Milner, Davis Lead $1M USAF Grant

Stuart Milner, civil and environmental engineering, and Chris Davis, electrical and computer engineering, are principal investigator and co-principle investigator for a new $1,048,279 grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. They will lead a multi-university program to investigate next generation, complex, heterogeneous wireless networks, seeking to quantify, control and manage information transfer for theater, tactical and strategic support.

Their work will focus on network architectures and protocols that support information transfer. The fundamental question is whether a user can ultimately get the information needed, rather than what throughput lower network layers can deliver.

"We address information-centric topology management and control vis-à-vis network topology management and control," stated the researchers. "We propose to address fundamental questions including: 1) How can the transfer of information (not just bits) be assured over a network topology where the channels are dynamically changing? and 2) How do you assure high information availability (as opposed to network reliability), high information delivery rate (as opposed to network throughput), and high information security (as opposed to network security), simultaneously and in a dynamic heterogeneous network environment?"

The project is an integrated, multi-investigator, multi-year research endeavor.

Published March 31, 2009