Research
The Electrical Engineering Department at Stanford University started a new advanced research program on Wireless Personal Communications in October 1993 under Professor Donald C. Cox, who had previously been Executive Director of Radio Research at Bellcore and earlier had done research in cellular radio, satellite systems and PCS at Bell Laboratories. In this program, faculty and graduate students are exploring new wireless access techniques, new signal processing techniques for implementing access technologies and new mobility management techniques for large scale networks. In order to demonstrate the feasibility of the new techniques, large scale computer simulations are being created and executed. Wireless systems and architectures are being synthesized and analyzed. Prototype circuits are being built and tested in the laboratory. And channel models are being created and refined from propagation measurements.
The research is driven by the many expanding markets and new opportunities for wireless communications. These opportunities include wireless access to new networks, wireless local area data networks, and cellular mobile radio. The rapid expansion of wireless communications continues to be hampered by limited systems capacity, by limited data rate capabilities, and by the short length of time that portable wireless transceivers can be powered by small lightweight batteries. When optimizing the often conflicting goals of minimizing power consumption while maximizing performance, relationships between the complexity of signal processing algorithms and circuit architectures and the overall system performance are considered altogether.
Current Research Projects
Prof. Cox's Research Interests