Virginia Tech researcher looks to make all sorts of different wireless networks work better together
The National Science Foundation has awarded a 5-year, $450K grant to a Virginia Tech researcher who says she hopes to figure out how disparate wireless networks can better fit together to speed traffic deliver across the Internet.
According to a write-up of the grant from Virginia Tech, Assistant Professor Yaling Yang of the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering likens the differently designed wireless networks that have cropped up over the years as carriers have moved from CDMA to WiMAX to LTE to the different shaped blocks in a game of Tetris. Her mission is to analyze the networks and see if there’s a better way to get them to fit together.
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“The objective of this project is to systematically and rigorously categorize and analyze coexistence restrictions of cross-layer designs in wireless networks,” Yang writes, and then come up with improved designs and protocols. “Ultimately, this will greatly enhance the flexibility and robustness of current and future wireless network systems,” she writes.
Yang is no one-trick pony either. She also recently won another NSF grant worth $350K that involves establishing a theoretical foundation for the design of compatible IP routing systems (she’s working with Virginia Tech’s Thomas Hou on this).
