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Explore novel system architectures and key technologies for ad-hoc networking of information appliances within the home and for interfacing with wide area networks outside of the home.
We propose to explore novel system architectures and key technologies for ad-hoc networking of information appliances within the home, and for interfacing with wide area networks outside of the home. Information appliances include devices, such as PCs, cellular phones, health and premises monitoring devices and hand held electronic games. A home network that is low cost and easy to use will appeal to homeowners, home appliance vendors, and stimulate demand for information and communications services. The proposal is to develop an inexpensive one chip, no-new-wire solution that is self organizing and useable right-out-of-the-box. The strength of the ad-hoc in-home network is primarily in the number and variety of devices attached to the network. The proposed work differs from first generation initiatives by(1) including network architecture and reliability within its scope, (2) explicitly focusing on communication between nodes whose transmission and processing capabilities vary dramatically and (3) further increasing communication rates and lowering costs.
We propose to explore novel system architectures and key technologies for ad-hoc networking of information appliances within the home, and for interfacing with wide area networks outside of the home. Information appliances include PCs, cellular phones, health and premises monitoring devices and hand held electronic games. The proposal is to develop an inexpensive one chip, no-new-wire solution that is self organizing and useable right-out-of-the-box. The strength of the ad-hoc in-home network is primarily in the number and variety of devices attached to the network. In this regard, the ad-hoc in-home environment differs from environments where most nodes are of equal capability. The work proposed in this effort extends current generation initiatives, such as Bluetooth and HomeRF by (1) including network architecture and reliability within its scope, (2) explicitly focusing on communication between nodes whose transmission and processing capabilities vary dramatically and (3) further increasing communication rates and lowering costs. In particular we plan to focus on the following issues:
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Network architectural approaches, communication protocols, signaling strategies, and processing algorithms that are compatible with system-on-a-chip implementation. |
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Transceiver (RF through demodulation) architecture development and optimization for extremely low cost mixed-mode CMOS implementation. |
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Media Access protocols that support routing and scheduling within the confines of a home, removing the need for a separate network layer and thereby lowering cost. |
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Protocols for reliable communication between transmitters and receivers, using algorithms that adapt to the complexity capabilities and residual energy available at the communicating and forwarding entities for packet transmissions. |
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Low complexity, low cost modulation and coding techniques for transmissions within the home at rates that vary from a few hundred bps to 2 Mbps or more, and which may involve multiple air interfaces. |
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Protocols and corresponding lightweight embedded virtual machine layer to support distributed self-organization and self configuration capabilities. These protocols will enable adhoc-network-enabled devices to automatically obtain and setup their network addresses, automatically discover incremental changes in the adhoc-network topology, announce themselves and their capabilities to the network, and communicate with and use services provided by other adhoc-network-enabled devices in the network. |
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Ultra low-cost embedded system-on-a-chip architecture that efficiently supports the lightweight embedded virtual machine layer with minimal power consumption. In addition, the single-chip embedded architecture should efficiently support small applet computations and low-level communications functions such as those found in the media access and physical layers.
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Affiliated Faculty
CoRe Research Projects