CAREER: Theoretical Foundations for Wireless Network Algorithm Design: Satisfying Short-Term and Long-Term Application Requirements

Ohio State University Research Foundation -Do Not Use, Columbus OH

Investigators

Abstract

Multi-hop wireless networks that are envisioned to form the backbone of many future communication systems are: typically subject to restrictive and unpredictably changing resource constraints; required to operate using low complexity and scalable operations; envisioned to serve essential applications with a range of long-term (e.g. throughput-greedy, long-duration applications) to short-term (e.g. delay-sensitive, short-duration applications) requirements. Yet, there is a huge gap in our understanding of how to design wireless network controllers operating under such harsh conditions that can efficiently serve diverse applications, especially those that have various degrees of delay sensitivities. This research fills this gap by developing a rigorous theoretical foundation for the methodical design of communication strategies for effectively supporting diverse applications in general multi-hop wireless networks. To that end, it first reveals the significant impact of several unexplored design choices, including the service discipline, traffic shaping strategy, and delay-aware decision making, on the achieved application performances. Then, it systematically exploits these new design dimensions for optimally serving both delay-related short-term and throughput-related long-term application requirements by developing new approaches and mathematical tools within non-convex optimization, stochastic network control, and randomized/approximate algorithms. The insights and mathematical tools developed within this project are expected to play an instrumental role in the design of efficient communication protocols for tomorrow's networks serving vital services with a range of delay sensitivities and throughput requirements (in health-care, rescue operations, security, automated control, etc.). The society will also benefit from the educational aspects of the project in the training of future engineers and researchers.