Planning Grant: Engineering Research Center for Next Generations of Wireless Telecommunication (WiTeC)

工程研究中心的规划赠款竞争是作为ERC计划内的试点招标运行。ERC竞赛不要求提供规划赠款，但旨在培养团队规划集中的中心规模工程研究的能力。新冠肺炎疫情比人类历史上任何其他事件都更强化了电信的需求和重要性。它单枪匹马地维持了企业、政府、学术界和社会的运转，尽管有强制性的社会隔离和隔离。人类在逆境和自然灾害面前生存的需要继续发展，无处不在的连通性成为一种必要。从精准农业到人工智能驱动的精准医疗，从全息远程传输到空间连接，创造一个推动我们当前电信技术边界的世界是很重要的，这样我们就可以更好更强大地度过下一次流行病和/或灾难。1.5 2019冠状病毒病疫情期间，有10亿儿童需要在线教育，而2020年有51%的美国人在家工作。然而，由于缺乏接入和负担能力，美国有4400万家庭以及居住在部落土地上的非洲裔美国人、西班牙裔美国人和美洲原住民各约40%无法获得宽带服务。毫不奇怪，这一流行病对这些族裔阶层的社会经济和精神健康造成了最严重的损害。由于无法获得在线医疗保健和政府授权以及有关病毒传播的通知，纳瓦霍族的人均感染率在全国最高，非洲裔美国人社区的失业率最高。 技术方面的接触、可负担性和知识可以弥合差距。这项规划补助金的目标是了解这些社区的需求，从而设计有影响力的电信系统，以帮助创造公平的竞争环境。WiTeC ERC旨在合并来自全国各地的融合研究团队，成功创建具有无所不在的连接性和前所未有的可靠性和延迟的下一代电信-超越当前电信系统所能提供的。它将成为突破性技术研究挑战的中心，如Tbps级的数据速率和微秒级的延迟，即使是目前的毫米波技术也无法实现。它将作为一个讨论未来和广泛变化的用例的平台，从精准农业到CubeSat（立方毫米大小的卫星）通信，即使在美国农村最偏远的地方也可以提供连接。WiTec的智力价值将在于它将承担的基础研究挑战，即（i）探索无线电技术，以前所未有的速度，可靠性和延迟实现无处不在的连接，（ii）创新更环保，更节能的未来电信系统，以及（iii）利用普及人工智能构建比以往任何时候都更智能，更强大的电信系统的新方法。该中心还将成为开发创新无线电技术的开创性电信研究试验台的所在地。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。

The Planning Grants for Engineering Research Centers competition was run as a pilot solicitation within the ERC program. Planning grants are not required as part of the full ERC competition, but intended to build capacity among teams to plan for convergent, center-scale engineering research.The Covid-19 pandemic reinforced the need and importance of telecommunications more than any other event in the history of mankind. It, single-handedly, kept businesses, governments, academia and societies running in spite of the mandated social isolations and quarantines. The need for the human race to survive in the face of adversities and natural calamities continues to evolve where a world of ubiquitous connectivity becomes a necessity. From precision agriculture to artificial intelligence driven precision medicine, from holographic teleportation to space connectivity, it is important to create a world which pushes the boundaries of our current telecommunication technologies so that we can survive the next pandemic and/or calamity better and stronger. 1.5 billion children required online education during the COVID-19 pandemic and 51% of Americans worked from home in 2020. However, 44 million households in America and about 40% each of African Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans residing on tribal lands do not have access to broadband services owing to the lack of access and affordability. It is not surprising that the pandemic has taken its most severe toll on the socio-economic and mental well-being of these ethnic classes. Without access to online healthcare and government mandates and notifications about the spread of the virus, the Navajo Nation had the highest per capita infection rate in the country and the highest job-losses occurred in the African American community. Exposure, affordability and literacy in technology can bridge the gap. The goal of this planning grant is to understand the needs of these communities and thereby design impactful telecommunications systems to help level the playing field. The WiTeC ERC aims to amalgamate a convergent research team from across the nation to successfully create the next generation of telecommunication with omnipresent connectivity and unprecedented reliability and latency -leaps beyond what current telecommunication systems can offer. It will be a hub for breakthrough technological research challenges like Tbps-level of data rates and microsecond orders of delay that even current millimeter wave technology cannot achieve. It will serve as a platform for discourse on futuristic and widely variant use cases, ranging from precision agriculture to CubeSat (cubic millimeter sized satellites) communication that can provide connectivity even in the remotest part of rural America. The intellectual merit of WiTec will lie in the fundamental research challenges it will undertake, namely (i) exploring radio technologies for ubiquitous connectivity with unprecedented speed, reliability and latency, (ii) innovating greener and power efficient future telecommunication systems and (iii) novel ways of utilizing pervasive artificial intelligence to build a telecommunication system that is smarter and more robust than ever before. The Center will also be the seat for developing groundbreaking telecommunications research test-beds in novel radio technologies.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.