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Computational Antenna |
comptenna/ |
Communications |
The performance of wireless communications and sensing is fundamentally determined by the available degrees of freedom in space, frequency, and time. However, as the wireless systems are moving into mmWave 5G and beyond-5G with larger bandwidths (e.g., tens of GHz) combined with larger antenna arrays (e.g., 64 or more antennas at base stations), the number of degrees of freedom becomes so large that it is no longer feasible to access them in a practical manner. In other words, it is challenging to achieve sufficient computational degrees of control in practice to access the available degrees of freedom in higher spectra. This project seeks to address this challenge by developing computational antennas (CompTenna) that can perform programmable analog computations at the antenna in the mmWave and sub-THz bands. CompTenna is best viewed as a new computational unit. When combined with analog and digital computations, CompTenna will significantly expand the degrees of control. This expansion will enable novel wireless communications and sensing applications on next-generation mobile devices.
Fig 1: CompTenna for Retroreflective amplification of mmWave signals
Fig 2: CompTenna for spoofing mmWave vehicle radars
This project will investigate the foundations of computational antennas (CompTenna) and novel methods to increase network capacity and enable new wireless sensing. It includes three research tasks. (1) CompTenna Foundations: develop CompTenna hardware, its computational model, and simulator. The goal is to synthesize a first-pass physical CompTenna design in a time-efficient manner, based on targeted high-level application needs. (2) Speeding Up the Network Using CompTenna: develop techniques to leverage all the degrees of freedom enabled by the CompTenna in an energy-efficient manner. In particular, this project focuses on how to use CompTenna to create optimal beamforming for single-user and multi-user communications and distributed interference management. (3) Doing More with CompTenna: develop foundations and methods for a layered joint sensing and communications architecture.
Research made possible by NSF Award Number: 2211805
Dinesh Bharadia: PI, UC San Diego
Ashutosh Sabharwal: PI, Rice University
Alireza Vahid: PI, CU Denver
Taiyun Chi: PI, Rice University
Dr.Ish Jain, UC San Diego
Rohith Reddy, Ph.D. Student UC San Diego
Nagarjun Bhat, Ph.D. Student UC San Diego
Manideep Dunna, Kshitiz Bansal, Sanjeev Anthia Ganesh, Eamon Patamasing, Dinesh Bharadia
R-Fiducial
Siddharth Mohan, Kshitiz Bansal, Manideep Dunna, Dinesh Bharadia
Retroreflection
Rohith Reddy Vennam, Ish Kumar Jain, Kshitiz Bansal, Joshua Orozco, Puja Shukla, Aanjhan Ranganathan, Dinesh Bharadia
More details on the UCSD website