DARPA Non-Equilibrium Information Theory Phase 2 is a Go!

DARPA has renewed its support of the WNCG-led Information Theory for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (IT-MANET) program for 2008-9. This prestigious program, labeled by DARPA as "The Grand Challenge in Information Theory", seeks to characterize the ultimate performance limits of MANETs, arguably the most challenging open problem in information theory and networking. WNCG Director Jeffrey Andrews leads a 12-faculty team that includes Associate Director Robert Heath and Professor Sanjay Shakkottai, as well as faculty from Northwestern, USC, Minnesota, MIT, UC Irvine, Drexel and Notre Dame.

During the first phase of the project, entitled "Non-Equilibrium Information Theory", the team made significant progress. Amongst other accomplishments, team member Syed Jafar developed the breakthrough capacity degrees of freedom region for describing wireless network capacity, and the Interference Alignment procedure which achieves it. The team also made substantial progress on integrating delay and feedback—two critical quantities in wireless network generally ignored in link-based information theory—into the capacity formulation.

More on the project, including a new paper outlining the project goals, can be found at the webpage: /itmanet/