Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

The unprecedented evolution of 1G to 5G wireless technologies in recent years has drastically transformed our industry, lifestyles, and society. With the ongoing convergence of communication technologies, artificial intelligence (AI), and Internet-of-Things (IoT), the next generation wireless networks are expected to play even more important roles by empowering diverse applications with distinct service requirements. In effectively realizing their value by supporting diverse applications, future wireless networks have to derive a plethora of new "communications plus" capabilities beyond traditional data transmission (e.g. locationing, sensing, controlling and semantic interaction), as well as tailored multi-service provisioning and value realization mechanisms. The fundamental goal of this NSERC Discovery Grant program is to create a new unified framework of system designs, theoretical foundations, as well as operation mechanisms in next generation wireless networks for highly effective goal and value realization through tailored multi-service provisioning. Specifically, the proposed research and training activities are focused on the creation and integration of new beyond communication service capabilities, semantic interaction mechanisms, and autonomous coordination strategies for goal and value realization in complex systems. A set of new beyond communications capabilities will be created first for future wireless networks to support diverse applications through integrated multi-service provisioning. These new capabilities, including sensing, locationing, synchronization, controlling and collaboration, will be realized through novel distributed signal manipulation and collaboration techniques. To overcome the constraints of limited and inflexible interaction capabilities in existing networks, multi-modal layered semantic interaction mechanisms will be created through integrated use of control channel, user-defined packets, and context-specific interaction for tailored negotiation, collaboration and problem-solving. Furthermore, autonomous value realization in networked complex systems will be achieved through semantic coordination enabled short-term operation goal discovery, collaborative task completion and long-term value-oriented successive coordination among distributed devices. The expected outcomes from the proposed leading-edge research and training activities will bridge the technical gap between existing wireless networks and emerging needs of the connected society. Our innovative goal and value-oriented design and operation approaches for future networks will bring significant economic value for vertical industry applications and complex systems. By training tailored highly qualified personnel (HQP) with EDI considerations, our integrated technology innovation, system design, prototyping activities and timely industry collaboration in this NSERC Discovery program will maximize both the economic and societal impacts to Canada.