Course Information

Announcements

The initial project discussion schedule can be found here.

Starting April 9, lectures will be held in Hewlett 102.

Lectures

Lectures are on Tuesdays and Thursdays, 2:15–3:30 pm, in Hewlett 102.

Abstract

Information theory forms the basis for the design of all modern day communication systems. The original theory was primarily point-to-point, studying how fast information can flow across an isolated noisy communication channel. Until recently, there has been only limited success in extending the theory to a network of interacting nodes. Progress has been made in the past decade driven by engineering interest in wireless networks. In this course, we aim to provide a unified overview of this recent progress made in information theory of wireless networks. Starting with an overview of the capacity of fading and multiple-antenna wireless channels, we aim to answer questions such as:

• What is the optimal way for users to cooperate and exchange information in a wireless network?

• How much benefit can optimal cooperation provide over traditional communication architectures?

• How can cooperation help to deal with interference between multiple wireless transmissions?

Approximate Outline

• Modeling and capacity of fading multiple-antenna channels (5 weeks)

• Cooperation in large wireless adhoc networks, Scaling laws for capacity, Operating regimes of large networks (1-2 weeks)

• Deterministic models for wireless, Noisy network coding and approximate capacity of multicast wireless flows (1-2 weeks)

• Interference channel and interference alignment (1–2 weeks)

Pre-requisites

• Information Theory (EE 376A or equivalent)

• Probability (EE 178 or equivalent)

• Linear Algebra

Grading

Grading is based on 5 homeworks in the first 5 weeks of the quarter, lecture scribing and a final project. The weightage for each homework is 8%, lecture scribing 10% and final project is 50%. The final project will be a research project related to one of the topics covered in the course. Students are expected to deliver a 3-4 page final report and two 15 min presentations, one in the middle of the quarter and one at the end of the quarter. More details will be provided in the first lecture.