SII Planning: Developing a National Spectrum Innovation Initiative (SII) Center for Adaptive and Reconfigurable Wireless Technology

Baylor University, Waco TX

Investigators

Abstract

This award is a planning grant for the Spectrum Innovation Initiative: National Center for Wireless Spectrum Research (SII-Center). The focus of a spectrum research SII-Center goes beyond 5G, IoT, and other existing or forthcoming systems and technologies to chart out a trajectory to ensure United States leadership in future wireless technologies, systems, and applications in science and engineering through the efficient use and sharing of the radio spectrum. In the last 30 years, most Americans have gone from having no personal wireless devices to, today, possessing five to ten in a given household. The resulting spectrum congestion requires a paradigm shift in the way in which spectrum use is researched, managed, shared, secured, and maintained. Wireless systems of the future must be adaptive and reconfigurable at all levels, allowing real-time modifications to policy, spectrum usage, geographic region usage, arrays, and devices to facilitate coexistence of disparate wireless systems. This project will enlist a complete leadership team and form a leadership structure for an SII Center proposal; design a complete research roadmap; and build a complete, engaged roster of committed collaborators connecting the research with governmental, regulatory, and industrial processes that will ensure the Center’s innovations move forward. The work will also include development of an undergraduate spectrum engineering course and a graduate course that will be implemented at five partner universities. The project focuses on the theme of adaptive and reconfigurable spectrum use. Nine key research areas will include: (1) real-time spectrum sharing approaches and algorithms between disparate wireless systems, (2) 5G, 6G, 7G wireless spectrum needs, (3) adaptive and reconfigurable radar systems, (4) critical passive systems, (5) propagation assessment and validation for interference mitigation, (6) reconfigurable circuits and electronics, (7) algorithms for adaptive systems, circuitry, and arrays, (8) security of spectrum-sharing wireless systems, and (9) social, political, governmental, and regulatory aspects of spectrum assignment and sharing. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.