Project acronym ATTO
Project A new concept for ultra-high capacity wireless networks
Researcher (PI) Piet DEMEESTER
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITEIT GENT
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), PE7, ERC-2015-AdG
Summary The project will address the following key question:
How can we provide fibre-like connectivity to moving objects (robots, humans) with the following characteristics: very high dedicated bitrate of 100 Gb/s per object, very low latency of <10 μs, very high reliability of 99.999%, very high density of more than one object per m2 and this at low power consumption?
Achieving this would be groundbreaking and it requires a completely new and high-risk approach: applying close proximity wireless communications using low interference ultra-small cells (called “ATTO-cells”) integrated in floors and connected to antennas on the (parallel) floor-facing surface of ground moving objects. This makes it possible to obtain very high densities with very good channel conditions. The technological challenges involved are groundbreaking in mobile networking (overall architecture, handover with extremely low latencies), wireless subsystems (60 GHz substrate integrated waveguide-based distributed antenna systems connected to RF transceivers integrated in floors, low crosstalk between ATTO-cells) and optical interconnect subsystems (simple non-blocking optical coherent remote selection of ATTO-cells, transparent low power 100 Gb/s coherent optical / RF transceiver interconnection using analogue equalization and symbol interleaving to support 4x4 MIMO). By providing this unique communication infrastructure in high density settings, the ATTO concept will not only support the highly demanding future 5G services (UHD streaming, cloud computing and storage, augmented and virtual reality, a range of IoT services, etc.), but also even more demanding services, that are challenging our imagination such as mobile robot swarms or brain computer interfaces with PFlops computing capabilities.
This new concept for ultra-high capacity wireless networks will open up many more opportunities in reconfigurable robot factories, intelligent hospitals, flexible offices, dense public spaces, etc.
Summary
The project will address the following key question:
How can we provide fibre-like connectivity to moving objects (robots, humans) with the following characteristics: very high dedicated bitrate of 100 Gb/s per object, very low latency of <10 μs, very high reliability of 99.999%, very high density of more than one object per m2 and this at low power consumption?
Achieving this would be groundbreaking and it requires a completely new and high-risk approach: applying close proximity wireless communications using low interference ultra-small cells (called “ATTO-cells”) integrated in floors and connected to antennas on the (parallel) floor-facing surface of ground moving objects. This makes it possible to obtain very high densities with very good channel conditions. The technological challenges involved are groundbreaking in mobile networking (overall architecture, handover with extremely low latencies), wireless subsystems (60 GHz substrate integrated waveguide-based distributed antenna systems connected to RF transceivers integrated in floors, low crosstalk between ATTO-cells) and optical interconnect subsystems (simple non-blocking optical coherent remote selection of ATTO-cells, transparent low power 100 Gb/s coherent optical / RF transceiver interconnection using analogue equalization and symbol interleaving to support 4x4 MIMO). By providing this unique communication infrastructure in high density settings, the ATTO concept will not only support the highly demanding future 5G services (UHD streaming, cloud computing and storage, augmented and virtual reality, a range of IoT services, etc.), but also even more demanding services, that are challenging our imagination such as mobile robot swarms or brain computer interfaces with PFlops computing capabilities.
This new concept for ultra-high capacity wireless networks will open up many more opportunities in reconfigurable robot factories, intelligent hospitals, flexible offices, dense public spaces, etc.
Max ERC Funding
2 496 250 €
Duration
Start date: 2017-01-01, End date: 2021-12-31
Project acronym Cathedral
Project Post-Snowden Circuits and Design Methods for Security
Researcher (PI) Ingrid VERBAUWHEDE
Host Institution (HI) KATHOLIEKE UNIVERSITEIT LEUVEN
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), PE7, ERC-2015-AdG
Summary Summary: Comprehensive set of circuits and design methods to create next generation electronic circuits with strong built-in trust and security.
Electronics are integrating/invading into the human environment at an amazing speed, called the Internet-of-Things and next the Internet-of-Everything. This creates huge security problems. Distributed (e.g. body) sensors, pick up often very private data, which is sent digitally into the cloud, over wireless and wired links. Protection of this data relies on high-quality cryptographic algorithms and protocols. The nodes need to be cheap and lightweight, making them very vulnerable to eavesdropping and abuse. Moreover, post-Snowden, society realizes that the attack capabilities of intelligence agencies, and probably following soon of organized crime and other hackers, are orders of magnitude stronger than imagined. Thus there is a strong demand to re-establish trust in ICT systems.
