CIF: Small: Collaborative Research: Towards a Paradigm-shift in Distributed Information Processing: Harnessing Group-structure and Interaction

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"This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009(Public Law 111-5)."With a vision to fully realize the potential of next generationcommunication network infrastructure based on ubiquitous sensor nodes,this research introduces new architectures and strategies, fordistributed in-network information processing, which directly harness:the structure of the objective performance metrics for informationprocessing, the structure of the underlying statistical dependenciesin the information gathered by sensing nodes, the topology of thenetwork, and the capability for bidirectional interactive informationexchange. This research advocates a two-fold paradigm shift in networkinformation processing: 1) a shift from the traditional goal of datatransport to the goal of function computation and 2) a shift fromunidirectional models of information flow to interactive informationflow models. This research supports the education of future scientistsand engineers by integrating research advances with curriculumdevelopment and supports diversity by encouraging the participation ofwomen and under-represented groups.This research develops two fundamentally new classes of code ensemblesfor interactive information processing. The first is based ontechniques from abstract algebra and random graph theory to capturethe structure of functions being computed at destinations. The secondis based on techniques from communication complexity and multiterminalinformation theory to capture interactive structures of informationflow in the network. These new code classes have superseded theperformance of random code ensembles used in network informationtheory since its inception. This research develops new analyticalframeworks and tools to uncover the fundamental performance limits ofinteractive information processing in sensor networks. This researchfacilitates the cross-pollination of research fields by providingcomponents which build bridges between four fundamental areas, namely,information and coding theory, abstract algebra, random graph theory,and communication complexity theory.