Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Prof. Zhu US NSF Grant

Prof. Zhu (PI)
Profs. Yu and Xiong (co-PI)
MRI: Acquisition of a 4G/LTE Wireless Communications Test Set, NSF, $252K
additional co-PIs: Haodong Wang at CIS, Miron Kaufman at Physics

Abstract - We propose the acquisition of an E6621A PXT 4G/LTEWireless Communications Test Set from Agilent Technologies in this proposal. The fourth generation (4G) of mobile communications provide broadband Internet access to mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. The low-delay, high-bandwidth, and ubiquitous Internet access enables a new spectrum of mobile applications and services such as mobile cloud computing, high-definition mobile TV, 3D gaming, 3D navigation, mobile virtual reality, IP telephony, and video conferencing. With the growing national coverage of 4G/LTE networks and increasing popularity of 4G-capable devices, 4G communications are predicted to account for 45 percent of mobile data traffic in 2017 by Cisco. However Cleveland State University (CSU) currently has no capability to conduct researches on 4G communications. The addition of the proposed instrument will enable us to conduct cutting-edge researches, attract local collaborators and strengthen existing collaboration, and train both graduate and undergraduate students on the 4G communication technology, the applications and services enabled by the 4G communications, and security and privacy protection for 4G communications.

The acquisition of the proposed instrument will support cutting-edge and innovative research that impacts a wide range of scientific and engineering fields, including: digital communications, networking, distributed computing, mobile computing, network security and privacy, information systems, and physics.
The acquisition will enable studies on:

  1. security and privacy of 4G communications
  2. fast indoor positioning in large-scale, chaotic venues
  3. efficient modulation and coding for 4G mobile communications
  4. characterizing the noise in wireless channels with statistical physics approaches
  5. secure medical communication systems

The proposed instrument also enables researches on complex topics that require multidisciplinary approaches, including:

  1. hybrid approaches to detect security attacks and privacy leakage in 4G networks
  2. cross-layer design for 4G networks
  3. modulation support for indoor positioning systems

The versatile and highly integrated instrument will facilitate these research projects since it supports both physical layer researches through features such as RF parametric measurement and MIMO operation, network and upper layer researches through features such as protocol logging and analysis, and message editor.
NSF Award Abstract