WiFiUS: Collaborative Research: Low Overhead Wireless Access Solutions for Massive and Dynamic IoT Connectivity

通过无线连接数十亿个物理设备，如传感器、电器、车辆、机器和可穿戴电子产品，无处不在的物联网连接将从根本上改变人类相互之间以及与物理世界的交互方式。物联网技术有望改变许多关键领域，包括健康，能源和交通。另一方面，物联网应用的大规模连接、不均匀的信息负载、严重的成本和功耗限制以及多样化的服务需求也对无线系统的现有设计原则提出了重大挑战。为了应对这些挑战，WiFiUS项目旨在开发全新的接入协议和传输技术，专门用于下一代以物联网为中心的无线应用，以实现高效率和低延迟的低开销和低成本通信。该项目的成功将通过解决有效连接大量物联网设备的及时和困难的挑战，使无线运营商和设备/设备开发商广泛受益。该项目的成果将通过教程、出版物、与行业合作伙伴的交流等方式广泛传播，并纳入本科和研究生教育。具体而言，该项目开发新的物联网网络框架、控制算法和优化工具，以支持具有异构能源和延迟要求的大量物联网设备的高性能和低开销连接。结合PHY/MAC层和信号处理以及网络层协议设计和优化的专业知识，美国-芬兰团队利用两项关键创新来释放物联网应用的网络层和物理层进步的潜力。首先，该项目的目标是降低开销和复杂性（例如信道接入、调度和波束成形），并将其作为中心研究问题;旨在通过低开销、低成本和低功耗限制，为物联网设备释放大规模多天线覆盖的巨大效率增益。其次，这些解决方案将无缝集成授权和非授权频段，以及固定和移动的接入点，以支持具有不同QoS要求的最大潜在范围的物联网应用。综合而言，该项目将生成一套新颖而全面的解决方案，以支持低开销和低成本的大规模物联网连接，并动态适应不断变化的负载和流量模式，以提供所需的覆盖范围和服务质量水平。

By wirelessly connecting billions of physical devices such as sensors, appliances, vehicles, machines, and wearable electronics, the ubiquitous connectivity to IoT (Internet of Things) will fundamentally change the way humans interact with one another and with the physical world. IoT technologies are poised to transform many critical sectors including health, energy, and transportation. On the other hand, the massive connectivity, uneven information payload, severe cost and power constraints, and diverse service needs of IoT applications also pose significant challenges to existing design principles of wireless systems. To address such challenges, this WiFiUS project aims to develop fundamentally new access protocols and transmission technologies specifically for the next-generation IoT-centric wireless applications, to achieve low-overhead and low-cost communications at high efficiency and low-latency. The success of the project will broadly benefit both wireless operators and equipment/device developers by addressing the timely and difficult challenge of effectively connecting massive number of IoT devices. The results of this project will be widely disseminated through tutorials, publications, exchanges with industry partners, and be incorporated into undergraduate and graduate education.Specifically, the project develops new IoT network frameworks, control algorithms and optimization tools to support high-performance and low-overhead connectivity for massive number of IoT devices with heterogeneous energy and latency requirements. Bringing together expertise spanning PHY/MAC-layers and signal processing as well as network-layer protocol design and optimization, the US-Finland team leverages two key innovations to unleash the potential of network-layer and physical-layer advances for IoT applications. First, the project targets the reduction of overhead and complexity (such as for channel access, scheduling, and beamforming) as a central investigative issue; and aims to unlock the vast efficiency gains of large scale multi-antenna coverage for IoT devices with low-overhead, low-cost, and low-power constraints. Second, the solutions will seamlessly integrate licensed and unlicensed bands, as well as stationary and mobile access points, in order to support the largest potential range of IoT applications with diverse QoS requirements. Integratively, the project will generate a novel and comprehensive set of solutions to support low-overhead and low-cost massive IoT connectivity, and to dynamically adapt to changing load- and traffic-patterns to deliver the required level of coverage and service quality.