Collaborative Research: EARS: Interference mitigation by stream decomposition enabled by liquid-metal adaptive antennas

合作研究：EARS：通过液态金属自适应天线实现流分解来减轻干扰

• 批准号: 1546980
• 负责人: Aaron Ohta
• 金额: $ 41.02万
• 依托单位: University of Hawaii
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-09-15 至 2019-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1546980&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; EARS; Interference; mitigation

Interference between users is one of the main impediments for the growth of wireless networks such as the ones used by mobile phones. Developing practical methods to mitigate interference is critical for the future of wireless technology. The proposed research addresses the problem of interference, and therefore has a large potential impact on economic growth as well as quality of life. This project has two interconnected components. First, based on recent information theory results, communication streams will be decomposed into many small streams; these can be managed, combined, and split to combat interference. Second, adaptive liquid-metal antennas will be investigated for interference mitigation. As liquid metals can be made to change their physical shape, they can enable antennas that can be adjusted to reduce interference. Research and education for this project will be tightly integrated through Vertically Integrated Projects that involve students ranging from PhD students to sophomore-level undergraduates, including under-represented minority and female students. The results of this research will be disseminated widely through the web, technical conferences, and seminars. Exciting discoveries in recent years have pushed the boundaries of understanding interference. The theoretical capacity of interference channels in several operating modes has been established, and new theoretical techniques such as interference alignment have been discovered. However, many practical challenges stand in the way of realizing these promising techniques. This project has two interconnected components for developing interference-mitigation techniques for wireless networks that create a new direction in interference mitigation aimed at practicality and wide applicability. The first component of the project decomposes the communication stream into "microstreams" to fit the transmissions into the contours of available opportunities, in a manner that improves rates while limiting the damage of interference. The broad principle of breaking communication into many small pieces has a long and distinguished pedigree, including ARQ in the data link layer and TCP/IP in higher layers. The proposed research introduces a novel manifestation of this time-tested principle to produce new approaches that combat interference in the physical layer. The second component of the project investigates adaptive liquid-metal antennas that generate radiation patterns to avoid interference in a manner not possible with signal processing alone; in particular their unique flexibility helps to avoid "singular" values of channel gains that prevent interference mitigation. The unique strengths of liquid-metal antennas are perfectly showcased in this application, because the exact manner of microstream combining can have a strong effect on performance, and this is where liquid-metal antennas promise to have a strong impact. The proposed activity will play an important role in the advancement of knowledge and understanding in the field of wireless interference. The project will develop practical methods for coding and decoding under interference. Furthermore, it will lead to a basic understanding of how liquid-metal antennas can affect capacity in interference networks.

用户之间的干扰是无线网络（例如移动电话使用的网络）发展的主要障碍之一。开发减轻干扰的实用方法对于无线技术的未来至关重要。拟议的研究解决了干扰问题，因此对经济增长和生活质量具有巨大的潜在影响。该项目有两个相互关联的组成部分。首先，根据最新的信息论成果，通信流将被分解为许多小流；这些可以被管理、组合和分割以对抗干扰。其次，将研究自适应液态金属天线以减轻干扰。由于液态金属可以改变其物理形状，因此可以调整天线以减少干扰。该项目的研究和教育将通过垂直整合项目紧密结合，涉及的学生范围从博士生到二年级本科生，包括代表性不足的少数族裔和女学生。这项研究的结果将通过网络、技术会议和研讨会广泛传播。近年来令人兴奋的发现突破了对干扰的理解界限。几种工作模式下干扰信道的理论容量已经建立，并且发现了干扰对齐等新的理论技术。然而，许多实际挑战阻碍了这些有前途的技术的实现。该项目有两个相互关联的部分，用于开发无线网络干扰缓解技术，为干扰缓解开辟了实用性和广泛适用性的新方向。该项目的第一个组成部分将通信流分解为“微流”，以使传输符合可用机会的轮廓，从而提高速率，同时限制干扰损害。将通信分解为许多小块的广泛原则有着悠久而杰出的历史，包括数据链路层中的 ARQ 和更高层中的 TCP/IP。拟议的研究引入了这一经过时间考验的原理的新颖表现形式，以产生对抗物理层干扰的新方法。该项目的第二个组成部分研究自适应液态金属天线，该天线可生成辐射方向图，以避免仅通过信号处理无法实现的干扰；特别是，它们独特的灵活性有助于避免信道增益出现“奇异”值，从而阻碍干扰减轻。液态金属天线的独特优势在此应用中得到了完美的展示，因为微流组合的精确方式会对性能产生很大的影响，而这正是液态金属天线有望产生强大影响的地方。拟议的活动将在提高无线干扰领域的知识和理解方面发挥重要作用。该项目将开发干扰下编码和解码的实用方法。此外，它将让人们对液态金属天线如何影响干扰网络的容量有一个基本的了解。