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The underlying theme of the Center for Wireless Communications is broadband wireless access. To this end, our research is focused upon five thrust areas:
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The goal here is the creation of enabling approaches for the synthesis of highly functional circuitry suitable for portable terminals and telephones. Included here are low noise amplifiers, power amplifiers, linear amplifiers, voltage controlled oscillators, direct down converters, A/D converters, and signal processors. Circuit-oriented research is strongly guided by wireless system needs.
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Time-varying shadow fading, multipath propagation, and co-channel interference are among the dominant physical-level impairments to wireless communications. Our thrust in antennas and propagation seeks to adequately characterize both the indoor and outdoor environments such that satisfactory systems-level solutions may be offered. A special effort is focused on the use of base station array antennas for the abatement of multi-path propagation and co-channel interference (smart antennas).
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Research interests include modulation and coding, strategies to improve spectral utilization efficiency and signal detectability, multiple access strategies (e.g., TDMA and CDMA) for sharing the available spectrum among a plurality of users in accordance with the individual needs of those users, and data/voice/image compression strategies for increasing the number of user connections supportable by the channel. Of paramount importance is the production of strategies which realistically reflect physical level impairments and circuit implementation feasibility.
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This thrust is concerned with cellular-based media access strategies for providing packet-oriented bandwidth-upon-demand to a plurality of users, and management of the multi-cellular environment in support of user mobility. An important aspect of this thrust is the provisioning of quality-of-service guarantees for each of the wide variety of traffic types (voice, data, image, video, continuous bit rate, variable bit rate, high speed, low speed, etc.) in support of multimedia services. Included are call admission control and other traffic management strategies which insure a low rate of dropped calls as users roam among many small radio microcells. Strategies are sought which respect physical level constraints and circuit implementation feasibility.
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Strategies are being developed to support the multimedia applications which will drive the need for, and benefit from the availability of, broadband wireless access. Included here are application software and communication protocol strategies for concealing the time-varying impairments of the packet-oriented wireless communication link. Also included are multi-resolution source coding strategies which insure graceful service degradation as the quality of the channel deteriorates.
In addition to the five thrust areas, we plan to create a comprehensive experimental laboratory facility to be used for feasibility demonstration of selected innovations. This facility will further serve to encourage the involvement of undergraduates and M.S. level students in our activities. A focus of this laboratory will be implementation of a wireless local area network operating at a speed of 100Mb/s. This experimental facility, in effect, should be regarded as a sixth thrust.
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Affiliated Faculty
Research Thrust Areas
