INTERDISCIPLINARY STOCHASTIC PROCESSES COLLOQUIUM

Thursday December 5th,  380 Soda  3:10-4:00pm

Speaker: Massimo Franceschetti (U.C. Berkeley, EECS Dept)

TITLE:
The wandering photon, a probabilistic model of wave propagation

ABSTRACT.
There are different levels of abstraction at which one can model wireless
networks. Typically, at the information theory level, one makes
assumptions on the channel characteristics, and derives results based on
these assumptions. However, many non-trivial channel properties can be
discovered only by studying the propagation of electromagnetic waves, and
can then be exploited at the information theory level.

In this talk we look at the problem of determining the propagation loss
of an urban wireless channel, which is essential for link budget
calculations in wireless network planning, and to determine throughput
scaling laws of the network.

We introduce a new model of propagation in urban environments, that is not
based on the classical EM theory, but only on random walks, and that is
analytically tractable. This leads to a path loss formula that
is validated by comparison with experimental data and with previously
proposed empirical formulas.

Finally, we discuss relationships with the classical transport theory of
wave propagation in random environments.