Ephremides, Luo receive NSF grant for wireless multicasting optimization

Professor Tony Ephremides (ECE/ISR) and former ECE postdoc Jie (Rockey) Luo, now assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Colorado State University, have received a National Science Foundation (NSF) collaborative research grant for their work on Systematic Optimization in Wireless Multicasting. The three-year grant is worth approximately $234,000.

The research focuses on multicasting, where common information is transmitted from a source to multiple destinations. Multicasting is the core component of many network applications such as multimedia distribution, information updating, group conferencing, etc. Creative encoding of network trac at the intermediate terminals can significantly improve the throughput of a multicast. Due to the open nature of the wireless medium, communication throughput of a wireless link depends on its transmission power and on the interference generated by nearby network terminals. The goal of this research is to develop a systematic framework for maximizing a general multicast utility function via the joint optimization of transmission power, rate, and schedule, within the framework of network coding.

Published September 20, 2007