UCLA Engineering Leads Hybrid Wireless Research

UCLA is one of six universities selected by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to lead development of a wireless network testbed. The grant, worth more than $5.5 million, will finance sixmultidisciplinary testbed initiatives in the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science.

Researchers at UCLA and partner institutions around the nation will design and develop WHYNET, a wireless hybrid networked testbed that will redefine how specific innovations in wireless communication technologies are evaluated. WHYNET will provide a testbed for researchers to evaluate the impact of new technologies on application level performance, using scalable and realistic scenarios.

WHYNET is funded by the NSF's Networking Research Testbeds (NRT) program, which is designed to create a new generation of networking technologies through a diverse set of research testbeds. Through this program, researchers will test and refine new concepts and architectures using a number of independent testbeds that have been designed and built by researchers themselves.

Envisioned as a hybrid testbed that combines the realism of physical testing with the scalability and flexibility of simulations, WHYNET will use devices and systems developed by researchers at UCLA and the other participating universities, as well as off-the-shelf components.

"There is a rich history of wireless networking research at UCLA," said Vijay K. Dhir, dean of the Engineering School. "The WHYNET project will enable our faculty and students to rapidly advance research in the field in new and interesting ways."

The WHYNET research could lead to improved cellular communication networks. UCLA and UC San Diego engineers are examining how mobile ad hoc networks can be integrated into traditional cellular networks to enable better reception farther from base stations or existing infrastructure. They are also exploring the impact and benefits of directional antennas in traditional wireless systems.

The twelve WHYNET testbeds, located at universities around California and in Delaware, will be connected via the Internet, allowing researchers to test new components on the entire system, not just on those testbeds located at their institution. Researchers will be creating and evaluating new technologies from the radio layer to protocol stacks.

"The next generation of mobile technology is impacted by innovations at many levels - these sophisticated technologies cannot be evaluated in isolation, or their behavior easily predicted," noted Rajive Bagrodia, principle investigator and a computer science professor at UCLA. "The key to exploiting these technologies lies in determining the cross-layer interactions."

Each of the universities will be examining specific aspects of wireless networking, including security and quality of service. There will be six testbeds located at UCLA, each focusing on a different area of wireless networking: mobile, ad hoc networks (MANETs), wireless sensor networks, narrowband radio SDR, fast frequency hopped spread spectrum radios (FHSS), multi-input-multi-output systems (MIMO) and smart antennas.

UCLA researchers will leverage the wide range of expertise in wireless networking available in the computer science and electrical engineering departments. "Few universities can claim the breadth of talent across technologies (in wireless networking) that we can," said Bagrodia.

When complete, researchers throughout the wireless community will be able to remotely upload models to the testbed, enabling them to investigate how new systems and devices would behave in a real-world setting.

"The problems facing researchers in industry and academia are related and the testbed will give them the means to efficiently test new ideas and solutions," explained Bagrodia.

The research will also generate a repository of wireless networking scenarios, measurements, models and implementations. Although there is considerable information available on the behavior of wired networks, there is very little available on wireless networks. The data derived from research on the testbeds will enable validation of simulation models, determine base performance of high layer protocols and radio devices, and generate a rich set of wireless protocol models.

The WHYNET program participants are: the Universities of California, Davis, Riverside, San Diego, and Santa Barbara, the University of Southern California, and the University of Delaware.

The program has already received interest and support from key partners in industry, including Intel, Nokia, Microsoft, HRL Laboratories, Extreme Spectrum, and ST Microelectronics, as well as input from researchers at Livermore National Laboratory and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

-Marlys Amundson

12/10/03