NeTS: Small: Cognitive Antennas for Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

认知无线电具有调节带宽、调制方案、发射功率、错误编码和其他参数的能力，为适应网络条件提供了巨大的灵活性。虽然认知无线电主要改变频谱分配或调制特性，但该项目考虑了认知无线电网络，其中每个节点的天线可以通过电子方式重新配置。将认知无线电与可重构天线耦合，为网络节点提供了额外的自由度，以增加链路鲁棒性，增强干扰抑制，并增加频谱容量。这个项目展示了电可重构天线提供的辐射模式的灵活性，或者？认知天线?，可以实现更大密度的同信道通信链路，从而增加网络容量。多传感器数据融合被用于将天线和无线电配置与认知无线电场景评估和适应技术结合起来，使用多个数据源。分布式控制技术正在开发，以适应认知无线电设置，节点之间的交互最小，并分析了这些算法的稳定性和收敛性（包括收敛率）。我们还在创建实用的网络协议，包括QoS路由、拥塞控制、路径故障缓解和资源管理中的认知天线功能。研究成果正在硬件测试台上进行演示。该项目的主要成果是一个框架，用于控制配备可重构天线的认知无线电。该提案促进了本科生的技术创新和设计，以及吸引学生，特别是来自代表性不足群体的学生进入工程领域的外展活动。

Cognitive radios, which have the ability to adjust bandwidth, modulation scheme, transmit power, error coding, and other parameters, provide tremendous flexibility for adaptation to network conditions. While cognitive radios predominantly change spectral allocation or modulation characteristics, this project considers networks of cognitive radios in which the antennas at each node can be electronically reconfigured. Coupling cognitive radios with reconfigurable antennas gives network nodes an additional degree of freedom to increase link robustness, enhance interference suppression, and increase spectral capacity.This project demonstrates how the flexibility in radiation patterns provided by electrically reconfigurable antennas, or ?cognitive antennas?, can enable a greater density of co-channel communication links and thus increase network capacity. Multi-sensor data fusion is being used to incorporate antenna and radio configuration with cognitive radio scene assessment and adaptation techniques, using multiple data sources. Distributed control techniques are being developed to adapt cognitive radio settings with minimum interaction between nodes, and and the stability and convergence of these algorithms (including convergence rate) are analyzed. We are also creating practical networking protocols to include cognitive antenna capabilities in QoS routing, congestion control, path failure mitigation, and resource management. Research results are being demonstrated on a hardware testbed. The main result of this project is a framework for controlling cognitive radios equipped with reconfigurable antennas. The proposal fosters technical innovation and design among undergraduate students, and outreach activities to attract students, especially from under-represented groups, to engineering.