CAREER: Scalable MIMO Spatial Filtering and Synchronization for Heterogenous Wireless Networks

无线网络是信息基础设施的一个组成部分，在世界上的一些地区，无线网络的普及程度甚至超过了电力。下一代无线网络面临的主要挑战是数据容量。无线数据使用量每年都在翻倍，网络供应商预计每个用户每天的需求将接近1千兆。这需要将网络容量增加1000倍，并将最坏情况下的数据速率提高100倍。由于频谱的可用性有限，因此必须通过在用户之间共享现有频谱和改进无线系统的性能来实现更高的容量。然而，移动应用程序也需要低功耗来延长电池寿命。该项目将研究下一代无线网络的节能无线电路和系统，该网络可以在密集频谱复用下运行时提供每秒千兆比特的链路。开发这样的无线系统具有广泛的影响，因为提高无线链路的可用性和速度将扩大现有的应用，并使新的应用有利于经济和社会。教育和研究之间的协同作用包括创建多输入多输出通信的跨学科课程。这将使学生能够识别和解决无线网络中具有高影响力的跨域问题。向高中生伸出援手将为他们早期接触研究环境创造机会，加强STEM管道。下一代无线网络将基于MIMO系统，以便在频谱稀缺和极度密集的情况下增加容量。该项目研究MIMO电路和架构，以实现干扰消除，并使下一代高容量无线网络成为可能。CMOS晶体管的速度不断提高，附加晶体管的成本几乎为零，这使得利用多个发射-接收元件实现更高性能和抗干扰能力的新型集成架构得以发展。随着下一代网络向更多元素和更高性能过渡，确保此类架构在能效和性能方面的可扩展性至关重要。该项目还将研究用于简化大规模MIMO阵列中元件之间同步的电路和架构。使用多个元件来提高收发器前端性能，可以降低模数转换器的要求，从而实现进一步支持可扩展性的数字密集型架构。

Wireless networks are an integral part of the information infrastructure and are more widespread than even access to electricity in some parts of the world. The primary challenge for next-generation wireless networks is data capacity. Wireless data usage is doubling every year and network providers are projecting demand approaching one gigabit per user per day. This requires a 1000x increase in network capacity and 100x increase in worst-case data rates. Since availability of spectrum is limited, the higher capacity must be achieved by sharing existing spectrum among users and improving the performance of wireless systems. However, mobile applications also require low power consumption for longer battery life. This project will investigate energy-efficient wireless circuits and systems for next-generation wireless networks that can provide gigabit per second links while operating under dense spectrum reuse. Developing such wireless systems has broad impact since improving the availability and speed of wireless links will expand existing applications as well as enable new applications that benefit economy and society. Synergy between education and research includes the creation of an inter-disciplinary course on multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communications. This will allow students to identify and solve high-impact cross-domain problems in wireless networks. Outreach to high school students will create opportunities for early exposure to research environments, strengthening STEM pipelines.Next-generation wireless networks will be based on MIMO systems for increased capacity in the context of spectrum scarcity and extreme densification. This project investigates MIMO circuits and architectures to achieve interference cancellation and enable next-generation, high-capacity wireless networks. The increasing speed of CMOS transistors and near-zero incremental cost of additional transistors allow the development of novel integrated architectures that leverage multiple transmit-receive elements to achieve higher performance and interferer tolerance. Ensuring the scalability of such architectures in terms of energy-efficiency and performance is critical as next-generation networks transition to larger number of elements and higher performance. This project will also study circuits and architectures for simplifying synchronization between elements in large-scale MIMO arrays. Using multiple elements to improve transceiver frontend performance results in relaxed analog-to-digital converter requirements, thereby enabling digital-intensive architectures that further support scalability.