Prof. Brian L. Evans
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Wireless Networking and Communications Group
The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas
Lead graduate students: Kapil Gulati and Marcel Nassar
Other graduate students: Aditya Chopra and Marcus DeYoung
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Texas Wireless Summit, Austin, Texas
For next-generation mobile networks to deliver the data speeds and reliability they promise, we must overcome interference problems that plague mobile devices. A particularly difficult one is the interference generated by the mobile device itself - a source of interference that in our estimation reduces user data reliability by 10x. Here, at UT Austin, we have uncovered techniques that address the problem of self-interference. Our techniques could allow chip and equipment vendors a way to differentiate their products in the market and command pricing premiums.
Due to its small form factor, the mobile platform has many sources of self-interference that interfere with wireless reception. These sources include not only clocks and busses, but also power saving subsystems. We have developed methods for wireless receivers to sense and reduce the self-interference from the mobile platform. These methods are complementary to the static circuit-level and board-level design methods used to mitigate self-interference. We have bundled prototypes of our methods in freely distributable software releases to assist engineers in incorporating these methods into products: