Compressed Mapping of Communication Signal Strength

Reference number: STC-PS-0953
Inventor(s): Y. Mostofi; P. Sen
For more information, contact: Minh D. Tran (505-272-7937) or Lisa Kuuttila (505-272-7905)

Patent(s)

Application(s) pending

Background

Many companies, such as cellular service providers or wireless location-based service engines, have been interested in mapping the quality of wireless channel links as a function of position, in order to do things such as base station location planning, location-based services, ensuring communication reliability, etc. There are also applications for mobile networks, which rely heavily on learning the channel spatial variations. Such applications include mobile networks deployed as robotic routers, surveillance and security, and emergency response. Existing approaches for finding spatial variations of the channel require a dense spatial sampling of the signal strength in the environment of interest, in order to successfully evaluate the wireless channel quality at every position, which is a slow, expensive, and hard to maintain process.

Technology

This technology overcomes current limitations with a novel method for efficiently reconstructing the spatial variations of wireless channels with only very few measurements. The approach is based upon applying results from non-uniform sampling theories to mapping of the communication channel. It offers ways to reconstruct the communication signal strength that have been sampled at rates much lower than the Nyquist rate, by taking advantage of the sparsity in other domains, such as the Fourier domain. As a result, the inventors can map the spatial variations of the channel, with considerably less samples than previously thought possible.

Applications/Advantages

• Fewer samples required for same results than with conventional methods
• Easily measures wireless channels reliably
• Applications in mapping deploying wireless networks, cellular systems, mobile networks, or location-based services.
• Applications in emergency response, surveillance and security, and battlefield operations

Keywords

Adhoc Networks, Autonomous Systems, Computer Algorithms, Infrared, Measuring and sensing, Mobile/Wireless Networks, Robotics, Sensor Networks, Sensors, Signal Processing

Related Categories

• Computer Technologies and Algorithms, Circuit Design, and Signal Processing
• Mechanical Engineering and Miscellaneous Devices