NSF Award
1018292
As more people access the global Internet through wireless networks, the limited capacity of wireless networks is becoming a major challenge of our information-based society. Building around the point-to-point architecture, where the basic transmission unit is from a single transmitter to a single receiver, current wireless networks are shown to be severely limited in throughput and do not scale well as they become large and dense. Thus, it is time for a fundamental revisit and change to the wireless network system architecture, in order to explore distributed cooperation and one-to-many encoding/decoding in wireless networks. <br/><br/>The MatrixNet project uses a component-based framework to design implementable, distributed concurrency algorithms and protocols, spanning routing, media access control, and physical layers. It bridges and goes beyond theoretical asymptotic analysis in information theory in order to identify fundamental, algorithmic and system challenges facing the emerging, increasingly important field of system concurrent wireless networks. The project integrates multiple experimental platforms, including Sora, GNU radio, and networked MIMO, and conducts systematic, realistic evaluations. The project team consists of both academic and industrial researchers to facilitate potential technology transfer and cross-institution collaboration.
