This award enables support for the Workshop on Future Wireless Communication Networks. This workshop will bring together wireless networking experts who will discuss and debate the critical challenges in wireless networking and communication, and articulate a vision for conducting fundamental and inter-disciplinary research in the area. A tangible outcome of the workshop will be a report that will (i) identify major issues affecting future wireless research; (ii) expose the research community to new and exciting inter-disciplinary problems; and (iii) stimulate far-reaching future research initiatives, and collaborations that would help along the evolution of the wireless research community.
The workshop will help influence future research and development in wireless systems. It will fuel inter-disciplinary collaborations between members of various communities (e.g., application communities, security, information theory, etc.). It will enable diverse groups within the community will help shape the future of wireless communications. It will also educate the general public on the importance of wireless research, the challenges, and the enormous potential.
Wireless communication networks are closely intertwined with the very fabric of both civilian and military environments, and their continued growth and well-being is critical to the success and health of our nation. Today’s wireless communication industry worldwide is a trillion-dollar business that represents a substantial fraction of the global economy. Over the past two decades, it has had a transformative impact on our society and has revolutionized almost all aspects of human interaction. Through the use of smartphones, personal tablets and increasing number of wireless-based sensors in our environments, wireless networking systems touch every aspect of human lives today. Nonetheless, with exponential spread of mobile wireless devices, continued improvements in spectrum utilization, resource allocation, hardware miniaturization, and development of new renewable energy sources, we find ourselves still very much in the infancy of the development of such networks, which have the potential to grow and become orders-of-magnitude more sophisticated. The NSF Workshop on Future Directions of Wireless Networking was held on November 4-5, 2013, in Arlington, Virginia, to develop a broad vision of the key research challenges facing the wireless networking community in the next decade and beyond. At the workshop, attendees discussed and debated the critical challenges in wireless networking, and articulated a vision for conducting both fundamental and inter-disciplinary research in the area. A total of 105 participants were invited to the workshop, representing a broad spectrum of expertise in the wireless research community. A report on the workshop outcomes has been written to (i) identify major open issues for future wireless research; (ii) expose the research community to new and exciting inter-disciplinary problems; and (iii) stimulate far-reaching future research initiatives as well as collaborations that will help advance the evolution of the wireless research community. The wireless networking field was broadly partitioned into a number of technical areas, which include: Wireless systems Wireless applications Wireless networking architectures and testbeds Controls and algorithms Emerging spectrum access technologies Metrics, measurements, and management Security and Privacy In addition, the workshop participants also discussed various issues related to improving the quality of education in the domain, and achieving a better engagement between industrial activities and academic research.
