Intellectual Merit: The objective of this project is to develop basic theory and design strategies for new wireless communication architectures that are expected to deliver transformative enhancements in the access to, and usage of, the electromagnetic spectrum at millimeter-wave frequencies. The exploding bandwidth requirements imposed by the new data-hungry mobile devices will soon outgrow the Megabits/sec speeds offered by current networks. Additionally, there is simply not enough bandwidth available at the currently used frequencies. Two technological trends offer new synergistic opportunities: i) millimeter-wave systems with orders-of-magnitude larger bandwidths, and ii) multi-antenna transceivers that can exploit the spatial dimension for transformative gains at such small wavelengths. State-of-the-art approaches fall significantly short of harnessing the opportunities because of their failure to address fundamental performance-complexity tradeoffs inherent at millimeter-wave frequencies. An integrated theoretical-experimental approach is being pursued for developing new transceiver architectures that leverage the concept of beamspace communication multiplexing data into distinct spatial beams to fully harness the spatial degrees of freedom for enhanced power efficiency, spectral efficiency, security, and reduced interference. The investigation is anchored on two complementary architectures one based on conventional arrays and digital beamforming and a new architecture that uses a novel lens array for analog beamforming whose combinations offer a rich set of performance-complexity pathways. The proposed research activities include optimized antenna array design, propagation channel modeling, development of beamspace communication techniques, and prototype-based evaluation. The results of the project are expected to enable critical operational capabilities that are beyond the reach of the state-of-the-art, including electronic multi-beam steering and tracking in mobile point-to-multipoint links.
Broader Impacts: The project will provide an invaluable opportunity for multi-disciplinary training of students at the cutting-edge of wireless communications. Research results will be broadly disseminated through conference and journal publications, research seminars, and via the internet. Research findings will be incorporated by the PIs into existing courses through lectures and course projects. Under-represented undergraduate and graduate students will be involved in the project through existing successful programs at the University of Wisconsin. Middle- and high-school teachers will be engaged in the project for outreach in science and engineering. In the longer term, the results of this project are expected to spur new interdisciplinary research in wireless communication and sensing at millimeter-wave and higher frequencies. Through proactive industrial collaborations and technology transfer, the results of the project are expected to impact the conception, development, standardization and commercialization of emerging millimeter-wave broadband wireless technologies for delivering 10-1000 Gigabits/s speeds.
