Ultra Low-Latency, Low-Power Wireless Mesh Networks

Research Project, 2017 – 2018

Wireless networking for Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) and the Internet of Things (IoT) poses unique challenges: Many applications in, for example, the automotive industry, health care and manufacturing are mission or safety critical and have stringent deadlines. In cooperative driving, for example, autonomous vehicles have to wirelessly coordinate their planned trajectories within milliseconds when approaching an intersection or changing a lane. Such applications demand reliable wireless networking at a message latency and energy efficiency that today's approaches cannot provide. I propose to help usher the paradigm shift to wireless safety-critical applications in CPS and IoT through three lines of disciplinary investigation, and show the impact of my results through a series of integrated demonstrators. First, I will devise robust, ultra-low latency communication protocols that radically depart from conventional approaches by exploiting synchronous transmissions. Second, the lower latency of my protocols will be a key enabler for designing low-power distributed computing solutions for this environment. Third, I will realize safety-critical applications such as wireless closed-loop control and cooperative driving to demonstrate the feasibility of my approach. I believe to achieve an improvement of more than two orders of magnitude over the state of the art and will match the demanding requirements of safety-critical applications in CPS and IoT.