Wireless devices are proliferating and have widely different data rate, communication range, and power requirements. Currently, such devices use incompatible communication protocols, which limits their connectivity and restricts the set of applications. We are designing a flexible family of protocols that enables vastly different devices to communicate while preserving their individual requirements. The protocols use an OFDM physical layer. Faster protocols use more parallel channels in parallel. To enable large network utilizations, the devices transmit on pseudo-orthogonal sequences of multiple channels. The protocols select the sequences and perform the necessary rendezvous functions. We use simulations to evaluate the characteristics of the protocols and guide the selection of design parameters. The protocols developed in this project enable very different wireless devices to communicate. They result in backward-compatible systems and should spark the development of new applications that exploit these new communication capabilities. The expected result of the project is a new family of MAC communication protocols validated through extensive simulations. These protocols can be implemented with configurable OFDM radios currently being designed by the industry.
