Background

The idea of Internet-of-Things (IoT) holds the promise of billions of smart devices being connected to the Internet and exchanging information for wide range of applications such as smart manufacturing, smart cities, smart vehicles, smart power grids, energy management, security, healthcare and entertainment systems. As the number of IoT devices increases, the demand for wireless bandwidth also increases. Many wireless schemes, such as complex modulation schemes and error corrections, have been developed to maximize wireless bandwidth utilization while cognizant of the fact that wireless bandwidth remains a finite resource. However, IoT devices have limited hardware capabilities (e.g. limited energy source and computational power) which limit the practical application of most existing wireless schemes for IoT communication systems. Hence, there is a need for wireless communication technologies that can provide better spectrum efficiency without burdensome hardware requirements for IoT devices.

Technology Overview

Accomplished researchers at the University of Victoria have developed and patented a novel encoding and decoding scheme coined as “Chitchat”. Chitchat offers an innovative solution to transmit and decode superimposed signals from two transmitters without any power control. Briefly, the pair of transmitters are allocated two communication slots, with each transmitter transmitting in both the slots, so that a receiver sees the superimposed transmissions. By changing the relative phase of the transmitters between the two slots, both transmitters’ data can be detected during at least one of the slots. This rotation code-based scheme enables a receiver to distinguish and detect superimposed signals from two transmitters to achieve better spectrum efficiency. 

Benefits

• Compatibility with IoT devices
• Improved bandwidth utilization, better spectrum efficiency
• Decoding without any power control

Applications

• IoT wireless communications and networking
• Cellular communications

Opportunity

• Licensing
• Collaborative research and development (e.g. via the NSERC Alliance funding program in Canada)