Tapping into the RF gaps

US researchers are investigating means to use unused portions of the radio spectrum using combined computational and electronic methods.

Columbia University’s Data Science Institute (DSI) and Electrical Engineering Department have received a US National Science Foundation (NSF) grant worth more than $800,000 to develop the energy-efficient sensors.

It is hoped the sensors will enable communication systems that can detect and use available spectrum when it is not engaged by primary users.

“At some point in the future as we keep using more and more mobile devices, the spectrum will run out of space,” said John Wright, a DSI affiliate and electrical engineering professor who is the principal investigator on the project.

“We’ll use all the data-science tools we possess — machine learning, neural networks, algorithms and advanced computation techniques, in conjunction with new hardware devices — to sense pieces of the RF spectrum as they become available.”

Peter Kinget, an electrical engineering professor at Columbia who specialises in analog and RF integrated circuits, will design circuits that can produce ‘snapshots’ of a large portion of the spectrum.

Wright will then use a few of the snapshots to design algorithms to reconstruct the spectrum and help design a more energy-efficient sensor.

What’s novel about this project, said Wright, is that it mixes the latest computational methods with novel hardware design.

On the data-science side, he will lead a team to develop computational techniques to model and predict the available areas of the spectrum.

Kinget’s team, on the other hand, will design the circuits to sense the available channels in the spectrum.

“In the past couple of years we have demonstrated several RF spectral sensors that generally used off-the-shelf signal-processing approaches with our custom hardware and have demonstrated significant speed and energy benefits,” said Kinget.

“It will be exciting to see how much more progress we can make using new algorithms built on the latest insights in signal processing.”

Wright agrees that the multidisciplinary nature of the project will help it succeed.

“What’s exciting about the research is that the algorithms and computational tools my team is developing can enhance the circuits that Peter’s team is designing,” he said.

“And we hope this project will lead to energy-efficient ways to detect and use the RF spectrum, so it continues to be available to the escalating number of wireless-communication users and mobile applications.”

Image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/kstudija

Follow us and share on Twitter and Facebook