Sustainable Computing and Communication at the Edge (SONATA)

现代通信网络正在迅速发展成为集通信和计算能力于一体的复杂系统。网络边缘计算是支持从扩展现实到智能健康、智能城市、智能工厂和自动驾驶等许多新兴应用的关键。SONATA的动力来自于这样一个事实：大规模采用边缘智能技术，在有利于人类生产力和效率的同时，将导致移动网络中数据和计算的激增，这反过来又将加剧其已经显著的能源消耗。SONATA是一项跨学科的努力，通过将记忆硬件和能量收集技术与新颖的机器学习算法和物理层通信技术相结合，来驯服日益增长的能源需求。特别是，我们希望将记忆设备的节能内存计算和学习潜力与边缘学习的“空中计算（OAC）”方法结合起来，这种方法将空气从纯粹的通信媒介转变为计算单元。我们的项目不仅旨在大幅降低边缘学习系统的能量需求，而且还专注于使它们对由于不可靠的硬件或能源而导致的随机故障具有鲁棒性。我们将利用电路设计，编码理论，无线通信，机器学习和网络科学的工具来实现这些目标。SONATA的研究结果将为研究和开发技术开辟新的方向，使移动系统能够以可持续的方式提供人们期待已久的通信和计算服务。

Modern communication networks are rapidly evolving into sophisticated systems combining communication and computing capabilities. Computation at the network edge is the key to supporting many emerging applications, from extended reality to smart health, smart cities, smart factories and autonomous driving. SONATA is motivated by the fact that the large scale adoption of edge intelligence technology, while benefiting human productivity and efficiency, will result in a surge of data and computation in mobile networks, which, in turn, will exacerbate their already significant energy consumption. SONATA is an interdisciplinary effort to tame this growing energy demand by combining memristive hardware and energy harvesting technologies with novel machine learning algorithms and physical layer communication techniques. In particular, we want to combine the energy efficient in-memory computing and learning potential of memristive devices with an "over-the-air computation (OAC)" approach to edge learning, which turns the air from a purely communication medium to a computation unit. Our project not only aims at reducing the energy requirements of edge learning systems drastically, but also focuses on making them robust against stochastic failures, due to unreliable hardware or energy sources. We will exploit tools from circuit design, coding theory, wireless communications, machine learning and network science to achieve these goals. Results from SONATA will open up new directions for research and development of technologies that will allow mobile systems to offer the much anticipated communication and computing services in a sustainable manner.