KINGSTON, R.I. – November 16, 2018 — As applications on mobile devices increasingly use artificial intelligence, there is a need to make wireless networks more adaptive and efficient.
University of Rhode Island Assistant Professor Bin Li and Professor Lei Ying of Arizona State University are researching a solution to this challenge.
“Mobile devices that use apps for intelligent learning tasks, such as speech or image recognition, take longer to transmit information and consume a lot of energy,” said Li. “Our goal is to minimize lag time and energy consumption by optimizing the balance between those tasks being computed by the mobile device and the cloud. This will be especially helpful when there are many users accessing the network at the same time.”
The two professors received a three-year grant Oct. 1 from the National Science Foundation for $250,000 each to work on the project, titled, “Towards Adaptive and Efficient Wireless Computing Networks.”
Li first met Ying when the URI researcher was completing his post-doctoral studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champain (UIUC) and Ying was visiting UIUC.
Ying is considered an expert on the design of optimal and low complexity algorithms for stochastic network systems, including wireless networks and cloud computing. Li’s expertise lies in the performance analysis and optimization of large-scale wireless networks and embedded system design.
“We share a common research interest in the emerging field of wireless computing networks,” Li stated. “Therefore, our collaboration on this project makes perfect sense.”
“Bin is an outstanding researcher who is always inspired by problems that are challenging and have practical importance,” said Ying. “He has been at the forefront of emerging research areas, such as cloud computing, machine learning and edge computing.”
The two colleagues discuss the project weekly on Skype and expect to see each other at academic conferences throughout the year. Once a year, they plan to visit each other at their respective universities to establish a detailed research plan for the following year.
Last summer, Li won the best poster award for a wireless network related topic at the International Symposium on Mobile Ad Hoc Networking and Computing (MobiHoc 2018).