Seminar: APP-PHY Interactions in Wireless Networks

Speaker: Professor H. Vincent Poor

Faculty Host: Professor Elza Erkip

Abstract

A salient feature of wireless networks is the close interaction between the physical layer (PHY) and other networking layers. This phenomenon is a result of the principal distinguishing features of wireless, namely mobility and the importance of physical properties (diffusion, interference, fading and radio geometry) in determining link characteristics. For example, the applications layer (APP) interacts considerably with the physical layer, as is well known through the importance of quality-of-service in wireless network design. This talk will explore three other issues in which the applications layer influences, or interacts with, the physical layer. In particular, the three applications of file transfer, inference and social networking, will be used to motivate consideration of three respective research problems involving the physical layer: information theoretic security in data networks, distributed inference in sensor networks, and connectivity in small-world networks. Recent progress in each of these three research areas will be reviewed.

Bio

H. Vincent Poor is with Princeton University, where he is the Michael Henry Strater University Professor of Electrical Engineering and Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science.  His current research interests are in the areas of stochastic analysis, statistical signal processing, and information theory, and their applications in wireless networking and related fields. His publications in these areas include the recent books MIMO Wireless Communications (Cambridge, 2007) and Information Theoretic Security (Now, 2009).  Dr. Poor is a member of the U. S. National Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and an International Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering of the UK. He is also a Fellow of the IEEE, the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, and other organizations.  He has served as President of the IEEE Information Theory Society, as Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, and as General Co-Chair of the 2009 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, held in Seoul.  Recent recognition of his work includes the 2005 IEEE Education Medal and the 2009 Edwin Howard Armstrong Award of the IEEE Communications Society.