Sbir phase II: massively parallel protocols for software-based wireless instrumentation

Award Details: Lutris, Inc. received a $1.249M Cooperative Agreement from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (TIP) program (CFDA 47.084) awarded September 1, 2025, with completion targeted for August 31, 2027. This Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) award represents the continuation of the company's Phase I effort ($273.383K awarded September 2023) focused on massively parallel protocols for software-based wireless instrumentation.

Products and Services: Under this award, Lutris, Inc. will develop an automated monitoring and optimization system for 4G and 5G wireless networks that operates non-intrusively to detect interference, misconfiguration, and coverage gaps without requiring specialized wireless expertise from network operators. The core innovation leverages software-defined radio (SDR) technology implemented on commodity computing hardware, enabling operators to capture and process over-the-air signals on standard computers using advanced parallel processing algorithms. The resulting system will enable faster, less expensive wireless network deployments while improving spectrum efficiency and network performance through automatic detection and remediation of configuration and operational deficiencies. This solution addresses the fundamental challenge of implementing complex modern wireless communication standards in software by utilizing multi-core microprocessor architectures to meet demanding computational requirements.

Abstract

The broader impact of this small business innovation research (sbir) phase II project is that IT enables the use of wireless spectrum more efficiently, while ensuring high quality service to wireless users. Demand for wireless communication continues to expand, and 4G and 5G protocols are able to efficiently use available spectrum ? But only as long as deployments are properly engineered and configured. The technology being developed addresses the complexity of configuring a wireless network and ensuring that IT operates at peak efficiency. The objective is to build a system that can non-intrusively monitor 4G and 5G networks and detect interference, misconfiguration and/or places where additional base stations are needed. This will be done automatically, removing the need for specialized wireless expertise from the network owner, installer or operator. This enables deploying wireless networks faster and less expensively. The underlying innovation is a new approach to implementing radios purely in software. By using off-the-shelf ?software defined radio? Hardware, over-the-air signals are captured in a form that can be processed on a standard computer (e.g., a laptop). Combining standard hardware with advanced software makes a system that meets the above goals possible. This small business innovation research (sbir) phase II project addresses a central problem in implementing wireless communication systems. IT has long been appreciated that if wireless systems were mostly implemented in software, they could be deployed faster and upgraded more easily. However, while computer speeds have gone up dramatically, the processing requirement of wireless systems have increased even faster. Software implementations of modern communication standards (e.g., 5G) have lagged. However, current microprocessors have many individual processing ?cores? ? Dozens to a few hundred ? And can do many operations in parallel. The challenge is to divide up the task of wireless signal processing so tasks can be done in parallel, without the overhead of moving results between cores and degrading the gains. Previous work has identified promising approaches, and this work aims to extend them, allowing complete decoding of 4G and 5G over-the-air control signals (user traffic is encrypted for privacy and is not accessible). The research seeks to develop signal processing techniques that are well-matched to modern multi-core processors and uses them at peak efficiency. The result will be a system that is able to monitor and verify correct operation of a modern wireless network. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.- subawards are not planned for this award.