In this proposal we focus on the root of trust: the digital hardware. The overall objective is to provide fundamental enabling technologies for secure trustworthy digital circuits which can be applied in a wide range of applications. To master complexity, digital hardware design is traditionally split into different abstraction layers. We revisit these abstraction layers from a security viewpoint: we look at process variations to the benefit of security, standard cell compatible digital design flow with security as design objective, hardware IP blocks for next generation cryptographic algorithms and protocols (e.g. authenticated encryption schemes, post-quantum public key schemes), integration into embedded HW/SW platforms, and methods to provide trust evidence to higher levels of abstraction. To strengthen the security we investigate the links between the layers. Finally an embedded application is selected as design driver, the security evaluation of which will be fed back to the individual layers.
Summary
Summary: Comprehensive set of circuits and design methods to create next generation electronic circuits with strong built-in trust and security.
Electronics are integrating/invading into the human environment at an amazing speed, called the Internet-of-Things and next the Internet-of-Everything. This creates huge security problems. Distributed (e.g. body) sensors, pick up often very private data, which is sent digitally into the cloud, over wireless and wired links. Protection of this data relies on high-quality cryptographic algorithms and protocols. The nodes need to be cheap and lightweight, making them very vulnerable to eavesdropping and abuse. Moreover, post-Snowden, society realizes that the attack capabilities of intelligence agencies, and probably following soon of organized crime and other hackers, are orders of magnitude stronger than imagined. Thus there is a strong demand to re-establish trust in ICT systems.
In this proposal we focus on the root of trust: the digital hardware. The overall objective is to provide fundamental enabling technologies for secure trustworthy digital circuits which can be applied in a wide range of applications. To master complexity, digital hardware design is traditionally split into different abstraction layers. We revisit these abstraction layers from a security viewpoint: we look at process variations to the benefit of security, standard cell compatible digital design flow with security as design objective, hardware IP blocks for next generation cryptographic algorithms and protocols (e.g. authenticated encryption schemes, post-quantum public key schemes), integration into embedded HW/SW platforms, and methods to provide trust evidence to higher levels of abstraction. To strengthen the security we investigate the links between the layers. Finally an embedded application is selected as design driver, the security evaluation of which will be fed back to the individual layers.
Max ERC Funding
2 369 250 €
Duration
Start date: 2016-09-01, End date: 2021-08-31
Project acronym COSMOS
Project Semiparametric Inference for Complex and Structural Models in Survival Analysis
Researcher (PI) Ingrid VAN KEILEGOM
Host Institution (HI) KATHOLIEKE UNIVERSITEIT LEUVEN
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), PE1, ERC-2015-AdG
Summary In survival analysis investigators are interested in modeling and analysing the time until an event happens. It often happens that the available data are right censored, which means that only a lower bound of the time of interest is observed. This feature complicates substantially the statistical analysis of this kind of data. The aim of this project is to solve a number of open problems related to time-to-event data, that would represent a major step forward in the area of survival analysis.
The project has three objectives:
[1] Cure models take into account that a certain fraction of the subjects under study will never experience the event of interest. Because of the complex nature of these models, many problems are still open and rigorous theory is rather scarce in this area. Our goal is to fill this gap, which will be a challenging but important task.
[2] Copulas are nowadays widespread in many areas in statistics. However, they can contribute more substantially to resolving a number of the outstanding issues in survival analysis, such as in quantile regression and dependent censoring. Finding answers to these open questions, would open up new horizons for a wide variety of problems.
[3] We wish to develop new methods for doing correct inference in some of the common models in survival analysis in the presence of endogeneity or measurement errors. The present methodology has serious shortcomings, and we would like to propose, develop and validate new methods, that would be a major breakthrough if successful.
The above objectives will be achieved by using mostly semiparametric models. The development of mathematical properties under these models is often a challenging task, as complex tools from the theory on empirical processes and semiparametric efficiency are required. The project will therefore require an innovative combination of highly complex mathematical skills and cutting edge results from modern theory for semiparametric models.
Summary
In survival analysis investigators are interested in modeling and analysing the time until an event happens. It often happens that the available data are right censored, which means that only a lower bound of the time of interest is observed. This feature complicates substantially the statistical analysis of this kind of data. The aim of this project is to solve a number of open problems related to time-to-event data, that would represent a major step forward in the area of survival analysis.
The project has three objectives:
[1] Cure models take into account that a certain fraction of the subjects under study will never experience the event of interest. Because of the complex nature of these models, many problems are still open and rigorous theory is rather scarce in this area. Our goal is to fill this gap, which will be a challenging but important task.
[2] Copulas are nowadays widespread in many areas in statistics. However, they can contribute more substantially to resolving a number of the outstanding issues in survival analysis, such as in quantile regression and dependent censoring. Finding answers to these open questions, would open up new horizons for a wide variety of problems.
[3] We wish to develop new methods for doing correct inference in some of the common models in survival analysis in the presence of endogeneity or measurement errors. The present methodology has serious shortcomings, and we would like to propose, develop and validate new methods, that would be a major breakthrough if successful.
