CAREER: Energy Efficient Mobile Wireless Networking

Stevens Institute Of Technology, Hoboken NJ

Investigators

Abstract

Mobile wireless networking is experiencing a tremendous rate of growth. Many traditional wireline based applications are going wireless. Among other issues, one core issue that needs to be addressed for the success of future mobile wireless communications is energy-efficient wireless networking. Currently, the re-chargeable battery energy capacity of most mobile devices is limited due to a variety of reasons. It is also known that the rate at which battery technology is progressing is rather slow compared to the advances in wireless technology and applications. Therefore, it is important to optimize the networking algorithms, protocols and parameters for energy efficiency. Especially, this may be essential to support next generation high speed wireless networking. Energy minimization is of two types: communication and computation energy minimization. There has been significant progress in designing energy-efficient physical layer algorithms and hardware architectures. But, the goal of this project is to investigate energy optimization and control policies at higher layers of the network protocol stack. Towards this objective a new layer called Control Layer is proposed. A rich set of mathematical tools and stochastic control algorithms are incorporated in this layer to predict, estimate, and control the time-varying parameters such as battery capacity, rate of transmission, error control, routing, transport protocols, and application requirements. This layer enables the other protocol layers to be energy-aware. In summary, the proposed plan for this inter-disciplinary research project and the educational initiatives to integrate research with teaching at both undergraduate and graduate levels are as follows: 1) Energy-efficient link and MAC layer protocols for time-varying wireless links. Stochastic control of the tradeoff between communication versus computation energy. New probability based MAC protocols that attempt to schedule users such that energy is minimized. 2) Theoretical analysis of stochastic control algorithms that react to the bursty nature of traffic and link errors. Experiments to validate and test these control algorithms for real-life channels. 3) Stochastic minimum energy routing algorithms that account for the current battery state of a mobile node and also the network state. 4) Energy-aware transport control protocols that distinguish between the good and bad states of a wireless link and act accordingly. 5) Stochastic dynamic programming based rate control techniques at the application layer to save energy. 6) Implementation of project based learning and active learning techniques in the class room. Motivate undergraduate and graduate student research through this NSF CAREER project. A matching grant of $100,000 from Stevens Institute and $100,000 from New Jersey state have been committed to this project. Supporting documents have been attached as supplements.