NeTS: Collaborative Research: Assessing the Feasibility of Programming the Ambient Wireless Environment

无线连接已经成为日常生活中不可或缺的工具。除了提供基本通信之外，无线基础设施还构成了从智能家居解决方案到自动驾驶汽车等许多物联网（IoT）生态系统的控制和管理功能的支柱。因此，为了确保这些关键基础设施的效率和可靠性，人们付出了无数的努力。在此背景下，该项目遵循了改善无线基础设施以实现更快和无缝连接的总体主题。从科学的角度来看，该项目旨在通过将重点从数据网络本身转移到周围环境，从根本上改变无线网络设计技术方法的可行性。从工业角度来看，该项目为技术贡献开辟了道路，既可以提高蜂窝网络连接质量，又可以在干扰限制其有效性的密集城市部署中实现Wi-Fi技术的共存。从教育的角度来看，该项目有可能改变学术界向本科生和研究生教授无线通信和无线信道主题的方式。传统的无线网络优化方法围绕无线端点，即发射机和接收机，并将无线信道作为硬约束，调用多种解决方案来充分利用该信道。该项目将重点关注优化周围无线环境是否可行。该项目将探索改变沿无线链路感知信道的方法，而不是改变端点的行为方式，从而为无线通信创造更有利的条件。具体来说，该团队将探索如何用小型无线元件测量无线环境，以影响无线接收器从无线发送者处测量的无线信道的变化。然后，将包含这些元件的基板与实时测量无线发送者和接收者之间的信道的控制基础结构结合起来，并驱动元件基板以影响信道变化。作为概念验证，该团队将探索使用该设计来改进单个链接以及减少并发链接之间的干扰。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Wireless connectivity has become an indispensable utility in everyday life. Far beyond providing basic communications, wireless infrastructure comprises the backbone of the control and management functions of many Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystems, ranging from smart home solutions to autonomous vehicles. Therefore, countless efforts have been made to ensure the efficiency and reliability of such critical infrastructure. Against this backdrop, this project follows the same overarching theme of improving wireless infrastructure towards faster and seamless connectivity. From a scientific perspective, the project seeks to investigate the feasibility of fundamentally transforming the technical approach to wireless network design by shifting the focus from the data networks themselves to the ambient environment. From an industrial perspective, the project opens the way for the contribution of techniques to both improve cellular network link quality and enable co-existence of Wi-Fi technologies in dense urban deployments, where interference limits their effectiveness. From an educational perspective, the project has the potential to change the way academia teaches the topic of wireless communications and the wireless channel to undergraduate students and graduate students alike.The traditional approach to optimizing wireless networks revolves around the wireless endpoints, i.e., the transmitters and the receivers, and takes the wireless channel as a hard constraint, invoking a multitude of solutions to fully utilize that channel. This project will instead focus on whether it is feasible to optimize the ambient wireless environment. Instead of changing the ways in which endpoints behave, the project will explore ways of changing the perceived channel along the wireless link to create more favorable conditions for wireless communication. Specifically, the team will explore how to instrument the wireless environment with small wireless elements to effect changes in the wireless channel that a wireless receiver measures from a wireless sender. A substrate comprising these elements is then combined with a control infrastructure that measures the channels between wireless senders and receivers in real time, and actuates the element substrate in order to effect channel variations. As a proof of concept, the team will explore using this design to improve individual links as well as reduce interference between concurrent links.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.