EARS: Achieving Spectrum Efficient Broadcast Under Cross-Technology Interference

Wireless technologies have percolated into people's daily life for personal communication, mobile Internet surfing, global positioning, digital media broadcasting, and smart home automation. These technologies are deployed in environments ranging from well-controlled laboratories and residential houses to highly dynamic urban surroundings. This work aims at improving a range of wireless technologies so that information can be broadcast more reliably, quickly and cost-efficiently in highly crowded WiFi, Bluetooth and LTE environments. Research has shown that uncoordinated wireless coexistence in overlapping channels leads to severe inefficiency in spectrum utilization. Although a few coexistence designs have been done recently to deal with cross-technology interference (CTI), those studies focus primarily on improving spectrum utilization in unicast communication. Unlike in one-to-one unicast communication, network topological features in one-to-many broadcast communication significantly impact broadcast spectrum efficiency. With the increasing demand for broadcast support, the field is facing an urgent need to investigate broadcast spectrum efficiency in the context of wireless coexistence.

This project conducts a systematic cross-layer study of broadcast under CTI, contributing novel designs across physical, data link, and network layers. The research topics include: 1) conducting extensive measurement studies to collect traces regarding cross-technology interference patterns in a wide range of environments; 2) building synthetic models to generalize instances of measure traces into a set of parameterized models that precisely characterize features of cross-technology interference; 3) empirically and theoretically modeling how uncontrolled CTI affects multiple wireless links simultaneously and proposing mitigation methods through network topology management; 4) delivering a spatial, temporal, and spectral CTI mapping device that exposures CTI information as a service to surrounding wireless ISM devices, so that these devices can seek white space opportunities in spatial, temporal and spectral domains for effective broadcast, and 5) supporting cross-technology broadcast by embedding side-channel information through cross-technology modulation. The broader impact of this work is amplified by (i) improving curriculum development with enhanced course projects; (ii) disseminating research results through high-profile tutorials and open-source sites; (iii) raising interest in technology among K-12 students and under-represented minority groups through open houses; and (iv) supporting talented female and minority PhD students to successfully accomplish their doctoral studies.