Abstract
From inception to current gigabit standards, WiFi data rates has seen over a 1000-fold increase. This was primarily achieved through advances in physical layer (PHY) wireless communication techniques that provided increased spectral efficiency. The medium access layer (MAC) was mostly designed independent of the PHY, resulting in a widening gap between the advertised PHY layer data rates and the typical throughputs seen by a WiFi device. In this talk, I will argue that integrated PHY/MAC design is the pivotal next step in the evolution of WiFi radios and is especially crucial for the operation of next generation WiFi radios over fragmented spectrum such as white spaces.

BIO
Ram Ramjee received his B.Tech in Computer Science from IIT Madras, and his M.S./Ph.D. in Computer Science from University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is currently a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research, India. Previously, he spent ten years at Bell Labs as a technical manager and a distinguished member of technical staff. His research interests include network protocols and architecture, wireless networking and mobile computing. He has published over 50 papers including several award winning papers and is a co-inventor on over 30 patents of which one won the 2010 Thomas Alva Edison patent award. He has taught two graduate-level courses in wireless networks as an adjunct faculty at Columbia University. He is an ACM Distinguished Scientist and a Fellow of the IEEE.