Intelligent Automation, Inc. — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: A15-045

Description

Multiple antenna systems, commonly referred as multiple and output multiple output (MIMO) system multiply the link capacity by using multiple transmit and receive antennas for transmitting and receiving more than one data signal simultaneously via multipath propagation. MIMO is known to provide major spectral efficiency gains over single antenna systems by balancing diversity-multiplexing trade-offs. This capability has been extensively studied for point-to-point MIMO systems and further extended to multiple access and broadcast channels with different transmitter-receiver configurations leading to multi-user MIMO. MIMO has a strong potential to improve data communications, connectivity and situational awareness when applied to tactical mobile ad hoc network (MANET). By taking into account network dynamics, this MIMO MANET paradigm is modeled as combinations of different MU-MIMO settings corresponding to multiple access, broadcast and interference channels (with different unicast, multicast and broadcast subcategories). We propose AMMO (Advanced MIMO MANET Optimization) system to improve MANET communications with the application of multiuser MIMO under realistic protocol and radio implementation constraints and requirements, including innovative solutions regarding channel estimation, feedback mechanism and dynamic scheduling of transmitter-receiver configurations.