems in unprecedented detail. The facility will benefit from being situated at the University of Southampton, which has established strong experimental capabilities in areas, such as photonics, communications and the life sciences. Research at the extended cleanroom complex of Southampton's Zepler Institute, a unique facility in UK academia, will benefit from the availability of this facility, which will enable fabrication and advanced applications research to be intimately connected. Furthermore, this new facility will be attached to EPSRC's National Dark Fibre Facility - this is the UK National Research Facility for fibre network research, offering access and control over the optical layer of a dedicated communications network for research-only purposes. The two together will create an experimental environment for communications research that is unique internationally.

Fast data rate communication over wireless networks like 5G and WiFi has become immensely important to our society, influencing livelihoods, economy and security on every level. The recent experience of home working has highlighted our dependence on reliable and resilient high-speed connectivity, in particular, real-time and streaming video services over wireless networks. These trends are set to grow and with them the need for more data traffic in support of the metaverse, holographic telepresence and cyber-physical systems delivered via a global network of networks. To address this future internet, research into 6G networks is underway and central to this new connectivity paradigm is the use of sub-terahertz electromagnetic waves, which bring bandwidths above 10GHz to achieve data rates above 1 Tbit/s. At the heart of realising the 6G ambition is the design of the radio system from the choice of waveform, through transceiver circuits and signal processing to protocols for controlling the flow of data over the air-interface. The SDR6G+ facility proposed here aims to support the UK's academic and industrial sectors undertaking research and development into 6G radio systems by providing a versatile capability to experimentally test at full scale and across realistic environments all aspects of the radio system performance. The facility will enable users to take research from fundamental concepts at Technology Readiness Level 1 to technology demonstration at Technology Readiness Level 6, thereby accommodating academic and industry interests. These capabilities will be achieved via a cutting-edge SDR platform incorporating advanced waveform generation, multiple over-the-air sub-terahertz paths, extreme wide bandwidth digitisation and software control of the signals and system. These capabilities allow full performance characterisation at the system as well as device and component level. The versatility of the SDR6G+ platform will enable different types of users to experimentally evaluate their research concepts and prototypes. For example, user groups studying waveforms will be able to synthesise new waveforms and evaluate their behaviour and resilience over realistic sub-terahertz channels. User groups researching power amplifiers, low noise amplifiers, bandpass filters and antennas will be able to characterise their devices and assess their impact on 6G radio performance. Users researching digital acquisition will be able to test direct sub-terahertz sampling schemes to determine optimum SDR architectures. Users studying medium access control protocols will be able to measure throughput performance on realistic end-to-end transmission channels. A major facet of the facility will be its ability to produce raw data for machine learning/ artificial intelligence applications used at the Physical layer. The facility is both timely and important and will position the UK at the international forefront of new radio systems research and development for 6G networks and beyond. The facility will support the UK requirement for national capabilities in advanced wireless communication systems aimed at addressing major challenges in a rapidly changing international landscape. For example, to develop energy efficient radio technologies for disaggregated network standards, which facilitate the UK's supplier diversification and 2050 net-zero targets. The facility will support a broad cross-section of the UK telecommunications industry including mobile radio and satellite vendors, and their supply chains. Importantly, the facility will train and inspire diverse cohorts of future UK academic and industrial leaders and innovators in a holistic, collaborative, and vibrant cross-disciplinary environment.