SWIFT: Synergy and Coexistence of Millimeter Wave Wireless Communications, Imaging, and Localization

Initiating a communication link between wireless users and devices is a complicated and resource-demanding process due to the chaotic propagation of wireless signals in most environments and the unknown location of the users themselves. Establishing and maintaining a reliable wireless connection would be simpler if the communication system had a map of the surroundings (e.g., buildings, trees) and the location of the wireless devices.

This project investigates future communication systems operating at millimeter-wave (mm-wave) frequencies that could have the necessary resources to create 3D maps of the surroundings. However, mm-wave signals (30 GHz to 300 GHz) travel much shorter distances than lower frequency radio waves. Thus, to ensure sufficient received signal power, a large number of antennas are usually needed at both the transmitter and the receiver.

Such a wealth of spectrum and number of antennas (e.g., antenna arrays, meta-surfaces) can be leveraged for applications beyond regular data communications and extended to imaging, sensing, and precision localization. More interestingly, the synergy between communications, imaging, and localization can be leveraged to potentially overcome the challenges that each of the three systems faces.

The project will also emphasize educating a broader audience of high school, undergraduate, and graduate students. With the use of augmented reality (AR) headsets, the students will implement software that allows the visualization of mm-wave imaging capabilities in the real world. Furthermore, the data collected from the measurement campaigns of this project will be appropriately formatted and published on a public database (DeepSense dataset) for other researchers in the scientific and engineering community.

Exploiting the mm-wave frequency band for wireless communications, imaging, and localization has attracted significant research interest in the last few years. Although the 5th generation (5G) of wireless communications is becoming a reality, future wireless communication systems are expected to do more than just communications. The large absolute bandwidth, electrically large apertures, and extremely narrow pencil beams of future wireless systems provide temporal and spatially rich information to extend the applications beyond wireless communications into imaging/sensing and precision localization.

Motivated by this potential, the project seeks to develop a fundamental understanding of the synergy between mm-wave wireless communications, imaging, and localization methods to improve 1) spectrum usage efficiency by enabling more than one application in a given communication band and 2) the performance of individual applications through cooperative techniques. The project will also develop approaches where communication signals and systems are utilized for imaging and localization.

This involves developing new image reconstruction methods that allow mm-wave imaging systems to create 3D maps of both line-of-sight (LoS) and non-line-sight (NLoS) areas from a single viewpoint (one base station) or multiple viewpoints. Additionally, the project will develop NLoS localization algorithms and low-overhead channel acquisition and beam tracking approaches utilizing mm-wave imaging tools and leveraging the imaging information about the surrounding environment.

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.