SBIR Phase I: Simultaneous Transmit-Receive and Full-Duplex Millimeter-Wave Massive Multiple-Input and Multiple-Output (MIMO) Systems

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The broader/commercial impact of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project addresses the demand for high-speed, secure, reliable, ubiquitous wireless connectivity, driven by digital transformation in the commercial and defense sectors. The widespread use of the millimeter-wave (mmWave) spectrum is essential to meet this demand, despite the release of new spectrum below 10 GHz (which will help in the short term, but not by itself be able to satisfy overall demand). The last few years have seen first-generation deployments of mmWave systems mainly for mobile access applications to smartphones. However, mmWave networks have not become widespread, due to significant pain points and challenges that remain in terms of coverage, capacity, reliability, ease of deployment, and total cost of ownership. Moreover, the high energy consumption of current 5G systems is estimated to have a significant impact on global carbon emissions and network operators’ energy costs. This project comprises three elements: enabling high-speed broadband access for all Americans; deploying a reliable, high-speed, low-latency wireless connectivity in the manufacturing, industrial and energy infrastructure sectors, and building partnerships with academia to enhance the American STEM workforce. Optimized solutions have an annual market estimate of $10 billion.This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will develop technologies for efficient, practical and low-cost Multiple-Input and Multiple-Output (MIMO) full-duplex radios operating in high frequency spectral bands and will pave the way for their eventual commercial implementation in future wireless networks. This project will adopt a holistic, inter-disciplinary approach to develop hardware-software system solutions encompassing novel silicon and novel algorithms to enable better use of spatial, temporal and frequency resources. If successful, the developed solutions can eventually lead to greater coverage, higher reliability, lower latency, more efficient spectrum usage, and also higher performance, lower power and cost. The team is building mmWave system (software + silicon) solutions that efficiently form and intelligently steer beams to enable better use of the spatial domain. The solutions can lead to greater coverage, higher reliability, lower latency, more efficient spectrum usage, and also higher performance, lower power and cost. To this end, the mmWave MIMO radios are based on two core principles: “digitalized” hardware created by designing advanced digital/hybrid MIMO radios and integrated artificial intelligence (AI)/ machine learning (ML)-based algorithms tightly into the radio/physical layer. While the above goals are by themselves a significant advance over the state-of-the-art, the aim in Phase I is to specifically focus on solving technical challenges to implement mmWave full-duplex MIMO communication in wireless networks of the future, and to eventually drive this technology towards commercial adoption.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.