NeTS: Small: Automated Design of Medium Access Control Protocols

该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案(公法111-5)资助的。无线网络的性能关键取决于网络协议的仔细设计。传统上，网络协议的设计仅基于直觉，并通过特定于手头网络的复杂设计过程进行。传统方法的缺点是协议设计周期长、成本高，而且容易出现人为错误。缺乏通用方法还意味着，协议要么是通用的，因此性能较低，要么是专用的，因此缺乏灵活性，当应用程序规范发生变化时，需要完全重新设计。本项目的主要研究贡献是以媒体访问控制(MAC)协议为第一个原型，建立了网络协议自动化的通用方法学。在高性能的无线网络中，MAC协议的性能至关重要。创建以下设计过程链以基于资源约束和特定于应用的目标来生成MAC协议：(1)优化程序：对控制信息交换的影响进行建模的网络协议问题的公式化；(2)解算器：最优波形生成，其指定控制信息和数据的最优交换；(3)协议提取：提取最优协议作为对最优波形的最小描述。这项技术为未来基于自动化设计工具的网络协议设计开辟了道路。该项目还将原型工具的开发整合到研究生级别的课程工作中。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).The performance of wireless networks critically depends upon the careful design of networking protocols. Networking protocols are traditionally designed based only on intuition, and through a complex design process that is particular to the network at hand. The disadvantage of the traditional approach is that protocol design cycles are long, costly, and prone to human error. The lack of a general methodology also means that either the protocols are general-purpose and hence low-performance, or are specialized and hence inflexible and require complete re-design when the application specifications change. The major research contribution of this project is the establishment of a general methodology for the automation of networking protocols, taking the Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols as a first prototype. The MAC protocol performance is critical in high-performance wireless networks. The following design process chain is created to generate a MAC protocol based on resource constraints and application-specific goals: (1) Optimization Program: Formulation of the network protocol problem that models the effects of control information exchanges, (2) Solvers: Optimal waveform generation, which specifies the optimal exchange of both control information and data, (3) Protocol Extraction: The extraction of the optimal protocol as a minimal description of the optimal waveforms. This technology opens the way to the design of networking protocols that will be based on automation design tools in the future. This project also integrates the development of prototype tools into graduate-level coursework.