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

FCC寻求到2020年将1900万未得到服务的美国人连接到宽带。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。即使在人口稠密、有线基础设施充足的环境中，拥挤的体育场、灾难恢复区和公共交通仍存在容量问题。上述每一项接入挑战似乎都很适合无线Mesh网络，但尚未完全解决。然而，最近，随着多天线方案的出现，在不同频段(例如电视白色空间)运行的无线电有了相当大的增长。在该项目中，利用多用户波束成形和不同的频带来显著增强网状网络最初寻求的灵活性。在这样做的过程中，频率捷变波束成形网状网(FabMesh)网络寻求根据用户数量和流量需求在复杂性和成本上真正进行扩展。这项工作包括三个关键创新：(I)客户端、波束感知和频率捷变协议，以利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成形的网状网络中的媒体访问控制的空间重用和容量；以及(Iii)可扩展的网络部署，其利用沿回程的多用户波束成形和根据网络需求跨多个频带进行适配。该项目包括为所有级别的大学生开设一些实践课程，对数千名在线学生采取“及时”的教学方法，向代表性不足的学生和社区进行外联，以及为加快FabMesh网络的商业采用而进行的关键行业合作。

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.