SBIR Phase II: Long Range 2-way Communications for the Remote IOT

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project will allow highly cost effective, 2-way communications to be delivered to machinery and 'Things' over extremely long and non-line-of-sight distances using underutilized frequencies and new hardware and software techniques. The resulting technologies will provide 2-way connectivity where cellular does not exist and where other techniques (Satellite) are too expensive. This will result in near universal availability of the Internet-of-Things at costs superior to legacy approaches and which are appropriate for applications typically seen in Internet-of-Things applications. Further, the work will have broad impact in allowing more balanced utilization of the radio spectrum which cannot be addressed (either economically or at all) with legacy wireless techniques. The proposed project will create a new system of hardware, software, frequency and operating techniques which will allow underutilized spectrum to be used to deliver 2-way communications to very remote machines and things. The work will build on our Phase I accomplishments to create production-ready designs of two new wireless systems, signal processing software to allow use of challenging spectrum while avoiding existing users, create the first instance of a cloud based infrastructure for automated control and coordination of our architecture, and, the creation of a basic set of deployment tools and techniques to support field operations. We expect to continue building a significant base of Intellectual Property as we pursue the work. 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.