The Internet is expanding towards mobile wireless connectivity rapidly. However, to enable this for increasing numbers of users and connected devices, and increasingly bandwidth-, processing power- and energy-hungry applications, will require a transformation in the way in which current mobile and wireless networks perform. Shorter wireless distances (small cells, picocells, femtocells) and different network types for the connection (WiFi, 3G, 4G, 5G) depending on the availability and suitability for different applications, is a process that is already happening and expected to continue. This will manifest itself with simpler remote radio heads providing coverage in otherwise difficult to penetrate locations (and the main processing functions gathered together in a centralised pool of base station baseband units), and with the appearance of new wireless standards. NIRVANA takes this evolution and proposes a transformative step: the incorporation of fast, hardware-based, network monitoring, and intelligence (using the monitoring/gathered information) close to the pool of base stations. The proximity of the intelligence enables low-overhead control of a range of operational functions, which allow users to be moved from one connection type to another, according to their application and the load on the network, and to match the network's resources precisely to user needs. It allows energy efficiency to be optimised throughout the network and in the mobile device, too. The latter is augmented by locating the computing resources for a "mobile cloud" near the base station pool. Some processing is offloaded to the mobile cloud instead of being done on the mobile, and even some mobile-to- mobile communication may be done within this cloud - saving the mobile device (and the network) energy that would have been used in radio transmissions. Finally, among the new wireless connection types to be investigated, millimetre-wave communications, using the most up-to-date releases of the wireless local area network standard (802.11ad/j), will be fashioned into a device-to-device mesh network, for mobile distributed caching, which will be shown to further enhance the capacity of the network and its energy efficiency.

Global demand for broadband communications continues to increase substantially every year. A major factor contributing to this demand is the growing number of fixed and mobile broadband users, data-hungry applications like video as well as an ever-increasing number of network-connected everyday objects and machines. It is forecast that by 2020 the number of network-connected devices will reach 1000 times the world's population while data volumes transported over networks will progressively grow to Zettabytes and upwards. These trends pose entirely new challenges related to data volume, granularity, end-to-end connectivity and reach as well as increasing heterogeneity in network technologies (i.e. wireless and wired), networked-connected devices (i.e. sensors, mobile phones, computers, TVs, Data Centres) and services (i.e. Tbps data transfer for e-science, ultra-low latency financial transaction, real-time media streaming, kbps for sensor-based monitoring). Addressing these challenges necessitates radically new network models supporting convergence of traditionally separate network technology domains and offering high flexibility and adaptability in data granularity and throughput. TOUCAN aims to achieve ultimate network convergence enabled by a radically new technology agnostic architecture targeting a wide range of applications and end users. This architecture will facilitate optimal interconnection of any network technology domains, networked devices and data sets with high flexibility, resource and energy efficiency, and will aim to satisfy the full range of Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of Experience (QoE) requirements. TOUCAN will realise its goals by including the network infrastructure and its control as part of the end-to-end service delivery chain. Important enablers will be that of separating the data and control planes, which will rely on Software Defined Networking (SDN) principles. TOUCAN will drastically evolve SDN to incorporate fundamentally new technology-specific interfacing and resource description followed by infrastructure resource abstraction, virtualisation and programmability. These features will enable any network technology and device to become "TOUCAN-ready" which means that the devices are programmable and interoperable. This is the foundation upon which the technology-agnostic feature of the TOUCAN architecture will be realized; thereby ultimate seamless end-to-end convergence will be achieved. TOUCAN will revolutionize the way we build and operate communication networks in a similar way that computer networks and more recently mobile terminals were transformed from platform-oriented to platform-agnostic solutions (e.g. through Linux and Android) and will drive towards commoditisation of network devices. Any new technology generation, regardless whether wired or wireless, will connect to the TOUCAN network in a plug-and-play fashion. Our research will open up a new network innovation eco-system, which will allow for the first time applications to compose, deploy and program their own virtual network infrastructures, as part of the service delivery mechanism to optimally support their specific and very diverse requirements. Such an environment will be able to adapt to challenging and unpredictable infrastructure and service evolution scenarios, meeting future application requirements. This highly challenging £12M project will bring together an Internationally renowned team of academics for a period of 5 years, allowing in depth technical exploration based on holistic and radical thinking in order to achieve the project goals. 58 person years of postdoctoral researcher time are requested for TOUCAN while the Universities have allocated a further 30 person years or more of PhD students. The TOUCAN consortium includes an impressive list of external partners who collectively are committing critical and tangible resources in excess of £3.6M.

In recent years there has been a huge explosion in the use of mobile devices such as smartphones, laptop computers and tablets which require a wireless connection to the internet. Numbers are forecast to reach 40 billion worldwide by 2020 as areas as diverse as the home, transport, healthcare, military and infrastructure experience increasing levels of embedded 'smart' functionality and user operability. Major applications such as future 5G communications systems, the Internet of Things and Autonomous Vehicles are driving this technology. At present wireless systems operate at frequencies up to 6GHz. However, there is a growing realisation that the spectrum below 6GHz cannot support the huge data rates being demanded by future users and applications. The next step is to develop technologies utilising much higher frequencies to give data rates compatible with future demand. Currently, world licencing bodies such as ETSI and ITU have identified millimetre wave frequencies up to 90 GHz as most likely for this expansion in the spectrum. Strategically, the UK must develop wireless technologies to compete on the world stage and increase its competitiveness particularly in competition with the Far East. Superfast 5G level Telecoms infrastructure is central to the Industrial Strategy Green Paper, which the UK government has been championing and highlighting in the ten pillars of combined strategy. Two technology bottlenecks in millimetre wave receivers, which are important aspects of future communication systems, are: 1) current receiver architectures are unable to directly digitise millimetre wave signals with acceptable power consumption, and 2) antenna arrays are not sufficiently frequency agile. This project aims to address both bottlenecks using new techniques developed on the FARAD project. The proposed research will embrace the co-design of antennas, filters and amplifiers with track-and-hold-amplifiers, analogue-to-digital-convertors and digital down conversion. This will result in new receiver architectures for fully digital massive MIMO systems. The techniques and architectures developed in this project will enable future high-frequency networks to operate efficiently in the new millimetre wave transmission bands. The research will have far-reaching consequences for solving the wireless capacity bottleneck over the next 20 to 30 years and keeping the UK at the forefront of millimetre wave technology and innovation.

