Radio teaming: Establishing communication when communication is not possible

This paper introduces an alternative communication scheme that can work as an overlay for existing commodity wireless devices and support communication when conventional communication is not possible. The methodology we propose provides a reliable communication link when presented with an unreliable environment (such as an urban canyon), or even when dealing with an adversary attempting to jam the receiver. The protocol we explore is a form of cooperative communication, where a team of radio teaming transmitters work together to relay messages by leveraging their multipaths in order to induce beam-pattern distortion at the intended receiver. This new form of cooperative communication differs from traditional approaches in that the typical stringent synchronization constraints of conventional beamforming and MIMO applications are relaxed, thereby making the protocol amenable to a team of heterogeneous wireless devices. We outline our communication scheme, and then validate it through simulations and an implementation using a current, real-world software defined radio (SDR) architecture - GNU radio and the universal software radio peripheral (USRP).