1.    Introduction

       Wireless communications and networking technologies have experienced a rapid evolution in the past two decades. A rich of wireless networks evolve into the next generation to provide better services including B3G/4G cellular networks, wireless ad hoc networks, wireless sensor networks, wireless mesh networks, etc. Our vision is to build high performance wireless networks to allow people/devices on the move to communicate with anyone, anywhere, and at any time. Our mission is to tackle the fundamental and technical challenges to make this vision a reality.

    The Wireless Networking Theory and Application (WNTA) research team consists of outstanding academic staffs from different departments of the School of Electronic, Information and Electrical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

    The research directions under investigation cover channel capacity analysis, coding and modulation techniques, protocol design, application layer adaptation and the associated hardware implementations. We will introduce 5 representative research achievements which are identified into the following 3 topics: (1) Resource Allocation in Wireless Network, (2) Coding and Modulation over Wireless Channels, and (3) Sensor networking technology and application.

    Our research is supported by a range of national and Shanghai Municipal programs including the prestigious National 973 Program, NSFC Outstanding Youth Program, NSFC Key Project Foundation, and by collaborating programs with major IT companies like Microsoft, Intel, IBM, Hua Wei, ZTE and Qualcomm. Our projects are funded over USD 1 million in recent 3 years. More than 80 IEEE journal papers and numerical international conference (such as IEEE INFOCOM, MobiHoc, GlobeCom, IEEE ICC and IEEE CDC et al.) papers have been published in recent 5 years. The research team received 1 National Natural Science Award of China in 2008 and 3 first prizes of provincial scientific awards.

    We have cultivated a good environment for both learning and innovation. There are a Key Laboratory of Ministry of Education, China and a Key Laboratory of Shanghai Municipal, China. The team is comprised of more than 20 PhD students and over 40 Master students. In addition, a number of postdoctoral and visiting positions are provided annually.

    The team keeps close collaboration with many reputable universities in the world, such as North Carolina State University, Illinois Institute of Technology, University of Alberta, University of Waterloo, National University of Singapore, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and many transnational companies in the world. The team members are very active in academic activities. They serve as associate editor of several IEEE journals such as IEEE Trans. Wireless Communications, and IEEE Trans. System, Man and Cybernetics-C. Almost all members serve as chair, co-chair, session chair and invited speakers of international conferences.

 

2.    Faculty Member

      The team consists of 8 professors, 8 associate professors, and 1 lecturer.

      Prof. Guan Xinping is currently a Senior Member of IEEE, the Professor of "Cheung Kong Scholar" Program, and the winner of "2005 National Outstanding Youth Foundation". In 2007, he was elected as "State-level Candidate" of "New Century Bai Qianwan Talent Project". Prof. Guan serves as Associate Editor of IEEE Trans. Systems, Man & Cybernetics-C. He has authored and/or coauthored 2 research monographs, 2 textbooks and more than 96 referred SCI indexed journal papers and numerous conference papers. His current research interests include industrial wireless sensor networks, cognitive radio, multi-agent systems. He was one of the First Prize Winners of University Natural Science Award from The Ministry of Education of China in 2003 and 2006, respectively. In 2008, he also received the Second Prize of National Natural Science Award from the Ministry of Science and Technology of China. Prof. Guan is one of the recipients of “IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems Outstanding Paper Award for 2005”.

       Prof.Li Minglu is has published more than 100 papers in well-known journals and mainstream conferences like IEEE TPDS, IEEE INFOCOM and IEEE ICDCS. He was one of the receipts of the prestigious National Scientific Progress Award in 2008 and two best paper awards. Prof. Li served as the general chair or co-chair for several international conferences, such as 2009 IEEE Int. Conf. on Clustering and Grid Computing (CCGrid 2009). He is on the editorial board of five international journals, i.e., Computer Networks, Int. J. of Web Services Research, Int. J. of Grid and HPC and Int. J. of Grid and Utility Computing. He has been invited to give keynote talks on four international conferences or workshops.

       Prof. Chen Wen is currently Director of Institute for Signal Processing and Systems, Shanghai Jiao Tong University and the Vice General Secretary of Shanghai Institute of Electronics. His interests cover OFDM coding, MIMO-OFDM precoding, cooperative communications and network coding. He has published more than 50 papers in IEEE and IEICE journals and conferences. Dr. Chen was awarded the Ariyama Memorial Research Prize in 1997, the PIMS Post-Doctoral Fellowship in 2001. He received the honors of “New Century Excellent Young Researcher in China” in 2006 and “Pujiang Excellent Investigator in Shanghai” in 2007. He is on the editorial board of the Int. J. of Wireless Comm. and Networking, and serves as guest editor of J. of Comm. and J. of Computers. He is the TPC chair for IEEE-ICCSC2008, the General Conference Chair for IEEE-ICIS2009.

