Meet the Scientists is an Armed with Science segment highlighting the men and women working in the government realms of science, technology, and research and development: the greatest minds working on the greatest developments of our time. If you know someone who should be featured, email us.
Syed Jafar is a professor at UC Irvine’s Henry Samueli School of Engineering. Photo courtesy of UC Irvine
WHO: Syed Jafar, a professor, began his career in electrical engineering about two decades ago. He got his bachelor’s degree at IIT Delhi India in 1997, then went on to receive his master’s degree at Caltech in 1999. He earned his doctorate in electrical engineering at Stanford University in 2003. A year later, he joined the faculty at the University of California, Irvine. His industry experience includes positions at Lucent Bell Labs, Qualcomm Inc. and Hughes Software Systems. His research interests include multiuser information theory, wireless communications and network coding.
TITLE: He is currently a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at UC Irvine’s Henry Samueli School of Engineering.
MISSION: “The University of California is one of the top research universities in the world, and also, as a public university, its key mission is to train and educate California’s workforce.”
Tell us a little about your technology/science.
“My research group is focused on the fundamental limits of communication networks, especially wireless networks – as in how many bits per second can be transmitted reliably over these networks, and how many users can be supported at those data rates, not only based on the existing technology but also whatever clever schemes may be invented in the future.
“The key challenge in wireless networks is the interference between simultaneous transmissions. The conventional approach of avoiding interference by dividing bandwidth among users, much like a cake, causes the portion of the bandwidth (cake) available per user to decrease rapidly as the number of users increases. However, what we have shown is that, in theory, it is possible to share bandwidth in such a way that everyone gets half the cake/bandwidth free from interference even when there are many users competing for it.”
What is your role in developing this new way to share bandwidth?
“My research group crystallized the concept of interference alignment and showed that through interference alignment, it is possible for everyone to access half of the total bandwidth free from interference. Initially this result was shown under a number of idealized assumptions that are typical in theoretical studies. We have since continued to work on peeling off these idealizations one at a time, to bring the theory closer to practice. Along the way we have made numerous discoveries through the lens of interference alignment, which reveal new and powerful signaling schemes.”
What is the goal/mission of this concept, and what do you hope it will achieve?
“The goal is to identify the optimal design principles of communication networks, which will enable future networks to operate close to their fundamental capacity limits.”
In your own words, what is it about this data rate-improving technology that makes it so significant?
“Communication networks are at the core of the modern information-centric society. There are more wireless devices than people on the planet. Reliable communication at fast speeds is the key to enabling all sorts of applications, from watching live video feeds on a mobile device to cloud computing, remote medicine and unmanned automated vehicles. If the data rates can be improved by orders of magnitude, the potential for which is revealed by our theoretical studies, the impact on everyone’s lives would be tremendous.”
How could you use interference alignment to aid the military or help with military missions?
“Information dominance is an essential aspect of modern defense. The military especially needs the most advanced communication networks, wired and wireless, that are reliable, fast, secure and robust to jamming, and can support a large number of devices. Fortunately, the same ideas of interference alignment that show this enormous potential for orders of magnitude improvements in the number of users and data transfer speeds, also show that such communications are inherently secure. If the theory can be translated into practice, it could be a revolutionary leap forward for tactical communication networks.”
What do you think is the most impressive/beneficial thing about interference alignment, and why?
“That signals can be designed so that ‘everyone gets half the cake’ is a truly remarkable and surprising discovery. Not only does it open our minds to the tremendous potential hidden within wireless networks, but also the underlying mathematical principles cut across applications. For instance, using the same mathematical principles that we used for interference networks, we have found the fundamental limits of certain distributed storage networks. Once again, the fundamental limits turned out significantly higher than what was previously believed to be possible.”
What got you interested in this field of study?
“One of my earliest inspirations was Einstein’s famous E=mc2 formula. I was struck by its beauty. It was so simple and yet so profound. It became my lifelong dream to pursue beauty through science. In graduate school at Caltech, when I took a course on Information Theory, I came across Shannon’s formula for the capacity of a communication channel, which had the same sort of beauty to it as Einstein’s equation. I also learned that the capacity was not known for most communication networks, i.e., multiple users communicating simultaneously. That is when I realized that this was the perfect field for me.”
Are you working on any other projects right now?
“Indeed, there are many open challenges in dealing with the idealized assumptions made in the initial theoretical studies. Relaxing these idealizations and bringing the theory closer to practice is something we are working on.
“Aside from wireless interference networks, I am working on problems such as the distributed storage repair problem and the index coding problem, which share some of the same mathematical attributes as the wireless settings.”
If you could go anywhere in time and space, where would you go and why?
“It typically takes a few decades for practice to catch up with theory. If I could, I would like to go 50 years into the future and see what advances have been made in communication networks, whether the most challenging questions of our times have been answered, and whether the potential that is currently revealed by our discoveries in interference alignment could ultimately be realized in practice.”
What is your best advice for budding scientists?
“My advice is to have faith that the fundamental principles behind seemingly complex phenomena are simple and beautiful, to seek such simplicity, and to remember that while simplicity is often the hardest thing to find, it is worth the effort.”
Follow us on Facebook and Twitter for military science and technology updates!
———-
Disclaimer: Re-published content may have been edited for length and clarity. The appearance of hyperlinks does not constitute endorsement by the Department of Defense. For other than authorized activities, such as, military exchanges and Morale, Welfare and Recreation sites, the Department of Defense does not exercise any editorial control over the information you may find at these locations. Such links are provided consistent with the stated purpose of this DoD website.
from Armed with Science http://ift.tt/1WOiReX
Meet the Scientists is an Armed with Science segment highlighting the men and women working in the government realms of science, technology, and research and development: the greatest minds working on the greatest developments of our time. If you know someone who should be featured, email us.
