Information and Inference in the Wireless Physical Layer

DBH 6011
Speaker: Prof. Vincent Poor, Princeton University

Refreshments: 10:45 a.m.

 

ABSTRACT

Wireless networking applications continue to motivate challenging problems
in information theory, signal processing, and other fields. A salient
feature of wireless networks is the close interaction between the physical
layer and the 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 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 briefly four research areas,
primarily involving information theoretic or inferential problems, each of
which is motivated by an applications-layer issue. In particular, the four
applications of file transfer, inference, real-time multimedia
transmission, and social networking, will be used to motivate
consideration of four respective research problems involving the physical
layer: physical layer security in data networks, distributed inference in
sensor networks, finite-blocklength capacity in multimedia networks, and
connectivity in small-world networks. Recent progress in each of these
four research areas will be reviewed.

SPEAKER'S BIOGRAPHY

H. Vincent Poor is the Michael Henry Strater University Professor of
Electrical Engineering at Princeton University, where he is also Dean of
the School of Engineering and Applied Science. His current research
interests lie primarily in the area of wireless networking and related
fields. Among his publications in these areas are the recent books
Quickest Detection (Cambridge, 2009) and Information Theoretic Security
(NOW, 2009). Dr. Poor is a member of the National Academy of Engineering,
and is a Fellow of the IEEE, the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and
the Royal Academy of Engineering of the U.K. He has served as President of
the IEEE Information Theory Society, and as Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE
Transactions on Information Theory. In 2005, he received the IEEE
Education Medal. Recent recognition of this work includes the 2009 Edwin
Howard Armstrong Achievement Award of the IEEE Communications Society, the
2010 IET Ambrose Fleming Medal for Achievement in Communications, and the
2011 IEEE Eric E. Sumner Award.