Our research involves physical and Media Access Control (MAC) layers of tele-communications systems, information theory and signal processing, with primary focus on wireless and optical transmission. Our mission is to understand the basics, further develop the theory in targeted areas, and apply it to the practice of commutations systems.
Although most of our publications are in theoretical journals, the primary motivation for the research has been in majority of cases rooted in practice, and in some cases we have even taken the concepts to hardware implementation. Research has been funded by companies like Bell, Ciena, Nortel Networks, and RIM matched with various government funds from Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) (Industrial Research Chairs (IRC), Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI), etc) and Ontario Research Funds (ORF) (Information Technology Research Center (ITRC), Communications and Information Technology Ontario (CITO), Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE), Ontario Research Fund –Research Excellence (ORF-RE)/Ontario Research Fund Research Infrastructure (ORF-RI)). Some of the research introduced in our group include interference alignment, two-way wireless, media-based wireless and unconditional security (i.e., perfect security) by introducing the concept of wireless entanglement.
Media-based wireless is based on embedding messages in the wireless channel rather than the conventional methods where the information is embedded in the source and then transmitted through the channel. This offers huge gains at a smaller complexity as compared to Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) antenna systems. For example, a 1xK media-based wireless offers tens of dBs of gain compared even to a KxK legacy MIMO. Wireless Entanglement Security (WES) uses the characteristics of the wireless channel in a two-way link to establish a shared private key between legitimate parties. WES is the only known practical method for unconditional (perfect) security. Interference Alignment (IA) introduced by our group in 2006 has turned into a widely pursued topic in industry and academia world-wide, and our more recent results on two-way wireless, media-based wireless and WES are expected to shape the future of wireless.
Graduate admissions (master’s and PhD)
There are a few projects with a mix of theory and practice, appropriate for master’s or PhD thesis. Please see the three research areas and admissions page for details.