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December 5, 2022
2 Min Read
WASHINGTON – The Platforms for Advanced Wireless Research (PAWR) Project Office announces $2.8 million in new funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) as it continues its mission to accelerate wireless innovation through the shared resource of advanced network testbeds. The new funding aligns with rising global interest in wireless research facilities and underscores the value of programs that expand researcher access to sophisticated and adaptive network testing environments.
The PAWR Project Office (PPO) is jointly run by team members from US Ignite and Northeastern University. Investment by the NSF extends the initial five-year term of the PPO and supports the PAWR platforms as they drive foundational research in areas such as open radio access networks (Open RAN), spectrum sharing, and drone-based wireless systems. Since the program began, the PPO has helped to establish four PAWR platforms or testbeds–POWDER in Salt Lake City, COSMOS in New York City, AERPAW in the Research Triangle area of North Carolina, and ARA, a rural broadband testbed currently under construction in Ames, Iowa.
Success for the PAWR program has come in multiple forms:
In a joint effort with the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (OUSD R&E), the PAWR program supported development of a prototype dynamic spectrum allocation system built to radically enhance spectrum sharing capabilities.
Multiple PAWR platforms have partnered with the O-RAN Alliance to test new Open RAN technologies, including as part of a recent event to assess power reduction strategies for Open RAN infrastructure. Open RAN promises to diversify the telecom supply chain and to promote innovation by enabling new participants in the wireless market.
The PAWR platforms are also emerging as a critical resource for RF data collection. The diverse network environments available across the platforms provide unique opportunities to produce datasets that will help drive the development of algorithms for optimizing radio performance.
And new opportunities are now available to support application-level research on the PAWR platforms, with example scenarios ranging from the assessment of street traffic patterns with edge computing to the use of unmanned aerial vehicles for remote monitoring of agricultural fields.
In addition to the latest investment from the NSF in the PPO, the PAWR program continues to win research-specific grants from multiple government agencies, and to leverage significant contributions from its industry partners across the wireless sector. It has also expanded to include Colosseum among its program assets. Colosseum, housed at Northeastern University, is the world's largest radio-frequency emulator.
Read the full press release here.
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