[Colloq] PhD Thesis Defense - Yin Wang

[Rachel Kalweit]

The College of Computer and Information Science presents:

PhD Thesis Defense by:
Yin Wang

Date: August 31, 2010
Time: 4:00pm
Location: 366 West Village H

Title: Distributed Diversity in Hybrid Wireless Networks

Abstract:
Wireless communication networks span a wide range of applications such  
as traditional telephony, internet data access, and cyber-physical  
infrastructure monitoring. However, the quality of service is still lacking, and  
problems such as dropped calls, dead spots, and slow network speed are still very  
common. Those are due to fundamental constraints such as the scarcity of radio-
frequency spectrum, signal propagation effects, e.g., channel fading and
shadowing, and the small form factor of mobile devices with limited  
energy capacity and antenna diversity.

In this thesis, we propose to explore a new cooperative communication  
model. We investigate communication strategies that exploit the channel and  
traffic diversity across a set of cooperating mobile nodes equipped with  
multiple radio frequency interfaces (e.g., cellular, WiFi).  The research aims at
developing a framework for cooperation across multiple network layers to
improve robustness, throughput, and delays. The proposed cooperation is
based on two strategies: signal-combining and traffic-multiplexing.  
Within this framework, we propose and evaluate a set of distributed cooperation
techniques operating at different hierarchical levels with resource
constraints such as short-range RF bandwidth. Our evaluation is based  
on a combination of analysis, simulations, and real world experiments using
system prototypes.


Committee:
Guevara Noubir (Advisor)
Rajmohan Rajaraman
Ravi Sundaram
Benyuan Liu (UMass Lowell)