Next generation cellular WiFi integration

移动设备用户不断增长的数据消费给移动网络带来了压力，因此，系统运营商不断升级其无线广域网络。随着支持WiFi的移动设备数量的增加以及WiFi接入在家庭、企业和零售场所变得无处不在，WiFi卸载对网络运营商来说是一个有吸引力的选择。虽然移动蜂窝服务提供商预计2013-2018年移动数据流量将增长11倍，但提供移动数据的成本很高，2013年，45%的全球移动数据流量被分流。新兴的IEEE 802.11ac WiFi标准包含通过多输入多输出(MIMO)技术对多天线的更好物理层支持的增强，以使例如无线局域网(WLAN)接入点(AP)能够以高速率同时向多个用户传输分组。802.11ac不仅支持多用户MIMO，还可以通过帧聚合和多路径传输控制协议(TCP)提高媒体接入(MAC)网络协议的效率。 该项目致力于开发由新兴WiFi标准和专有性能增强实现的功能，以卸载广域移动蜂窝网络。爱立信是全球领先的基站设备开发商，在加拿大拥有成熟的研发机构，是工业研究合作伙伴。建议的研究目标是研究WiFi吞吐量的改进，重点放在：(1)通过结合帧聚合、时间预测和多用户MIMO开发新颖的MIMO传输适配方法，提高点对点WiFi物理层性能；(2)针对密集部署，多AP协调用户感知能力；(3)通过研究网络/喷泉编码的分组从网关到最终用户的传输，实现WiFi和蜂窝网络的集成。

The ever-growing consumption of data by mobile device users is placing a strain on mobile networks, and as a result, system operators are continually making upgrades to their wireless wide area networks. With the increasing number of WiFi capable mobile devices and WiFi access becoming ubiquitous in homes, enterprises and retail locations, WiFi offload is an attractive option for network operators. While mobile cellular service providers are expecting mobile data traffic to increase by 11-fold over 2013-2018, mobile data is costly to provide, and in 2013, 45 percent of global mobile data traffic was offloaded. The emerging IEEE 802.11ac WiFi standard contains enhancements for better physical-layer support for multiple antennas via multi-input multi-output (MIMO) technology to enable, for example, wireless local area network (WLAN) access points (APs) to transmit packets simultaneously to multiple users at high rates. Not only does 802.11ac support multi-user MIMO, there are also potential media access (MAC) network protocol efficiency improvements possible through both frame aggregation and multipath transmission control protocols (TCP). This project is concerned with developing the capabilities enabled by emerging WiFi standards and proprietary performance enhancements to offload wide area mobile cellular networks. Ericsson, a world-leading developer of basestation equipment with an established R&D presence in Canada, is the industrial research partner. The proposed research goals are to investigate improvements in WiFi throughput, focusing on: (1) improving point-to-point WiFi PHY performance, enhanced by recent IEEE 802.11ac, by developing novel adaptation methods for MIMO transmission in combination with frame aggregation, temporal prediction, and multi-user MIMO, (2) multiple AP coordination of user sensing capability for dense deployments and (3) WiFi and cellular network integration by investigating network/fountain coded packet transmission from gateway to end user via parallel cellular and WiFi links that are multipath TCP compatible.