SBIR-STTR Award

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project seeks to improve the efficiency and throughput of wireless networking (WiFi) systems through advanced MIMO (multiple-input multiple-output) decoding. Current and upcoming networking standards allow the use of multiple transmit and receive antennas to improve reliability and data rates. However, for systems with more than two transmit and two receive antennas, and for those with high data rate, accurately decoding the transmitted symbols becomes prohibitively complex. Thus, it is common to use simple techniques that are significantly less effective than is possible. This project will develop technology that allows advanced mathematical transformations to be efficiently performed on the signals received by from the antennas. These transformations make it possible to approach theoretical limits on signal decoding, paving the way for systems that vastly out-perform existing wireless MIMO technology. The resulting systems will be able to scale for operation on eight or more antennas and to reduce the received bit-error rate substantially?all while increasing the computational complexity only slightly over the simplest existing systems. The broader impact/commercial potential of this project is maximized by its receiver-side use. This project will directly result in the commercialization of advanced equalization techniques for MIMO networking systems. As these advances are compatible with existing systems, the significant gains in range, power, and spectral efficiency can be realized without changes to existing infrastructure. This multi-disciplinary project will provide a competent framework to understand interrelationship among the hardware and software implementations. Such a framework can be used to focus future theoretical communications research more effectively on implementable systems that can benefit consumer, government, and industrial sectors. This project will also establish a conduit for commercialization of further advances in communications and enhance the research partnership between the investigators and the researchers in the wireless communication industry facilitating application of scientific discoveries to the application domains

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project uses enhanced MIMO (multiple-input, multiple-output) technology to boost capacity, coverage, and enhance link robustness in wireless communications without using additional spectrum. This is accomplished by transmitting independent data streams all at the same frequency but on different antennas. MIMO technologies have been widely adopted and have been incorporated into the 802.11n and 802.11ac WiFi, WiMax, and the LTE-A cellular standards. However, for MIMO systems, the computational complexity required to detect data symbols increases dramatically as the system size (number of antennas) and data constellation size increases. Thus, MIMO symbol detection has become a critical step for wireless communication systems. Lattice-reduction (LR)-aided MIMO equalization has shown great potential to reduce complexity and improve the performance. This research develops and transitions advanced LR-aided equalization technology to real-time, hardware implementations that meet the stringent requirements of next generation wireless communication systems. These advanced LR-aided equalization techniques can reach near-optimal performance (an additional 5-20 dB of signal-to-noise-ratio gain relative to common equalizers currently used in industry). This project will result in the creation of a commercial-grade hardware implementation capable of realizing these gains in existing systems at only a slight increase in cost. The broader impact/commercial potential of this project extends to nearly all high-speed wireless data communications including WiFi, cellular, and backhaul/infrastructure. The advanced LR technology can be implemented in MIMO receivers to improve range, power, and spectral efficiency without requiring changes to existing standards or infrastructure. Furthermore, the advanced LR technology also enables the development of future systems with higher-order MIMO for higher data rates and better reliability. This project will develop and commercialize integrated circuit designs that directly address the problem of spectrum crunch being experienced by wireless network providers seeking to supply ever increasing data rates to meet customers? demands. This project will also establish a conduit for commercialization of further advances in communications and enhance the research partnership between the investigators and the researchers in the wireless communication industry facilitating application of scientific discoveries to the application domains.