CAREER: Capacity of Wireless Networks: Cooperative Communication

University Of Texas At Austin, Austin TX

Investigators

Abstract

Capacity of Wireless Networks: Cooperative Communication The fundamental capacity limit of wireless networks is a highly pursued yet elusive problem lying at the intersection of distinct fields of research. The principle issue is the lack of appropriate tools within any one field to tackle this problem in its entirety. This research activity builds an inter-disciplinary framework for the analysis of this fundamental limit, merging networking and optimization theoretic concepts such as node cooperation, cooperative routing and Lagrangian duality in conjunction with sophisticated mathematical tools from information theory. A mathematical theory is developed using these diverse tools and, where necessary, introducing new tools to obtain 1) improved achievable rates for a given network configuration over those currently known 2) novel outer bounds on network sum capacity, 3) non-trivial conditions where inner and outer bounds meet and 4) algorithms that compute the corresponding resource allocation strategies for time-varying wireless networks. Specifically, techniques such as joint source-channel coding, multi-user binning and multiuser cooperative coding are used to develop the inner bounds on the capacity of the systems, while Lagrangian duality theory and estimation theory is used both to develop outer bounds on capacity and to compare the inner and outer bounds.