TITANIA — Distributed 6G Electromagnetic Signal Processing Lab
The TITANIA lab - distributed 6G electromagnetic signal processing (EMPS) lab - is a new research infrastructure being established at AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, Center for Digital Safety and Security, Vienna, Austria. It is funded by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) under the Technologieinfrastrukturförderung 2025 programme.
The lab will provide three key innovations:
- 1. FR3 spectrum access (7–20 GHz) and FR1 (0 - 6 GHz )
- 2. Distributed radio units with fiberoptic synchronisation
- 3. Electromagnetic signal processing (EMSP) with intelligent metasurfaces
It can operate in three different modes:
- Distributed multi-static sensing and communication with directly fed antennas (baseline distributed MIMO measurement infrastructure).
- Single radio unit EMSP with metasurface for energy-efficient multi-user communication and integrated sensing.
- Full distributed EMSP with 10 radio units (each with 2 RF chains and a metasurface) coherently synchronised over a multi kilometre coverage radius.
Lab Infrastructure
New Equipment
- Software defined radio (SDR) transceivers (USRP X420, Emerson/NI) — covering 10 MHz–20 GHz; programmable via Xilinx RFSoC FPGA using the open-source RFNoC and UHD frameworks and GNURadio.
- Distributed optical synchronisation system — phase and frequency coherent operation of distributed radio units
- Stacked intelligent metasurface (SIM) hardware
Lab Infrastructure at AIT
- Semi-anechoic room for metasurface characterisation
- Massive MIMO channel sounding testbed and mmWave channel sounder
- Real-time geometry-based hardware-in-the-loop channel emulator
- Spectrum analyser (mmWave band), vector network analyser up to 70 GHz
- Arbitrary waveform generators for RF frequencies up to the mmWave band
- Rubidium clocks for accurate and synchronised time measurements
- Antenna and amplifier setups for below 6 GHz and mmWave bands
- Optical camera-based 6 degrees-of-freedom (DoF) tracking system (<1 mm accuracy)
Industry Partners
- Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB) — reliable radio communication and sensing for cost-efficient automated train operation on branch lines.
- Siemens AG Österreich — metasurfaces for reliable radio communication and sensing.
Research Projects
Currently Running
- RISILIENT (FFG, 01.2025–12.2027, Siemens Austria) — RIS-enabled reliable and efficient wireless communication. Develops transmissive intelligent metasurfaces and core EMSP communication and sensing algorithms as a direct input to TITANIA.
- DEDICATE 6G (AIT Principal Scientist Grant, 01.2021–12.2025) — Revolutionary physical layer technologies for reliable, energy-efficient and low-latency 6G communication and sensing systems, focusing on distributed MIMO, RIS control and design, and multi-band operation.
- FUTURE (ERJU, 12.2022–11.2026, ÖBB) — Numerical ray-tracing simulation model for wireless communication in railway branch-line scenarios to support automated train operation (ATO).
- FUTURE2 (ERJU, 10.2026–03.2029, ÖBB) — Innovative Rail Services to Revitalise Capillary Lines. Will establish a distributed MIMO measurement system for a large-scale railway demonstrator in Austria, using the TITANIA distributed FR1/FR3 SDR infrastructure.
Lab Access and Contact
Access will be offered to industry- and research-partners at transparent, non-discriminatory terms. A baseline technical support and FPGA/software building blocks for SDR operation (RFNoC, GNURadio) will be provided for fast experimental setup.
Inquiries regarding research collaborations, lab access, or test campaigns are welcome at thomas.zemen(at)ait.ac.at.