Bringing Wireless Internet Connectivity to Everything

随着物联网(IoT)的到来，数十亿台新的互联设备将上线，从而在非常不同的领域实现新的应用。虽然令人兴奋，但这将创造出对高能效和高吞吐量无线互联网连接的前所未有的需求，而现有的无线网络无法满足这些需求。这一限制是由于当今应用程序的需求和约束存在巨大的多样性。一些应用程序使用小型传感器，需要使用最小的能量和带宽进行操作，而另一些应用程序使用高数据速率的多媒体系统，这需要多吉比特每秒的吞吐量。这两个极端都强调这些连接设备可用的通信和能源资源，它们需要不同的解决方案来满足其需求。 我的长期目标是通过重新检查从物理层到应用层的计算机网络堆栈来解决当今无线网络的能源和吞吐量问题。我的方法是为无线网络开发软硬件体系结构，其中算法、协议和底层硬件是联合设计的。为了支持这一长期目标，我的短期研究目标是开发基于毫米波的高吞吐量无线网络，以及开发基于后向散射的无电池无线网络。拟议的研究计划意味着全球范围内的创新，因为这些突破将创造出比今天的标准网络具有更高能力的新无线网络。随着世界对更高功能的需求在自动驾驶汽车、虚拟现实、智能家居和智能城市等许多领域继续扩大，新的无线网络是一种迫在眉睫且不断增长的需求。 拟议的研究本质上是跨学科的，将计算机网络与硬件和无线电设计联系起来。因此，它将为研究开辟新的途径和技术工具包，如果没有这两个领域的整合，这些技术是不可能的。因此，这一研究计划不仅使物联网领域的研究达到世界级水平，而且为培养学生设计尖端软硬件系统创造了巨大的机会。该领域是加拿大顶尖研究机构和高科技公司都需要的新兴研究领域。

With the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT), billions of new connected devices will come online, enabling new applications in very diverse areas. While exciting, this will create unprecedented demand for energy-efficient and high-throughput wireless internet connectivity that cannot be satisfied by existing wireless networks. This limitation is due to the fact that there is huge diversity in the demands and constraints on today's applications. Some applications work with small sensors and need to operate using minimal energy and bandwidth, while others use high-data-rate multimedia systems, which require multiple-gigabit-per-second throughput. Both extremes stress the communications, and energy resources available to these connected devices, and they require different solutions to satisfy their needs. My long-term goal is to address the energy and throughput problems of today's wireless networks by re-examining the computer network stack from the physical layer all the way to the application layer. My approach is to develop software-hardware architectures for wireless networks in which algorithms, protocols, and underlying hardware are jointly designed. In support of this long-term goal, my short-term research objectives are developing a mmWave-based high-throughput wireless network; and developing a backscatter-based battery-free wireless network. The proposed research program signifies innovation on a global scale as these breakthroughs will create new wireless networks with much higher capability than today's standard networks. New wireless networks are an immediate and growing need as the world demand for higher capability continues to expand in many areas such as autonomous vehicles, virtual reality, smart homes and smart cities. The proposed research is interdisciplinary in nature, bridging computer networking with hardware and radio design. Hence, it will open up new avenues for research and a toolkit of techniques that are not possible without the integration of both areas. As a result, this research program not only enables world-class research in the area of IoT, but also it creates a great opportunity to train students in designing cutting-edge software-hardware systems. The area is an emerging research area which is needed by both top Canadian research institutes and high-tech companies.