Ephremides, Baras, La, Ulukus awarded wireless networks grant

The design, planning, control and management of high performance networks require a much more integrated approach than the conventional layered approach, where each layer is designed and optimized independently from the others.

Professor Anthony Ephremides (ECE/ISR); Professor John S. Baras (ECE/ISR); Assistant Professor Richard La (ECE/ISR); and Assistant Professor Sennur Ulukus (ECE/ISR) have received a three-year, $1.5 million National Science Foundation Information Technology Research (ITR) grant to develop "Vertical Protocol Integration In Ad-hoc Wireless Networks." Dr. Ephremides is the Principal Investigator for the project.

The project seeks to exploit inter-layer dependencies in network protocols for improved network performance. In particular, the researchers will focus on ad-hoc wireless networks, in which these interdependencies are more pronounced and in which the network will benefit significantly by crosslayer designs.

The main focus is on the interaction between the physical layer, the MAC layer, and the routing/transport layers. The researchers take into account the nature of the wireless medium by detailed modeling of the transmission parameters and of the detector structure and consider both TDMA(scheduled) and CDMA media-access control mechanisms. The researchers couple these with the flow and route assignment problems and, furthermore, consider how the transport protocol interacts with route selection and bandwidth allocation.

In addition, the researchers address the role of network control and management in ad-hoc wireless networks and exploit its interaction with the aforementioned layers. Finally, the researchers consider the interaction of signal compression with rate and quality control and are mindful of the energy consumption repercussions of the joint protocol design.

Published September 3, 2002