Collaborative Research: EARS: Interference mitigation by stream decomposition enabled by liquid-metal adaptive antennas

用户之间的干扰是移动电话等无线网络发展的主要障碍之一。开发实用的方法来减轻干扰对无线技术的未来至关重要。拟议的研究解决了干扰问题，因此对经济增长和生活质量具有很大的潜在影响。这个项目有两个相互关联的组成部分。首先，根据最新的信息理论结果，通信流将被分解为许多小流；这些流可以被管理、合并和拆分以对抗干扰。其次，将研究自适应液态金属天线的干扰抑制。由于液态金属可以改变其物理形状，它们可以使天线能够进行调整，以减少干扰。该项目的研究和教育将通过垂直整合项目紧密结合，这些项目涉及从博士生到二年级本科生的学生，包括代表性不足的少数族裔和女性学生。这项研究的结果将通过网络、技术会议和研讨会广泛传播。近年来令人兴奋的发现推动了对干扰的理解。建立了几种工作模式下干扰信道的理论容量，并发现了干扰对齐等新的理论技术。然而，许多实际挑战阻碍了这些有前途的技术的实现。该项目有两个相互关联的组成部分，用于开发无线网络的干扰缓解技术，以实用性和广泛适用性为目标，开创干扰缓解的新方向。该项目的第一个组成部分将通信流分解为“微流”，以便使传输符合现有机会的轮廓，从而在提高速率的同时限制干扰的损害。将通信分成许多小块的广泛原则有着悠久而独特的谱系，包括数据链路层的ARQ和更高层的TCP/IP。这项拟议的研究引入了这一久经考验的原理的新表现，以产生在物理层对抗干扰的新方法。该项目的第二个组成部分是研究自适应液态金属天线，这种天线产生辐射方向图以避免干扰，而这种干扰是单靠信号处理不可能的；特别是它们独特的灵活性有助于避免防止干扰缓解的信道增益值的“单一”值。液态金属天线的独特优势在这一应用中得到了完美的展示，因为微流组合的准确方式可以对性能产生强烈的影响，而这正是液态金属天线有望产生强烈影响的地方。拟议的活动将在增进对无线干扰领域的知识和了解方面发挥重要作用。该项目将开发在干扰情况下进行编码和解码的实用方法。此外，它将导致对液态金属天线如何影响干扰网络中的容量的基本理解。

Interference between users is one of the main impediments for the growth of wireless networks such as the ones used by mobile phones. Developing practical methods to mitigate interference is critical for the future of wireless technology. The proposed research addresses the problem of interference, and therefore has a large potential impact on economic growth as well as quality of life. This project has two interconnected components. First, based on recent information theory results, communication streams will be decomposed into many small streams; these can be managed, combined, and split to combat interference. Second, adaptive liquid-metal antennas will be investigated for interference mitigation. As liquid metals can be made to change their physical shape, they can enable antennas that can be adjusted to reduce interference. Research and education for this project will be tightly integrated through Vertically Integrated Projects that involve students ranging from PhD students to sophomore-level undergraduates, including under-represented minority and female students. The results of this research will be disseminated widely through the web, technical conferences, and seminars. Exciting discoveries in recent years have pushed the boundaries of understanding interference. The theoretical capacity of interference channels in several operating modes has been established, and new theoretical techniques such as interference alignment have been discovered. However, many practical challenges stand in the way of realizing these promising techniques. This project has two interconnected components for developing interference-mitigation techniques for wireless networks that create a new direction in interference mitigation aimed at practicality and wide applicability. The first component of the project decomposes the communication stream into "microstreams" to fit the transmissions into the contours of available opportunities, in a manner that improves rates while limiting the damage of interference. The broad principle of breaking communication into many small pieces has a long and distinguished pedigree, including ARQ in the data link layer and TCP/IP in higher layers. The proposed research introduces a novel manifestation of this time-tested principle to produce new approaches that combat interference in the physical layer. The second component of the project investigates adaptive liquid-metal antennas that generate radiation patterns to avoid interference in a manner not possible with signal processing alone; in particular their unique flexibility helps to avoid "singular" values of channel gains that prevent interference mitigation. The unique strengths of liquid-metal antennas are perfectly showcased in this application, because the exact manner of microstream combining can have a strong effect on performance, and this is where liquid-metal antennas promise to have a strong impact. The proposed activity will play an important role in the advancement of knowledge and understanding in the field of wireless interference. The project will develop practical methods for coding and decoding under interference. Furthermore, it will lead to a basic understanding of how liquid-metal antennas can affect capacity in interference networks.