ERI: Pushing the Limits of WiFi Technology for Non-Mission-Critical and Mission-Critical Applications

尽管WiFi(又名802.11)设备易于部署和普及，但住宅和校园环境中使用的资源受限的物联网设备难以满足必要的能效和通信延迟要求，以满足应用程序的需求。此外，尽管WiFi提供的高数据速率可以满足工业自动化等关键任务应用的通信速率要求，但WiFi堆栈的复杂性和不可预测性使得开发新应用成为一项不切实际的任务。这项研究旨在研究和开发新的方法、算法和软件框架，以促进基于WiFi的新型应用程序和服务的开发。这项研究针对两大类应用程序：(I)非任务关键型系统，其中常规用户设备(例如智能手机、笔记本电脑)和物联网设备(例如摄像头、恒温器、烟雾探测器)共存；(Ii)任务关键型系统，其中设备和控制器之间必须实施确定性的端到端延迟(即控制回路)。为了促进WiFi通信领域的创新并调查这些网络的运行情况，本研究提出了一种可扩展和可编程的WiFi堆栈监控软件框架。此外，还开发了参考测试床设计以及流量特征和生成方法，以构建代表真实部署场景的测试床。对于非任务关键型系统，将开发新的方法来提高物联网设备在呈现动态流量模式的环境中的能效和通信及时性。具体地说，本研究引入了分组传递延迟预测作为一种新的方法来开发提高设备通信延迟和能量效率的方法。第三，对于工业自动化等关键任务应用，本研究将开发一个框架，该框架集成了WiFi协议栈的用户空间实现，并提供编程原语来促进确定性通信调度算法的开发。使用这个框架，将开发调度算法，以在动态环境中执行端到端通信延迟保证。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Despite the ease of deployment and prevalence of WiFi (a.k.a., 802.11) devices, the resource-constraint Internet of Things (IoT) devices used in residential and campus environments struggle to meet the necessary energy efficiency and communication delay requirements to address applications’ demands. In addition, although the high data rates offered by WiFi can satisfy the communication rate requirements of mission-critical applications such as industrial automation, the complexity and unpredictability of the WiFi stack make new applications development an impractical undertaking. The proposed research investigates and develops new methodologies, algorithms, and software frameworks to facilitate the development of new classes of WiFi-based applications and services.This research targets two broad classes of applications: (i) non-mission-critical systems where regular user devices (e.g., smartphones, laptops) and IoT devices (e.g., cameras, thermostats, smoke detectors) coexist, and (ii) mission-critical systems where deterministic end-to-end delaysbetween devices and controllers (i.e., control loop) must be enforced. Towards facilitating innovation in the realm of WiFi communication and investigating the operation of these networks, this research proposes a software framework for scalable and programmable monitoring of theWiFi stack. In addition, a reference testbed design and traffic characterization and generation methods are developed to build testbeds that represent real-world deployment scenarios. For non-mission-critical systems, new methods will be developed to enhance IoT devices' energyefficiency and communication timeliness in environments exhibiting dynamic traffic patterns. Specifically, this research introduces packet delivery delay prediction as a novel approach to develop methods for improving devices' communication delay and energy efficiency. Third, for mission-critical applications such as industrial automation, this research will develop a framework that integrates a user-space implementation of WiFi stack and provides programming primitives to facilitate the development of deterministic communication scheduling algorithms. Using this framework, scheduling algorithms will be developed to enforce end-to-end communication delay guarantees in dynamic environments.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.