NeTS: Small: Fundamentals of Internet-of-Things with Energy Harvesting and Edge Intelligence

物联网(IoT)是一个巨大的互联生态系统，由从传统计算设备到普通物体的无线连接设备组成。大多数物联网设备的低成本性质和有限的资源，再加上系统的巨大规模，从根本上带来了新的设计限制。特别是，很大一部分物联网设备将部署在难以到达的地方，这使得频繁更换电池具有挑战性。解决这一问题的一个有吸引力的解决方案是允许物联网设备从环境源(如现有无线网络的射频(RF)信号)获取自己的能量。为此，本研究的首要目标是开发一个基本框架，以揭示大规模集能物联网系统的性能和操作限制。特别是，开发的框架将提供一种统一的方法，在从拟议的原型物联网设备试验台获得的现实操作约束下，对能量采集物联网进行建模、分析和优化。这项研究还得到了一项详细的教育计划的补充，该计划包括开发新课程，并指导研究生和本科生在无线网络、能源收集和物联网的交叉点进行研究。还计划利用针对当地学校代表性不足的少数族裔的动手物联网试验，开展精心设计的外联活动。这项变革性的研究将通过开发第一个全面的框架来分析和优化能量收集约束下的物联网性能，从而为能量收集物联网奠定基础。该框架集成了来自无线网络、随机几何、博弈论、学习和设备实现的新思想，以产生以下基本创新：1)用于联合分析能量收集物联网系统的能量收集和通信方面的新的空间模型和相关的性能度量；2)用于能量收集物联网的能量受限和相关性感知的边缘智能技术；3)新颖的自组织资源管理机制，其提出来自博弈论的新思想以捕捉物联网设备之间的规模、动态和相互依赖；4)实时在线算法，使每个物联网设备能够以完全自组织的方式找到其最优资源管理解决方案，5)设计并实现了一种新颖的宽带射频能量采集模块，该模块使用唤醒电路，只在采集的射频能量大于相应组件消耗的能量的频段上激活能量采集。总体而言，这些创新将为能够迎合新兴智能城市服务的新型采能物联网奠定基础。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a massive interconnected ecosystem of wireless connected devices ranging from traditional computing devices to mundane objects. The low-cost nature and limited resources of most IoT devices coupled with the sheer scale of the system introduce fundamentally new design constraints. In particular, a significant fraction of IoT devices will be deployed at hard-to-reach places which makes it challenging to replace their batteries frequently. One appealing solution to this is to allow IoT devices to harvest their own energy from ambient sources, such as the radio frequency (RF) signals of existing wireless networks. To this end, the overarching goal of this research is to develop a foundational framework that will unravel the performance and operational limits of a large-scale energy harvesting IoT system. In particular, the developed framework will provide a unified approach to the modeling, analysis, and optimization of an energy harvesting IoT under realistic operational constraints obtained from the proposed test-bed of prototype IoT devices. This research is complemented by an elaborate educational plan that includes development of new courses and mentoring of graduate and undergraduate students on research at the intersection of wireless networking, energy harvesting, and IoT. Elaborate outreach events leveraging hands-on IoT experiments targeting under-represented minorities at local schools are also planned. This transformative research will lay the foundations of an energy harvesting IoT by developing the first comprehensive framework for analyzing and optimizing IoT performance under energy harvesting constraints. This framework integrates novel ideas from wireless networking, stochastic geometry, game theory, learning, and device implementation, to yield the following fundamental innovations: 1) New spatial models and associated performance metrics for the joint analysis of energy harvesting and communication aspects of energy harvesting IoT systems, 2) Energy-constrained and correlation-aware edge-intelligence techniques for an energy harvesting IoT, 3) Novel, self-organizing resource management mechanisms that advance new ideas from game theory to capture the scale, dynamics, and inter-dependencies across IoT devices, 4) Real-time, online algorithms that enable each IoT device to find its optimal resource management solution in a fully self-organizing manner, and 5) Design and implementation of a novel wideband RF energy harvesting module using wake up circuits that will only activate energy harvesting on the bands where RF energy harvested is more than the energy dissipated by the corresponding components. Collectively, these innovations will lay the foundations of a new breed of energy-harvesting IoT that can cater to emerging smart city services.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.