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The project aims to enable rapid development and deployment of configurable wireless
appliances and network infrastructure devices capable of high-bandwidth ubiquitous
data communications through a heterogeneous network. Configurable platform
architectures will be developed to satisfy the above objective, consisting of
configurable wireless protocols, hardware-software architectures, and a network-aware
operating system. The configurable platform will enable a new class of wireless
applications that will adapt to platform resources, network conditions, and
contextual information in the user’s computing and communication environment.
To enable ubiquitous computing and communication in an evolving, heterogeneous
network, there will be a critical need for mobile wireless appliances and wireless
network devices with integrated computing and communication capabilities. The new
appliances and network devices will have to communicate using multiple wireless
access technologies and protocol standards; satisfy differing quality of service
(QoS), error resiliency, and security requirements of new wireless data services,
and adapt to display and battery constraints of the appliances. This research will
develop multi-network, configurable wireless protocol stacks to support anytime,
anyhow and anywhere communications; adaptive applications that can adapt to the
available resources and dynamic constraints of the heterogeneous wireless networks;
and a hardware-software platform architecture which can implement the above tasks
efficiently providing dynamic configurability to varying network conditions, diverse
service requirements, and appliance constraints.
The proposed wireless platform will enable rapid production of new wireless
appliances and infrastructure devices, with different processing and network
access requirements, and with varying cost, performance and battery constraints.
By configuring the platform architecture to the desired application instead of
designing a new appliance for each application, significant reductions can be
achieved in the design cost and time-to-market for these appliances. The wireless
platform architecture will provide for volume production, stimulating the
semiconductor and wireless equipment industry in California as processors and
memory did in the last two decades. Through support of enhanced functionalities,
such as support for high-bandwidth wireless data services and multiple, adaptive
wireless protocols, the platform architecture will enable wireless products with
significantly enhanced value without associated increase in time-to-market and
cost, and hence positively impact the products’ time-in-market. As will be
demonstrated by our research, the run-time configurable wireless appliances and
network devices will lead to the evolution of adaptive wireless applications,
stimulating new wireless application software and wireless data service industries
in California. The proposed research will pave the way for ubiquitous data
communications, leading to the next growth spurt in industrial productivity.
Mobile, ubiquitous computing and communications will enable a new era of mobile
information technology, fueling the need for a heterogeneous, yet seamlessly
integrated, network of multi-function, multi-access-technology wireless appliances
and infrastructure devices such as wireless access points and gateway devices.
In addition to supporting multiple wireless access technologies and their protocol
standards, like software defined radios aim to, the new appliances and infrastructure
devices have to satisfy the differing dynamic requirements of the wireless services,
such as transmission latency, security levels, and bit error rate (BER), and the
constraints imposed by client appliances, including limited battery capacity and
display capabilities. Consequently, new design methodologies need to be developed
to make the new wireless appliances and infrastructure devices, as well as the
applications that run on them, aware of varying network conditions, service
requirements, and appliance constraints; and to develop a configurable architecture
which enables rapid development of the appliances as well as run-time adaptability
to changing network, service, and client constraints.
To provide the required dynamic configurability, and simultaneously reduce
time-to-market and enhance time-in-market of wireless appliances and infrastructure
devices, we propose to develop a configurable platform architecture and applications
which provide dynamic adaptation through the following techniques: (1) providing
protocol level adaptivity through support of multiple protocol stacks as well as
dynamic adaptability in each protocol stack; (2) developing a configurable
hardware-software (HW/SW) platform based architecture which provides significant
runtime performance improvement over the software defined radio approach; and (3)
developing new adaptive applications enabled by the configurable platform, and
developing the necessary interfaces and run-time environment for adaptive
applications. The proposed platform based architecture can be configured to
produce a wide range of wireless appliances and network devices. While the
HW/SW platform-based approach provides ASIC-like performance, it achieves the
configurability required by the wireless appliances and network devices through
provisioning for static as well as dynamic application level and protocol level
configuration.
The following CWC faculty are participating in this research project: Sujit Dey(lead PI),
Bill Lin, Ramesh Rao, and Geoff Voelker.
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Affiliated Faculty
CoRe Research Projects