SBIR Phase I: Low-complexity, high-throughput wireless networking

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.