The above objectives will be achieved by using mostly semiparametric models. The development of mathematical properties under these models is often a challenging task, as complex tools from the theory on empirical processes and semiparametric efficiency are required. The project will therefore require an innovative combination of highly complex mathematical skills and cutting edge results from modern theory for semiparametric models.
Max ERC Funding
2 318 750 €
Duration
Start date: 2016-09-01, End date: 2021-08-31
Project acronym MAZEST
Project M- and Z-estimation in semiparametric statistics : applications in various fields
Researcher (PI) Ingrid Van Keilegom
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITE CATHOLIQUE DE LOUVAIN
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), PE1, ERC-2007-StG
Summary The area of semiparametric statistics is, in comparison to the areas of fully parametric or nonparametric statistics, relatively unexplored and still in full development. Semiparametric models offer a valid alternative for purely parametric ones, that are known to be sensitive to incorrect model specification, and completely nonparametric models, which often suffer from lack of precision and power. A drawback of semiparametric models so far is, however, that the development of mathematical properties under these models is often a lot harder than under the other two types of models. The present project tries to solve this difficulty partially, by presenting and applying a general method to prove the asymptotic properties of estimators for a wide spectrum of semiparametric models. The objectives of this project are twofold. On one hand we will apply a general theory developed by Chen, Linton and Van Keilegom (2003) for a class of semiparametric Z-estimation problems, to a number of novel research ideas, coming from a broad range of areas in statistics. On the other hand we will show that some estimation problems are not covered by this theory, we consider a more general class of semiparametric estimators (M-estimators called) and develop a general theory for this class of estimators. This theory will open new horizons for a wide variety of problems in semiparametric statistics. The project requires highly complex mathematical skills and cutting edge results from modern empirical process theory.
Summary
The area of semiparametric statistics is, in comparison to the areas of fully parametric or nonparametric statistics, relatively unexplored and still in full development. Semiparametric models offer a valid alternative for purely parametric ones, that are known to be sensitive to incorrect model specification, and completely nonparametric models, which often suffer from lack of precision and power. A drawback of semiparametric models so far is, however, that the development of mathematical properties under these models is often a lot harder than under the other two types of models. The present project tries to solve this difficulty partially, by presenting and applying a general method to prove the asymptotic properties of estimators for a wide spectrum of semiparametric models. The objectives of this project are twofold. On one hand we will apply a general theory developed by Chen, Linton and Van Keilegom (2003) for a class of semiparametric Z-estimation problems, to a number of novel research ideas, coming from a broad range of areas in statistics. On the other hand we will show that some estimation problems are not covered by this theory, we consider a more general class of semiparametric estimators (M-estimators called) and develop a general theory for this class of estimators. This theory will open new horizons for a wide variety of problems in semiparametric statistics. The project requires highly complex mathematical skills and cutting edge results from modern empirical process theory.
Max ERC Funding
750 000 €
Duration
Start date: 2008-07-01, End date: 2014-06-30
Project acronym RobSpear
Project Robust Speech Encoding in Impaired Hearing
Researcher (PI) Sarah Verhulst
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITEIT GENT
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), PE7, ERC-2015-STG
Summary The prevalence of hearing impairment amongst the elderly is a stunning 33%, while the younger generation is sensitive to noise-induced hearing loss through increasingly loud urban life and lifestyle. Yet, hearing impairment is inadequately diagnosed and treated because we fail to understand how the components that constitute a hearing loss impact robust speech encoding.
A recent and ground-breaking discovery in animal physiology demonstrated the existence of a noise-induced hearing deficit -cochlear neuropathy- that coexists with the well-studied cochlear gain loss deficit known to degrade the audibility of sound. Cochlear neuropathy is thought to impact robust encoding of the audible portions of speech and occurs before standard hearing screening methods indicate problems, implying that a large group of noise-exposed people with self-reported hearing problems is currently not screened, nor treated. To design effective hearing restoration strategies, it is crucial to understand how cochlear neuropathy interacts with other hearing deficits to affect robust speech encoding in every-day listening conditions.
Through an interdisciplinary approach, RobSpear targets hearing deficits along the ascending stages of the auditory pathway to revolutionize how hearing impairment is diagnosed and treated. RobSpear can yield immense reductions of health care costs through effective treatment of currently misdiagnosed patients and studies the impact of noise-induced hearing deficits on our society. To achieve this, RobSpear:
(i) Builds a hearing profile that, based on a computational model of the auditory periphery, develops physiological measures that differentially diagnose hearing deficits in listeners with mixtures of deficits.
(ii) Designs individually tailored speech enhancement algorithms that work in adverse conditions and target perceptually relevant speech features, using an unprecedented validation approach that combines novel psychoacoustic and physiological metrics.
