II-New: Multi-Dimensional Drone Communication Infrastructure

无人机的下一波应用范围从自然灾害期间的消费品交付或互联网连接到自主作战或搜索和救援等防御场景，所有这些都需要在从飞行到地面站的各种高度上协调多个实体。然而，实现这些应用程序存在两个重要挑战。首先，定位许多天线以在三维中进行通信是不平凡的，因为在功率和重量方面的负载能力受到高度限制，并且无人机主体可能会阻挡天线的相对侧上的接收。第二，大规模天线阵列越来越多地用于提高给定方向上的信道质量。然而，单个无人机上的天线规模有限，并且由于恒定的移动性、变化的相对位置以及无法更新所有发送节点的信道状态，将天线阵列分布在无人机群上的挑战是极其复杂的。在这个项目中，目标是建立MuDDI，一个多维无人机通信基础设施，它将使无人机的室内和室外实验能够解决与3D连接相关的研究问题，在无人机群中分布天线，以及优化传输到预期接收器的3D群编队。为了实现这些研究活动，设计这样的基础设施有四个关键的开发任务：（i.）构建可编程无人机平台，以在每个无人机上实现混合波束成形，从而实现跨越所有三个物理维度的极端的定向传输，这需要无人机的每个面上的天线和切换元件来向这些天线动态地分配有限的射频（RF）处理链，（ii.）设计用于跨无人机的大规模分布式波束形成的测试基础设施，用于对已经提出但尚未在具有飞行中振动和移动模式以及各种群编队的无人机上进行评估的各种信道反馈机制进行实验分析，（iii.）在天花板和周围墙壁的表面上构造和结合大规模天线阵列，以捕获寻求3D连接的单个无人机、创建各种编队的分布式无人机群以及大规模多输入/多输出（MIMO）地面站的各种所得传输模式，以及（iv.）集成了一个大规模MIMO控制站，可以实现定向传输，并跟踪飞行中系统的移动性，从而实现对各种波束宽度和多用户波束模式的研究，这些波束模式可以在大型天线阵列中同时分配。该奖项反映了NSF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。

The next wave of applications for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) or drones range from delivery of consumer goods or Internet connectivity during natural disasters to defense scenarios such as autonomous combat or search and rescue, all of which require coordination of multiple entities across various altitudes from in-flight to ground-based stations. However, there are two important challenges to realizing such applications. First, positioning many antennas to communicate in three dimensions is non-trivial since the load capacity in terms of power and weight is highly restricted, and the drone body may block reception on the opposite side of the antenna. Second, large-scale antenna arrays are increasingly being used to increase channel quality in a given direction. However, there is limited antenna scale on a single UAV, and the challenge of distributing the antenna array across a drone swarm is extremely complex due to constant mobility, varying relative positions, and the inability to update the channel state of all transmitting nodes. In this project, the goal is to build MuDDI, a Multi-Dimensional Drone Communication Infrastructure, which will enable indoor and outdoor experimentation with UAVs to address research issues related to 3-D connectivity, distributed antennas across a drone swarm, and 3-D swarm formations that optimize the transmission to intended receivers.To enable these research activities, there are four key development tasks to design such an infrastructure: (i.) building a programmable drone platform to enable hybrid beamforming on each drone to enable directional transmissions across the extremes of all three physical dimensions, which requires antennas on each face of the drone and switching elements to dynamically allocate limited radio frequency (RF) processing chains to these antennas, (ii.) designing a test infrastructure for large-scale distributed beamforming across UAVs for the experimental analysis of the various channel feedback mechanisms that have been set forth but have yet to be evaluated on drones with in-flight vibrations and mobility patterns and various swarm formations, (iii.) constructing and incorporating a large-scale antenna array over the surface of the ceiling and surrounding walls to capture various resulting transmission patterns of a single drone seeking 3-D connectivity, distributed drone swarm creating various formations, and a massive multiple-input/multiple-output (MIMO) ground station, and (iv.) integrating a massive MIMO control station that can enable directional transmissions to, and track the mobility of in-flight systems, enabling research on the various beam widths and multi-user beam patterns that may be simultaneously allocated among large antenna arrays.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.