The principal investigators (PI) will conduct research to: (1) develop new conceptual frameworks and models for studying multiaccess communication, optical fiber communication, and data networks. The framework is a collection of models, theoretical structures, and bodies of engineering understanding that interface appropriately with insights flowing from one to the other, (2) to solve the problems posed above by analysis and by creation of new algorithms, and (3) to synthesize these solutions into insights about the tradeoffs in the engineering of efficient, reliable communication networks. The research will be interdisciplinary and involve information theory, particularly coding theorems of point-to- point and multiaccess systems; communication systems, particularly modulation, signal structures, detection, synchronization, and acquisition; queueing theory, and computer science, particularly distributed algorithms, algorithmic complexity, and hierarchial layering.
