NeTS: Small: Enabling Mobile mmWave Communication: Achieving Low Power and Delay via a Hybrid RF Design

到2020年，年数据流量预计将超过130艾比特。这种流量的泛滥将大大加剧蜂窝提供商已经经历的频谱紧缩问题。为了支持流量需求的显著增长，预计5G蜂窝系统将使用毫米波（mmWave）频带的某些部分，跨越30 GHz到300 GHz之间的频谱。这将大大增加蜂窝提供商可用的频谱，这些蜂窝提供商目前仅限于700 MHz和2.6 GHz之间的频谱，所有当前蜂窝技术的带宽分配仅为780 MHz。然而，在毫米波通信成为现实之前，由于需要解决可变信道、间歇连接、高延迟和高能耗等问题，它面临着重大挑战。为了克服这些挑战，该项目将开发和实施必要的架构和相关算法，以完全集成的方式利用毫米波和RF接口。是项研究目标远大，但如能成功，将为发展移动的毫米波技术迈出重要一步，大大纾缓现时频谱紧绌的情况。移动的毫米波传播的缩小实验：已经通过实验证明，由当前无线传播模型做出的时间尺度分离假设对于移动的毫米波不起作用。该项目将开发一种测量设置，该设置使用针对不同感兴趣环境的小尺度模型，并以成比例的高频率进行测量。这种新颖的框架能够在RF和毫米波接口处实现精确的移动的测量，而无需构建实际的真实世界系统。2.节能通信：尽管毫米波接口处的巨大带宽可用，但始终充分利用它并不是节能的。此外，连接建立和波束成形可能消耗大量资源。为了缓解这些挑战，该项目将仔细利用RF和mmWave接口之间的相关性，以最大限度地提高每单位功耗的实现速率。主要目标之一是完全在模拟域中处理快速毫米波波束成形。3.低延迟通信：考虑到毫米波信道的高度可变性，该项目将开发一个框架，以联合管理RF和毫米波接口的队列。相关的延迟最小化和队列管理方案明确考虑了处理器读/写速度相对于毫米波链路速率的影响。

By 2020, annual data traffic is expected to surpass 130 exabits. This deluge of traffic will significantly exacerbate the spectrum crunch problem that cellular providers are already experiencing. To support this significant increase in traffic demand, it is envisioned that 5G cellular systems will use certain portions of the millimeter-Wave (mmWave) band, spanning the spectrum between 30GHz to 300GHz. This will substantially increase the spectrum available for cellular providers who are currently confined to the frequency spectrum between 700MHz and 2.6GHz with only 780MHz of bandwidth allocation for all current cellular technologies. However, before mmWave communication can become a reality, it faces significant challenges due to variable channels, intermittent connectivity, high delay, and high-energy usage that need to be addressed. To overcome these challenges, this project will develop and implement the necessary architecture and associated algorithms to exploit the mmWave and RF interfaces in a fully integrated fashion. The proposed research is ambitious, but if successful is expected to take an important step towards the development of mobile mmWave technology, which will significantly alleviate the enormous spectrum crunch that we are currently encountering.The proposed research will be conducted across three major inter-related thrusts:1. Scaled-down experimentation for mobile mmWave propagation: It has been experimentally demonstrated that the time-scale separation assumption made by the current models of wireless propagation does not work for mobile mmWave. This project will develop a measurement setup that uses small-scale models for different environments of interest and take the measurements at proportionally high frequencies. This novel framework enables accurate mobile measurements, jointly at the RF and mmWave interfaces without having to build actual real-world systems.2. Energy-efficient communication: Despite the availability of huge bandwidths at the mmWave interface, it is not energy efficient to utilize it fully at all times. Furthermore, connection setup and beamforming can consume significant resources. To alleviate these challenges, this project will carefully exploit the correlations across RF and mmWave interfaces in order to maximize the achieved rate per unit power consumed. One of major goals is to handle fast mmWave beamforming completely in the analog domain.3. Low-delay communication: Taking into account the high variability of mmWave channels, this project will develop a framework to jointly manage the queues at the RF and mmWave interfaces. The associated delay minimization and queue management schemes explicitly take into account the processor read/write speed relative to the mmWave link rates.