WIRELESS SYSTEMS
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Communications technologies have evolved rapidly in the last three decades. Cellular phone deployment is growing at a rapid pace, and the internet has reached a large fraction of the population worldwide. As an outcome of this unprecedented growth in communications technologies, quick and reliable access to information is fast becoming an intrinsic need for continued economic and social progress. Due to their potential to provide ubiquitous access, wireless technologies will play a pivotal role in supporting the future communications needs. Over the last two decades, wireless systems have evolved from basic voice and paging services to an integrated personal communications network with multimedia services. While the progress of this evolution has been at a slower rate than previously predicted, we are now seeing a rapid adoption of wireless local area networks (WLAN) and mesh networks, and third generation cellular wireless data services. Other technologies such as RFID (radio frequency identification) and wireless sensors are also becoming increasingly prevalent. Wireless communication is thus emerging as the ubiquitous medium for rapid exchange of information in both commercial and military applications. This trend is expected to accelerate with many existing services transitioning to wireless devices, and new services being developed specifically for wireless devices and utilized in a wide range of applications. This growing dependence on, and growing densities of, wireless devices makes it imperative to develop wireless technologies that can support reliable, secure, ubiquitous communication at low cost, possibly using small resource-constrained devices. Achieving this challenging goal will require use of innovative communications mechanisms, devices, and application designs. Communications policy and human factors will also affect the successful deployment of new technologies. The Illinois Center for Wireless Systems (ICWS) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) was formed to address these challenges. Faculty and students at UIUC have made pioneering and high impact research contributions to various aspects of wireless systems, ranging from hardware to applications. ICWS brings together our diverse expertise under one umbrella with the goal of fostering systems-level research. |
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