Layering As Optimization Decomposition

Speaker:	Professor Mung Chiang
		Electrical Engineering Department
		Princeton University

Title:		"Layering As Optimization Decomposition"

Date:		Monday, 12 September 2005

Time:		4:00pm - 5:00pm

Venue:		Lecture Theatre F
		(Leung Yat Sing Lecture Theatre, near lift nos. 25/26)
		HKUST


ABSTRACT:

Layered network architecture has traditionally been designed based on
engineering heuristics. Recently a mathematically rigorous and practically
relevant framework has emerged to view the network as a solver of a
generalized utility maximization problem, with alternative decompositions
of the problem corresponding to different layering schemes, each
decomposed subproblem corresponding to a different layer, and functions of
variables coordinating the subproblems as the interfaces among the layers.
Such decompositions can be carried out both horizontally across
geographically disparate network elements and vertically into various
functional modules. This talk surveys the recent advances in establishing
this framework as a systematic approach to analyze and design protocol
stacks in a holistic way that reveals the underlying structures and
explores design alternatives. Practical implementations and future
research challenges of 'layering as optimization decomposition' are then
outlined.



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Biography:

Mung Chiang is an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering at
Princeton University. He received the B.S. (Honors) in Electrical
Engineering and Mathematics, M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical
Engineering from Stanford University, and was a technical consultant at
three telecom startup companies and a Principal Member of Technical Staff
in Network Systems Engineering at SBC Communications.

Professor Chiang conducts research in the areas of nonlinear optimization
of communication systems, architectures and algorithms in broadband access
networks, and information theoretic limits of data transmission and
compression. He has been awarded as a Hertz Foundation Fellow, Stanford
Graduate Fellow, NSF Graduate Fellow, and received Stanford University
School of Engineering Terman Award, SBC Communications New Technology
Introduction Contribution Award, National Science Foundation CAREER Award,
and Princeton University Howard B. Wentz Junior Faculty Award.

Professor Chiang is the Lead Guest Editor of the Special Issue of IEEE
Journal of Selected Areas in Communications on 'Nonlinear Optimization of
Communication Systems', a Guest Editor of the Joint Special Issue of IEEE
Transactions on Information Theory and IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking
on 'Networking and Information Theory', the Program Co-Chair of the 38th
Conference on Information Sciences and Systems in 2004, and a TPC member
for Infocom, Globecom, ICC, WiOpt.