PAWR Platform ARA: Wireless Living Lab for Smart and Connected Rural Communities

该奖项将资助创建一个大规模的先进无线研究平台，该平台将部署在爱荷华州州立大学（ISU）校园、艾姆斯市（ISU所在地）、周围的研究和生产农场以及爱荷华州中部的农村社区，跨越直径超过60公里的农村地区。该平台名为ARA：智能互联农村社区无线生活实验室将通过研究和开发以农村为重点的无线技术来解决农村宽带挑战，这些技术为农村社区和农业等行业提供负担得起的高容量连接。该项目是美国国家科学基金会先进无线研究平台（PAWR）计划的一部分。ARA旨在在现实世界的农业和农村环境中部署先进的无线平台，捕获农村宽带的系统和环境特性以及应用和社区环境。例如，ARA展示了作物和畜牧场的精准农业的未来，包括自动地面车辆以及摄像头和传感器。该平台具有独特的无线技术，从低UHF大规模多输入多输出（MIMO）天线到毫米波无线接入和长距离回程，自由空间光学和低地球轨道（LEO）卫星通信，采用软件定义无线电（SDR）和可编程商业现成（COTS）平台，有效地利用开源无线软件平台，如OpenAirInterface，srsLTE和其他技术，连续覆盖数百平方英里的农村地区，ARA作为一个大规模的，深度可编程的基础设施，在现实世界中的农村无线研究。通过将物理基础设施转变为支持严格科学研究和应用试验的研究工具，ARA的软件系统AraSoft将实现可重复、方便的实验，并促进跨学科、跨社区的合作。该项目小组由爱荷华州州立大学的研究人员领导，沿着来自加州大学欧文分校、俄亥俄州州立大学和国际计算机科学研究所的研究人员参与。在先进无线研究平台（PAWR）项目办公室的监督下，该团队将设计、部署、运营和维护ARA，作为一个革命性的实验平台，以支持农村宽带、5G无线系统等方面的先进研究。https://www.advancedwireless.org该项目还得到了美国农业部（USDA）国家食品和农业研究所（NIFA）的资助。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。

This award will fund the creation of an at-scale platform for advanced wireless research to be deployed across the Iowa State University (ISU) campus, City of Ames (where ISU resides), and surrounding research and producer farms as well as rural communities in central Iowa, spanning a rural area with diameter over 60km. The platform, called ARA: Wireless Living Lab for Smart and Connected Rural Communities, will address the rural broadband challenge by enabling the research and development of rural-focused wireless technologies that provide affordable, high-capacity connectivity to rural communities and industries such as agriculture. This project is part of the NSF Platforms for Advanced Wireless Research (PAWR) program.ARA aims to deploy advanced wireless platforms in real-world agriculture and rural settings, capturing the systems and environmental properties as well as the application and community contexts of rural broadband. For instance, ARA features the future of precision agriculture in both crop and livestock farms, involving automated ground vehicles as well as cameras and sensors. The platform features unique wireless technologies ranging from low-UHF massive Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) antennas to millimeter-Wave wireless access and long-distance backhaul, free-space optical, and low-earth-orbit (LEO) satellite communications, employing both software-defined-radio (SDR) and programmable commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) platforms, effectively leveraging open-source wireless software platforms such as OpenAirInterface, srsLTE, and others, with a contiguous coverage of hundreds of square miles of rural areas, ARA serves as an at-scale, deeply-programmable infrastructure for rural wireless research in real-world settings. Transforming the physical infrastructure into a research instrument supporting rigorous scientific studies and application trials, AraSoft, the software system of ARA, will enable reproducible, convenient experimentation and facilitates cross-discipline, cross-community collaborations. The project team is led by researchers at Iowa State University along with researchers participating from University of California – Irvine, Ohio State University and International Computer Science Institute. With oversight from the Platforms for Advanced Wireless Research (PAWR) Project Office, this team will design, deploy, operate, and sustain ARA as a revolutionary experimentation platform to support advanced research on rural broadband, 5G wireless systems and beyond. Information on the access to this PAWR platform is available on https://www.advancedwireless.org. The project is also supported with funding from the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA).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.