| NSF Org: |
CNS Division Of Computer and Network Systems |
| Recipient: |
|
| Initial Amendment Date: | September 24, 2015 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | July 16, 2018 |
| Award Number: | 1564477 |
| Award Instrument: | Continuing Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Murat Torlak
CNS Division Of Computer and Network Systems CSE Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering |
| Start Date: | August 1, 2015 |
| End Date: | June 30, 2021 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $445,768.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $445,768.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
FY 2015 = $103,355.00 FY 2016 = $96,356.00 FY 2017 = $97,833.00 FY 2018 = $100,775.00 |
| History of Investigator: |
|
| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
845 N PARK AVE RM 538 TUCSON AZ US 85721 (520)626-6000 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
|
| Primary Place of Performance: |
888 N Euclid Avenue Tuscon AZ US 85721-0001 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
|
| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
|
| Parent UEI: |
|
| NSF Program(s): | Networking Technology and Syst |
| Primary Program Source: |
01001516DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01001617DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01001718DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01001819DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT |
| Program Reference Code(s): |
|
| Program Element Code(s): |
|
| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.070 |
ABSTRACT
The ever-growing number of wireless systems and the scarcity for available spectrum necessitates highly efficient spectrum sharing among disparate wireless networks. Many of them are heterogeneous in hardware capabilities, wireless technologies, or protocol standards. The resulting cross-technology interference (CTI) can be detrimental to the performance of co-locating networks if not properly mitigated. Current interference management approaches mostly follow the interference-avoidance paradigm, where transmissions are separated in frequency, time, or space to enable spectrum sharing, rather than to reduce or eliminate interference. This project explores cooperative interference mitigation (CIM), a new coexistence paradigm among heterogeneous multi-hop wireless networks. By exploiting recent advances in multi-input multi-output (MIMO) interference cancellation (IC) techniques, the proposed approach allows disparate networks to cooperatively cancel/mitigate their CTI to enhance everyone?s performance. This research focuses on the following objectives: 1) Develop tractable models/frameworks to analyze the theoretical limits and performance bounds of CIM for heterogeneous multi-hop networks, considering various forms of network heterogeneity; 2) Study the incentives of CIM through a novel game theoretic framework, that characterizes the conditions of mutual cooperation and thwarts selfish or malicious behavior; 3) Design distributed performance-approaching algorithms to achieve CIM and integrate them into practical network/MAC layer protocols, by exploiting machine learning tools and implicit inter-system communications. The expected outcomes also include the development of various simulation toolkits and system prototypes for experimental validation.
The integrated education plan includes cross-discipline curriculum development, student mentoring and outreach. The proposed research will have broad impacts on unplanned heterogeneous multi-hop networks that share spectrum resources, such as current and future networks in unlicensed bands, and secondary networks in TV white spaces. Applications will benefit multiple domains including healthcare, energy, emergency services and military etc. Major results will be disseminated via conference and journal publications, software packages, talks and tutorials.
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.
The objective of this project is to develop the theoretical foundation and protocol design of a new coexistence paradigm among heterogeneous MIMO networks (single or multi-hop), called cooperative interference mitigation (CIM). It explores interference cancellation (IC) techniques to enhance the performance of network coexistence and security. Major research outcomes from this project include: (1) Theoretical limits and performance bounds of CIM for heterogeneous multi-hop MIMO networks: We proposed and offered a thorough study of the CIM paradigm for heterogeneous multi-hop networks in unplanned settings. We first show that general technology-independent interference cancellation (TIIC) is feasible for heterogeneous multi-hop networks with different protocol standards, and then studied the theoretical throughput limit of CIM using different interference cancellation (IC) techniques. (2) Incentive study of CIM: We showed the feasibility of CIM via a game-theoretic study of the incentives of heterogeneous networks that interfere with each other, as well as strategies to deal with non-cooperative behavior. (3) Applications of CIM, and protocol design: We applied the principle of CIM to real-world applications, such as enhancing the coexistence between LTE and Wi-Fi in the unlicensed band. We proposed new MAC protocols that enable concurrent transmissions by using successive interference cancellation (SIC) techniques to enhance the total throughput and fairness. We also demonstrated the feasibility of this by implementing a prototype cross-technology SIC decoder using a USRP based experimental platform. In addition, we proposed implicit sensing-based techniques to infer topological information and interference relationship, and coordinate the channel access decisions across networks with different technology, without explicitly communicating with each other. (4) Enhancing wireless security: we proposed novel techniques of using interference cancellation to prevent reactive jamming attacks in heterogeneous networks, as well as techniques to ensure message integrity and authentication in wireless channels by preventing signal cancellation attacks. In addition, the results of this project also bridges the gaps between information theory and wireless networking, due to the study of secure degrees of freedom in multi-hop networks.
The research results from this project have been disseminated to the research community and impacted the current active research on cross-technology network coexistence, interference management, cross-layer optimization, wireless network security, and incentive mechanism design. The investigation of benefits of cooperation for the coexistence of heterogeneous networks, such as LTE and WiFi in the unlicensed bands with interference cancellation capabilities, yielded a couple of insights on how to improve spectrum sharing efficiency and incentives of cooperation, which may impact policy in dynamic spectrum sharing. The research results have been disseminated by publications in journals (e.g., IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing) and presentations have been made in premier conferences, such as IEEE International Conference on Computer Communication (INFOCOM), Annual IEEE International Conference on Sensing, Communication and Networking (SECON), ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks (WiSec), etc. On education activities, the PI has integrated the research to enrich the curriculum of three graduate/undergraduate courses at UofA (in the form of course assignments or student projects), as well as outreach to undergraduate/high school students leveraging existing REU programs and summer apprenticeship programs.
Last Modified: 10/26/2021
Modified by: Ming Li
Please report errors in award information by writing to: awardsearch@nsf.gov.
