NeTS: Small: Cognitive Antennas for Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

认知无线电具有调整带宽、调制方案、发射功率、差错编码和其他参数的能力，为适应网络条件提供了巨大的灵活性。虽然认知无线电主要改变频谱分配或调制特性，但该项目考虑认知无线电网络，其中每个节点的天线可以进行电子重新配置。认知无线电与可重构天线的耦合为网络节点提供了额外的自由度，以增加链路的稳健性，增强干扰抑制，并增加频谱容量。本项目展示了由电可重构天线提供的辐射方向图的灵活性如何能够实现更大的同频道通信链路密度，从而增加网络容量。多传感器数据融合被用于将天线和无线电配置与认知无线电场景评估和适应技术相结合，使用多种数据源。为了适应认知无线电环境，节点之间的交互最少，正在开发分布式控制技术，并分析了这些算法的稳定性和收敛速度(包括收敛速度)。我们还在创建实用的网络协议，将认知天线功能包括在QoS路由、拥塞控制、路径故障缓解和资源管理中。研究成果正在硬件试验台上展示。该项目的主要成果是一个控制配备可重新配置天线的认知无线电的框架。该提案促进了本科生的技术创新和设计，并开展了外联活动，以吸引学生，特别是来自代表不足的群体的学生，进入工程学专业。

Cognitive radios, which have the ability to adjust bandwidth, modulation scheme, transmit power, error coding, and other parameters, provide tremendous flexibility for adaptation to network conditions. While cognitive radios predominantly change spectral allocation or modulation characteristics, this project considers networks of cognitive radios in which the antennas at each node can be electronically reconfigured. Coupling cognitive radios with reconfigurable antennas gives network nodes an additional degree of freedom to increase link robustness, enhance interference suppression, and increase spectral capacity.This project demonstrates how the flexibility in radiation patterns provided by electrically reconfigurable antennas, or ?cognitive antennas?, can enable a greater density of co-channel communication links and thus increase network capacity. Multi-sensor data fusion is being used to incorporate antenna and radio configuration with cognitive radio scene assessment and adaptation techniques, using multiple data sources. Distributed control techniques are being developed to adapt cognitive radio settings with minimum interaction between nodes, and and the stability and convergence of these algorithms (including convergence rate) are analyzed. We are also creating practical networking protocols to include cognitive antenna capabilities in QoS routing, congestion control, path failure mitigation, and resource management. Research results are being demonstrated on a hardware testbed. The main result of this project is a framework for controlling cognitive radios equipped with reconfigurable antennas. The proposal fosters technical innovation and design among undergraduate students, and outreach activities to attract students, especially from under-represented groups, to engineering.