Massive MIMO and Millimeter wave Integrated Tactical Communication for Swarm Networks: Design and Experiment

Overview and Motivation: The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarms will become an indispensable part of a networked battlefield, which requires an efficient connection among different nodes through various communication technologies in multiple battlefield conditions. The swarm system is envisioned to be distributed, large scale, and autonomous. Although existing wireless design approaches can be extended for these networks, these approaches make the design unrealistically expensive (if not possible) for large scale swarm networks. Furthermore, the design approaches will utilize several switches/routes making the system to introduce unacceptable communication delay for a large scale battlefield UAV swarms which exhibits high mobility and extremely hostile propagation environment Intellectual Merit: This project proposes design and experiment of a novel massive multiple input multiple output (MIMO) and millimeter wave (mmWave) integrated tactical communication for swarm networks by exploiting available frequency, and spatial and temporal dimensions to effectively create a scalable, low-latency, and situation aware (intelligent) communication. Towards this end, the project proposes a research plan with the following interrelated research thrusts Thrust 1: Scalable, low-latency, and situation aware communication and fail safe design. In this thrust, we propose to use; (a) a simultaneous and adaptive mmWave and sub-6 GHz waveform to enable communication between the leader and follower of each swarm. (b) a massive MIMO with scheduling at the sub-6 GHz bands to enable communication between the leader of a swarm and ground base station (BS). Towards this end, the beam alignment and beam direction prediction procedures, and a situation dependent frequency band assignment using clustering techniques will also be discussed. In addition, the reliability aspect of the system (to avoid system failure) will be presented. Thrust 2: Low form factor RF component design and integration. For the design of intra-swarm communication, mmWave systems are expected to play a significant role. The challenges in this band is that their design is still not understood well. And, the existing technologies in these bands are costly and have extremely limited flexibility. The main objective of this thrust would be the component level design and integration of the RF parts for mmWave communication band. The design will facilitate to realize hybrid beamforming which utilizes both digital and analog beamforming techniques. We plan to design the mmWave RF components in 26 to 30 GHz bands. Broader Impacts and relevance to DoD R&D activities: One of the missing elements of researchers in the wireless domain at the NC A&T State University which is an HBCU is the lack of hands on experience opportunity in swarm of UAV communication that integrates mmWave and massive MIMO communication. Students involved in this research and using the equipments will get an exciting opportunity to see in advance the system design, integration, and formal analysis aspects and practical limitations of massive MIMO and mmWave technologies for swarm of UAVs under tactical communication which are not understood well. This project also engages graduate and undergraduate students, and conducts outreach activities. Further, with the mmWave band object sensing solution (developed by the PIs students), the proposed design will be used to create Geofencing in a UAV swarms which complements the R&D activities of the Department of Defense (DoD).