SBIR Phase II: High-Speed TV-Band White Space Networks with Many-Antenna Multi-User Beamforming

该项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力是为服务不足的农村地区提供经济高速互联网连接的无线技术，满足4000万美国人和全球50%以上人口的需求。该项目的技术发展将通过创新的硬件和协议设计解决可扩展性瓶颈，为下一代无线系统采用大规模或多天线MIMO技术铺平道路。该项目的成果将是为互联网服务提供商提供革命性的新无线系统，解决800亿美元的固定无线系统市场，并将服务不足的全球社区连接到高速互联网商业、通信、教育和娱乐。该小型企业创新研究（SBIR）第二阶段项目将为IP数据流量开发一种可用于生产的电视空白（TVWS）大规模MU-MIMO无线系统，然后首次使用它来描述多样化的大规模多用户TVWS信道。该项目将展示第一个经济上可行的大规模MIMO系统，以及第一个能够实现超过10英里非视距范围和超过2gbps总容量的点对多点无线系统。该系统将用于在各种农村环境中大规模测量和表征TVWS频道，使用大型波束形成阵列为数十英里外的数十个客户提供服务。特别是，这些测量将探索距离、环境、用户分离和极化对实际可实现容量的影响。研究结果将用于指导全球农村TVWS宽带网络的设计、优化和部署。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this project is to provide wireless technology for economic high-speed internet connectivity in under-served rural regions, addressing the needs of 40 million Americans and over 50% of the global population. The technological developments in this project will pave the way for adoption of Massive, or Many-Antenna MIMO technologies in next-generation wireless systems by addressing scalability bottlenecks with innovative hardware and protocol design. The result of this project will be a revolutionary new wireless system for internet service providers addressing an $80 billion fixed wireless systems market and connecting under-served global communities to high-speed internet commerce, communications, education, and entertainment.This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase 2 project will develop a production-ready Television White Space (TVWS) Massive MU-MIMO wireless system for IP data traffic, then use it to characterize for the first time diverse, large-scale multi-user TVWS channels. This project will demonstrate the first economically-viable Massive MIMO system, as well as the first point-to-multipoint wireless system capable of non-line-of-sight ranges over 10s of miles with over 2 Gbps of aggregate capacity. The system will be used to measure and characterize TVWS channels at scale in various rural environments, with large beamforming arrays serving tens of clients tens of miles away. In particular, these measurements will explore the effect of range, environment, user separation, and polarization on real-world achievable capacity. The results will be used to guide the design, optimization, and deployment of rural TVWS broadband networks across the world.