Prof H. Vincent Poor, Princeton University
Date: 21 Mar 2011 (Monday)
Time: 11:00am -12:30pm
Venue: Leung Yat Sing Lecture Theater (LT - F), HKUST

Abstract:

Wireless networking applications continue to motivate challenging problems in information theory, signal processing, and other fields. A salient feature of wireless networks is the close interaction between the physical layer and the other networking layers. This phenomenon is a result of the principal distinguishing features of wireless, namely mobility and the importance of physical properties (diffusion, interference, fading and radio geometry) in determining link characteristics. For example, the applications layer interacts considerably with the physical layer, as is well known through the importance of quality-of-service in wireless network design. This talk will explore briefly four research areas, primarily involving information theoretic or inferential problems, each of which is motivated by an applications-layer issue. In particular, the four applications of file transfer, inference, real-time multimedia transmission, and social networking, will be used to motivate consideration of four respective research problems involving the physical layer: physical layer security in data networks, distributed inference in sensor networks, finite-blocklength capacity in multimedia networks, and connectivity in small-world networks. Recent progress in each of these four research areas will be reviewed.

About the speaker:

H. Vincent Poor is the Michael Henry Strater University Professor of Electrical Engineering at Princeton University, where he is also Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science. His current research interests lie primarily in the area of wireless networking and related fields. Prof Poor is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering, and is a Fellow of the IEEE, the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and the Royal Academy of Engineering of the UK. He has served as President of the IEEE Information Theory Society, and as Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. In 2005, he received the IEEE Education Medal. Recent recognition of this work includes the 2009 Edwin Howard Armstrong Achievement Award of the IEEE Communications Society, and the 2010 IET Ambrose Fleming Medal for Achievement in Communications. Later this year, he will receive the IEEE Eric E. Sumner Award, and the degree DSc honoris causa from the University of Edinburgh.