2017 North-American School of Information Theory
June 6-9, 2017, Atlanta, GA

Overview

The 2017 North American School of Information Theory will be held June 6-9 2017 in the Technology Square Research Building at Georgia Tech. 

The school is the 10th Annual North American School of Information Theory and follows a series of events designed to provide graduate students with opportunities to:

• Learn from senior lecturers in the field who will present long-format (2 1/2 hour) tutorials;
• Participate in a stimulating and inviting forum of scientists;
• Present their own work for feedback and potential collaboration;
• Deepen their connections with the community.

Program

The school will be held over 3 and a half day and will consists of

• Senior lecturers presenting long-format (2 1/2 hour) tutorials; 
• Students presenting their own work in poster sessions. 

The confirmed lecturers for this year's even are the following

Padovani Lecturer: Prof. Amin Shokrollahi, EPFL

A Tale of Two Startups

Prof. Gerhard Kramer , Technische Universität München

Optical Fiber Models and their Capacity

Optical fiber models are based on a nonlinear differential equationthat has many fascinating properties. Unfortunately, information theory seems difficult to apply to these models. This talk reviews the differential equation and describes progress on understanding fiber capacity. First, representative capacity lower bounds are presented for various networking scenarios. Second, the talk focusses on simplified fiber models to help the participants understand the effects of spectral broadening. Finally, a capacity upper bound is developed that applies two of Shannon’s basic tools: maximum entropy under a correlation constraint and the entropy power inequality (EPI). 

Prof. Muriel Medard , Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Bringing Codes into Protocols: Some Principles and Applications

In this lecture we shall overview three aspects regarding integrating codes into transport protocols. The first part will cover routing with coding, in particular how coding allows us in the multicast case to use the type of convex optimization approaches generally associated with point-to-point routing. We shall overview how we can perform distributed optimization and eschew the use of Steiner trees. The second part will cover issues around in-order coding delay, and the design of codes in the context of protocols with feedback. As an application, the final part of the course will consider integrating coding into TCP, in order to improve reliability and goodput.

Prof. Daniela Tuninetti , University of Illinois at Chicago

Information-theoretic advances in coded caching

Coping with current and predicted future growth in wireless data traffic requires novel technologies to be put in place. Caching is expected to be a key element in increasing network performance. This lecture will survey recent information theoretic advances in coded caching.

We will start with the fundamental limits of shared-link broadcasts network with end-user caches, as introduced by Maddah-Ali and Niesen. In this system a server with N files, of B bits each, is connected to K users through a shared error-free broadcast link and where each user has a cache of size MB bits. A caching scheme has two phases. Placement phase: each user stores MB bits in its cache without knowledge of later demands; if each user directly copies some bits of the files, the placement is said to be uncoded; if users can coordinate their placement, the placement is said to be centralized. ii) Delivery phase: after each user has requested one file and according to cache contents, the server transmits RB bits in order to satisfy the user demands. The goal is to find the minimum delivery rate R such that any set of user demands (worst case demands) can be satisfied.

Important ideas that will be covered are:
— local vs. global caching gains,
— centralized vs. decentralized coded caching,
— connections with index coding for uncoded cache placement,
— extensions beyond shared error-free broadcast systems with end-user caches,
— joint design of caching and physical layer.

Prof. Aylin Yener , Pennsylvania State University

Foundations of Energy Harvesting and Energy Cooperating Communications

 Wireless communication networks composed of devices that can harvest energy from nature will lead to the green future of wireless, as energy harvesting offers the possibility of perpetual network operation without adverse effects on the environment. By developing effective and robust communication techniques to be used under energy harvesting conditions, some of the communication devices in a heterogeneous network can even be taken off the grid. Energy harvesting brings new considerations to system level design of wireless communication networks, leading to new insights. These include randomness and intermittency of available energy, as well as additional system issues to be concerned about such as energy storage capacity and processing complexity. Additionally, one can now envision such devices engaging in energy cooperation by powering one another to improve overall network performance. The goal of this talk is to furnish the audience with fundamental design principles of energy harvesting and energy cooperating wireless communication networks which is an emerging research area. We will consider the communication theory considerations followed by information theory of energy harvesting channels.

Registration

Registration is now open here  and until May 15, 2017.

If you are a local student and do need housing during the conference, please contact Prof.  Matthieu Bloch directly for more information.

Organizing committee

• Matthieu Bloch
• Faramarz Fekri
• Mark Davenport
• Justin Romberg
• Chris Rozell
• Sebastian Pokutta
• Gordon Stuber

Support 

	IEEE Information Theory Society
	Center for Science of Information
	Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering