NeTS: Small: Collaborative Research: Transparent Cross-technology Communication in Wireless Networks

Successful proliferation of wireless technologies in the past decade was led by multiple and heterogeneous technologies (e.g., WiFi, Bluetooth, and ZigBee) to accommodate diverse application requirements including system reliability, timeliness, and energy usage. However, wireless devices and their non-cooperative behavior lead to critically inefficient utilization of scarce wireless spectrum. This project develops a collaboration framework taking a clean-slate approach called Cross-technology Communication (CTC) - enabling message exchange between heterogeneous wireless technologies (e.g., Bluetooth and WiFi). The project aims to achieve two goals: (i) address resource under-utilization to bring significant cost reduction in network operation, and (ii) enable unique and advanced network functions via collaboration among heterogeneous entities with different capabilities. The impacts of this project will be further amplified by 1) embedding the technology on massive off-the-shelf systems via collaborations with major industry players; 2) improving curriculum development with enhanced course projects; 3) disseminating research results through high-profile tutorials and open-source sites; 4) raising interest in technology among K-12 students and under-represented minority groups through outreach activities including open houses; and 5) supporting talented female and minority PhD students.

The project departs from the extensive studies in literature that commonly take implicit spectrum sharing approaches, to uniquely propose an explicit approach by enabling CTC. It enables cross-technology collaboration to bring advanced services, essentially exploring the bright side of coexistence. To achieve the goal, the project includes in-depth systematic study on CTC, contributing novel designs across multiple domains including: 1) extensive studies on empirical measurement and simulation to reveal the practical and theoretical limits of CTC capacity; 2) exploration of CTC design space to achieve gains in throughput, Quality of Service, and compatibility; 3) building scalable and reliable heterogeneous networks via CTC; and 4) CTC-enabled services benefiting from collaboration between cross-technology channel coordination, time synchronization, localization, and energy management.