Syed Jafar is a professor at UC Irvine’s Henry Samueli School of Engineering. Photo courtesy of UC Irvine
WHO: Syed Jafar, a professor, began his career in electrical engineering about two decades ago. He got his bachelor’s degree at IIT Delhi India in 1997, then went on to receive his master’s degree at Caltech in 1999. He earned his doctorate in electrical engineering at Stanford University in 2003. A year later, he joined the faculty at the University of California, Irvine. His industry experience includes positions at Lucent Bell Labs, Qualcomm Inc. and Hughes Software Systems. His research interests include multiuser information theory, wireless communications and network coding.
TITLE: He is currently a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at UC Irvine’s Henry Samueli School of Engineering.
MISSION: “The University of California is one of the top research universities in the world, and also, as a public university, its key mission is to train and educate California’s workforce.”
Tell us a little about your technology/science.
“My research group is focused on the fundamental limits of communication networks, especially wireless networks – as in how many bits per second can be transmitted reliably over these networks, and how many users can be supported at those data rates, not only based on the existing technology but also whatever clever schemes may be invented in the future.
“The key challenge in wireless networks is the interference between simultaneous transmissions. The conventional approach of avoiding interference by dividing bandwidth among users, much like a cake, causes the portion of the bandwidth (cake) available per user to decrease rapidly as the number of users increases. However, what we have shown is that, in theory, it is possible to share bandwidth in such a way that everyone gets half the cake/bandwidth free from interference even when there are many users competing for it.”
What is your role in developing this new way to share bandwidth?
“My research group crystallized the concept of interference alignment and showed that through interference alignment, it is possible for everyone to access half of the total bandwidth free from interference. Initially this result was shown under a number of idealized assumptions that are typical in theoretical studies. We have since continued to work on peeling off these idealizations one at a time, to bring the theory closer to practice. Along the way we have made numerous discoveries through the lens of interference alignment, which reveal new and powerful signaling schemes.”
What is the goal/mission of this concept, and what do you hope it will achieve?
“The goal is to identify the optimal design principles of communication networks, which will enable future networks to operate close to their fundamental capacity limits.”
In your own words, what is it about this data rate-improving technology that makes it so significant?
“Communication networks are at the core of the modern information-centric society. There are more wireless devices than people on the planet. Reliable communication at fast speeds is the key to enabling all sorts of applications, from watching live video feeds on a mobile device to cloud computing, remote medicine and unmanned automated vehicles. If the data rates can be improved by orders of magnitude, the potential for which is revealed by our theoretical studies, the impact on everyone’s lives would be tremendous.”
How could you use interference alignment to aid the military or help with military missions?
“Information dominance is an essential aspect of modern defense. The military especially needs the most advanced communication networks, wired and wireless, that are reliable, fast, secure and robust to jamming, and can support a large number of devices. Fortunately, the same ideas of interference alignment that show this enormous potential for orders of magnitude improvements in the number of users and data transfer speeds, also show that such communications are inherently secure. If the theory can be translated into practice, it could be a revolutionary leap forward for tactical communication networks.”
What do you think is the most impressive/beneficial thing about interference alignment, and why?
“That signals can be designed so that ‘everyone gets half the cake’ is a truly remarkable and surprising discovery. Not only does it open our minds to the tremendous potential hidden within wireless networks, but also the underlying mathematical principles cut across applications. For instance, using the same mathematical principles that we used for interference networks, we have found the fundamental limits of certain distributed storage networks. Once again, the fundamental limits turned out significantly higher than what was previously believed to be possible.”
What got you interested in this field of study?
“One of my earliest inspirations was Einstein’s famous E=mc2 formula. I was struck by its beauty. It was so simple and yet so profound. It became my lifelong dream to pursue beauty through science. In graduate school at Caltech, when I took a course on Information Theory, I came across Shannon’s formula for the capacity of a communication channel, which had the same sort of beauty to it as Einstein’s equation. I also learned that the capacity was not known for most communication networks, i.e., multiple users communicating simultaneously. That is when I realized that this was the perfect field for me.”
Are you working on any other projects right now?
“Indeed, there are many open challenges in dealing with the idealized assumptions made in the initial theoretical studies. Relaxing these idealizations and bringing the theory closer to practice is something we are working on.
“Aside from wireless interference networks, I am working on problems such as the distributed storage repair problem and the index coding problem, which share some of the same mathematical attributes as the wireless settings.”
If you could go anywhere in time and space, where would you go and why?
“It typically takes a few decades for practice to catch up with theory. If I could, I would like to go 50 years into the future and see what advances have been made in communication networks, whether the most challenging questions of our times have been answered, and whether the potential that is currently revealed by our discoveries in interference alignment could ultimately be realized in practice.”
What is your best advice for budding scientists?
“My advice is to have faith that the fundamental principles behind seemingly complex phenomena are simple and beautiful, to seek such simplicity, and to remember that while simplicity is often the hardest thing to find, it is worth the effort.”
Follow us on Facebook and Twitter for military science and technology updates!
———-
Disclaimer: Re-published content may have been edited for length and clarity. The appearance of hyperlinks does not constitute endorsement by the Department of Defense. For other than authorized activities, such as, military exchanges and Morale, Welfare and Recreation sites, the Department of Defense does not exercise any editorial control over the information you may find at these locations. Such links are provided consistent with the stated purpose of this DoD website.
from Armed with Science http://ift.tt/1WOiReX
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