The objective of this project is to lay a theoretical foundation for all aspects of virtual full-duplex wireless networks and to build prototypes using readily available software-defined radios and evaluate the performance. Commercial and military radios of today are half-duplex and cannot transmit and receive simultaneously over the same frequency band due to overwhelming self-interference. This project challenges the paradigm by proposing full-duplex and virtual full-duplex design of the physical, medium access control and network layers based on emerging technologies.
One key technique, called rapid on-off-division duplex, allows all nodes to transmit and receive simultaneously by choosing an on-off mask and letting each node transmit through the on-slots and receive over the off-slots. Over a single frame, every node can simultaneously broadcast a message to all neighboring nodes and receive a message from every neighbor at the same time. The transformative solution removes a major constraint on the transmission schedule and thereby increases the throughput and decreases network overhead.
Intellectual merit:
The intellectual merit lies in transformative network architectures and designs that enable nodes to transmit and receive information at the same time, contrary to conventional wisdom of separating transmission and receptions in time and/or frequency. This challenging research will draw from and, in turn, add to, communication theory, signal processing, information theory, and network theory.
Broader impacts:
The broader impacts are radically new wireless standards with robust and significantly improved performance, involving undergraduate and graduate students in cutting-edge research, and integrating new research results into the curricula.
