The next generation of communications systems is expected to provide high data rates up to hundreds of Mbps with ubiquitous access anytime, anywhere. Rather than developing new technologies to meet the demands, we are working to seamlessly integrate existing networks together, including optical high-speed SONET, 3G cellular, Wireless LAN (WiFi) and WiMAX, in order to create a virtual single system equipped with all the advanced technologies we already have.
Integration of these systems will require new solutions to issues including architecture design, billing models, and management of mobility, networks, and resources. Since simulation, which is still the major means of validation and performance evaluation, cannot access the practicality of the research work in this research area, we plan to address these challenges using our experimental prototype, which consists of SONET routers, a WCDMA Base station emulator , WLAN modules, and a WiMAX testbed.
Founded by Dr. Chi Zhou, the Optical Wireless Integration Lab is at the cutting edge of research into Network Coding, resource allocation for MIMO systems and Wireless Sensor Networking .