University of Southern California

USC Invited Workshop on
Theory & Practice in Wireless Networks

Viterbi School of Engineering
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA

May 20 - 21, 2008

Panel Information

Panel 1 - Using collision-free scheduling: dream or reality?

[audio] [video]

There has been significant recent work on designing optimal scheduling solutions (e.g. TDMA-based). But there are fundamental questions about the implementability of such approaches: how to compute them in polynomial time, how to implement them in a decentralized fashion with low overhead, and yet stay near-optimal.

Participants:
Eytan Modiano, MIT (moderator) [slides]
Michael Neely, University of Southern California [slides]
Tara Javidi, UCSD [slides]
Anil Vullikanti, Virginia Tech [slides]
Gil Zussman, Columbia University [slides]

 

Panel 2 - Is random access fundamentally inefficient?

[audio] [video]

A number of recent studies have raised questions about the ability of random access to achieve fair and efficient performance especially in multi-hop scenarios. It is important to access whether these issues are fundamental or if they are artifacts of the way random access is implemented and used, and of the current practice of keeping higher layers unaware of interference.

Participants:
Gustavo De Veciana, University of Texas at Austin (moderator)
Elizabeth Belding, University of California Santa Barbara [slides]
Konstantinos Psounis, University of Southern California [slides]
Rajmohan Rajaraman, Northeastern University [slides]
Patrick Thiran, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne [slides]

 

Panel 3 -  What constitutes a useful experimental result?

[audio] [video]

Good experimental work can raise new questions and play an important role in validating or invalidating assumptions of and results from theoretical work. At the same time, experimental research faces the criticism of being driven too narrowly by current hardware limitations and market realities.

Participants:
Martin Haenggi, University of Notre Dame (moderator) [slides]
Bhaskar Krishnamachari, University of Southern California [slides]
Ratul Mahajan, Microsoft Research [slides]
Injong Rhee, North Carolina State University [slides]
Kamin Whitehouse, University of Virginia [slides]

 

Panel 4 -  What constitutes a useful theory result?

[audio]

The field has seen a number of theoretical findings varying from asymptotic results, some with potentially large hidden constants, to meticulous calculations that model almost all the details of specific protocols. What kinds of results in this spectrum are useful in understanding practical issues and then designing real protocols to address them?

Participants:
JJ Garcia Aluna Aceves, University of California Santa Cruz (moderator) [slides]
Randall Berry, Northwestern University [slides]
Mung Chiang, Princeton University [slides]
Koen Langendoen, Delft University of Technology [slides]
John Silvester, University of Southern California


Panel 5 - Cooperation instead of contention!

[audio] [video]

From physical layer cooperation and coding to the use of multi-channel radios, recent research has suggested exploiting simultaneous transmissions instead of treating them as interference.

Participants:
Urbashi Mitra, University of Southern California (moderator) [slides]
Syed Jafar, University of California Irvine [slides]
Srikanth Krishnamurthy, University of California Riverside [slides]
Anna Scaglione, Cornell University [slides]
Mihaela van der Schaar, University of California Los Angeles [slides]


Panel 6 - Medium access in new contexts: reinventing the wheel?

[audio] [video]

A number of new kinds of wireless systems are emerging, for example underwater networks, cognitive radio networks, embedded networks, vehicular networks, and delay tolerant networks. Do these systems require fundamentally new ways to manage interference?

Participants:
Kevin Almeroth, University of California Santa Barbara (moderator) [slides]
John Heidemann, University of Southern California/Information Sciences Institute [slides]
Koushik Kar, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute [slides]
Mingyan Liu, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor [slides]
Mani Srivastava, University of California Los Angeles