11th Congress of the Portuguese Committee of URSI '' New technologies for mobility''

"New technologies for mobility" was the theme of 11th Congress of the Portuguese Committee of URSI (International Union of Radio Science), held on 24 November 2017 at the Fundação Portuguesa das Comunicações (Portuguese Communications Foundation), in Lisbon, chaired by Luisa Mendes, ANACOM’s Director of Spectrum Management and Chair of the Portuguese Committee of URSI.

The working session opened with presentations by João Cadete de Matos, Chair of ANACOM's Board of Directors, and Guilherme d'Oliveira Martins, Secretary of State for Infrastructure.

The opening speeches highlighted mobility as the major future trend, being the basis of the main technological revolution of the 21st century. As radio technologies evolve towards 5G, new frontiers are opened up for a connected future, which will necessarily change the way people interact, affecting social and professional relationships.

Intelligent mobility and the Internet of things will provide the development of digital, sustainable cities and increasingly faster, automated and intelligent transport systems. New technologies play a key role in facilitating the introduction of new paradigms, which introduce significant gains in security and efficiency and improve the quality of the services offered to users.

Throughout the day, there was an extensive programme of activities with very diverse panels, which surely stimulated a strong interest in all participants.

Carlos Salema, from Instituto de Telecomunicações (IT - Telecommunications Institute), moderated the first session, on “Challenges of Mobility”, inviting industry, academia, and the communications regulator to present their vision on the future of mobility, not only from the point of view of technology and infrastructure, but also in relation to the spectrum resources needed to make all these new paradigms possible in the short term.

João Batista, Director of Auditing and Management Control at Navegação Aérea (NAV), moderated the session about “Aerospace mobility”, which was attended by representatives from the aviation, aerospace, and Air Force sectors, all of them with solid know-how and strong experience in the technological domains under discussion.

In the afternoon, Rui Camolino, Chair of ITS Portugal (an association for the promotion of intelligent transport systems and services), moderated the session “Cooperative transport systems”, with prominent guests from the transport and infrastructure industry, who shared their views and disclosed interesting ongoing projects in this field.

This year there were two parallel sessions moderated by António Topa, from Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) and from IT, Pedro Cruz, from Controlar and Earlier Carrier of URSI, and Tiago Morgado, from the University of Coimbra, where the twelve pre-selected works were presented as candidates for the Best Student Paper Award, within the thematic areas of the scientific committees of the Portuguese Committee of URSI.

This was followed by the awards ceremony instituted by ANACOM, i.e., the ANACOM-URSI Portugal Prize, which awards the best research work in the field of radioelectricity, and the Best Student Paper Award, intended to encourage young authors.

João Monteiro Felício was the big winner of the ANACOM-URSI Portugal Prize, worth 4000 euros, for his research work of great scientific and social impact “Rastreio de Cancro da Mama por Microondas: Validação Experimental (Breast Cancer Screening by Microwaves: Experimental Validation)”.

João Felício gained his master’s in Electrotechnical and Computer Engineering at IST in 2014.  Besides being a PhD student at IST and a researcher at IT, he is also a visiting assistant professor at ISCTE - Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL) since September 2017. In 2015, at the 9th Congress of the Portuguese Committee of URSI, he won an award for the best poster presented by a student, with the work “Imagiologia por microondas para deteção de alvos em Phantoms Humanos utilizando um algoritmo de radar no domínio da frequência (Microwave imaging for detection of targets in Human Phantoms using a frequency domain radar algorithm)”.

The winner of the Best Student Paper Award was Carolina Gouveia, student of the Master in Electrotechnical and Telecommunications Engineering at the University of Aveiro, with the work “Bio-radar performance evaluation for different antenna design”.

In second place was Hafssaa Latioui, from IT, for the work “Electromagnetic transparency in a material with two distinct topological phases”, and third place went to Vera da Silva Pedras, from IST, for the work “Desenvolvimento de modelos de QoE (No Reference) para voz e Web Browsing baseados em medidas rádio 3G/4G (Development of QoE (No Reference) models for voice and Web browsing based on 3G/4G radio measurements)”.

At the closing session, Luísa Mendes took stock of the URSI activities, mentioning the 32nd General Assembly and the URSI Scientific Symposium that took place in Montreal in 2017, whose outcome was very positive for Portugal. This was because, for the first time, Portugal secured the election of a Vice-Chair on a scientific commission (Commission A – Electromagnetic Metrology: Electromagnetic Measurements and Standards), who, after this term of office, will take position of Commission Chair. About 10 Portuguese works were presented at the Assembly.

The next General Assembly of URSI will take place in 2020, in Rome, and the 2nd URSI Atlantic General Assembly will be held from 28 May to 1 June 2018, in Gran Canaria. A call for papers has already been launched and the deadline for submission is 10 January 2018.

With Pedro Cruz, Earlier Carrier of URSI’s Commission A providing the impetus, this year participants in the Best Student Paper Award had the chance to submit an extended version of the article submitted to the Congress for possible publication in the “Radio Science Bulletin”.

Articles accepted for publication will be included in issue no. 364 of the above magazine, to be published in March 2018. It contains peer-reviewed scientific articles covering the fields of interest of the ten URSI scientific commissions, as well as information items on URSI activities and items of interest to radio scientists and engineers.

Luísa Mendes also thanked for the interesting and diversified panels, which aroused considerable interest among the participants, but regretted, however that there was not enough time available for the discussion of many more issues related to intelligent mobility and the challenges ahead.

She congratulated the Congress once again for having accomplished its goals in terms of promoting and disseminating the research carried out in Portugal, also in terms of strengthening important ties of cooperation between academia, research, and entrepreneurs from the communications sector.