| NSF Org: |
CNS Division Of Computer and Network Systems |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | August 17, 2015 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | August 27, 2018 |
| Award Number: | 1514285 |
| Award Instrument: | Continuing Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Monisha Ghosh
CNS Division Of Computer and Network Systems CSE Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering |
| Start Date: | September 1, 2015 |
| End Date: | August 31, 2019 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $800,000.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $800,000.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
FY 2016 = $344,842.00 FY 2018 = $214,639.00 |
| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
6100 MAIN ST Houston TX US 77005-1827 (713)348-4820 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
6100 Main ST Houston TX US 77005-1827 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | Networking Technology and Syst |
| Primary Program Source: |
01001617DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01001819DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT |
| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.070 |
ABSTRACT
The driving vision of this project is to develop the foundations to scale line-of-sight (LOS) Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) to Terabit/second (Tbps) throughput and to exploit Tbps LOS interconnections to form distributed arrays in lower frequency bands. Namely, this project first targets to scale millimeter-wave networks with wide aperture LOS spatial multiplexing, thereby overcoming a fundamental limit of the lack of rich multi-path channels at high frequency. The second target is to overcome the inability of high frequencies to penetrate objects and the inability of lower frequency devices to have large arrays on a single client due to physical device constraints. Surmounting these obstacles enables formation of all-wireless distributed arrays with unprecedented properties. The proposed research agenda will enable new dimensions for scaling WLAN throughput and range.This project targets to impact spectrum policy via demonstration of novel usage cases of emerging and diverse spectral bands. This project will show how a design based on wide aperture enables high frequency bands to scale to achieve previously impossible capacity gains. This project will impact standards bodies as it will show how enhancements to existing standards and fusion of diverse bands can yield vast performance gains. This project will impact industry through demonstration of results coupled with the investigators' extensive collaborative industry network. Finally, the project includes an inter-disciplinary education plan and the team includes multiple Ph.D. students from under-represented groups. This project will provide two integrated fundamental advances towards realizing a vision of scaling WLAN throughput and range. The first project thrust is development and fabrication of a wide aperture millimeter wave interconnect with pico-second scale synchronization. The key technique is combining widely-spaced radiating elements into a synchronized and coherent line-of-sight spatially multiplexed transmission. Second, the project exploits the diverse properties of spectrum spanning two orders of magnitude (100 times or 100x). By coupling the aforementioned millimeter wave interconnect (operating at 30 GHz to 300 GHz) with legacy bands (500 MHz to 5 GHz), the 100x architecture will enable long-range spatially multiplexed object-penetrating links. The design will enable a device with a single legacy-band antenna to spoof legacy-band MIMO infrastructure into performing full-rank transmission and reception. A key project outcome will be experimental proof-of-concept demonstrations of all scaling principles and the first experimental realization of distributed legacy-band spatial multiplexing for single legacy-band antenna devices, a mode enabled by tightly synchronized distributed antennas with 100x spectrum diversity.
Gigabit-per-second scale wireless transmission is now feasible: Driven by the wide spectrum availability at 60 GHz, multi-Gb/sec systems are already standardized in protocols such as IEEE 802.11ad and wireless HDMI and are available in commercial products and chipsets, including tri-band chips that support 60 GHz as well as legacy bands at 2.4 and 5 GHz. Moreover, the broad range of millimeter wave spectrum (30 GHz to 300 GHz) is considered a leading candidate by industry, regulators and the research community for the next generation of wireless systems. The project's objective is to realize the next order of magnitude in rate, directionality, and range, targeting both direct line-of-sight (LOS) paths and non-line-of-sight (NLOS) paths that must penetrate objects. The project's goal is to both explore the underlying foundations and to design and implement proof-of-concept systems to (i) realize a WLAN architecture that scales to Tbps via networked mm-wave antennas that form a large effective aperture and (ii) fuse diverse spectral bands spanning two orders of magnitude in order to scale client array size, and subsequently capacity, beyond the physical constraints of the device.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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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.
Our project advances the concepts of diverse spectrum by demonstrating the successful foundations of scaling WLAN throughput and range with wide aperture.
One of the targeted thrusts in this project is to achieve long-range spatially multiplexed object-penetrating links by exploiting the diverse properties of spectrum spanning two orders of magnitude (100x). Towards this goal, the project has resulted in the design of a custom system to achieve high data rate links in the mm-wave band despite device mobility (a key challenge limiting the high-rate capability of mm-wave transmissions in practical systems) by expanding our architecture to include spectrum in the visible light band (430-770 THz range). The design tracks device mobility by passively sensing changes in light intensity from indoor light sources and infers any changes in mm-wave beams at WATabit nodes to maintain high SNR links despite device mobility. We achieved robust and extremely fast mm-wave links to share data and CSI with very low latency, necessary to form a virtual array in the legacy band and thereby achieve uplink spatial multiplexing.
The project has also produced diverse spectrum spatial multiplexing (DSSM), the first system to enable uplink spatial multiplexing for clients with a single in-band antenna, where the DSSM client spoofs an unmodified AP to infer that the single-antenna client has an array. The project's architecture transparently couples antenna arrays in the legacy band and millimeter wave band, such that mobile devices use millimeter wave band to form a short range, wide band network to synchronize and share data, enabling multi-stream transmissions in legacy band with single antenna clients forming a virtual array.
The project further expanded diverse spectrum architecture with a novel system that steers mm-wave beams at mobile devices by repurposing indicator LEDs on wireless APs to passively acquire direction estimates using off-the-shelf light sensors. This platform exploits the intensity measurements of visible light sources to track device mobility, and continuously adapt mm-wave phased array antenna beams without requiring any in-band beam-search.
The projects development and fabrication of a wide aperture millimeter wave interconnect with picosecond scale synchronization includes a key proposed technique for scaling to Tb/sec, the realization of networked impulse-based transmitters.
The project implemented a fully integrated injection-locked picosecond pulse receiver for 0.29 psrms-jitter wireless clock synchronization in 65nm CMOS. We reported a picosecond pulse receiver based on a three-stage divide-by-8 injection-locked frequency divider. The receiver operates for pulses with center frequency of 77 GHz and locks its output to the 9.6-GHz repetition rate with an effective locking range of 142 MHz. This receiver, which consumes 42 mW dc power, is used to demonstrate wireless clock synchronization with a 0.29ps RMS timing jitter and indicates an estimated sensitivity of −65.5 dBm in detecting picosecond pulses.
The project produced a self-mixing picosecond impulse receiver with an on-chip antenna for high-speed wireless clock synchronization and a nonlinear impulse sampler for detection of picosecond pulses in 90 nm SiGe BiCMOS. Our Self-Mixing Picosecond Impulse Receiver with an On-Chip Antenna for High-Speed Wireless Clock Synchronization is the first receiver in silicon that can detect sub-6-ps electromagnetic pulses and use them for wireless time transfer.
Lastly, the project also achieved the first PIN diode-based THz pulse radiator implemented in a silicon-based process. The project's work, the reverse-recovery of a standard PIN diode device in 130-nm BiCMOS technology is used to generate THz-pulses (wideband frequency comb), which are radiated through a broadband on-chip antenna.
Last Modified: 12/20/2019
Modified by: Edward W Knightly
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