New Fields of investigation

CURRENT WIRELESS NETWORKING ARCHITECTURES for both commercial and military data communications applications are quickly approaching their performance limits. HRL is working on technologies in the areas of mobile adhoc network (MANET) protocol design, intra- and inter-vehicles wireless communication, and MANET optimization and control to meet the demands of new wireless applications that require ever increasing bandwidth, performance, and adaptability.

Recent efforts have focused on three areas: Intra-system networks, energy efficient wireless network architectures, and cognitive radios.

INTRA-SYSTEMS NETWORKS

Our objective is to reduce the number of data wires connecting subsystems in any complex platform, such as cars and airplanes. After investigating a number of novel shortrange waveforms, HRL concluded that ultra-wideband (UWB) waveforms, combined with an optimized network stack based version of the IEEE 802.15.4a wireless network standard, offer the most cost-effective path to enabling reliable, adaptable intra-system wireless communications. Our analyses indicated that the combination of UWB waveforms with the optimized standard is an excellent fit for non-safety critical, command and control applications that are suitable for most applications with data transfer requirements below one megabyte per second (Mbps). Preliminary latency analysis indicates an excellent fit with non-safety critical applications for command and control applications.

ENERGY EFFICIENT
WIREESS NETWORK ARCHITECTURES

In energy efficient wireless network architectures, the goal is to minimize energy consumption for low, infrequent data rate applications. Our approach is to streamline the way we redesigned the standard Internet Protocol-based (IP-based) network stack standard and match it with an integrated layer network stack coupled with instant acquisition enabled radio communications signaling. The basic concept is to turn the physical (PHY) layer and radio off when no useful traffic is present, but to instantly wake it up when there is data to send or receive. For the typical low-duty cycle networks, we have demonstrated huge energy savings–up to three orders of magnitude–for applications requiring just a few messages per hour. We are applying this energy efficient network architecture in a prototype small sensor network to demonstrate power-efficient, distributed fusion algorithms.

COGNITIVE RADIOS

Our goal is to develop a scalable and robust overall system that can optimize resources and self-adapt in real-time to specific mission and environmental requirements. Our design is a revolutionary, complex network architecture that seamlessly integrates robust, scalable and efficient resource optimization services with a novel dynamically reconfigurable mobile adhoc network stack. By replacing the conventional protocol-based stack with a function-based network and novel network protocols, and by using adaptive network control to allow nodes to cooperate and share resources, our new architecture results in large improvements in network performance and flexibility for mobile users and applications.

HRL also has a new effort in the development of technology that enables rapid prototyping of communications algorithms and networking protocols, which results in a streamlined, cost-effective flow for transitioning network and hardware technologies into subsystems. The process we use enables engineers to design algorithms in high-level, simulation software and then automatically embed the algorithms onto Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA)-based platforms to execute rapid concept to system demonstrations. We demonstrated, through the design and prototype of a variety of signal processing and communication algorithms, that this process can reduce the time to implement a real time hardware prototype by an order of magnitude.

developing technologies