The paper trail

Personal favorites

Papers I am still fond of

• 1990 A Dielectric-Free Superconducting Coaxial Cable IEEE Trans. MTT 38(2), with Mike Gans. The idea is to levitate the center conductor and thereby avoid a lossy dielectric support. Conceived during the euphoria after the discovery of high-T_c superconductors. Current densities are still too low for this to be feasible, but it was fun to dream.
• 1989 Rapid Optimal Scheduling for Time-Multiplex Switches Using a Cellular Automaton IEEE Trans. Comm. 37(5). Let a set of autonomous, simple, simply-connected computers rapidly calculate "diagonals" — also called systems of distinct representatives — for a given offered traffic matrix.
• 1992 Mean Internodal Distance in Multihop Store & Forward Networks IEEE Trans. Comm. 40(8). This paper and its sequel were a response to the "network of the week" craze that was driving me crazy. The basic point: random networks do very well on connectivity and on mean hop distance — a measure of how efficient a network is.
• 1987 The Performance of Random and Optimal Scheduling in a Time-Multiplex Switch IEEE Trans. Comm. 35(8). My very first paper EVER. Written with Mike Hluchyj, later founder of Sonus Networks.
• 2004 Inscribed Matter as an Efficient Means of Communication with an Extraterrestrial Civilization Nature 431, pp. 47–49, with Gregory Wright. Plus supplementary information and the whole cosmic communications story.
• 2026 Limits of Information Flow Between Classically Interacting Particles Physical Review E, with Miles Miller-Dickson. The newest one, and possibly the beginning of the rest of it.

Molecular communication

The publication trickle

Roughly a decade of working out what it means to signal with individual molecules, in the order it happened.

• 2011 Communication Theory and Multicellular Biology Integrative Biology 3.
• ISIT '11 An Additive Exponential Noise Channel with a Transmission Deadline Talk slides.
• WCNC '12 Wireless Signaling with Identical Quanta
• arXiv Timing Channels with Multiple Identical Quanta Formal submission whenever I can get off my duff.
• ISIT '13 Signaling with Identical Tokens: lower bounds with energy constraints Talk slides.
• ISIT '14 Signaling with Identical Tokens: upper bounds with energy constraints Talk slides.
• Banff '14 Timing plus payloads Biological and Bio-Inspired Information Theory workshop.
• WINLAB IAB Fall 2014 talk With some really cute and revealing numbers.
• ITA '15 Molecular Communication Using Timing and Payload
• ICC '15 Timing PLUS payload London.
• CTW '16 Low energy Nafplio, Greece.
• TMBMC '16 Inscribed Matter Communication, Part I and Part II Magnum compendiums that no one might ever read.
• Globecom '18 40 bps using alcohol and photoionization detectors Abu Dhabi.
• Proc IEEE '19 Capacity Bounds on Point-to-Point Communication Using Molecules The survey.
• ISIT '19 A General Upper Bound on Particle Timing Channel Capacity Under constant emission intensity.
• NSF '20 Molecular communication workshop talk All videos.

Archive

Earlier work

Mobility, paging & registration (1995–2000)

• 1999 State-Based Paging/Registration: A Greedy Approach IEEE Trans. Veh. Tech. 48(1), pp. 166–173.
• 1998 Highly Mobile Users and Paging: optimal polling strategies IEEE Trans. Veh. Tech. 47(4), pp. 1251–1257.
• 1997 Location Uncertainty in Mobile Networks: a theoretical framework IEEE Communications Magazine 35(2).
• 1997 Ensemble Polling Strategies for Increased Paging Capacity ACM Wireless Networks 3(2), pp. 159–167.
• 1996 Minimizing the Average Cost of Paging and Registration: a timer-based method ACM Wireless Networks 2(2), pp. 109–116.
• 1995 Minimizing the Average Cost of Paging Under Delay Constraints ACM Wireless Networks 1(2), pp. 211–219.

Genetic algorithms & queueing (1995–1997)

• 1997 Genetic Algorithms Applied to the Cellular Call Admission Problem: local policies IEEE Trans. Veh. Tech. 46(1).
• 1996 Genetic Algorithms and Call Admission to Telecommunications Networks Computers & Operations Research 23(5), pp. 485–499.
• 1996 Analysis of a Mobile Assisted Adaptive Location Management Strategy ACM MONET 1(2), pp. 105–112.
• 1995 Scheduling Arrivals to Queues for Minimum Average Blocking The S(n)/M/C/C system. Computers & Operations Research 22(8), pp. 793–806.

Talks & seminar series

• DIMACS Talk slides from the DIMACS Seminar Series on Computational Information Theory Co-chaired with Sergio Verdú, 2002–2003.
• ITA '13 Communications conquers the universe Somewhere between profound and ludicrous.
• 2016 Write, Don't Radiate Breakthrough Discuss, Stanford.
• 2006 An extremely weak talk I gave at Google On recording everything. My assessment, not theirs.
• Also RFID overview By Gregory Wright.

Declined proposals, posted as a public service

I submitted an NSF proposal that was declined, but the reviews were especially helpful. As it goes with these things, one often feels the reviewer might have missed the point — see the comment about characterizing moving foliage being infeasible. I agree, but if so, that still tells you something about the channel estimation problem. Objectively though, the reviewer may also be pointing out that I missed the point.

Anyone who wants to run with the idea, or deride it, is welcome. I am thinking of posting all proposals and subsequent reviews here — possibly helpful to new faculty, if only as an example of what not to do if you want to get funded.

• Proposal How Well Can We Know a MIMO Channel?
• Reviews The reviews