CAREER: Towards Metamaterial-inspired Networking for Wireless Devices in Extreme Environments

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Despite the presence of wireless connectivity in most terrestrial scenarios, there are still many extreme environments that cannot be covered, including underground, underwater, and confined spaces (tunnels, pipelines, and indoor environments with no network infrastructures). Wireless networks in such environments can enable various applications, ranging from environmental sustainability, homeland security, to military and defense automation. However, existing wireless networking techniques, including electromagnetic wave-based solutions, acoustic wave-based solutions, and magnetic induction-based solutions, do not work in the aforementioned extreme environments, especially when the target environment has lossy media and complex structure and when the device is small and mobile. In this project, a new networking paradigm, Metamaterial-inspired Networking (MetaNet), will be developed to wirelessly internetwork portable (or even smaller) devices in extreme environments. MetaNet will generate significant impacts by providing a new networking platform to establish wireless connection in extreme environments. It can positively impact many human activities and can eventually address many key problems, such as increasing oil/gas recovery factor, protecting groundwater, mitigating the impacts of natural disasters, establishing smart cities and smart buildings, and enhancing the safety of military and law enforcement personnel. In this project, education will be integrated with the research through a distance education program focusing on everywhere wireless networking, a new graduate level course and a senior level capstone course, and a tech summer camp to reach out to K-12 students.In this MetaNet project, each wireless device is equipped with a software-defined micro-coil-antenna array (i.e., a smart metamaterial layer) and uses the Metamaterial-enhanced Magnetic Induction (M2I) technique to establish network links. M2I helps each node to achieve reasonable communication range (tens of meters with pocket-sized devices) in various hostile and complex environments. Moreover, since M2I significantly enhances the magnetic coupling among the wireless devices as well as the conductive objects in the environment, the much closer interactions among all the nodes as well as the environment create both opportunity and risk for network design. The objective of this project is to explore for the first time the fundamentals of metamaterial-inspired networking in various extreme environments through a closed-loop combination of mathematical modeling, simulations, and experimental evaluation. This proposed plan is based on four core intertwined research tasks: (i) physical layer solutions based on channel analysis of M2I communications in various environments; (ii) environment-aware and cross-layer network control techniques; (iii) network topology-discovery and localization algorithms; and (iv) prototyping and performance evaluation through a MetaNet testbed and a cross layer simulator.