Smarter handhelds could bolster wireless, mobility

Stanford group studies the possible benefits of greater wireless frequency sharing

Smart radios and game theory are key elements of a Stanford University project to make more efficient use of wireless frequencies so handheld devices have better signal availability and range.

The project is part of a larger effort at Stanford called Clean Slate Design for the Internet, whose goal is to draw a blueprint for a better-functioning Internet. If the wireless project’s recommendations, which are still a year away, are adopted by the Federal Communications Commission, they could result in radios that stand a better chance of sending and receiving information because they would pick and choose among a broader range of frequencies, seeking those that are least congested, says Andrea Goldsmith, an associate professor of electrical engineering at Stanford.

The wireless project seeks ways to protect privately owned frequencies that have been sold by the government but to allow public use of that spectrum when it isn’t busy.

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Smart radios and game theory are key elements of a Stanford University project to make more efficient use of wireless frequencies so handheld devices have better signal availability and range.

The project is part of a larger effort at Stanford called Clean Slate Design for the Internet, whose goal is to draw a blueprint for a better-functioning Internet. If the wireless project’s recommendations, which are still a year away, are adopted by the Federal Communications Commission, they could result in radios that stand a better chance of sending and receiving information because they would pick and choose among a broader range of frequencies, seeking those that are least congested, says Andrea Goldsmith, an associate professor of electrical engineering at Stanford.

The wireless project seeks ways to protect privately owned frequencies that have been sold by the government but to allow public use of that spectrum when it isn’t busy.

The project is hoping to find rules for radios to share these frequencies that are similar to the rules of engagement imposed on radios using Wi-Fi frequencies, Goldsmith says. “So if I’m a transmitter and I find out the receiver I want to talk to has some opening in time, space and frequency, I jump into that open spectrum, use it and then jump out again when I’m done transmitting,” she says. “There’s no mechanism for doing that in licensed bandwidth right now.”

In return for sharing licensed bandwidth, these smart radios could even boost performance in the licensed ranges. “If I’m a receiver I can listen to all the signals that are being transmitted around me, and if there’s one that’s for somebody that’s close to me I can forward that signal and that would actually help the transmitter,” Goldsmith says.

The smart radios would be able to make more-sophisticated analysis of the available frequencies than to Wi-Fi radios, and so would require more complex rules than those governing Wi-Fi, she says. “FCC rules are fairly basic,” says Goldsmith.

These suggestions would require buy-in from the FCC, which holds authority over radio spectrum, licensed and unlicensed.

Goldsmith and her fellow researcher Ramesh Johari are looking at what rules these smart radios should operate under. “All the users would like to use all the spectrum all the time - and then everything would be a catastrophe,” she says.

They are invoking game theory in which the radios represent competitors vying for as much bandwidth as possible for themselves, but also cooperating to put as much total data as possible on all the available frequencies.

Game theory is a blend of economics and mathematics that provides a way to model interactions of people in given situations. In this case, people and societal goals would be replaced by radios and the desire to make the best use of available radio frequencies.

“We believe you can bring sophisticated tools of game theory and cooperative games into the general problem of how should users cooperate to get the most out of the spectrum,” Goldsmith says.