Planning Grant: Engineering Research Center for Next Generations of Wireless Telecommunication (WiTeC)

工程研究中心规划拨款竞赛是ERC项目的试点征集。规划补助金不需要作为ERC竞赛的一部分，但它旨在在团队之间建立能力，以规划聚合的、中心规模的工程研究。2019冠状病毒病大流行比人类历史上任何其他事件都更加凸显了电信的必要性和重要性。它单枪匹马地维持了企业、政府、学术界和社会的运转，尽管有强制性的社会隔离和检疫。面对逆境和自然灾害，人类生存的需求不断发展，无处不在的连接世界成为必要。从精准农业到人工智能驱动的精准医疗，从全息传送到空间连接，创造一个突破当前电信技术界限的世界是很重要的，这样我们才能更好、更强大地度过下一次大流行和/或灾难。在2019冠状病毒病大流行期间，15亿儿童需要在线教育，51%的美国人在2020年在家工作。然而，美国有4400万户家庭，以及居住在部落土地上的约40%的非洲裔美国人、西班牙裔美国人和印第安人由于缺乏接入和负担能力而无法获得宽带服务。这一流行病对这些族裔阶层的社会经济和精神健康造成了最严重的损害，这并不奇怪。由于无法获得在线医疗服务，也没有政府的授权和关于病毒传播的通知，纳瓦霍族的人均感染率是全国最高的，非洲裔美国人社区的失业率也是最高的。接触、负担能力和技术素养可以弥合差距。这项规划赠款的目标是了解这些社区的需求，从而设计有影响力的电信系统，以帮助公平竞争。WiTeC ERC的目标是整合来自全国各地的研究团队，以成功创建具有无所不在的连接和前所未有的可靠性和延迟的下一代电信-超越当前电信系统所能提供的。它将成为突破性技术研究挑战的中心，如tbps级的数据速率和微秒级的延迟，即使是目前的毫米波技术也无法实现。它将作为一个讨论未来和广泛不同用例的平台，从精准农业到立方体卫星（立方毫米大小的卫星）通信，甚至可以在美国农村最偏远的地区提供连接。WiTec的智力优势将在于它将承担的基础研究挑战，即(i)探索无线电技术，以前所未有的速度、可靠性和延迟实现无处不在的连接，（ii）创新更环保、更节能的未来电信系统，以及（iii）利用无处不在的人工智能构建比以往更智能、更强大的电信系统的新方法。该中心还将成为开发新型无线电技术的开创性电信研究试验台的所在地。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。

The Planning Grants for Engineering Research Centers competition was run as a pilot solicitation within the ERC program. Planning grants are not required as part of the full ERC competition, but intended to build capacity among teams to plan for convergent, center-scale engineering research.The Covid-19 pandemic reinforced the need and importance of telecommunications more than any other event in the history of mankind. It, single-handedly, kept businesses, governments, academia and societies running in spite of the mandated social isolations and quarantines. The need for the human race to survive in the face of adversities and natural calamities continues to evolve where a world of ubiquitous connectivity becomes a necessity. From precision agriculture to artificial intelligence driven precision medicine, from holographic teleportation to space connectivity, it is important to create a world which pushes the boundaries of our current telecommunication technologies so that we can survive the next pandemic and/or calamity better and stronger. 1.5 billion children required online education during the COVID-19 pandemic and 51% of Americans worked from home in 2020. However, 44 million households in America and about 40% each of African Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans residing on tribal lands do not have access to broadband services owing to the lack of access and affordability. It is not surprising that the pandemic has taken its most severe toll on the socio-economic and mental well-being of these ethnic classes. Without access to online healthcare and government mandates and notifications about the spread of the virus, the Navajo Nation had the highest per capita infection rate in the country and the highest job-losses occurred in the African American community. Exposure, affordability and literacy in technology can bridge the gap. The goal of this planning grant is to understand the needs of these communities and thereby design impactful telecommunications systems to help level the playing field. The WiTeC ERC aims to amalgamate a convergent research team from across the nation to successfully create the next generation of telecommunication with omnipresent connectivity and unprecedented reliability and latency -leaps beyond what current telecommunication systems can offer. It will be a hub for breakthrough technological research challenges like Tbps-level of data rates and microsecond orders of delay that even current millimeter wave technology cannot achieve. It will serve as a platform for discourse on futuristic and widely variant use cases, ranging from precision agriculture to CubeSat (cubic millimeter sized satellites) communication that can provide connectivity even in the remotest part of rural America. The intellectual merit of WiTec will lie in the fundamental research challenges it will undertake, namely (i) exploring radio technologies for ubiquitous connectivity with unprecedented speed, reliability and latency, (ii) innovating greener and power efficient future telecommunication systems and (iii) novel ways of utilizing pervasive artificial intelligence to build a telecommunication system that is smarter and more robust than ever before. The Center will also be the seat for developing groundbreaking telecommunications research test-beds in novel radio technologies.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.