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

I-Corps：用于毫米波通信的全数字收发器

• 批准号: 1928678
• 负责人: Shivendra Panwar
• 金额: $ 5万
• 依托单位: New York University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2019-04-15 至 2020-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1928678&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Corps; digital; transceivers; millimeter; wave

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.

这个I-Corps项目更广泛的影响/商业潜力几乎涵盖了与下一代移动的通信技术相关的所有应用，例如联网汽车、无人机、机器人和智能手机。这种无线技术可以通过建立在28 GHz以上的毫米波（mmWave）频谱中运行的更高效、更强大的连接来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减少将使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），自动驾驶和无人驾驶机器人。快速无线交换大量信息对于AR/VR来说至关重要，因为它将允许摆脱连接到耳机的电缆，对于自主汽车和机器人系统来说，因为它将通过广播以最小的延迟广播由激光雷达，雷达，这个I-Corps项目的重点是为毫米波通信设计一个全数字收发器无线电。28 GHz以上的毫米波频率对于缓解传统蜂窝频段的频谱紧缩以及实现超快5G用例是必要的。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，不仅在低功率预算下工作，而且还提供无线生态系统所需的鲁棒性。现有最先进的毫米波模拟收发器无线电在鲁棒性与功率之间进行权衡：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允许同时查看所有方向，从而实现更高效和更强大的通信。 该设计的定义技术特征是来自每个天线链的信号被独立数字化，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，然后数字化。该奖项反映了NSF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。