Martins Receives AFOSR Grant for Wireless Networks Research

Assistant Professor Nuno Martins (ECE/ISR) has received a three-year, $270,000 grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) for "Networked guidance and control for mobile multi-agent systems: a multi-terminal (network) information theoretic approach."

This research will develop computationally efficient methods for the joint design of guidance/control and wireless communication modules for multi-agent networked control systems.

The new framework will include guidance objectives which must be accomplished while also guaranteeing the multi-agent communication network supports a secure and disruption-free exchange of data. Martins will develop optimal guidance/controller design methods that allow for new types of specifications involving the rates of data transmission among agents in the presence of interference and transmission power constraints. These modules could find use in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), where it is crucial to have guaranteed inter-agent rates of data transmission.

In other news, Martins was also named one of four guest editors for an upcoming special issue of International Journal of Systems, Control and Communications.

This special issue will focus on the highly interdisciplinary research in the theory and application of distributed control and communication systems. The increasing use of heterogeneous channels such as the internet or dedicated bus lines, particularly in the context of distributed systems, challenges conventional assumptions of perfect communication and instantaneous observation, and calls for the development of systematic optimal control design tools for distributed control systems. This special issue aims at presenting research from various disciplines in a coherent context, which can serve as a guide for research in information processing and decision making over communication networks and uncertain information channels.

Published April 18, 2008