RESEARCH
working on a
wireless world
very day that computer sciences
Multi-hop wireless
professor Lili Qiu works to fi nd
new ways to make wireless
connections faster, more reliable
mesh networks
and more accessible is another
day that the challenges and
possibilities of the wireless have been proving
world expand.
Since arriving at the university from Micro-
soft in 2005, Qiu has completed a general wire-
increasingly attrac-
less interference model that should make it pos-
sible to systematically optimize performance
tive to places where
for real wireless networks. She’s discovered
new security holes that “greedy” users might
employ to trick wireless networks into giving
it’s too costly or
them more bandwidth than they deserve—
crowding out honest users—and she’s found
ways to patch those holes. She’s helped build too complicated to
virtual tunnels across networks and service pro-
viders in order to facilitate applications—like
Internet-based phone service, video conferenc-
set up a fully
ing, and online trading—that depend on uncor-
rupted and uninterrupted connections. And
integrated wired
she’s begun looking at the kinds of challenges
that arise as more people play multi-user video of other wireless devices within range that are
games from wireless connections. capable of receiving and then re-transmitting a
infrastructure.
Qiu is also developing software to more effi - signal. SOAR provides a mesh network with a
ciently transmit information through “multi- set of software protocols that allow the network
hop wireless mesh networks,” which are set to choose, at each step, the most optimal node in
up to pass information along through numer- range to pass on a packet of information.
ous wireless nodes (usually computers) before Qiu has been testing her software on a net-
reaching an access point to the wired infrastruc- work of 25 wirelessly linked computers in and
ture of phone and cable lines. around her offi ce in the ACES building. Next,
Such mesh networks, which were initially she hopes to take advantage of the City of Aus-
developed so that the military could maintain tin’s multi-hop mesh network for fi eld-testing.
communications in isolated, unwired locales, “My work at UT has been about fi nding
have been proving increasingly attractive to a more systematic approach to these kinds
T
O: BRETT BUCHANAN
PHO
places—like rural communities, high-density of problems,” says Qiu. “Right now most of
urban downtowns, and developing countries— the solutions are either ad hoc—created for a
where it’s too costly or too complicated to set up particular network, or they’re so abstract that
a fully integrated wired infrastructure. they’re of questionable utility when dealing
The software developed by Qiu and her stu- with a real system. Ultimately, I plan to develop
dents, nicknamed “SOAR,” has already shown a complete toolkit that is both solid theoreti-
that it can improve effi ciency by taking advan- cally and practically effective, and apply it to
tage of the fact that a wireless signal is broadcast managing wireless networks at home, on cam-
in all directions and thus may have a number pus, in enterprises, and at medical clinics.”
daniel oppenheimer
winter 2008
Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28