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。由于我们的无线基础架构，我们几乎涉及互联网。无线连接还不仅仅是访问信息。无线互联网已使从咖啡壶到无人机或特斯拉的设备广度上遥控。即使没有人类用户，无线网络也可以连接机器对机器通信的设备，并且使我们不断增长的人工智能基础架构可以从遥感者中消耗大量数据。随着数据需求的不断增加，研究界正在寻求新型技术来支持无线的未来。这包括对光学无线通信（OWC）作为超密集无线网络的候选技术的新兴趣。高速OWC链接取得了广泛的进展。但是，考虑到密集环境中多用户和多细胞OWC系统的部署时，存在开放的挑战。该领域的许多现有工作都是基于理论或模拟的，并具有最小的实验验证。这种趋势是由于公开访问和潜在的OWC波形实时信号处理功能的工具包的可用性有限。考虑到过去二十年来RF通信的进步，RF社区显然受益于软件定义无线电（SDR）的概念（SDR）和相关的RF信号处理工具。也就是说，SDR通过减少进入的障碍并使研究人员可以物理实例化新颖的想法，从而为无线通信研究创造了更加公平的机会。该项目将通过开发与广泛使用的SDR软件和设备集成的开源OWC工具包来为OWC带来好处。该工具包将允许研究人员实施和分析多细胞/多用户OWC网络的新技术。工具包的工作流程量表从低级模拟到实时实验分析，包括探索各种研究问题的机会，这些研究可以实现室内OWC网络的实际部署。开发的软件工具和硬件部署剧本将重点关注与密度OWC网络中多个访问，间间干扰和移交相关的测试系统。该项目还可以评估需要分布式发射器的光学无线系统，包括动态范围适应，空间调制和室内定位。最后，考虑了设备的使用表征，以便深入了解密集网络中的设备运动/方向。最终的表征最终将提高旨在在移动设备存在下评估高度方向通信系统的模拟准确性。该项目在基本OWC研究和引入工具方面具有优点，以实现OWC社区的未来贡献。 OWC系统的实验分析将与理论工作进行基线比较，以验证理论/模拟模型，或者识别在建模此类系统时可能被忽略的独特特征。移动设备使用情况的表征还将通过改善室内无线网络规模的动态设备的模型来为研究社区提供价值。总而言之，该项目将为各种多电池/多用户OWC系统以及一个开源平台提供基线实验分析，该平台使其他OWC研究人员可以将新颖的系统设计思想带入实验系统中。这样，基于SDR的OWC工具的引入将使OWC系统中的实验研究更容易被以前专注于理论建模或仿真的研究人员，以及那些希望在OWC中制定研究计划的人。该奖项反映了NSF的法规任务，并被认为是通过基金会的知识优点和广泛的cristia criperia crigitia criperia the Insportaucation通过评估而被认为是宝贵的。