High Accuracy Timing for Critical National Infrastructure and 5G/6G Radio Spectrum Management

This project will consider future requirements for high accuracy timing in mobile/wireless networks, which have evolved to be part of the UK's CNI (critical national infrastructure) but is now vulnerable to failure due a loss of access to accurate timing for synchronisation. Research will be conducted in collaboration with key partners, Surrey 5G/6G Centre, and NPL National Timing Centre.

In addition to the CNI requirements, the current spectrum 'crunch' at low and mid-band frequencies, means that there is a very high demand for more spectrum to facilitate more and new services at higher data rates in both uplink and downlink.

To address the CNI issues and spectrum demand, spectrum sharing and dynamic spectrum access (DSA) to allow sharing of key radio frequency bands, will require reliable, national (both urban and rural), and always available high accuracy timing support - ideally from UK managed assets. Aligning with the "Security and Resilience" theme, and EPSRC ICT theme, this project will investigate provision of high accuracy timing from UK assets (LEOs & timing nodes).

Researchers will build (AMD based) FPGA enabled RF sampling solutions to demonstrate how to acquire key timing (from radio/LEO) and then manage timing for dynamic spectrum management to allow more efficient use and access to UK spectrum assets. A target endeavour is to show that spectrum monitoring and high accuracy timing can allow up to 5x's capacity increase by allowing access to unused or quiet radio frequency bands.