Title: Mathematical Optimizations in Wireless Networks, Smart Grids and Radar Networks.

 Summary

The efficient use of radio spectrum and optimization of power are two important design goals in wireless networks. To achieve these goals, it is important that resources such as radio spectrum, spatial dimension and power need to be optimised and convex optimization and game theoretical methods play an important role. Generally, smart antennas in the form of beamforming, spatial multiplexing and MIMO have the potential for enhancing spectrum efficiency and various communication standards such as WiMAX and LTE already support these technologies.  Recently, cognitive radios have also emerged as a potential technique for enhancing spectrum efficiency. Due to various constraints such as power limitation, quality of services and interference leakage, convex optimization is considered to be a powerful mathematical tool for the design of spectrally efficient wireless networks. Due to non-cooperative nature of various autonomous wireless devices, game theory has also taken a central role in the resource allocation and scheduling in wireless networks.

The first part of the talk will introduce various mathematical optimization techniques such as convex optimization and game theory. Various classes of convex optimization techniques such as linear programming, quadratic programming, geometric programming and second order cone programming will be covered. Basic game theoretic methods will also be introduced. The second part will address the application of these mathematical optimization techniques for efficient use of radio spectrum and power in wireless networks, specifically within the context of smart grids and cognitive radios. Finally, the application of these techniques in demand management in smart grids and power control in radar networks will also be discussed.

Biography: Sangarapillai Lambotharan is a Professor in Digital Communications in the School of Electronic, Electrical and Systems Engineering at Loughborough University, UK.  He received his PhD degree in Signal Processing from Imperial College, UK in 1997, where he remained until 1999 as a postdoctoral research associate. He was a visiting scientist at the Engineering and Theory Centre of Cornell University, USA in 1996. Between 1999 and 2002, he was with the Motorola Applied Research Group, UK and investigated various projects including physical link layer modelling and performance characterization of GPRS, EGPRS and UTRAN. He was with King’s College London and Cardiff University as a lecturer and senior lecturer respectively from 2002 to 2007.  His current research interests include cognitive radios, wireless relay networks, MIMO, smart grids optimizations, data mining and radar networks. He has published more than 150 technical journal and conference articles in these areas. He is a senior member of the IEEE and an associate editor for EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking.

 http://homepages.lboro.ac.uk/~elsl4/