CI-ADDO-EN: Infrastructure for the RF-Powered Computing Community

在这个项目开始之前，研究人员开发了一种名为WISP的新型射频传感和计算平台，该平台从射频识别阅读器发出的射频信号中获取全部工作功率。他们还开发了一个配套的SDR（软件定义无线电）阅读器平台，该平台将RF信号发送到电源，并使用一种称为反向散射的节能通信技术与wisp通信。wisp和阅读器的硬件和软件都是开源的，并可供研究社区使用。该提案通过向合格的研究人员捐赠下一代增强版本的wisp、读者和软件，增强了以前开发的基础设施，并使其更广泛地提供给研究社区。与第一代基础设施相比，增强的基础设施改进了读取范围、程序内存、计算能力和编程抽象。这个项目促进了计算与物理世界越来越紧密地联系在一起的长期转变。这种转变可以实现更智能的生活和工作环境、更好的医疗保健、改进的制造和物流、减少能源使用和污染，以及其他好处。一个基本的困难是如何为这些物理嵌入的微电子系统供电。电池限制了设备的使用寿命、尺寸、重量和外形。然而，在微电子的能源效率的改进，最近有可能运行嵌入式计算机仅使用电力收集从射频信号。该提案为研究社区提供了基础设施，以实现射频驱动的计算研究，从而在物理世界中更深层次地嵌入计算。

Prior to the start of this project, the investigators developed a novel RF-powered sensing and computing platform called the WISP that harvests the entirety of its operating power from RF signals emitted by RFID readers. They also developed a companion SDR (Software-Defined Radio) reader platform that sends RF signals to power and communicate with the WISPs using a power efficient communication technique known as backscatter. The hardware and software for both the WISPs and readers was open-sourced and made available to the research community. This proposal enhances that previously developed infrastructure, and makes it more widely available to the research community, by donating next generation, enhanced versions of the WISPs, readers, and software to qualified researchers. Compared to the first generation infrastructure, the enhanced infrastructure has improved read range, program memory, computing power, and programming abstractions.This project facilitates a long-term transformation in which computing becomes more and more deeply connected to the physical world. This transformation can enable smarter living and working environments, better medical care, improved manufacturing and logistics, reduced energy usage and pollution, and other benefits. A fundamental difficulty has been how to power these physically-embedded microelectronic systems. Batteries limit devices lifetimes, size, weight, and form factor. However, improvements in the energy efficiency of microelectronics have recently made it possible to run embedded computers using only power harvested from RF signals. This proposal provides infrastructure to the research community to enable RF-powered computing research, and thus deeper embedding of computation in the physical world.