Grant: Idea to Innovation

This project will develop Dispersion Coded Multiple Access (DCMA) system at 60 GHz, a potentially disruptive technology for meeting the challenging demands of next-generation 5G networks. The current 4G technology will be largely insufficient to meet the expected 1,000-fold increase in data capacity to handle over 100 billion devices featuring peak rates of 10 Gb/s of the fast evolving IEEE 802.11 and 5G wireless markets. The present 4G systems heavily rely on digital techniques, whose high-power consuming mixed signal subsystems, require ultrafast analog-to-digital (ADC) and digital-to-analog converters (DAC), that become prohibitive in such high-frequency and large-bandwidth regimes. Therefore, considering the projected trends for vast expansion of the Wireless Gigabit (WiGig/11ad) market to grow from $269.9M in 2014 to $10.53B in 2019, there is a most pressing need for disruptive technological solutions. DCMA is a radically new approach of multiple-access technique based on analog and real-time processing, thereby featuring very low power consumption along with ultra-high data throughput. In the proposed DCMA system, each wireless channel operates within the entire available signal bandwidth, and is hardware encoded and decoded using unique dispersive codes generated using electromagnetic structures called phasers. The project will develop proof-of-concept prototypes for a 2x2 DCMA system and a 4x4 DCMA system operating around 60 GHz in realistic wireless environment conditions. It will involve the following activities: 1) development, fabrication and characterization of phasers at 60 GHz, 2) integration of these phasers into complete Tx-Rx architectures, 3) DCMA system realization and characterization in terms of power consumption, data throughput, communication range, and spectral efficiency, and 4) comparison of the system with state-of-the-art multiple access techniques. Preliminary simulations and experiments suggest that the proposed system will provide exceptional benefits in terms of cost, data capacity and power consumption.