Modeling and Resource Management in Wireless Networks

Speaker: Dr Rong Zheng

Time: 12:30pm-1:30pm, January 25th, 2008

Location: Nueces 201 Conference Room

Abstract:

Design of wireless networks remains a challenging problem due to the
complex and dynamic interactions among wireless devices and their
environments. In this talk, we present some of the recent efforts we
made towards better understanding and engineering of wireless networks.
First, a comprehensive MAC model is developed for multihop 802.11
wireless networks with heterogeneous transmit power levels and
carrier-sensing thresholds. Such a model can be used to predict the
performance of dense wireless hotspots or mesh networks, or infer
sources of starvation in the network. Then, we discuss a robust channel
allocation mechanism that utilizes knowledge of pairwise channel gain.
The talk will be concluded with an overview of research activities in
the Wireless System Research Lab (WiSeR) at the University of Houston.

Speaker Bio:

Rong Zheng received her Ph.D. degree from the CS department, University of
Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 2004 and earned her M.E.and B.E. in Electrical
Engineering in 1998 and 1996 from Tsinghua University, P.R. China. 
She is now an assistant professor at the CS department, University of Houston. 
Her current research interests include resource management and diagnostic of 
large-scale distributed systems, performance analysis and prototyping of 
wireless networks, and wireless location tracking. Rong Zheng is the recipient 
of NSF Career Award in 2006.