Network Theory

Communication networks have always been a remarkable source of inspiration for mathematicians and computer scientists. The works of Erlang on telephone networks gave birth to queuing theory, for instance, while those of Shannon on the first digital communications are considered as the starting point of information theory. Conversely, theory has often proved instrumental in the design and development of communication networks. Kleinrock‘s contributions to the design of the early Internet, including the key idea of packet switching, come from his theoretical background on queuing theory. More recently, many networking protocols and algorithms find their source in theoretical works; this is for instance the case of the proportional fair packet scheduler of Tse which is used in today’s cellular networks to improve the spectral efficiency of mobile communications.
 
LINCS aims at continuing this fruitful, long-standing interaction between theory and practice. Specifically, LINCS researchers have significant contributions in the following fields:
  • Information theory
  • Queuing theory
  • Graph theory
  • Stochastic geometry
  • Probabilistic method
  • Random graphs
  • Network calculus
  • Game theory
  • Voting systems
  • Markov decision processes
  • Perfect simulation
These branches of applied mathematics and computer science are key to improving current algorithms used to store, analyse and transfer information. Applications include radio resource allocation, access and congestion control, routing protocols, packet scheduling, traffic monitoring, big data analysis, content caching and cloud computing.
 

Current collaborative projects on network theory include FP7 EULER on compact routing and ANR GAP on graph, algorithms and probability.