CAREER: Towards a Formal Theory of Wireless Networking

20世纪的最后几十年见证了网络的出现，网络变得越来越普遍和重要。在21世纪初，发展对网络的科学理解仍然是一项未解决的智力努力。这项工作的一部分是在本项目追求的基础层面上理解无线通信网络。该研究制定了各种设置下无线网络建模的优化问题，并将前者的特性转化为后者的特性。为了做到这一点，研究人员依赖于这样一个事实，即随机性，以衰落的形式，产生看似更复杂的问题，但却具有更易于处理的结构。研究这种更丰富的结构是为了：(i)确定无线网络的体系结构特性。（ii）设计算法，寻找不同类型物理层的最优工作点。（iii）制定学习衰落分布的策略。（iv）考虑与获取通道状态信息相关的权衡。教育议程围绕着兴奋、挑战和学科差距展开。兴奋度差距是指人们对科学技术感到兴奋，而对从事科学技术职业缺乏兴趣。挑战差距指的是降低课程内容复杂性的持续趋势。学科差距暗指提供给学生的分门别类的经验，以及学科之间日益模糊的分离的现实。该教育计划通过开设关于随机过程的本科课程和关于无线网络优化设计的研究生课程，有助于缩小这些差距。这两门课程都被设计成具有挑战性，令人兴奋和多学科的。

The last decades of the 20th century witnessed the emergence of networks that have become ever more pervasive and important. At the start of the 21st century developing a scientific understanding of networks remains an unresolved intellectual endeavor. Part of this effort is the understanding of wireless communication networks on a fundamental level pursued in this project. The research formulates optimization problems that model wireless networks in a variety of settings and translates properties of the former into characteristics of the latter. For doing so, the investigators rely on the fact that randomness, in the form of fading, yields seemingly more complex problems that nonetheless have a more tractable structure. This richer structure is studied to: (i) Determine architectural properties of wireless networks. (ii) Design algorithms to find optimal operating points for different types of physical layers. (iii) Develop strategies to learn fading distributions. (iv) Consider tradeoffs associated with acquisition of channel state information.The education agenda revolves around the excitement, challenge and discipline gaps. The excitement gap is about the excitement people feels about science and technology versus the lack of interest to pursue careers in science and technology. The challenge gap refers to the ongoing trend to reduce the complexity of material covered in courses. The discipline gap alludes to the compartmental experience offered to students and the reality of an increasingly hazy separation between disciplines. The education plan contributes to the closing of these gaps through the development of an undergraduate level course on stochastic processes and a graduate level course on optimal design of wireless networks. Both of these courses are designed to be challenging, exciting and multidisciplinary.