A Primer on Techtile: An R&D Testbed for Distributed Communication, Sensing and Positioning

The Techtile measurement infrastructure is a multi-functional, versatile testbed for new communication and sensing technologies relying on fine-grained distributed resources. The facility enables experimental research on hyper-connected interactive environments and validation of new wireless connectivity, sensing and positioning solutions. It consists of a data acquisition and processing equipment backbone and a fabric of dispersed edge computing devices, Software-Defined Radios (SDRs), sensors, and LED sources. These bring intelligence close to the applications and can also collectively function as a massive, distributed resource. Furthermore, the infrastructure allows exploring more degrees and new types of diversity, i.e., scaling up the number of elements, introducing ‘3D directional diversity’ by deploying the distributed elements with different orientations, and ‘interface diversity’ by exploiting multiple technologies and hybrid signals (RF, acoustic, and visible light).