WALNUT ? Hard to Crack. Wireless Ad-hoc Links using robust Noise-based Ultra-wideband Transmission (11317)

Wireless sensor networks are seen as a key enabling technology for creating the "internet of things", which can support numerous new applications in for instance health care, logistics, and agriculture.
The nodes in such a network should consume only very low power, so that they either have very long battery lifetimes, or can even operate without batteries, through energy harvesting. This is particularly challenging because of the radio links between the nodes, which have to be maintained in interference-rich environments with harsh propagation conditions.

The aim of the WALNUT project is to develop new techniques for establishing robust radio links in wireless sensor networks that operate in an extremely crowded radio spectrum, at very low power. These techniques are based on transmitted-reference modulation using wideband noise carriers, implemented in novel CMOS chips, and combined with dedicated medium access mechanisms and network protocols. In the project we work in a cross-disciplinary way, with three PhD students in three neighboring but distinct fields: physical layer aspects, communication protocols, and the low-power IC design of the radio transceiver.