Systems Seminar: Prof. John Guttag, MIT EECS and LCS

Programmable Communication Systems

Abstract

This talk will provide an introduction to two current research projects: Active Networks and SpectrumWare. Both projects proceed from the premise that communication mechanisms should be tailored to meet application-specific needs and that this implies a radical rethinking of the interface between computation and communication.

ANTS is a novel active network architecture that facilitates the deployment of application-specific network services. It allows new protocols to be dynamically deployed at both routers and end systems, without the need for coordination and without unwanted interaction between co-existing protocols. The talk will briefly describe the ANTS architecture and some applications.

The remainder of the talk will be devoted to virtual radios, a software dominated approach to building wireless communication devices. We use specialized hardware to perform wideband digitization, and then perform all subsequent signal processing in user space on a general purpose workstation. This allows us to experiment with ways of structuring systems in which the radio component of communication devices are integrated with higher-level applications. This talk will describe our architecture and some applications that exemplify some of the benefits of virtual radios.

Speaker Bio

John Guttag is a Professor in MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He has served as that department's Associate Department Head for Computer Science. In January, he will become Department Head. He also heads the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science's Software Devices and Systems Group. This group does research in the areas of computer networks, computer and communications security, and wireless communications. Professor Guttag has also done research, published, and lectured in the areas of software engineering, mechanical theorem proving, hardware verification, and compilation.