Making battlefield communications better

November 23, 2009

Junshan Zhang is working to improve wireless communications technology with support from a Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) grant from the U.S. Department of Defense.<separator></separator>Zhang is an associate professor in the School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering, a part of Arizona State University’s Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering. He also works in the engineering schools’ Sensor, Signal and Information Processing Center (SenSIP).<separator></separator>The grant of more than $600,000 will fund Zhang’s efforts to improve the reliability of communications networks under battlefield conditions.<separator></separator>"Battlefield wireless networks often operate under hostile conditions that include adverse radio frequency environments, interference, bursts of traffic and changing network topology,” Zhang says. “As a result, network management of information flows in such a hostile environment often faces a number of challenges, such as network failure and compromise, and intermittent connectivity.”<separator></separator>There is an “urgent need to develop fundamental network science for identifying, representing and controlling information dynamics” in Department of Defense networks, Zhang says.<separator></separator>Advances in this area of research also promise to provide more reliability for various types of airborne and ground-based communications networks.<separator></separator>Zhang’s work is ASU’s part of a larger project, titled “Information Dynamics as a Foundation for Network Management,” led by Princeton University, with other research partners at the California Institute of Technology, Stanford University, University of California-Irvine, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.<separator></separator>Zhang’s grant is part of a $7 million MURI award for the overall project.<separator></separator>The MURI program is designed to accelerate research and technology development that supports specific science and engineering efforts considered vital to national defense.<separator></separator>Writer: Chelsea Brown

Engineering Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering