NeTS: Small: Collaborative Research: Theory, Algorithms, and Experiments for Frequency-Agile Beamforming Mesh (FabMesh)

FCC 的目标是到 2020 年为 1900 万未获得宽带服务的美国人提供宽带连接。由于有线基础设施成本超过了潜在的收入机会，这些农村地区尚未完全连接到互联网。即使在拥有充足有线基础设施的人口稠密环境中，拥挤的体育场馆、灾难恢复区和公共交通仍然存在容量问题。上述每个接入挑战似乎都非常适合无线网状网络，但尚未完全解决。然而，最近，随着新兴的多天线方案，在不同频段（例如电视空白频段）运行的无线电设备出现了大幅增长。在该项目中，利用多用户波束成形和不同频段来显着增强网状网络最初寻求的灵活性。为此，频率捷变波束成形网格 (FabMesh) 网络寻求根据用户数量和流量需求真正扩展复杂性和成本。这项工作包括三项关键创新：(i) 客户端、波束赋形感知和频率捷变协议，使用上下文信息和先进的物理层技术来提高客户端的性能和可靠性；(ii) 分析利用多用户波束赋形的网状网络中的空间复用和媒体访问控制能力；(iii) 可扩展的网络部署，利用沿回程的多用户波束赋形以及根据网络需求跨多个频段进行自适应。该项目包括为各级大学生提供的一系列实践课程、为数千名在线学生提供的“及时”教学方法、对代表性不足的学生和社区的推广，以及加速 FabMesh 网络商业应用的关键行业合作。

The FCC seeks to connect 19 million unserved Americans to broadband by 2020. These rural areas have yet to be fully connected to the Internet due to wireline infrastructure costs which exceed potential revenue opportunities. Even in heavily-populated environments with sufficient wireline infrastructure, capacity issues remain in congested stadiums, disaster recovery zones, and public transportation. Each aforementioned access challenge seemingly is well-suited for wireless mesh networks, but have yet to be fully solved. However, recently, there has been a sizable growth in radios operating in diverse frequency bands (e.g., TV white spaces) with emerging multi-antenna schemes. In this project, multi-user beamforming and diverse frequency bands are leveraged to significantly build upon the flexibility originally sought by mesh networks. In doing so, frequency-agile beamforming mesh (FabMesh) networks seek to truly scale in complexity and cost according to the user population and traffic demand. The work includes three key innovations: (i) client-side, beamforming-aware, and frequency-agile protocols to improve performance and reliability of clients, using contextual information and advanced physical layer techniques, (ii) analysis of spatial reuse and capacity for media access control in mesh networks which leverage multi-user beamforming, and (iii) scalable network deployments which leverage multi-user beamforming along the backhaul and adaptation across multiple frequency bands according to network demand. The project includes a number of hands-on courses for university students at all levels, "just in time" pedagogical approaches to thousands of online students, outreach to under-represented students and communities, and key industrial collaborations to accelerate the commercial adoption of FabMesh networks.