Low-Latency and Reliable Wireless Pipeline for Internet-of-Things

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Internet-of-Things (IoT) can provide ubiquitous connectivity for things and devices in the physical world and the related information in the digital world. IoT applications are anticipated to reduce costs, improve productivity, and provide new revenue sources. IoT spending will maintain a double-digit annual growth rate throughout the forecast period till 2022 and the global spending will surpass US$1 trillion in 2022 [IDC forecast in 2019]. Wireless technologies are a key enabler in the IoT era. To support future massive IoT applications scattering in large areas, there exist several critical challenges in addressing the high-reliability, low-latency, and wide-coverage requirements. Traditional layered Internet architecture and wireless solutions have difficulty dealing with the stringent delay and reliability requirements of IoT applications. Considering the new features and requirements of IoT data traffic, we propose to develop a novel network architecture built on the concept of wireless pipeline. Wireless signals can propagate along a multi-hop wireless pipeline, where synchronized transmissions are scheduled so the information can be forwarded within the pipeline close to the propagation speed. Such a virtual-circuit switching type architecture can ensure low-latency, high-reliability transmissions over long distances. Different from classic virtual-circuit switching networks where the resources of each wired communication links are orthogonal to each other, for wireless pipelines, mutual interferences within the pipeline and among different pipelines are unavoidable. Given the wireless impairments and mutual interference, we will develop advanced signal processing technologies, effective protocols, and optimized control mechanisms to ensure low latency, high reliability, and high efficiency, based on the software-defined networking and network function virtualization platform. Another challenge for IoT systems is mobility and dynamic topology. We will investigate fast and robust pipeline establishment and maintenance protocols for effective topology control and mobility management. Finally, IoT technologies for cyber-physical systems should be agile to deal with the system control objectives, so the IoT control strategies and the wireless pipeline communication protocols will be jointly designed and optimized. The proposed wireless pipeline architecture and protocols will form the basis for future academic-industry collaborations in IoT research, and for developing software-defined radio and software-defined networking-based test platform for validation, performance evaluation, and technology transfer.