| NSF Org: |
CCF Division of Computing and Communication Foundations |
| Recipient: |
|
| Initial Amendment Date: | February 4, 2015 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | February 4, 2015 |
| Award Number: | 1464293 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Phillip Regalia
pregalia@nsf.gov (703)292-2981 CCF Division of Computing and Communication Foundations CSE Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering |
| Start Date: | August 15, 2015 |
| End Date: | July 31, 2018 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $174,890.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $174,890.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
|
| History of Investigator: |
|
| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
300 TURNER ST NW BLACKSBURG VA US 24060-3359 (540)231-5281 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
|
| Primary Place of Performance: |
1145 Perry St, 432 Durham (0350) Blacksburg VA US 24061-1019 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
|
| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
|
| Parent UEI: |
|
| NSF Program(s): | Comm & Information Foundations |
| Primary Program Source: |
|
| Program Reference Code(s): |
|
| Program Element Code(s): |
|
| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.070 |
ABSTRACT
Driven by unprecedented increase in mobile data traffic, cellular networks are undergoing a huge paradigm shift from a coverage-centric homogeneous deployment of high-power cell towers (base stations) to a more organic capacity-driven deployment that additionally includes various types of low-power base stations, collectively called small cells. To maintain deployment flexibility and limit operational costs, it is highly desirable that these base stations have a capability to power themselves through self-contained energy harvesting modules. The inherent unreliability associated with energy harvesting, however, combined withthe irregular locations of the small cells, makes it challenging to quantify the reliability of such "self-powered" heterogeneous cellular networks. This project aims to lay the foundations of these networks through new analytical tools and metrics. Self-powered base stations with additional capability to self-backhaul will result in a "truly wireless" cellular network thereby enabling a variety of "drop and play" deployments. Further broader impact of this project will be through research dissemination, education, broadening participation of students, and industry collaboration.
With the overarching goal of establishing fundamental performance limits for self-powered hetergeneous networks, this project adopts a cross-disciplinary approach involving tools from communications, information theory, and stochastic geometry. The first synergistic component of this project develops a new comprehensive model capable of capturing key characteristics of self-powered heterogeneous networks, such as the differences in the base station capabilities, irregularities in their deployments, and uncertainties in their energy levels. Powerful mathematical tools with foundations in stochastic geometry and point process theory lend tractability to this model, thereby allowing the formal analysis of new performance metrics unique to self-powered heterogeneous networks. For instance, due to the coupling of loads across base stations, when one base station drains out its energy, it may initiate a "cascade effect" taking the whole network down with it. The first suite of results characterizes this behavior and determines the regimes in which the network remains stable. Once stability is guaranteed, the second set of results focuses on the end-user performance in this new paradigm where the surviving base stations are not always guaranteed to have sufficient energy to serve all their load, thereby resulting in energy outages. Finally, these metrics are jointly analyzed with classical quality-of-experience metrics, such as downlink rate.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
Note:
When clicking on a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) number, you will be taken to an external
site maintained by the publisher. Some full text articles may not yet be available without a
charge during the embargo (administrative interval).
Some links on this page may take you to non-federal websites. Their policies may differ from
this site.
PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
This CRII award provided the mathematical foundations needed to incorporate energy harvesting capability in large-scale heterogeneous networks. The general intellectual merit of this project includes a new mathematical approach to the coverage, secrecy, and stability analysis of these self-powered networks by merging ideas from communications theory, energy harvesting communications, and stochastic geometry. The main technical contributions of this project can be best organized in the following three main categories: 1) Models: The first set of contributions involve developing new spatial models capable of capturing inherent spatial coupling that exists between different network entities, such as base stations and users. These models are based on ideas from Poisson cluster and Poisson hole processes. This project characterizes several distributional properties of these point processes, which have applications in many other areas beyond energy harvesting communications. 2) Metrics: The second set of contributions involve developing new metrics that jointly capture the wireless, energy harvesting, and secrecy aspects of these self-powered networks. Using the new spatial models discussed above, accurate mathematical characterization of these new metrics is provided in a variety of operational regimes of interest. 3) Stability: The third set of contributions involve exploring the notion of stability in solar-powered cellular networks. The need for this analysis arises because of the possibility of cascaded failures if no backup power sources are available at the solar-powered base stations. This is because when one base station drains its energy, its load will have to be transferred to its neighboring base stations, thus increasing their energy utilization rate and hence their chances of draining energy. Collectively, the proposed approach have contributed to a better understanding of how energy harvesting can be integrated in a large-scale communication network. The stochastic geometry-based models and results have broader applicability. For instance, the Poisson cluster process-based framework developed in this project has already found applications in device-to-device communications, heterogeneous cellular networks, and drone-assisted communications. The broader impacts of this project include: (i) Training of one graduate student to completion who is joining academia and will continue working on energy harvesting communications, (ii) Broad dissemination through publications in top IEEE venues, tutorials, seminars, and invited lectures, (iii) Outreach activities at Virginia Tech to introduce this research area to the general audience, and (iv) Integration of research results from this project in the graduate curriculum at Virginia Tech.
Last Modified: 03/14/2019
Modified by: Harpreet S Dhillon
Please report errors in award information by writing to: awardsearch@nsf.gov.
