ERI: SDR Beyond Radio: Enabling Experimental Research in Multi-Node Optical Wireless Networks via Software Defined Radio Tools and Techniques

ERI：超越无线电的 SDR：通过软件定义无线电工具和技术实现多节点光无线网络的实验研究

• 批准号: 2347514
• 负责人: Michael Rahaim
• 金额: $ 20万
• 依托单位: University of Massachusetts Boston
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2024
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2024-08-01 至 2026-07-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2347514&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: ERI; SDR; Beyond; Radio; Enabling

The wireless communications ecosystem continues to be the most influential enabling technology in modern society. We have near-ubiquitous Internet access because of our wireless infrastructure. Wireless connectivity also allows for more than access to information. The wireless Internet of Things has enabled remote control over a breadth of devices – from a coffee pot to a drone or a Tesla. Even in the absence of a human user, wireless networks connect devices in machine-to-machine communications, and they allow our ever-growing artificial intelligence infrastructure to consume massive amounts of data from remote sensors. As data demand continues to increase, the research community is looking towards novel technologies to support the future of wireless. This includes a renewed interest in optical wireless communication (OWC) as a candidate technology for ultra-dense wireless networks. There has been extensive progress in highspeed OWC links; but there are open challenges when considering deployment of multi-user and multi-cell OWC systems in dense environments. Much of the existing work in this area is based in theory or simulation with minimal experimental validation. This tendency is due to the limited availability of toolkits that are openly accessible and possess real-time signal processing capabilities for OWC waveforms. Considering the advancements in RF communications over the past two decades, the RF community has clearly benefited from the concept of software defined radio (SDR) and related tools for RF signal processing. Namely, SDR has created a more equitable opportunity for research in wireless communications by reducing the barrier to entry and making it more feasible for researchers to physically instantiate novel ideas. This project will bring the benefits of SDR to OWC through development of an open-source OWC toolkit that integrates with widely used SDR software and equipment. The toolkit will allow researchers to implement and analyze novel techniques for multi-cell/multi-user OWC networks.The toolkit’s workflow scales from low-level simulation to real-time experimental analysis, including opportunities to explore a variety of research problems that would enable practical deployment of indoor OWC networks. The developed software tools and hardware deployment playbooks will focus on test systems related to multiple access, intercell interference, and handover in dense OWC networks. This project also enables evaluation of optical wireless systems that require distributed transmitters – including dynamic range adaptation, spatial modulation, and indoor positioning. Lastly, device usage characterization is considered in order to provide a deeper understanding of device motion/orientation in dense networks. The resulting characterization will ultimately improve the accuracy of simulations that aim to evaluate highly directional communication systems in the presence of mobile devices. The project offers merit in fundamental OWC research and in the introduction of tools to enable future contributions from the OWC community. The experimental analysis of OWC systems will provide a baseline comparison with theoretical work to either validate theoretical/simulated models or recognize the unique characteristics that may have been overlooked in modeling such systems. Characterization of mobile device usage will also offer value to the research community by improving models for dynamic devices at the scale of indoor wireless networks. In summary, this project will provide baseline experimental analysis for a variety of multi-cell/multi-user OWC systems along with an open-source platform that allows other OWC researchers to bring novel system design ideas to fruition in experimental systems. In this way, the introduction of SDR-based OWC tools will make experimental research in OWC systems more accessible to OWC researchers who have previously focused on theoretical modeling or simulation, and to those who are looking to develop a research program in OWC.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.

无线通信生态系统仍然是现代社会中最具影响力的技术，因为我们的无线基础设施几乎无处不在，无线连接还可以实现远程控制。各种各样的设备——从咖啡壶到无人机或特斯拉，即使在没有人类用户的情况下，无线网络也可以在机器对机器通信中连接设备，它们使我们不断增长的人工智能基础设施能够消耗大量的资源。来自远程传感器的数据量不断增加。研究界正在寻找支持无线未来的新技术，其中包括对作为超密集无线网络候选技术的光无线通信（OWC）重新产生了兴趣。但是，当考虑在密集环境中部署多用户和多小区 OWC 系统时，该领域的许多现有工作都是基于理论或模拟，而实验验证却很少。这种趋势是由于可用性有限。可公开访问并拥有实时信号的工具包考虑到过去二十年射频通信的进步，射频社区显然受益于软件定义无线电（SDR）的概念以及射频信号处理的相关工具。该项目将通过开发与广泛使用的 SDR 集成的开源 OWC 工具包，为 OWC 带来 SDR 的优势，从而降低进入门槛并让研究人员更容易实际实例化新想法，从而为无线通信研究提供机会。该工具包将允许研究人员实施和分析多小区/多用户 OWC 网络的新技术。该工具包的工作流程从低级模拟到实时实验分析，包括探索各种研究的机会。所开发的软件工具和硬件部署手册将重点关注与密集 OWC 网络中的多址接入、小区间干扰和切换相关的测试系统。分布式发射机 – 包括动态范围最后，考虑设备使用特征，以便更深入地了解密集网络中的设备运动/方向，最终提高旨在评估高度定向通信系统的模拟的准确性。该项目在 OWC 基础研究和引入工具方面具有优势，以便 OWC 社区未来做出贡献。 OWC 系统的实验分析将提供与理论工作的基线比较，以验证理论/模拟。建模或识别独特的特征在对此类系统进行建模时，移动设备使用情况的表征也将通过改进室内无线网络规模的动态设备模型为研究界提供价值。总之，该项目将为各种类型的实验提供基准分析。多小区/多用户 OWC 系统以及开源平台使其他 OWC 研究人员能够在实验系统中实现新颖的系统设计思想，通过这种方式，基于 SDR 的 OWC 工具的引入将进行实验研究。 OWC 系统中的 OWC 研究人员更容易使用以前专注于理论建模或模拟，以及那些希望在 OWC 中开发研究项目的人。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。