Topology Control for Computer Networks

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The world is connected and becomes increasingly so with the advances of information and communication technologies. Many natural phenomena and man-made systems can be captured, explained and improved by a better understanding of the structure and dynamics of the network topology and interactions. The proposed research program focuses on the topology control for computer networks, based on our early work on computational geometry and geometrical probability, and furthering into stochastic geometry with geographical perspectives, for both wireless communication networks and cloud computing networks. For example, in wireless communication networks, the received signal and interference strengths depend on the distances among transceivers and interferer, as well as shadowing and fading due to obstacles and multiple propagation paths. With cloud computing and distributed storage, user requests and associated data can be redirected to and stored at different locations, which also affect the service quality, system efficiency and the resilience against natural disasters and man-made attacks. Thus locations and distances play an increasingly important role in computer networks, particularly for topology control, based on which affect all upper-layer protocols and functions. Starting from a graph-theoretic perspective, our research in computational geometry and geometrical probability led to a few breakthroughs including the random distance distributions associated with rhombuses, hexagons, regular and irregular triangles, and eventually arbitrary polygons with or without a reference point, with a wide variety of applications. In the proposed research program, we will continue with high-order, joint and conditional distance distributions in both physical and logical spaces, e.g., hop distance distributions with different mobility models and routing schemes. By taking geographical perspectives into account, our proposed research will also incorporate the spatiotemporal dynamics of user requests, computation and storage capacities, and energy supplies into the topology control process. The proposed research will also continue the training of highly-qualified personnel with high-impact research contributions and high-competition job placement to benefit the economy and society in Canada and around the world.