DARPA is betting on AI to bring the next generation of wireless devices online
It’s so seamless you almost never notice it, but wireless communication is the foundation upon which much of modern life is built: it powers our ability to text and make calls, hail an Uber, and stream Netflix shows. With the introduction of 5G, it also promises to lower the barrier to safer self-driving cars and kick off a revolution in the internet of things. But this next leap in wireless technology will not be possible without a key ingredient: artificial intelligence.
On Wednesday, 10 teams from industry and academia competed to fundamentally change how wireless communication systems will function. The event was the sixth and final elimination round of the Spectrum Collaboration Challenge (SC2), the latest in a long line of DARPA grand challenges that have spurred development in emerging areas like self-driving cars, advanced robotics, and autonomous cybersecurity.
The challenge was prompted by the concern that the growing use of wireless technologies risks overcrowding the airwaves our devices use to talk to one another.
Traditionally, so-called radio spectrum hasn’t been allocated in the most efficient way. In the US, government agencies divvy it up into mutually exclusive frequency bands. The bands are then parceled out to different commercial and government entities for their exclusive use. While the process helps services avoid interference with one another, whoever holds the rights to a bit of spectrum rarely uses all of it 100% of the time. As a result, a large fraction of the allocated frequencies end up unused at any given moment.
The demand for spectrum has grown to the point that the wastefulness of this arrangement is becoming untenable. Spectrum is not only shared by commercial services; it also supports government and military communication channels that are critical for conducting missions and training operations. The advent of 5G networking only ups the urgency.