      Prof. Cao Jian has been with the Department of Computer Science and Engineering since 2000. His research interests include Collaborative Information System, Grid &Service Computing and Software Engineering. His main areas of expertise are the developments of software and models to support coordination and cooperation among humans, systems and components. He has authored or co-authored over 80 journal and conference papers in the above areas. His recent research has focused on the development of Service Workflow System, Service Agent Environment, Autonomous Computing and Business Simulation Environment. He has published 100 papers in international conferences and journals.

     Dr. Wang Xinbing received the B.S. degree (with hons.) from the Department of Automation, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shanghai, China, in 1998, and the M.S. degree from the Department of Computer Science and Technology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 2001. He received the Ph.D. degree, major in the Department of electrical and Computer Engineering, minor in the Department of Mathematics, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, in 2006. Currently, he is a faculty member in the Department of Electronic Engineering, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shanghai, China. His research interests include resource allocation and management in mobile and wireless networks, TCP asymptotics analysis, wireless capacity, cross layer call admission control, asymptotics analysis of hybrid systems, and congestion control over wireless ad hoc and sensor networks. Dr.Wang has been a member of the Technical Program Committees of several conferences including IEEE INFOCOM 2009-2010, IEEE ICC 2007-2011, IEEE Globecom 2007-2010.

      Dr.Tao Meixia’s research interests including MIMO techniques, cooperative communications, dynamic resource allocation, and physical layer network coding. She has published over 30 papers in top-tier IEEE journals and conferences on these topics. She is the recipient of the Publication Awards in the Institution of Engineers, Singapore, in 2005. In 2008, she was selected as “Chen Guang” Scholar of Shanghai, China. She also received the IEEE ComSoc Asia-Pacific Outstanding Young Researcher Award in 2009. Dr. Tao is currently on the editorial board of IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications. She has served as the Track Co-Chair for several interference conferences, such as APCC2009, ChinaCom2009, IEEE ICCCN'07 and IEEE ICCCAS'07.

      Dr.Long Chengnian's general research areas include resource allocation in wireless networks, cognitive radio, cooperative communication, TCP congestion control, and industrial wireless sensor networks. He was the Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at University of Alberta (with Killam Postdoctoral Fellowship). He has published over 50 papers in top IEEE journals and conferences. Dr. Chen was one of the First Prize Winners of University Natural Science Award from The Ministry of Education of China in 2004 and 2006. He has served as TPC member session chair of several international conferences.

 

3.    Reprehensive Research Achievement

      Reprehensive Research Achievement 1: Collaborative and Competitive Resource Allocation for Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

      Resource allocation is one of the critical issues of wireless networks in collaborative and competitive environments. We investigate this problem through several perspectives. The relevant research findings have been reported in top journals like IEEE J. on Selected Areas in Communications, IEEE Trans. on Vehicular Technology, IEEE Trans. on Wireless Communications, IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing and major international conferences such as ACM MobiHoc.

      We investigate the problem of joint congestion control, random access and power control design with multihop transmissions and interference constrained link rates. The end-to-end throughput maximization with energy efficiency is formulated as a cross-layer design problem under a realistic interference-based communication model. A distributed joint random access and power control algorithm is then proposed to adapt for the transport layer congestion status.

       The competitive multi-radio channel allocation problem is investigated in multi-hop wireless networks. The channel allocation problem is modeled as a static cooperative game, in which some players collaborate to achieve high date rate. Our results show that MMCPNE outperforms CPNE and NE schemes in terms of achieved data rates of the multi-hop links due to cooperation gain.

       We aim at designing a non-cooperative power control algorithm without pricing mechanism for ad hoc networks. We view the interaction among the users’ decision for power level as a repeated game. Based on the theory of stochastic fictitious play (SFP), we propose a reinforcement learning algorithm to schedule each user’s power level. Our proposed algorithm can safely run in a fully selfish environment without any additional pricing and secure mechanism.

       Construct a self-organized platform with all digital scalability to measure the performance of wireless network system.

