WIRELESS FLEXIBLE PERSONALIZED COMMUNICATIONS	COST 259
Work Plan

Introduction

COST 259 had its kick-off meeting in Brussels in the beginning of April 1997 and, since then, two more meetings of the Management Committee were held, in Turin by mid May and Lisbon by mid September.  The number of people attending the meetings has been raising, achieving already (85 participants) the number of attendees of COST 231 (from which COST 259 is a successor), which shows that the interest in the area of the Action continues to be very high, as it happened in COST 231.  The work has progressed as initially planned, giving confidence that the global plan (see Technical Annex) will be carried out.

Work breakdown

Since the Action started in April 1997, the work concerning 1998 corresponds to, roughly, 1/3 of the 1st and 2/3 of the 2nd project years.  Accordingly, some tasks and subtasks will continue to be addressed and some new ones will start.

The subtasks where work will continue to be developed are:
Task 1 Radio System Aspects
 ___ access schemes
 ___ equalisation and interference control
Task 2 Propagation
 ___ comparison of propagation models
 ___ development of new models for the UHF, micro- and millimetre wave bands
Task 3 Antennas
 ___ study of environmental effects
 ___ smart antennas
Task 4 Network Aspects
 ___ spectrum efficiency
 ___ efficient protocols
Task 5 Measurement Uncertainties
 ___ measurement techniques
Task 6 Planning Methods
 ___ definition of input parameters
 ___ territorial databases
The new subtasks which will start working are:
Task 1 Radio System Aspects
 ___ flexible data rates
 ___ flexible Quality of Service
 ___ multicarrier/OFDM
 ___ wideband CDMA
 ___ synchronisation/channel estimation
Task 2 Propagation
 ___ propagation measurements
Task 3 Antennas
 ___ diversity schemes
 ___ beamforming networks
Task 4 Network Aspects
 ___ channel allocation strategies
 ___ distribute networks
Task 5 Measurement Uncertainties
 ___ impact on channel sounding, simulation and modelling
Task 6 Planning Methods
 ___ development of a systematic planning method

New Subgroups

Due to the success of previous similar experiences in COST 207 and COST 231, two Subgroups will be formed (the outputs of specific subgroups within those former Actions were a great success, since their main results were adopted by GSM, ETSI and ITU).  A first one is a Subgroup of Working Group 2, on “Directional Channel Models”, and it is expected that it will deliver channel models that include the directional information of the radio channel, e.g., for intelligent antennas.  A second one, of Working Group 3 on “Standard Scenarios for Frequency Planning”, has the goal to compare different frequency assignment algorithms.

Awareness of the Action

Besides the specific work to be done in the several tasks and subtasks, other actions are foreseen for 1998, in order to increase the awareness of the Action in the scientific world, to augment the collaboration with other research projects, and to spread the results that have been achieved in the meanwhile:
___ 3 member countries have already volunteered to host meetings in 1998, which are already in stage of preparation: Feb. 2-4, in Bern, Switzerland, hosted by the SwissCcom; Apr. 23-24, in Bradford, UK, hosted by the University of Bradford; Sep. 23-25, in Duisburg, Germany, hosted by IMST;
___ organization of a workshop (which is in an advanced phase of preparation) by the end of the 1st project year, together with COST 252, in Apr. 21-22, hosted by the University of Bradford, UK;
___ increase of collaboration with others COST Actions in areas related with this one, like COST 260 and the previously mentioned COST 252;
___ increase of collaboration with projects of the ACTS, SMT and ESPRIT frameworks;
___ submission of proposals for organisation of specific COST 259 sessions in major international conferences in the area of mobile communications, as for example “VTC-IEEE Vehicular Technology”, “PIMRC-International Symposium on Personal, Indoor, and Mobile Radio Communications”, “ISSSTA-International Symposium on Spread Spectrum Techniques and Applications”, and “EPMCC-European Personal and Mobile Communications Conference”.

Additionally, the effort on maintaining a “Web page” for the Action, and on increasing the information exchange via email will continue.
 

 COST 259 Vice-chairman
 (acting Chairman due to illness of the Chairman)
 

 Prof. Luis M. Correia
 IST , Lisboa, Portugal