Achieving Spectrum Efficient Broadcast under
Cross-Technology Interference

CNS-1444021
                    

Project Introduction

The proliferation of wireless technologies has greatly benefited people's daily life. However, these wireless technologies coexist in the same or overlapping channels (e.g., ISM bands), and are heaviliy affected by the cross-technology interference (CTI), due to the incompatible PHY/MAC standards. Previous designs are mainly focused on the improvement of unicast communication, trying to improve the performance on individual wireless links from high interference. This limitation calls for the investigation of spectrum efficiency of broadcast under CTI. We will revisit the classical definition of spectrum efficiency in the context of broadcast, because the total aggregated throughput is also subjected to the number of involved receivers and their reception relationship. .



              

Challenges


Our objective of this proposal is to investigate the possible approaches to improve the spectrum efficiency of the ISM band, when heterogeneous technologies coexist in the same band. Our approach will take steps to focus on three complimentary scenarios:(i) devices coexisting with uncontrolled interferers;(ii) devices coexisting with interferers which can be measured and modeled; (iii) devices coexisting with informative and cooperative interferers. The objectives and contributions of this research project are:

  1. Measurement: We will use spectrum analyzers such as AirMagnet Spectrum XT and Avinet Air Masetro to conduct extensive measurement studies to collect cross-technology interference patterns in residential, commercial, and industrial environments. We are not only interested in smart transmitters, but also the RF traces by devices which operate in the ISM band.

  2. Modeling and Metric: We model and quantitatively characterize the spectrum efficiency for broadcast operation, and build synthetic lightweight models to generalize instances of measure traces into a set of parameters, which can precisely characterize the features of cross-technology interference.

  3. Improving Broadcast Spectrum Efficiency under Uncontrolled CTI: Devices (e.g., analog phones and microwave ovens) generate uncontrolled uncontrolled interference that affects the bit-error rate of other technologies working at the ISM band. We study the impact of uncontrolled CTI, and model how it affects multiple wireless links, followed by proposed mitigation methods.

  4. Improving Broadcast Spectrum Efficiency by Measurable CTI: By building on top of our existing WiBee system, we propose to delivery a multiplex CTI mapping devices that exposes CTI information as a service to surrounding devices.

  5. Improving Broadcast Spectrum Efficiency through Collaborative CTI: We exploit the opportunity to embed the side-channel information within traffic to provide cross-technology communication for different wireless technologies.