Introduction

Research has shown that wireless coexistence leads to disruption and severe inefficiency in spectrum utilization. Departing from the extensive studies in literature that commonly take implicit spectrum sharing approaches (e.g., cognitive radio and white space networking), we uniquely propose an explicit approach by enabling Cross-technology Communication (CTC). We define CTC as direct communication (i.e., message/data exchange) among heterogeneous wireless devices (e.g., WiFi, Bluetooth, ZigBee and etc.), despite their incompatible physical-layer modulation. We note that, CTC enables cross-technology collaboration to bring advanced services, essentially exploring the bright side of coexistence. Most importantly, to make CTC practical this work emphasizes the importance of transparency – i.e., supporting CTC without affecting the performance of existing wireless networks and services among homogeneous devices – in the main to turn the curse of wireless coexistence and heterogeneity to blessing.

Goals