Planning Grant: Engineering Research Center for Agricultural and Rural Connectivity (ARC)

规划资助：农业农村互联互通工程研究中心（ARC）

• 批准号: 2124376
• 负责人: Mehmet Vuran
• 金额: $ 10万
• 依托单位: University of Nebraska-Lincoln
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-09-01 至 2023-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2124376&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Planning; Grant; Engineering; Research; Center

The Planning Grants for Engineering Research Centers competition was run as a pilot solicitation within the ERC program. Planning grants are not required as part of the full ERC competition, but intended to build capacity among teams to plan for convergent, center-scale engineering research.Eighty percent of the 24 million Americans without high-speed Internet live in rural areas. This lack of broadband access severely limits the quality of life for rural residents and is a major source for potential global conflict over agricultural resources in the face of climate change and a growing population. The urban-rural digital divide is generally attributed to a lack of economic incentives resulting from low population density. As the population density in rural communities decreases, the density of connected devices in agricultural fields steadily increases. As a result, we are likely witnessing the evolution of a new digital gap between farm fields and rural towns exacerbated by outdated policy that prevents the realization of novel network architectures. As such, existing agricultural practices are limited (and therefore defined) by previous connectivity technologies, which were not designed for the unique characteristics of agricultural fields. The Engineering Research Center for Agricultural and Rural Connectivity (ARC) will unite engineers, computer scientists, agronomists and animal scientists, social scientists, education/outreach specialists, industry, municipalities, government agencies, and community stakeholders to bridge the urban/rural digital divide. ARC will engineer novel rural connectivity architectures and solutions, enhance rural communities' digital literacy to expand and utilize connectivity solutions, broaden participation of underserved and underrepresented rural communities in engineering research and development, and leverage a blossoming Silicon Prairie ecosystem to connect research solutions with commercial enterprises. ARC will advance fundamental research, provide workforce training, and foster the innovation ecosystem required to answer the connectivity challenges of rural communities. Its diverse team will identify economic drivers and policy constraints for rural connectivity (society), associated rural use cases (scientific community), and corresponding connectivity requirements (engineering community) – all toward solving critical real-world problems. ARC recognizes that no single existing wireless technology can solve rural broadband connectivity issues. Therefore, this planning grant brings together diverse expertise in agricultural Internet of Things, vehicular networking, UAV communications, agricultural robotics, and precision livestock management to focus on five primary convergent research directions:1) Farm as an Anchor Institution architectures that combine expertise in wireless technologies, economics, telecom law, and agricultural sciences to enable breakthroughs in rural agriculture, health, education, and infrastructure. 2) Agile technology transfer for continuous integration of new communication solutions in parallel with research and development. 3) Agricultural robotics to replace high-horse-power tractors and boost productivity while reducing negative impacts on the environment. 4) Mobile connectivity architectures for extensive high-speed coverage. 5) Precision animal management to aid animal caretaking with the timing of animal marketing and improve detection of animal health and well-being concerns. By bridging the digital divide, these convergent research directions will stimulate rural prosperity and improve food security by connecting rural towns, schools, hospitals, farm fields, ranches, roads, and bridges. The ARC team will use the ERC planning grant to complete a series of activities designed to enhance partnerships with native-serving institutions and rural community colleges (DCI), develop a comprehensive engineering workforce development program (EWD), maintain and expand the existing stakeholder community toward a diverse and inclusive vision (DCI/IE/EWD), crystallize convergent research directions (CR), and enhance the ARC leadership and core team (CR/DCI/EWD/IE). To this end, a series of retreats will bring together a diverse stakeholder community from public, private, and academic sectors, along with an engineering student body, all of whom will be integrated into the center's activities.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

工程研究中心竞赛的计划赠款是在ERC计划中作为试点招标进行的。在全面的ERC竞争中，不需要计划赠款，但旨在在团队之间建立能力，以计划收敛的中心尺度工程研究。缺乏宽带通道严重限制了农村居民的生活质量，并且是面对气候变化和人口增长的农业资源潜在冲突的主要来源。城乡数字鸿沟通常归因于人口密度低的经济激励措施。随着农村社区的人口密度的下降，农业领域连接设备的密度稳步增加。结果，我们很可能正在见证农场和农村城镇之间新数字鸿沟的演变，而过时的政策加剧了阻止新型网络体系结构的实现。因此，现有的农业实践受到以前的连接技术的限制（并因此定义），这些技术并非是为农业领域的独特特征而设计的。工程研究中心农业和农村连通性（ARC）将团结工程师，计算机科学家，农艺学家和动物科学家，社会科学家，教育/外展专家，工业，市政当局，政府机构，政府机构和社区利益相关者，弥合城市/农村数字鸿沟。 ARC将设计新颖的农村连接架构和解决方案，增强农村社区的数字素养，以扩展和利用连接解决方​​案，扩大服务不足和代表性不足的农村社区在工程研究和发展中的参与，并利用盛大的硅草原生态系统将研究解决方案与商业企业联系起来。 ARC将进步基础研究，提供劳动力培训，并培养回答农村社区的连通性挑战所需的创新生态系统。其潜水员团队将确定经济驱动因素和政策限制，以实现粗糙连通性（社会），相关的粗糙用例（科学界）以及相应的连接要求（工程社区），所有这些都用于解决关键的现实世界中的问题。 ARC认识到，没有单一的现有无线技术可以解决粗糙的宽带连接问题。 Therefore, this planning grant brings together divers expertise in agricultural Internet of Things, vehicle networking, UAV communications, agricultural robotics, and precision livestock management to focus on five primary convergent research directions:1) Farm as an Anchor Institution architectures that combine expertise in wireless technologies, economics, telecom law, and Agricultural sciences to enable breakthroughs in rough agriculture, health, education, and 基础设施。 2）敏捷技术转移，用于与研究和开发并行连续整合新的通信解决方案。 3）农业机器人技术取代高马力拖拉机并提高生产力，同时降低对环境的负面影响。 4）移动连通性体系结构，用于广泛的高速覆盖范围。 5）精确的动物管理，以动物营销的时间和改善动物健康和福祉问题来帮助动物看护。通过弥合数字鸿沟，这些融合的研究指示将通过连接农村城镇，学校，医院，农场，牧场，道路和桥梁来刺激繁荣并改善粮食安全。 ARC团队将使用ERC计划赠款来完成一系列活动，旨在增强与本地服务机构和粗糙社区学院（DCI）（DCI）的伙伴关系，制定全面的工程劳动力发展计划（EWD），维护和维护和扩展现有的利益相关者社区，向潜水员和包容性的愿景（DCI/IE/EWD），以及CRENCERTIONS（CR CRENCTALL）（CR）（CR）（CR），CR CRENCENT（CR），ARC CORMENT（CR），ARC CORMENTINS（CR），并将其介绍（CR/DCI/EWD/IE）。为此，一系列的务虚会将从公共，私人和学术领域组合在一起，以及一个工程专业的学生团体，所有这些社区都将整合到该中心的活动中。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并被认为是通过评估基金会的智力和更广泛的影响来通过评估来珍贵的支持，并享受了珍贵的支持。

项目成果

ECHO: Empirical Characterization and Height Optimization of UAV-to-Underground Channels

• DOI: 10.1109/pimrc56721.2023.10293818
• 发表时间: 2023-09
• 期刊: 2023 IEEE 34th Annual International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC)
• 作者: Syed Muhammad Hashir;M. Vuran;J. Camp