NeTS:Small:Collaborative Research:Holistic Transparent Performance Assurance within the Crowded Spectrum

该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的。廉价的商用现成无线设备越来越多地用于性能敏感型应用，如使用身体传感器的患者监护以及用于多媒体和游戏的家庭网络。然而，当无线通信使用相同或相邻的无线电频率时，它们可能相互干扰。随着各种设备（包括802.11b/g路由器、ZigBee传感器、蓝牙耳机和无绳电话）占据公共2.4GHz频谱，这成为一个日益严重的问题。现有的干扰缓解方案与特定平台的物理/MAC层紧密联系，因此通常不能在不牺牲系统性能的情况下共存于同一网络中。该项目开发了一个整体透明性能保证（HTPA）框架，以支持拥挤频谱中对性能敏感的应用程序。HTPA包括1）频谱分析器，其对异构无线环境中的频谱使用和动态外部、平台内和平台间干扰进行建模; 2）虚拟化介质访问控制层，其提供用于透明地表示、监视和调度底层无线电资源的统一接口;以及3）流和系统性能保证组件，其为每个单独的数据流调度无线电资源，并基于系统知识、MAC抽象和动态频谱模型。HTPA使网络设计人员能够系统地了解和减轻异构无线设备之间存在的复杂干扰的影响，并为未来在未授权频谱中运行的商用无线平台的标准化提供参考模型。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).Cheap commercial off-the-shelf wireless devices are being increasingly deployed for performance-sensitive applications such as patient monitoring with body sensors and home networking for multimedia and gaming. However, wireless communications may interfere with each other when they use the same or adjacent radio frequencies. This becomes a growing issue as the public 2.4GHz spectrum is being populated by a variety of devices, including 802.11b/g routers, ZigBee sensors, Bluetooth headsets, and cordless phones. Existing interference mitigation schemes are tightly tied with the physical/MAC layers of particular platforms, and hence often cannot co-exist in the same network without sacrificing the system performance. This project develops a Holistic Transparent Performance Assurance (HTPA) framework to support performance-sensitive applications in the crowded spectrum. HTPA consists of 1) a spectrum profiler that models the spectrum usage and dynamic external, intra- and inter-platform interferences in heterogeneous wireless environments; 2) a virtualized medium access control layer that provides unified interfaces for transparently representing, monitoring, and scheduling the underlying radio resources; and 3) a stream and system performance assurance component that schedules radio resources for each individual data stream, and harnesses network interference based on the system knowledge, MAC abstractions, and dynamic spectrum models. HTPA enables network designers to systematically understand and mitigate the impact of complex interference that exist between heterogeneous wireless devices, and provides reference models for the standardization of future commercial wireless platforms operating in unlicensed spectrums.