NeTS: Medium: Collaborative Research: Experimental Platform for Low-Power Wireless Networking Research

传统的短距离、低功耗无线硬件架构集成了无线电收发器和通用微控制器。然而，微控制器的计算能力有限，因此限制了可以实现的算法种类。此外，封闭的无线电架构阻止了对许多新应用所需的物理层的直接访问。具有高效占空比支持的低功耗fpga的出现为创建一种新的无线平台来克服这些限制提供了机会。该项目为基于低功耗FPGA器件的移动无线网络开发了高度灵活的硬件/软件架构。高性能DSP和其他算法可以直接在硬件中实现，而其余代码则运行在FPGA内部的软处理器核心上。这种灵活的硬件/软件边界增加了软件开发的复杂性，通过复杂的开发工具支持和项目正在开发的广泛的软件组件库来缓解。这个小而便宜的平台在许多应用中，在同等功率下提供了比当前基于微控制器的硬件高两个数量级的性能。因此，它将刺激对新协议的研究，并使今天不可能实现的新应用成为可能。将为本科生组织一场竞赛，获胜者将在范德比尔特大学带薪暑期实习期间获得实施其想法所需的硬件、软件、培训和指导。

The conventional architecture for short-range, low-power, wireless hardware integrates a radio transceiver and a general-purpose microcontroller. However, microcontrollers have limited computational power and hence, restrict the kinds of algorithms that can be implemented. Moreover, closed radio architectures prevent the direct access to the physical layer needed for many novel applications. The emergence of low-power FPGAs with their efficient duty cycling support presents an opportunity to create a novel wireless platform to overcome these limitations. The project develops a highly flexible hardware/software architecture for mobile wireless networking based on low-power FPGA devices. High performance DSP and other algorithms can be implemented directly in hardware, while the rest of the code runs on a soft processor core inside the FPGA. This flexible hardware/software boundary increases the complexity of software development that is eased via sophisticated development tool support and an extensive software component library that the project is also developing. The small inexpensive platform offers two orders of magnitude higher performance than current microcontroller-based hardware at equivalent power for many applications. Hence, it will stimulate research in novel protocols and enable new applications not possible today. A competition for undergraduate students will be organized in which winners will receive the hardware, software, training, and mentorship needed to carry out their ideas during a paid summer internship at Vanderbilt.