Project Details
Description
The next era of spectrum is envisioned to have spatially and spectrally adjacent systems that are dynamic, resulting in frequent cross-system interference. Naturally, interference lies at the heart of spectrum sharing and involves a network of radio transceivers, distributed in space with varying behavior over time. Mechanisms used in the current and past eras of spectrum management, have all run up against limitations owing to the cost and potential lack of scalability of such solutions. Cost is relevant to hardware complexity of the radio front-end, which, for the case of higher frequencies in the-tens of gigahertz-regime, becomes even more critical. Computational complexity of the proposed algorithms, coordination among the network terminals required for the proposed solutions (and necessary power and bandwidth resources for such coordination), and finally, distributed channel estimation (and the necessary resources to acquire such information) all contribute to the complexity. This project enables affordable, accurate, near-real-time spectrum situational awareness, including simple spectrum sensing algorithms, distributed mechanisms, and relevant spectrum sensing hardware. In addition, this project targets mechanisms at the physical layer that provide some form of radio waveform protection against malicious or unwanted interference, without modifying the core of the existing radio infrastructure. This work puts forth both spectrum situational awareness and protection from interference, exploiting ultra-low complexity radio hardware and non-coherent techniques; the basic idea lies at the heart of backscatter radio, which enables a fabric of low-complexity backscatter tags for said objectives. These tags are controlled through the receiver/gateway, connected to the cloud, without however requiring channel state information (CSI) regarding any of the involved links.The proposed fabric offers an intelligent, yet low-cost solution with minimal hardware complexity (due to the adopted backscatter radio tags), limited channel state information (due to the proposed non-coherent algorithms), with the capacity to observe signal strength (power), frequencies and direction-of-arrival (DoA) for a set of in-band, simultaneously operating links. Such multidimensional spectrum situational awareness comes with a collateral dividend: interference protection, i.e., the ability to cancel interference at specific receiver locations. Techniques developed include both model-based, as well as data-driven machine learning (ML) approaches. In addition, this work targets demonstration of the proposed principles in the FR3 band, with a particular focus on the 12.2 − 12.7 GHz band, where next generation cellular, digital video broadcasting and low-earth orbit satellite (SAT) radio applications have the potential to coexist. The research will focus on three key thrusts: (1) Thrust 1 develops a framework for multidimensional spectrum situational awareness using a backscatter fabric. (2) Thrust 2 develops a framework for spectrum protection at the PHY layer using non-coherent, data-driven, DoA assisted protection algorithms against interference. (3) Thrust 3 focuses on experimental evaluation on the COSMOS Testbed using the illustrative example of 5G Terrestrial Network and SAT co-existence in FR3 spectrum. The project will also quantify the density and spatial coverage requirements of the backscatter fabric to enable spectrum situational awareness and spectrum protection across a variety of spectrum bands. The creation of the backscatter fabric will lead to the development of robust solutions for spectrum situational awareness and protection, contributing to the envisioned Spectrum Era 4 and the ever-expanding problem of meeting increasing wireless data demands. Furthermore, the project’s theme is well-suited for the development of STEM projects that will captivate students at various educational levels.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.
Status | Not started |
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Effective start/end date | 1/1/25 → 12/31/27 |
Funding
- National Science Foundation: $800,000.00
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