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Communications Systems

Foto: Enno Kapitza für DLR
Image: Enno Kapitza for DLR

The focus of the department Communications Systems is on the fields of

  1. communications for aircraft, drones, railways, road vehicles and ships,
  2. navigation in difficult environments and
  3. swarm exploration.

Cross-cutting topics of the department are estimation theory, transmission methods and channel modelling. Most of our topics have systemic aspects. We develop prototypes in all areas and carry out numerous measurement campaigns. Our research work is very well suited for doctoral studies. About half of all colleagues are currently working on their PhD.

In the field of communication, we are developing and standardising LDACS, the future global communication standard for air traffic management, together with numerous partners at home and abroad. LDACS will replace the analogue aeronautical radio used worldwide today in the long term. We are also developing data links for communication with unmanned, remote-controlled aircraft and with autonomously flying drones. In order to enable innovative railway concepts (next generation train), we are working on new communication methods for the railways and are focusing on communication between trains (train-to-train). For shipping, we are also involved in the development, demonstration and standardisation of new transmission procedures. The communication requirements and framework conditions for the above-mentioned modes of transport differ greatly from one another. For much of our work, we need detailed knowledge about wave propagation. We therefore carry out channel measurements in all relevant environments (ground-to-aircraft, satellite-to-aircraft, drone-to-drone, ship-to-ship, ship-to-shore, train-to-train, vehicle-to-vehicle), model the channel characteristics and contribute to the standardisation at the ITU-R.

With multi-sensor navigation methods, we enable accurate indoor navigation for pedestrians and aim to use a variety of smartphone and "wearables" sensors to provide accurate position at all times inside buildings and also in the diverse use of urban transport modes. In addition to the inside of buildings, tunnels are also inaccessible to satellite navigation signals. Therefore, we are developing new methods to determine the position of trains in tunnels, exploiting the strongly disturbed earth's magnetic field along the track with innovative methods (RailSLAM). Furthermore, we are designing and demonstrating new navigation procedures for swarms of rovers for missions on the Moon and Mars.

We are designing autonomous and decentralised exploration procedures for swarms of rovers and flying platforms to explore foreign planets and to support disaster control. We use swarms that can explore much faster than a single rover, that are robust against failures and that can observe physical phenomena such as gas leakage simultaneously from different locations.

 

 

Aeronautical Communications Group


The "Aeronautical Communications" Group designs digital radio systems for civil aviation and urban air transport. Applications for these systems include air traffic control (ATC), air traffic management (ATM), airline operational control (AOC), and control and monitoring of unmanned aerial systems (UAS) and their integration into civil airspace (UAS traffic management, UTM). The group is also active in various committees.
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Vehicular Applications Group


The research interests of the Vehicular Applications Group lie in the area of novel systems that combine robust navigation, ad-hoc communications and information processing. We are addressing applications such as safety-of-life relevant cooperative assistance systems for vehicles and collision avoidance systems for vehicles and trains, dynamic coupling of trains, ubiquitous and context aware pedestrian navigation, and activity estimation of pedestrians. Our work is conducted at experimental, simulative and theoretical levels. Much of our activity in the areas of navigation is at the signal processing level.
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Multimodal Personal Navigation Group


The focus of the Multimodal Navigation group is on researching solutions for multimodal passenger navigation in urban environments. Particularly important are public transport and sustainable individual transport modes that serve the first/last mile, such as cycling, e-scooters and walking. This group has long-standing expertise in developing sensor fusion techniques for pedestrian navigation in critical urban environments where satellite navigation is unavailable or prevented, such as train stations and airports.
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Mobile Radio Transmission Group


Research focus of the Mobile Radio Transmission group is positioning of mobile devices/users using radio signals, which besides GNSS comprise terrestrial cellular mobile communications systems and other dedicated wireless communications systems. The emphasis is on the integration of those different positioning technologies. In particular, methods are developed which exploit multipath propagation specifically for positioning. Furthermore, algorithms for cooperative positioning are designed. Such approaches are of high relevance for both mobile radio positioning and swarm navigation.
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Gruppe Cybersicherheitsarchitekturen


Die Gruppe Cybersicherheitsarchitekturen ist für den Entwurf und die prototypische Implementierung sicherer Systeme, Netzwerke und Anwendungen im Bereich der Kommunikation und Navigation verantwortlich. Domänenschwerpunkte sind hierbei die zivile Luftfahrt, der urbane Luftverkehr in Form von Unmanned Aeronautical Vehicles (UAV), die Schifffahrt, Schiene und im allgemeinen kritische Infrastrukturen. Dabei belaufen sich die Arbeiten der Gruppe zumeist auf den Schichten 2-4 des Netzwerkmodells.
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Swarm Exploration Group


The main focus of the group is in the research and development of novel data processing algorithms for autonomous exploration of unknown or complex environments with mobile robotic platforms, e.g., quadrocopters or rovers. The algorithms address aspects of data processing that include decentralized methods for data acquisition and collaborative decision making, as well as advanced computational tools for in-network data analysis. Our vision is that intelligent swarm-based robotic systems will become primary tools for autonomous exploration of extraterrestrial environments, especially in cases when a direct control from Earth is compromised or delayed. Moreover, such intelligent systems might also become indispensable for situation awareness in emergencies or disaster control scenarios, when the access to infrastructure is limited or becomes unavailable.
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Contact
Prof. Dr. Uwe-Carsten Fiebig
German Aerospace Center

Institute of Communications and Navigation
, Communications Systems
Tel.: +49 8153 28-2835

Fax: +49 8153 28 2676


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