Selected Publications:

[1]   C. Long, B. Li, Q. Zhang, B. Zhao, B. Yang and X. Guan, “The end-to-end rate control in multiple-hop wireless networks: cross-layer formulation and optimal allocation,” IEEE J. Selected Areas in Comm. (JSAC), vol. 26, no. 4, pp. 719-731, May 2008.

[2]   C. Long, Q. Zhang, B. Li, H. Yang and X. Guan, “Non-cooperative power control for wireless Ad Hoc networks with repeated games,” IEEE JSAC, vol. 25, no. 6, pp. 1101-1112, Aug. 2007.

[3]   L. Gao, and X. Wang, "A Game Approach for Multi-Channel Allocation in Multi-Hop Wireless Networks", in Proc. of ACM MobiHoc 2008, Hong Kong, May, 2008

 

       Reprehensive Research Achievement 2: Centralized and Distributed Resource Allocation for Cellular Wireless Networks

With the rapid development of cellular networks like 3G/4G, resource allocation in cellular networks plays an increasingly important role. Multicarrier transmission in the shape of OFDM and multi-hop relaying are the leading techniques to provide spectrally efficient modulation, user multiplexing, coverage extension and throughput enhancement. Our research findings have been reported in prestigious journals like IEEE Trans. Networking, IEEE Trans. Wireless Communications, IEEE Trans. Communication, and major international conferences such as IEEE INFOCOM.

        The consideration of packet level dynamics is of great potential benefit to resource allocation based on our investigations. Some energy efficient algorithms are proposed. In addition, we provide the fast convergent handoff decision algorithms for the cellular networks, which facilitate resource allocation in cellular networks.

        The adaptive subcarrier and power allocation are developed in a heterogeneous OFDMA network that supports simultaneous transmission of delay-constrained (DC) traffic and non-delay-constrained (NDC) traffic. We formulated the problem as maximizing the sum-rate of all the users with NDC traffic while maintaining guaranteed rates for the users with DC traffic under a total transmit power constraint.

       We have investigated the end-to-end resource allocation in OFDM based linear multi-hop relay networks. The per-hop subcarrier power and per-hop transmission time allocation problems are formulated for end-to-end ergodic transmission rate maximization and information outage minimization under a long-term total power constraint. A decomposition technique is used to solve both problems. Suboptimal algorithms are also proposed to tradeoff between performance, computational complexity and signaling overhead.

 

Selected Publications

[1]   X. Wang, S. Xie, X. Hu, "Recursive Analysis for Soft Handoff Schemes in CDMA Cellular Systems," to appear in IEEE Trans. on Wireless Communications, 2009.

[2]   M. Tao, Y. Liang and F. Zhang, "Resource allocation for delay differentiated traffic in multiuser OFDM systems", IEEE Trans. on Wireless Communications, vol. 7, no. 6, pp. 2190-2201, June 2008.

[3]   D. Eun, X. Wang, “Achieving 100% Throughput in TCP/AQM under Aggressive Packet Marking with Small Buffer,” in IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, Vol. 16, No. 4, pages 945-956, August 2008.

 

 

       Reprehensive Research Achievement 3: Design and Analysis of Space-Time Coding

       Space-time coding is a family of codes that perform coding across both time and space (transmit antenna) dimensions so as to exploit the diversity and multiplexing gains promised by multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channels. We have studied the design and performance of space-time coding in depth over both co-located and distributed MIMO channels.

       We proposed new designed criteria and design better codes over co-located MIMO channels for low and moderate operating SNR regions. A systematic code construction method is proposed for an arbitrary number of transmit antennas with any signal constellation. We are the first to introduce non-constant amplitude in differential space-time block codes so that more power efficient constellations, can be applied. To further enhance the performance, we proposed trellis-coded differential unitary space-time modulation (TC-DUSTM) and high-rate TC-DUSTM.

       In distributed MIMO channels, different path loss, shadowing as well as fading fluctuation rates on different links are expected. Our goal is to investigate the effects of non-identical fading distribution on the performance of space-time coding designed previously. The analytical studies include 1) detection methods, error probability, and power control of differential space-time modulation, and 2) capacity limits and power control of general space-time diversity schemes. 

 

Selected publications:

[1]   M. Tao, “Effects of non-identical Rayleigh fading on differential unitary space-time modulation,” to appear in IEEE Trans. Communications, May 2009.

[2]   L. Cao, M. Tao and P. Y. Kam, “Power control for MIMO diversity systems with non-identical Rayleigh fading,” IEEE Trans. Vehicular Technology, vol. 58, no. 2, pp. 998-1003, Feb. 2009.

