Communications and Information Foundations  (CIF)

SYNOPSIS

The Communications and Information Foundations (CIF) program supports transformative research that addresses the theoretical underpinnings and current and future enabling technologies for information acquisition, transmission, and processing in communication and information networks. As a result, CIF research and education projects strengthen the intellectual foundations of communications and information theory and signal processing in a variety of types of networks such as sensor networks, wireless and multimedia networks, biological networks, and networks of quantum devices. Research outcomes can lead to more secure and reliable communications and advanced mathematical capabilities that are applicable throughout science and engineering.

This program continues to seek advances in theory of and techniques for secure and efficient representation, transmission and reception of digital and analog information over a variety of channels, e.g., wired line, mobile multi-antenna wireless, optical, quantum and biological channels. Research that involves cooperation at different layers is especially welcome. Notions of mobility, location, belief propagation, negotiation, gossip, and other information distribution and flow are vital to the program.

Research that advances network information theory, network coding, multi-user communications is sought. Applications of information-theoretic concepts to secure communications that protect against attacks on the privacy and integrity of information are also welcome. Recent advances that have resulted in simultaneous breakthroughs in both biology and in communications and information theory promise to continue offering a rich area for research, especially in coding and networking.

In addition to the contemporary signal processing topics that have enabled the IT revolution, there is growing interest within the program in new paradigms that enlarge the scope of signal and information processing from the domain of the linear to the realm of the nonlinear - from linear algebra to algebra, from Euclidean to curved spaces, from uniform to highly non-uniform time and space sampling, to signal processing on graphs. Research that will develop efficient power aware and hardware-friendly algorithms and research on signal/information processing algorithms for the new network science of distributed, decentralized, and cooperative algorithms that avoid global communications is encouraged. The exploration of new approaches to manage massive datasets, such as compressive sampling, also promises advances in the field.

This program is particularly interested in the application of signal/information processing in complex systems. Examples include exciting new applications, including monitoring the Nation's critical infrastructures, bioinformatics, and biomedical signal and image processing. These and other emerging application domains pose new constraints and challenges, leading to the reexamination of old questions and assumptions.

More information on topics of interest within this program is available at:
http://www.nsf.gov/cise/ccf/cif_pgm.jsp

Communications and Information Foundations (CIF) Staff

Funding Opportunities for the Communications and Information Foundations Program:

Computing and Communication Foundations (CCF): Core Programs.  NSF 08-577

THIS PROGRAM IS PART OF

Computing and Communication Foundations (CCF): Core Programs