MRI/Acq.: A Software-Defined Radio-Based Testbed for Next Generation Wireless Network Research Project Proposed: This project from an MSI, principally undergraduate university, acquiring/building software-defined radio (SDR) platforms for wireless monitoring and surveillance, aims to test and verify theoretical results for synthetic Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output (MIMO) systems. The work will - Enhance PHY and MAC visibility of operational wireless networks by distributed acquisition of RF signals and decodable frames and - Facilitate evaluation and repeatable experimentations in ongoing research projects in the area of wireless communications and networking, The project involves - Development of software tools for trace collection and replay for repeatable experimentation; - Collection of extensive wireless traces in campus environments to understand propagation characteristics, device types, and co-existence issues; - Construction of device fingerprint database for commonly used wired devices; and - Performance of synthetic MIMO experiments in a fully controlled environment. Broader Impacts: The experimental facility is likely to advance research in wireless monitoring and diagnosis by collecting comprehensive wireless traces and supporting design, analysis, and optimization of distributed space-time processing in both controlled and real-world deployment conditions. Complementing the existing apparatus for telecommunication system design within two centers, it should greatly strengthen and broaden wireless activity. Consequently, it will help students to obtain hands-on experience and expertise in theory and practice of experimental wireless and cognitive radio techniques. Thus it contributes to train highly skilled personnel in a critical area.
Spectrum is a scarce and expensive commodity (~$200M per MHz during the recent auction). A large scale spectrum situation awareness is essential in many mission-critical applications. The methodology in this study enables effective inference of spectrum usage across multiple frequency bands at different locations. The PVAMU approach, supported with this NSF instrumentation grant, allows validation of many researches on cognitive radio using real-world measurement data. Specifically, a cognitive radio test bed is established at Prairie View A&M University (PVAMU). Spectrum signatures of typical wireless devices are captured and spectrum measurements from multiple locations are collected and stored in a database. The collected RF traces of mobile phones and the medical band reveal interesting patterns that have not been reported in existing literature. This discovery requires further research into the usage and spectrum sharing of these frequency bands. This project provides much needed flexibility for performing spectrum sensing experiments with greater capabilities and larger geographical footprints. Through the process of developing and deploying the proposed hardware and software, the team has gained valuable hands-on experience on USRP2 and GNU radio. The experimental data provide the ground truth for validation of our on-going theoretical work on large-scale spectrum status determination. Spectrum inference for multiple frequency band at multiple locations is carried out by using image processing techniques on the collected data. The coexistence of multiple wireless devices and interference avoidance are also investigated. The results are disseminated through journal and conference publications, a website dedicated to this project, a seminar series organized by the PI, and collaborations with other institutions. Specifically, three journal papers and 16 peer-reviewed conference papers were published and presented. The PI (Qian) organized the Electrical and Computer Engineering Seminar series for several semesters and 12 colleagues from other institutions, two scientists from Los Alamos National Laboratory and two renowned researcheres from industry were invited to present their research works at our university. A website dedicated to this NSF project is implemented. The results from this project in terms of publications, experimental results and RF traces, and various software have been listed on the website for broad dissemination to the general public and the research community. This project provides valuable hands-on experience for faculty and students. Many graduate and undergraduate students have participated this project and they have obtained valuable hands-on experience of USRP2, GNU radio, and LabVIEW. The established test bed also helps them perform cutting-edge research in wireless communications and mobile networks.
