Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

We will investigate system-layer aspects of 5G+ indoor wireless communications architectures to endow them with resilience and automatic self-healing capabilities. Unlike its outdoor counterpart, the indoor wireless propagation environment depends on internal building structures and floor plans. The focus of this proposal is to make advancements in two main directions. The first pertains to techniques for agile adaptation of the network to changes in its own topology. This direction will make use of building-specific layouts and associated propagation models that will be provided by the industrial partner. The second direction pertains to the development of appropriate signalling schemes when the wireless nodes rely on harvesting energy from the ambient RF environment. The objective of the first direction is to endow the network with agile self configuration and self healing capabilities. The algorithms developed under this direction will operate in a distributed and autonomous fashion whereby the network operational and transmission functionalities are timely adapted to changes in topology and traffic demands. The output of the algorithms will be in the form of resource block (RB) assignments, transmission parameter schedules in addition to recommendations for relocating existing BS radios and introducing new ones to further enhance the performance and combat interference effects on the network. The second direction will focus on devising appropriate signalling and transmission schemes that achieve high throughout using RF energy collected from the environment. This direction will result in algorithms for interlacing the replenishment of the batteries of the wireless sensors with data transmission to maximize throughout and reliability. Concurrently with this project, we plan to submit a complementary application under the Voucher for Innovation Program of the Ontario Centres of Excellence that will cover safety considerations of 5G+ indoor wireless architectures and cloud-assisted network reconfiguration.