Summary
The prevalence of hearing impairment amongst the elderly is a stunning 33%, while the younger generation is sensitive to noise-induced hearing loss through increasingly loud urban life and lifestyle. Yet, hearing impairment is inadequately diagnosed and treated because we fail to understand how the components that constitute a hearing loss impact robust speech encoding.
A recent and ground-breaking discovery in animal physiology demonstrated the existence of a noise-induced hearing deficit -cochlear neuropathy- that coexists with the well-studied cochlear gain loss deficit known to degrade the audibility of sound. Cochlear neuropathy is thought to impact robust encoding of the audible portions of speech and occurs before standard hearing screening methods indicate problems, implying that a large group of noise-exposed people with self-reported hearing problems is currently not screened, nor treated. To design effective hearing restoration strategies, it is crucial to understand how cochlear neuropathy interacts with other hearing deficits to affect robust speech encoding in every-day listening conditions.
Through an interdisciplinary approach, RobSpear targets hearing deficits along the ascending stages of the auditory pathway to revolutionize how hearing impairment is diagnosed and treated. RobSpear can yield immense reductions of health care costs through effective treatment of currently misdiagnosed patients and studies the impact of noise-induced hearing deficits on our society. To achieve this, RobSpear:
(i) Builds a hearing profile that, based on a computational model of the auditory periphery, develops physiological measures that differentially diagnose hearing deficits in listeners with mixtures of deficits.
(ii) Designs individually tailored speech enhancement algorithms that work in adverse conditions and target perceptually relevant speech features, using an unprecedented validation approach that combines novel psychoacoustic and physiological metrics.
Max ERC Funding
1 499 780 €
Duration
Start date: 2016-10-01, End date: 2021-09-30
Project acronym VNALG
Project Von Neumann algebras, group actions and discrete quantum groups
Researcher (PI) Stefaan Vaes
Host Institution (HI) KATHOLIEKE UNIVERSITEIT LEUVEN
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), PE1, ERC-2007-StG
Summary Von Neumann algebras, and more specifically II_1 factors, arise naturally in the study of countable groups and their actions on measure spaces. A central, but extremely hard problem is the classification of these von Neumann algebras in terms of their group/action data. Breakthrough results were recently obtained by Sorin Popa. I presented a combined treatment of these in my Bourbaki lecture notes. In a joint work of Popa and myself, this gave rise to the full classification of certain generalized Bernoulli II_1 factors. In a recent article of mine, it lead for the first time to a family of II_1 factors for which the fusion algebra of finite index bimodules could be entirely computed. Popa's methods open up a wealth of research opportunities. They bring within reach the solution of several long-standing open problems, that constitute the main objectives of the first part of this research proposal: complete descriptions of the finite index subfactor structure of certain II_1 factors, constructions of II_1 factors with a unique group measure space decomposition and computations of orbit equivalence invariants for actions of the free groups. Even approaching these problems would have been completely hopeless just a few years ago. Other constructions of von Neumann algebras arise in the theory of discrete quantum groups. The first rigidity results for quantum group actions on von Neumann algebras constitute the main objective of this second part of the research proposal. Finally, we aim to deal with another connection between quantum groups and operator algebras, through the study of non-commutative random walks and their boundaries. The main originality of this research proposal lies in the interaction between two branches of mathematics: operator algebras and quantum groups. This is clear for the second part of the project and occupies a central place in the first part through subfactor theory.
Summary
Von Neumann algebras, and more specifically II_1 factors, arise naturally in the study of countable groups and their actions on measure spaces. A central, but extremely hard problem is the classification of these von Neumann algebras in terms of their group/action data. Breakthrough results were recently obtained by Sorin Popa. I presented a combined treatment of these in my Bourbaki lecture notes. In a joint work of Popa and myself, this gave rise to the full classification of certain generalized Bernoulli II_1 factors. In a recent article of mine, it lead for the first time to a family of II_1 factors for which the fusion algebra of finite index bimodules could be entirely computed. Popa's methods open up a wealth of research opportunities. They bring within reach the solution of several long-standing open problems, that constitute the main objectives of the first part of this research proposal: complete descriptions of the finite index subfactor structure of certain II_1 factors, constructions of II_1 factors with a unique group measure space decomposition and computations of orbit equivalence invariants for actions of the free groups. Even approaching these problems would have been completely hopeless just a few years ago. Other constructions of von Neumann algebras arise in the theory of discrete quantum groups. The first rigidity results for quantum group actions on von Neumann algebras constitute the main objective of this second part of the research proposal. Finally, we aim to deal with another connection between quantum groups and operator algebras, through the study of non-commutative random walks and their boundaries. The main originality of this research proposal lies in the interaction between two branches of mathematics: operator algebras and quantum groups. This is clear for the second part of the project and occupies a central place in the first part through subfactor theory.
Max ERC Funding
500 000 €
Duration
Start date: 2008-09-01, End date: 2013-08-31
