Collaborative Research: SWIFT: Small: Cross-Layer Interference Management: Bringing Interference Alignment to Reality

随着用户规模的扩大，对无线数据流量的需求呈指数级增长，而目前满足这种增长的方法是避免干扰。不幸的是，干扰避免技术不能适应这些缩放需求。为了支持大规模部署，需要允许多个用户共享相同的频谱。换句话说，必须减轻和利用干扰，而不是避免干扰。然而，先前的理论努力在实践中收效甚微。这个项目弥合了理论与实践之间的差距。pi将共同设计和开发PHY和MAC层的天线和算法，可能实现数量级更高的频谱效率通信。设计的解决方案将实现与所有类别的设备、自动驾驶、医疗保健和物联网的连接，并将为社会各阶层提供更便宜的连接。该项目将培养研究生并促进跨学科研究。拟议的活动旨在吸引各种背景的学生，重点关注那些代表性不足的群体。该提案的重点是开发在有限信噪比（SNR）下工作的干扰对准（IA）技术。该提案有两个重点，一个侧重于上行链路，另一个侧重于下行链路。pi计划使用准随机定向的天线元件来实现预期的目标。(1)提出新的基站发射和接收天线硬件结构，为干扰管理创造良好的环境；(2)开发新的物理层算法，利用拟议天线的特性，在不需要发射机信道信息的情况下，以数量级增加共享同一频率槽的用户数量；(3)开发物理层算法和mac层协议，利用所建议的天线设计，为大量用户实现干扰对准；(4)开发新的算法，使所提出的研究能够轻松地部署在现有的下一代蜂窝（5G）和WiFi （WiFi-6）协议上；(5)通过硬件和软件实现的模拟和现实世界实验来评估所提出的技术。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 demand for wireless data traffic along with the scale of users grows exponentially, while the current approach to meet such scaling is to avoid interference. Unfortunately, interference avoidance techniques cannot accommodate these scaling needs. To support large-scale deployments, there is a need to enable multiple users to share the same spectrum. In other words, the interference must be mitigated and exploited rather than avoided. However, prior theoretical efforts have resulted in minimal gains in practice. This project bridges the gap between theory and practice. The PIs will jointly design and develop antennas and algorithms in PHY and MAC layers potentially enabling orders of magnitude more spectrum-efficient communications. The designed solutions would enable connectivity to all classes of devices, autonomous driving, health-care, and IoT, and will facilitate the connectivity cheaper for all segments of society. The project will result in training graduate students and fosters interdisciplinary research. The proposed activities are designed to engage students from all backgrounds focusing on those from underrepresented groups.The proposal focuses on developing Interference Alignment (IA) techniques that work at the finite Signal-to-Noise (SNR) regime. The proposal has two thrusts - one focused on the uplink and another focused on the downlink. The PIs plan to use quasi-randomly oriented antenna elements to accomplish the desired objectives. (1) Present new transmit and receive antenna hardware structures at base-stations to create favorable environments for interference management; (2) Develop new physical-layer algorithms that exploit the characteristics of the proposed antennas and increase by order(s) of magnitude the number of users sharing the same frequency slot, without needing channel information at the transmitter; (3) Develop PHY-layer algorithms and MAC-layer protocols to exploit the proposed antenna designs to enable interference alignment for a large number of users; (4) Develop novel algorithms that enable deploying the proposed research easily on existing next-generation cellular (5G) and WiFi (WiFi-6) protocols; (5) Evaluate the proposed techniques through simulations and real-world experiments with hardware and software implementation.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.