I-Corps: All-digital transceivers for millimeter wave communications

I-Corps项目的广泛影响/商业潜力几乎涵盖了与下一代移动通信技术相关的所有应用，如互联汽车、无人机、机器人和智能手机。这种无线技术可以通过在28ghz以上的毫米波（mmWave）频谱中建立更高效、更强大的连接，从而释放更高频段的真正潜力。由此产生的无线容量增加和延迟降低将使5G背景下定义的关键用例成为可能，例如交互式增强现实/虚拟现实（AR/VR）、自动驾驶和无人机器人。无线快速交换大量信息对于AR/VR至关重要，因为它可以摆脱连接耳机的电缆，对于自动驾驶汽车和机器人系统来说，因为它可以通过以最小的延迟广播激光雷达、雷达和摄像头等传感器产生的大量数据，从而实现超视距视觉。I-Corps项目的重点是设计毫米波通信的全数字收发器无线电。28ghz以上的毫米波频率对于缓解传统蜂窝频段的频谱紧张，并使超高速5G用例成为现实是必要的。然而，在这些频率下具有挑战性的传播特性需要使用收发器，不仅要在低功耗预算下运行，还要提供无线生态系统所需的鲁棒性。现有的最先进的毫米波模拟收发器无线电在稳健性和功率之间进行了权衡：它们允许无线电一次仅在一个方向或少量方向上发送或接收。相反，这种全数字波束成形技术可以同时观察所有方向，从而实现更高的频谱效率和更强大的通信。本设计的决定性技术特征是来自每个天线链的信号是独立数字化的，而不是现有技术中来自每个天线的信号首先以模拟方式组合然后再数字化。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project covers nearly all applications related to next generation mobile communications technologies, such as connected cars, drones, robots, and smartphones. This wireless technology can unlock the true potential of higher frequency bands by establishing more efficient and robust connections that operate in the millimeter Wave (mmWave) spectrum above 28 GHz. The resulting increased wireless capacity and reduced latency will enable the key use cases that have been defined in the context of 5G, such as interactive Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality (AR/VR), autonomous driving, and unmanned robotics. Rapidly exchanging large amount of information wirelessly will be of paramount importance for AR/VR, as it will permit getting rid of the cables connected to the headsets, and for autonomous automotive and robotic systems, as it will enable beyond line-of-sight vision by broadcasting with minimal latency massive amount of data generated by sensors such as lidars, radars, and cameras.This I-Corps project focuses on the design of an all-digital transceiver radio for mmWave communications. The mmWave frequencies of above 28 GHz are necessary to alleviate the spectrum crunch in the traditional cellular bands, and to make ultra-fast 5G use cases a reality. However, challenging propagation characteristics at these frequencies necessitates the use of transceivers that not only operate over low power budgets, but also deliver the robustness that the wireless ecosystem demands. Existing state-of-the-art mmWave analog transceiver radios trade-off robustness against power: they allow the radio to transmit or receive in only one direction or a small number of directions at a time. Conversely, this all-digital beamforming technology allows to look in all directions simultaneously, resulting in more spectral-efficient and robust communications. The defining technical feature in this design is that the signals from each antenna chain are digitized independently, as opposed to existing techniques where the signals from each antenna are first combined in analog and then digitized.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.