Intelligent Energy Efficient Spectrum Access for Wireless IoT

Sponsor: National Science Foundation (NSF)

Duration: August 2017 - August 2021

Investigators: Dr. Jiang (Linda) Xie (PI), Dr. Tao Han, and Dr. Thomas Weldon

Students: Moinul Hossain, Qiang Liu, Johnson Opadere, Vinit Katariya, and Christopher Daniel

Overview:

The future Internet of Things (IoT) will support numerous types of applications producing overwhelming data traffic with highly different Quality-of-Service (QoS) requirements, creating challenges in terms of spectrum scarcity, and prohibitive energy consumption of billions of devices. This research offers transformative advances in overall network energy efficiencies, by leveraging order-of-magnitude energy efficiencies of low-frequency bands, novel heterogeneous battery management, and spectrum access methods designed to take advantage of these two new advances.

This project is the first endeavor in wireless IoT to take the great advantage of energy efficiency of reduced propagation losses in lower frequency bands (below 800MHz) and utilize this advantage to enable fast and energy-efficient spectrum access by low-power frequency-agile devices with heterogeneous batteries.

This research is truly interdisciplinary covering integrating advances in circuits/hardware design, device battery management, and synergistic energy-efficient networking and spectrum access.

Research Activities and Key Outcomes:

The specific research goal to be accomplished in this project is to design, analyze, and evaluate innovative intelligent energyefficient spectrum access technologies for wireless IoT. The project has the following main research components:

• Energy-efficient channel rendezvous: (1) design fully distributed rendezvous schemes for multi-band spectrum with heterogeneous transmit power and (2) support priority-based spectrum access with significantly reduced rendezvous delay.

• Cognitive battery system for IoT devices: (1) model the power consumption of hterogeneous batteries in each IoT device and (2) manage the cognitive battery system dynamically to maximize the energy efficiency of each IoT device.

• Digital non-Foster enhancement of electrically-small antennas to unlock energy efficiencies of low-frequency bands: (1) systematically design ideal non-Foster compensation methods for electrically-small antennas and (2) systematically design practical digital non-Foster compensation methods for evaluating practical limitations on bandwidth.

Publications:

• Johnson Opadere, Qiang Liu, Tao Han, and Nirwan Ansari, "Energy-efficient Virtual Radio Access Networks for Multi-operators Cooperative Cellular Networks," IEEE Transactions on Green Communications and Networking (TGCN), 2019.

• Qiang Liu, Tao Han, Nirwan Ansari, and Gang Wu, "On Designing Energy-efficient Heterogeneous Cloud Radio Access Networks," IEEE Transactions on Green Communications and Networking (TGCN), 2019.

• Thomas P. Weldon, "Theoretical and Observed Quality Factor of Gravitational Quadrupoles," Physical Review D, vol. 98, pp. 124044, December 2018.

• Liang Zhang, Tao Han, and Nirwan Ansari, "Energy-Aware Virtual Machine Management in Inter-datacenter Networks over Elastic Optical Infrastructure," IEEE Transactions on Green Communications and Networking (TGCN), vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 305-315, March 2018.

• Thomas P. Weldon and Kathryn L. Smith, "Comparison of Electromagnetic Antenna Chu Limit and Q of Gravitational Radiators," Proc. IEEE International Conference on Electromagnetics in Advanced Applications (ICEAA), September 2019.

• Thomas P. Weldon and Kathryn L. Smith, "Gravitationally-small Gravitational Antennas, the Chu Limit, and Exploration of Veselago-inspired Notions of Gravitational Metamaterials," Proc. 13th IEEE International Conference on Artificial Materials for Novel Wave Phenomena - Metamaterials, September 2019.

• Qiang Liu, and Tao Han, "VirtualEdge: Multi-Domain Resource Orchestration and Virtualization in Cellular Edge Computing," Proc. IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS), July 2019.

• Qiang Liu, and Tao Han, "DIRECT: Distributed Cross-Domain Resource Orchestration in Cellular Edge Computing," Proc. ACM MobiHoc, July 2019.

• Vinit, A. Katariya and Thomas P. Weldon, "Search-based Design of Digital Non-Foster Antenna Match for High-speed Low-impedance Converters," Proc. IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation and USNC-URSI Radio Science Meeting (APS/URSI), July 2019.

