Intellectual Merit: Modern automobiles increasingly rely on electronics and computing technologies to achieve enhanced vehicle control and intra-vehicle communications capabilities, resulting in large amounts of wiring and placing a considerable engineering burden on the designers of automobiles. Ultra Wide Band radio is a promising technology for intra-vehicle wireless control and communications applications since it is capable of achieving high-speed and robust transmissions within a short distance. However, in-vehicle channels introduce dense and extended multi-path components into received signals, and are sensitive to the movement of drivers and passengers. Hence existing Ultra Wide Band technologies need to be redesigned when applied to an in-vehicle environment. This collaborative project firstly addresses the differential code shifted reference technology to capture more signal energy without performing channel estimation leading to an enhanced bit-error rate performance in a low complexity. Secondly, cognitive Ultra Wide Band radio will be used to proactively eliminate various in-band narrowband interferences. Finally, intra-vehicle control and communications systems necessitate an innovative research strategy and design methodology in order to meet the requirement on the coexistence of reliable real-time control message delivery and high-speed date communications.
Broader Impacts: This collaborative project will improve the education quality of electrical engineering and technology programs by involving undergraduate and graduate students and will attract students, especially those from minority groups, to the fields of science, mathematics, engineering, and technology through seminars and demonstrations. Moreover, the research will help American automotive companies become the worldwide leaders in intra-vehicle wireless control and communications applications, save costs up to billions of dollars per year, enhance the reliability of American made vehicles, offer customers attractive features for informatics and entertainments, and ultimately boost the sales of American automotive products. Lastly, the outcomes of the research can be easily extended to other American industrial sectors, and hence increase the high-tech ingredient of American industry.
The developers of modern automobiles increasingly rely on electronics and computing technologies to achieve enhanced capabilities for vehicle control systems, resulting in large amounts of wiring. The packaging demands, reliability, and flexibility of wiring harnesses within an automobile nowadays place a considerable engineering burden on the designers of automobiles. Replacing wired control systems in automobiles with wireless controller area network (CAN) is a revolutionary approach that will benefit automobile manufacturers in decreasing wiring related defects and realizing a flexible design. Meanwhile, intra-vehicle wireless communications networks enable high-speed information transmission within a vehicle and wireless access to the Internet for passengers, which turns the riding into a completely new experience. Utilizing a huge amount of license-free bands, ultra-wideband (UWB) radio is exceptionally robust against a wide range of channel impairments, and has great potential to achieve high-speed transmission within a short distance. Thus, UWB radio has been considered as a promising technology for intra-vehicle wireless control and communications applications. Due to their incapability of achieving reliable and effective transmission in an in-vehicle environment, none of existing UWB radios is applicable to intra-vehicle control and communications systems. In the research project, a series of cutting-edge technologies on high performance low complexity UWB transceiver have been explored to reduce the uncertainty associated with the analysis, design and application of UWB radio for intra-vehicle control and communications services. The outcomes of the research project include: i) Developed on a high performance low complexity UWB transceiver architecture applicable to in-vehicle environments with the multi-band differential code-shifted reference (DCSR) impulse radio technology, and verified the architecture with a hardware platform under laboratory conditions. ii) Developed a full-wave time-domain electromagnetic simulation method that can accurately model UWB channels with significantly improvement in the simulation efficiency and reduction in the computation time with a saving of about 40%. iii) Developed a group of novel signal processing algorithms to implement high performance digital receivers for IR UWB systems with low resolution analog-to-digital converter. iv) Identified a novel research direction, the application of nonlinear signal processing technology and high-order statistical detection technology, to mitigate the destructive effects of narrowband interferences without requiring any prior knowledge on the characteristics of the interferences. v) Identified that nonlinear signal processing technology and high-order statistical detection technology can also mitigate the destructive effects of additive white Gaussian noise. Intellectual Merits: In-vehicle UWB channels distinguish with both the IEEE 802.15.4a and 802.15.3a channels in seriously distributed multipath delays. Both impulse radio and multi-band orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing technologies needs to be redesigned when applied to an in-vehicle environment. To response this critical need, the DCSR technology was firstly investigated in the project, which can capture more signal energy in an in-vehicle channel without channel estimation to achieve an enhanced bit-error rate performance with a low system complexity. Secondly, after narrowband interference was identified as a major factor that can seriously degrade the performance of UWB receivers, like the DCSR receivers, novel signal processing technologies, such as nonlinear signal processing and high-order statistical detection, were explored to mitigate the destructive effects of narrowband interferences without requiring any prior knowledge on the characteristics of the interferences. Finally, an innovative research strategy and design methodology that can meet the demanding requirements on the coexistence of reliable real-time control message delivery and high-speed date communications was explored for intra-vehicle control and communications systems. Broader Impacts: First, the research project improved the education quality of electrical engineering and technology programs at both University of Northern Iowa and University of Michigan - Dearborn through engaging both undergraduate and graduate students in the project. The project helped the participated students better understand course-learned knowledge, gain research experience and skills, and familiarize with the cutting edge technologies in wireless control and communications networks. Second, by presenting specifically designed seminars and demonstrations about the proposed research to general college students, the project helped attract students, especially those from minority groups, to the fields of science, mathematics, engineering, and technology. Third, the outcomes of the research project can help American automotive companies become the worldwide leaders in applying intra-vehicle wireless CAN and wireless communications networks, save costs up to billions of dollars per year, enhance the reliability of American made vehicles, offer customers with attracting features for informatics and entertainments, and ultimately boost the sales of American automotive products. Finally, the outcomes of the proposed research can be easily extended to other American industrial sectors, and hence increase the high-tech ingredient of American industry.
