Date of Award
Fall 2022
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Electrical Engineering (ENAS)
First Advisor
Hu, Wenjun
Abstract
Wireless connectivity forms the backbone of diverse IoT services. New consumer gadgets are being deployed in an unprecedented and unplanned manner, leading some to experience uneven coverage and suboptimal network performance. As IoT devices continue to diversify, network administrators are increasingly contending with managing wireless signal propagation in complex 3D geometries. Until recently, typical IoT designs tended to be endpoint-centric, reflected in radio or protocol designs at the endpoints of a wireless link. However, they are ill-suited to shaping the signal after transmission, and hence are far from the most effective signal shapers. Instead, recent environment-centric proposals customize the radio environment itself, and thus appear a better fit to provision 3D wireless coverage. But adopting this paradigm in decentralized, heterogeneous wireless settings still incurs efficacy, transparency, and scalability challenges. In this thesis, we tackle these challenges and advocate for environment-centric frameworks to programmatically manage 3D wireless propagation. Specifically, to counter the vagaries of complex 3D geometries with sufficient efficacy and spatial granularity, we propose exerting control over the end-to end trajectory of wireless signals by affixing arrays of power amplifiers and antennas in the environment. When suitably organized and strategically activated, these electronic components effectively supplant dominant propagation paths in the wireless medium, resulting in improved coverage. Furthermore, to support wireless devices of diverse characteristics and standards, we supplement our solution with a sensor-based control plane that infers link associations with very few assumptions. This paves the way towards provisioning transparent, standard-agnostic coverage. To build scalable and sustainable environment-centric wireless infrastructures, we highlight the importance of infrastructure deployment itself as a key design decision. We propose smart surface designs whose physical characteristics are more amenable to flexible deployment settings and can provision large coverage areas. This relaxes existing deployment limitations and opens new directions towards instrumenting everyday objects with wireless communication capabilities.
Recommended Citation
Zelaya, R. Ivan, "Provisioning 3D Wireless Coverage for Programmable Radio Spaces" (2022). Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations. 829.
https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/gsas_dissertations/829