• Christopher G. Daniel, Kathryn L. Smith, and Thomas P. Weldon, "Observed Q and Gravitationally-small Antenna Behavior of a Binary Black Hole Radiator," Proc. IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation and USNC-URSI Radio Science Meeting (APS/URSI), July 2019.

• Johnson Opadere, Qiang Liu, Ning Zhang, and Tao Han, "Joint Computation and Communication Resource Allocation for Energy-Ecient Mobile Edge Networks," Proc. IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC), May 2019.

• Moinul Hossain and Jiang Xie, "Hide and seek: A Defense Against Off-sensing Attack in Cognitive Radio Networks," Proc. IEEE Infocom, April 2019.

• Moinul Hossain and Jiang Xie, "Covert Spectrum Handoff: An Attack in Spectrum Handoff Processes in Cognitive Radio Networks," Proc. IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM), December 2018.

• Qiang Liu, Tao Han, and Nirwan Ansari, "Joint Radio and Computation Resource Management for Low Latency Mobile Edge Computing," Proc. IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM), December 2018.

• Qiang Liu, Tao Han, and Nirwan Ansari, "Energy-efficient On-demand Cloud Radio Access Networks Virtualization," Proc. IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM), December 2018.

• Qiang Liu, and Tao Han, "DARE: Dynamic Adaptive Mobile Augmented Reality with Edge Computing," Proc. IEEE International Conference on Network Protocols (ICNP), September 2018.

• Thomas P. Weldon, "Use of a Digital Non-Foster Radio Architecture for Conventional Tuning of Electrically-Small Antennas," Proc. IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation, July 2018.

• Thomas P. Weldon, "Measured and Field-Based Theoretical Q of Gravitationally-Small Gravitational Antennas," Proc. IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation, July 2018.

• Thomas P. Weldon, Patrick J. Kehoe, and Killian K. Steer, "Bilinear Transform Approach for Wideband Digital Non-Foster Matching of Electrically-Small Antennas," Proc. IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation, July 2018.

• Thomas P.Weldon, Patrick J. Kehoe, and Killian K. Steer, "A Clock-Tuned Digital Memristor Emulator," Proc. IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS),, May 2018.

• Donald M. Johnson and Thomas P. Weldon, "A Clock-Tuned Discrete-Time Negative Capacitor Implemented Using Analog Samplers," Proc. IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS),, May 2018.

• Moinul Hossain and Jiang Xie, "Off-sensing and Route Manipulation Attack: A Cross-layer Attack in Cognitive Radio based Wireless Mesh Networks," Proc. IEEE INFOCOM, April 2018.

• Qiang Liu, Siqi Huang, Johnson Opadere, and Tao Han, ""An Edge Network Orchestrator for Mobile Augmented Reality," Proc. IEEE INFOCOM, April 2018.

• Moinul Hossain and Jiang Xie, "Impact of Off-sensing Attacks in Cognitive Radio Networks," Proc. IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM), December 2017.

• Johnson Opadere, Qiang Liu, and Tao Han, "Energy-efficient RRH Sleep Mode for Virtual Cloud Radio Access Networks," Proc. IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM), December 2017.

• Siqi Huang, Tao Han, and Nirwan Ansari, "Data-Driven Network Optimization in Ultra-Dense Radio Access Networks," Proc. IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM), December 2017.

• Xingya Liu and Jiang Xie, "Priority-based Spectrum Access in Cognitive D2D Networks for IoT," Proc. IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC),, 2017.

Broader Impact:

This project will have a significant impact on “greening” of IoT. With the active involvement of industrial companies and standard working groups on IoT, energy-efficient designs and reconfigurable front-end radio hardware are critical components to extend the battery life of IoT devices and enhance IoT performance. Unfortunately, they have not been adequately explored in existing research and development.

This research will generate innovative techniques to serve numerous applications of IoT technologies, e.g., smart cities and smart homes, mobile health, and intelligent transportation systems. It will also greatly advance the understanding of energy efficiency of IoT devices and networks.

Education Activities:

• Curriculum Enhancement: research results on IoT, battery management, and digital non-Foster systems from this research are incorporated into the graduate-level courses.

• Graduate Student Mentoring: three PhD students worked on the research of this project.

• Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU): four undergraduate students participated in the research of this project with the REU Supplement funding.