Bob Kinicki's Current Research Profile

The Internet of Things

The Internet of Things is a concept that will change communication between people and machines. IoT traffic could swamp the Internet. To prepare for the eventual reality of IoT, new network protocols must be developed to handle WSN traffic and Machine-to-Machine (M2M). This traffic will run over all types of networks including wired backbones and wireless technologies that includes both cellular networks (e.g. 4G LTE networks) and the latest WiFi networks.

Wireless Sensor Networks

Networks of wireless sensors are being deployed in many diverse applications. To improve the effectiveness of wireless sensors, the TinyOS operating system as emerged as the OS used by most WSN researchers.

Power-Aware Wireless Protocols

To extend network lifetime, MAC layers for wireless sensors are being redesigned to minimize power usage. My research in this area involves both design of algorithms for clusters of sensors and investigating improvements to current power-aware wireless MAC protocols such as SCP-MAC and Crankshaft.

Rate Adaptation Algorithms for Wireless Networks

Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs)change transmission rates in response to wireless transmission losses. Current rate adaptation algorithms have difficulty distinguishing frame loss due to a poor wireless transmission environment from losses due to collisions caused by neighbor nodes and hidden terminals. Our research in this area has focused on trying to improve the CARA algorithm.

Infrastructure Wireless LAN Performance

Wireless LANs are frequently connected to the Internet through a wireless Access Point (AP) via a wired interface from an Internet Service Provider (ISP). The role and performance of the AP in light of current WLAN usage is an active research area. We remain active in trying to characterize and understand WLAN performance through active and passive wireless measurement techniques.

Performance of Multimedia Applications over Networks

Streaming multimedia has different quality of service issues than other Internet. applications.

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Last Modified: 26 March 2015
Robert E. Kinicki
rek@cs.wpi.edu