Collaborative Research: SWIFT:Facilitating Spectrum Access by Noise Guessing

无线技术通过支持企业、政府、科学和教育、国防和卫生部门，在促进社会增长和繁荣方面发挥着至关重要的作用。物联网(IoT)节点互联和5G无线通信的繁荣将导致无线数据流量翻数倍。这种数据风暴和万物互联模式将导致频谱稀缺和攻击面增加，从而推动对无线安全和动态共享频谱接入技术的迫切需求。为了促进此类技术的成功部署，该项目的总体目标是通过硬件、算法和系统的跨层优化，克服频谱利用和共享、能源效率和安全方面的根本挑战。该项目将研究与教育和推广计划紧密结合，将培训一批掌握最先进无线技术的下一代多元化劳动力。该研究计划全面整合多个领域，包括信息和编码理论、无线通信和网络、安全和硬件架构，以实现高效和强大的无线频谱利用。一项关键的创新在于分开管理噪声效应和干扰效应，以便使用不同代码和速率的站可能发生冲突。正在解决的具体研究问题包括(1)通过允许冲突而不协调MAC层中的编码方案来实现成功的同时使用频谱；(2)设计能量高效和与代码无关的解码器算法和硬件架构，利用假设的信道噪声，同时结合干扰消除技术；(3)探索新的物理层方法来防止、缓解和检测对能量和频谱高效的无线通信的攻击。利用定制设计的芯片和软件定义的无线电平台，将通过模拟和实际系统实现的实验来验证理论见解。这项研究的更广泛影响包括(1)推进未来动态共享频谱接入场景的安全频谱利用和共存的研究前沿，对医疗保健、制造和教育业务产生更广泛的影响；(2)为本科课程开发软件定义的无线电实验室；(3)通过组织关注无线通信未来的“5G日”活动，培养K-12学生对STEM科目的兴趣；(4)通过设立实习和研究职位，增加代表不足的学生和本科生对研究企业的参与；以及(5)组织关于无线频谱感知和安全技术的跨学科小型新兵训练营。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。

Wireless technologies play an essential role in enabling growth and prosperity in societies by supporting business, government, science and education, defense, and health sectors. The boom of connected Internet of Things (IoT) nodes and 5G wireless communications will lead to a many-fold increase in wireless data traffic. This data storm and connectivity-in-everything model will result in spectrum scarcity and increased attack surfaces, thereby driving an urgent need for wireless security and dynamically shared spectrum access technologies. To facilitate the successful deployment of such technologies, the overarching goal of this project is to overcome fundamental challenges in spectrum utilization and sharing, energy efficiency, and security through cross-layer optimization of hardware, algorithms, and systems. Tightly integrating research with education and outreach plans, the project will train a next-generation diverse workforce in state-of-the-art wireless technologies.This research program holistically integrates multiple areas, including information and coding theory, wireless communication and networking, security, and hardware architectures to enable efficient and robust wireless spectrum utilization. A key innovation resides in separately managing noise effects and interference effects so that stations employing different codes and rates may collide. Specific research questions being addressed include (1) achieving successful simultaneous use of spectrum by allowing collisions without coordinating coding schemes in the MAC layer; (2) designing energy-efficient and code-agnostic decoder algorithms and hardware architectures exploiting assumed channel noise while incorporating interference cancellation techniques; (3) exploring new physical-layer approaches to prevent, mitigate, and detect attacks on energy- and spectrally-efficient wireless communications. The theoretical insights will be verified via simulations and experiments with practical system implementations, leveraging custom-designed chips and software-defined radio platforms. Broader impacts of this research include (1) advancing the frontiers of research in secure spectrum utilization and coexistence for future dynamically-shared spectrum access scenarios with broader impact on healthcare, manufacturing, and education businesses; (2) developing software-defined radio labs for undergraduate courses; (3) fostering K-12 students' interests in STEM subjects by organizing a “5G Day” event focusing on the future of wireless communications; (4) increasing participation of under-represented and undergraduate students in research enterprise by establishing internships and research positions; and (5) organizing interdisciplinary mini boot camps on wireless spectrum sensing and security 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.