[3]   M. Tao, Q. Li and H. K. Garg, "Extended space-time block coding with transmit antenna selection over correlated fading channels", IEEE Trans. Wireless Communications, vol. 6, no. 9, pp.3137-3141, Sept. 2007.

 

        Representative Research Achievement 4: Coverage and event detection of Wireless Sensor Networks

 

       Environment monitoring and event detection are both important and typical applications of wireless sensor networks. It is of great importance to provide full coverage and to detect abnormal events accurately. Meanwhile, it is crucial for the sensor network to be energy efficient and thus to prolong network lifetime. We study the coverage and event detection issues of wireless sensor network in depth and have proposed several approaches for energy efficient coverage and event detection.

       For the first time we formally defined the problem of coverage problem in a directional sensor network (DCS). We proved that it is NP-complete to solve the DCS problem. Several efficient algorithms have been devised to find an energy efficient set for providing full sensing coverage.

       Many existing coverage algorithms assume that the target sensing field is a 2D plane. In reality, however, many sensing environments cannot be considered as a plane, for example, the surface of a mountain. We have proposed a new model and efficient algorithms to study this new surface coverage problem.

       Duty cycling is crucial for wireless sensor networks to conserve energy. However, duty-cycled sensor networks suffer performance loss in event detection. For example, detection latency is incurred and events may not be detected. We have studied the intrinsic tradeoff between energy efficiency and event detection performance. In addition, we proposed a probabilistic approach to provisioning event detection quality of service in wireless sensor networks.

Selected Publications:

[1]    Y. Cai, W. Lou, M. Li and X. Li, “Energy Efficient Target-Oriented Scheduling in Directional Sensor Networks,” to appear in IEEE Transactions on Computers, 2009.

[2]    M. C. Zhao, J. Lei, M. Y. Wu, Y. Liu, W. Shu, “Surface Coverage in Wireless Sensor Networks,” Proc. of IEEE INFOCOM, 2009.

[3]    Y. Zhu and L. M. Ni, “Probabilistic Approach to Provisioning Guaranteed QoS for Distributed Event Detection,” Proc. of IEEE INFOCOM, Phoenix, Arizona, 2008.

 

Representative Research Achievement 5: Vehicular Ad Hoc Sensor Networks

       A vehicular ad hoc sensor network consists of many vehicular sensor nodes, where a vehicular sensor node is a moving vehicle. A vehicular sensor is able to capture many valuable environmental parameters, such as road traffic, infrastructure health, and pollution conditions. Thanks to the mobility of vehicles, a vehicular sensor network is able to cover a large scale area. With wireless vehicular sensor networks, many promising applications can be developed, such as real-time road traffic monitoring, vehicle locating, and city environment monitoring.

      We have conducted in depth research on vehicular sensor networks. We implemented a large scale prototype of vehicular sensor network, employing more than 4000 taxis and buses in Shanghai to serve as vehicular sensors. Information such as location, speed, and taxi occupancy is collected in real time. We have proposed effective methods for monitoring metropolitan scale traffic information, locating a moving vehicle, constructing mobility models of taxis and designing efficient routing protocols.

      Vehicles moving in a metropolis like Shanghai exhibit an interesting pattern. We study the mobility of Shanghai Taxis. A mobility model is established based on the extensive real-world trace data. This model can be used for various purposes, e.g., generation of trace data.

      Each vehicle regularly reports its instant velocity, location and moving direction. With this information, we are able to monitor in real time road traffic conditions. We have proposed efficient methods to compute traffic conditions based on lossy and error-prone trace data.

     We have proposed a vehicle tracking system in which any vehicle can be located in real time with modest network traffic overhead.

 

Selected publications:

[1]   M. Li, H. Zhu, Y. Zhu and L. M. Ni, “ANTS: Efficient Vehicle Locating Based on Ant Search in ShanghaiGrid,” to appear at IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, 2009.

[2]   H. Zhu, Y. Zhu, M. Li and L. M. Ni, "SEER: Metropolitan-scale Traffic Perception Based on Lossy Sensory Data", Proc. of IEEE INFOCOM’09, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, April 2009.

[3]    H. Zhu, Y. Zhu, M. Li and L. M. Ni, “HERO: Online Real-time Vehicle Tracking in Shanghai,” Proc. of IEEE INFOCOM’08, Phoenix, AZ, USA, April 2008.