Abstract

Today’s wireless networks enable and enhance an assortment of applications such as video on demand, file backup, and voice telephony. Yet when wireless is stretched past its limits, users experience garbled pictures, unavailable file servers, and voice glitches. Why does this happen? There are two primary reasons: the highly dynamic nature of the wireless channel, and the fundamentally shared nature of the RF medium. Using an expanded interface to the physical layer (PHY) called the SoftPHY interface, I will describe how the PHY can pass information up to higher layers. This allows bit rate adaptation to better address the first challenge, and medium access control to better address the second.

Having shown two ways of mitigating these wireless challenges, I will then present ongoing software radio-based work which seeks to leverage a desirable feature: the diversity of paths over which a wireless signal travels.

Joint work with Hari Balakrishnan and Mythili Vutukuru.

Bio: Kyle Jamieson is Lecturer of Networks at University College London. He received the Ph.D. in June, 2008 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His research interests are in designing real-world wireless systems that cut across the boundary of digital communications and networking.