THE PRELIMINARY ORAL EXAMINATION FOR THE DEGREE OF Ph.D. IN
COMPUTER SCIENCE FOR
Aaron Schulman
Broadcast is a fundamental communication primitive, yet it is constrained in the Internet to individual links or subnets. This is unfortunate, because broadcast communication has several desirable fundamental properties. Broadcasts are scalable, synchronous, constrained, passive, and irrevocable. If Internet hosts could send broadcasts, protocols could be modified to improve their performance, scalability, and liveliness. Additionally, broadcast would bring new features to the Internet, such as communicating with unknown receivers, geographical addressing, connectivity for embedded systems and operation during extreme Internet connectivity disruptions.
I propose the following thesis: It is feasible to add a wireless broadcast channel to the Internet by sharing existing broadcast transmitters and adding tiny receivers to Internet devices. To demonstrate this thesis, I propose to design and evaluate the transmitter and receiver for a shared broadcast system based on the FM Radio Data System (RDS). For the transmitter, I will design the protocols that Internet hosts will use to share a broadcast transmitter. Broadcast is not free, so protocols for broadcast transmission must include general facilities for payment and pricing. I will evaluate the transmitter design by deploying it on a commercial 3 kW FM radio station. For the receiver, I plan to design and evaluate the hardware, firmware, and application interface. The receiver design must be low-cost and low-power, as I envision broadcast receivers in many battery powered devices, including smartphones, laptops, and embedded systems. I will evaluate the receiver’s power and RF properties with mobile and stationary experiments
Examining Committee:
Dr. Neil Spring - Chair
Dr. Michael Hicks - Dept’s Representative
Dr. Bobby Bhattacharjee - Committee Member
EVERYBODY IS INVITED TO ATTEND THE PRESENTATION