[CSEE-colloq] Yuksel on 'Free-Space-Optical Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks', 1pm Mon 2/27, ITE325, UMBC

[Tim Finin]

         FSO-MANETs: Free-Space-Optical Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks

                              Murat Yuksel
                    Computer Science and Engineering
                       University of Nevada, Reno

             1:00pm Monday 27 February 2012, ITE 325b, UMBC

The recent proliferation of wireless technologies and choices
available to user applications has triggered a tremendous wireless
demand, and wireless nodes are expected to dominate the Internet
soon. Reports show that usage of mobile Web and WiFi by smartphones is
increasing sharply, with more than 80% of their data consumption
landing on WiFi points, and this statistic does not even include a
major smartphone brand, the iPhone. Accommodating this exploding
wireless demand with cellular capacity does not seem possible in the
long run. As the radio spectrum (RF) spectrum is getting scarcer and
saturated by recent innovations in attaining high spectral efficiency
gains such as hierarchical cooperative MIMO, we urgently need
innovations that will enable leveraging of new wireless spectrums and
substrates in order to respond to the exploding mobile wireless
traffic demand. Further, the capacity gap between RF wireless and
optical fiber backbone speeds will remain huge because of the limited
availability of RF spectrum. Enabling optical spectrum in wireless
communications is the needed revolution for ultra-high-speed mobile
ad-hoc networks (MANETs) of the future.

In this talk, I will present our work on exploring the potential for
free-space-optics (FSO), a.k.a. optical wireless, in the context of
very-high-speed mobile ad-hoc and opportunistic networking. We
introduce basic building blocks for MANETs using FSO and present
initial prototypes for multi-hop FSO building blocks and protocols
operating under mobility. 3-D spherical structures covered with
inexpensive FSO transceivers (e.g., LED/VCSEL and photo-detector pair)
solve issues relevant to mobility and line-of-sight (LOS) management
via availability of several transceivers per node. Such structures
facilitate electronic LOS tracking (i.e., “electronic steering”)
methods instead of traditional mechanical steering techniques used in
FSO communications. By abstracting FSO directionality and LOS
characteristics, our work also explores issues relating to routing and
localization, and develops layer 3 protocols. FSO has been used at
high-altitude communications, and this research enables FSO
communications at lower-altitudes and in ad-hoc settings with
redundancy of cheap optoelectronic components. This research also
contributes to the new application of using solid-state lighting
technology due to potential integration of illumination and
communication functions in the same devices. Please refer to our
project website (http://bit.ly/FSOMAN) for further information.


Murat Yuksel (http://bit.ly/YUKSEM) is an Assistant Professor at the
CSE Department of The University of Nevada - Reno (UNR), Reno, NV. He
was with the ECSE Department of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
(RPI), Troy, NY as a Postdoctoral Research Associate and a member of
Adjunct Faculty until 2006. He received a B.S. degree from the
Computer Engineering Department of Ege University, Izmir, Turkey in
1996. He received M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Computer Science
Department of RPI in 1999 and 2002 respectively. His research
interests are in the area of computer communication networks with a
focus on protocol design, network economics, wireless routing,
free-space-optical mobile ad-hoc networks (FSO-MANETs), and
peer-to-peer. He is a senior member of IEEE, life member of ACM, and a
member of Sigma Xi and ASEE.

Host: Anupam Joshi
See http://csee.umbc.edu/talks for more information