We are living through a revolution, as electronic communications become ever more ubiquitous in our daily lives. The use of mobile and smart phone technology is becoming increasingly universal, with applications beyond voice communications including access to social and business data, entertainment through live and more immersive video streaming and distributed processing and storage of information through high performance data centres and the cloud. All of this needs to be achieved with high levels of reliability, flexibility and at low cost, and solutions need to integrate developments in theoretical algorithms, optimization of software and ongoing advances in hardware performance. These trends will continue to shape our future. By 2020 it is predicted that the number of network-connected devices will reach 1000 times the world's population: there will be 7 trillion connected devices for 7 billion people. This will result in 1.3 zettabytes of global internet traffic by 2016 (with over 80% of this being due to video), requiring a 27% increase in energy consumption by telecommunications networks. The UK's excellence in communications has been a focal point for inward investment for many years - already this sector has a value of £82Bn a year to the UK economy (~5.7% GDP). However this strength is threatened by an age imbalance in the workforce and a shortage of highly skilled researchers. Our CDT will bridge this skills gap, by training the next generation of researchers, who can ensure that the UK remains at the heart of the worldwide communications industry, providing a much needed growth dividend for our economy. It will be guided by the commercial imperatives from our industry partners, and motivated by application drivers in future cities, transport, e-health, homeland security and entertainment. The expansion of the UK internet business is fuelled by innovative product development in optical transport mechanisms, wireless enabled technologies and efficient data representations. It is thus essential that communications practitioners of the future have an overall system perspective, bridging the gaps between hardware and software, wireless and wired communications, and application drivers and network constraints. While communications technology is the enabler, it is humans that are the producers, consumers and beneficiaries in terms of its broader applications. Our programme will thus focus on the challenges within and the interactions between the key domains of People, Power and Performance. Over three cohorts, the new CDT will build on Bristol's core expertise in Efficient Systems and Enabling Technologies to engineer novel solutions, offering enhanced performance, lower cost and reduced environmental impact. We will train our students in the mathematical fundamentals which underpin modern communication systems and deliver both human and technological solutions for the communication systems landscape of the future. In summary, Future Communications 2 will produce a new type of PhD graduate: one who is intellectually leading, creative, mathematically rigorous and who understands the commercial implications of his or her work - people who are the future technical leaders in the sector.

The Communications sector is a vital component within the UK economy, with revenues in this area totalling around 129B. Recognised as a key enabler of telecommunications, broadcasting and ICT, communications is also poised to be a transformational technology in areas such as energy, the environment, health and transport. The UK is well placed to reap the full economic and social benefits enabled by communications and investment in a CDT, embracing the breath and reach of the discipline, will help to facilitate our economic recovery and growth and enhance our global standing.There is a serious and growing concern over the future availability of suitably skilled staff to work in the communications sector in the UK. International competition is fierce, with large investments being made by competitor countries in research and in the training of personnel. IT and telecoms companies in the UK are reporting difficulties in attracting candidates with the right skills. In this context, the National Microelectronics Institute and the IET have warned that the ICT sector is facing a growing recruitment crisis with little confidence that the problem will improve in the short or medium term. Various organisations (eg DC-KTN and Royal Academy of Engineering) with support from industry are addressing this issue but acknowledge that it cannot be achieved without relevant high quality under- and postgraduate degrees through which specialist skills can be obtained.To address this shortage, a new Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in 'Future Communication' is proposed. The University of Bristol has a world leading reputation in this field, focused on its Centre for Communications Research (CCR), but built on close collaboration between colleagues from Mathematics, Computer Science, Safety Systems and industry. Our vision is to establish a world-leading research partnership which is focused on demand and firmly footed in a commercial context, but with freedom to conduct academically lead blue skies research.The Bristol CDT will be focused on people: not just as research providers, but also as technology consumers and, importantly, as solutions to the UK skills shortage. It will develop the skilled entrepreneurial engineers of the future, provide a coherent advanced training network for the communications community that will be recognised internationally and produce innovative solutions to key emerging research challenges. Over the next eight years, the CDT will build on Bristol's core expertise in Efficient Systems and Enabling Technologies to engineer novel solutions, offering enhanced performance, lower cost and reduced environmental impact. The taught component of the Programme will build on our MSc programme in Communication Systems & Signal Processing, acknowledged as leading in the UK, complemented by additional advanced material in statistics, optimisation and Human-Computer Interaction. This approach will leverage existing commitment and teaching expertise. Enterprise will form a core part of the programme, including: Project Management, Entrepreneurship, Public Communication, Marketing and Research Methods. Through its research programme and some 50 new PhD students, the CDT will undertake fundamental work in communication theory, optimisation and reliability. This will be guided by the commercial imperatives from our industry partners, and motivated by application drivers in Smart Grid, transport, healthcare, military/homeland security, safety critical systems and multimedia delivery. While communications technology is the enabler it is humans that are the consumers, users and beneficiaries in terms of its broader applications. In this respect we will focus our research programme on the challenges within and interactions between the key domains of People, Power and Performance.