welcome

The signal processing and information networking laboratory (spinlab) was founded in 2002 by Prof. D. Richard Brown with the purpose of bringing motivated undergraduate and graduate students together to work on fundamental and applied problems in signal processing, communication systems, and networking. Spinlab is located on the third floor of the Atwater Kent Laboratories building at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Spinlab funding is currently provided by Raytheon BBN Technologies through a DARPA Computational Leverage Against Surveillance Systems (CLASS) subcontract. Spinlab has also received prior funding support from the National Science Foundation, DARPA, Bose, Inc, and General Electric Industrial Systems. The generous support provided by these sponsors has funded the degrees of several graduate students as well as the senior project work of dozens of undergraduate students. If you are a student interested in working in spinlab, please click on the Opportunities link above.

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recent news

March 2013: Min Ni presented "A Performance Comparison of Interference Alignment and Opportunistic Transmission with Channel Estimation Errors" and "Distributed Reception with Coarsely-Quantized Observation Exchanges" at the CISS2013 conference. See the Publications page for more details.
March 2013: Rick Brown presented "Precise Timestamp-Free Network Synchronization" at the CISS2013 conference. See the Publications page for more details.
February 2013: Our papers "A Performance Comparison of Interference Alignment and Opportunistic Transmission with Channel Estimation Errors", "Precise Timestamp-Free Network Synchronization", and "Distributed Reception with Coarsely-Quantized Observation Exchanges" were accepted to the CISS2013 conference. See the Publications page for more details.
January 2013: We submitted "A Performance Comparison of Interference Alignment and Opportunistic Transmission with Channel Estimation Errors", "Precise Timestamp-Free Network Synchronization", and "Distributed Reception with Coarsely-Quantized Observation Exchanges" to the CISS2013 conference. See the Publications page for more details.
November 2012: Pat Bidigare presented our paper "Implementation and demonstration of receiver-coordinated distributed transmit beamforming across an ad-hoc radio network" at the 2012 Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computers, Pacific Grove, CA, November 4-7, 2012. See the Publications page for more details.
August 2012: Rick Brown presented the paper "Receiver-Coordinated Zero-Forcing Distributed Transmit Nullforming" at the 2012 IEEE Statistical Signal Processing Workshop (SSP 2012), Ann Arbor, MI, August 5 - 8, 2012. See the Publications page for more details.
July 2012: Our paper "Cost-Aware Bayesian Sequential Decision-Making for Domain Search and Object Classification" appeared in IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems. See the Publications page for more details.
July 2012: Our paper "Implementation and demonstration of receiver-coordinated distributed transmit beamforming across an ad-hoc radio network" was accepted to appear at the 2012 Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computers, Pacific Grove, CA, November 4-7, 2012. See the Publications page for more details.
May 2012: We submitted "Implementation and demonstration of receiver-coordinated distributed transmit beamforming across an ad-hoc radio network" to the 2012 Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computers, Pacific Grove, CA, November 4-7, 2012. See the Publications page for more details.
April 2012: Our paper "Receiver-Coordinated Zero-Forcing Distributed Transmit Nullforming" was accepted to appear at the 2012 IEEE Statistical Signal Processing Workshop, Ann Arbor, MI, August 5 - 8, 2012. See the Publications page for more details.
March 2012: Rick Brown presented the paper "Receiver-Coordinated Distributed Transmit Nullforming with Channel State Uncertainty" at the to the 46th Annual Conference on Information Sciences and Systems (CISS 2012), Princeton, NJ, Mar 21 - 23, 2012. See the Publications page for more details.
March 2012: Soura Dasgupta presented our paper "Fundamental Limits on Phase and Frequency Tracking and Estimation in Drifting Oscillators" at the 37th International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP2012), Kyoto, Japan, March 25 - 30, 2012. See the Publications page for more details.
March 2012: Pat Bidigare presented our paper "Receiver-Coordinated Distributed Transmit Beamforming with Kinematic Tracking" at the 37th International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP2012), Kyoto, Japan, March 25 - 30, 2012. See the Publications page for more details.
February 2012: We submitted "Receiver-Coordinated Zero-Forcing Distributed Transmit Nullforming" to the 2012 IEEE Statistical Signal Processing Workshop, Ann Arbor, MI, August 5 - 8, 2012. See the Publications page for more details.
February 2012: Our paper "Receiver-Coordinated Distributed Transmit Nullforming with Channel State Uncertainty" was accepted to appear at the to the 46th Annual Conference on Information Sciences and Systems (CISS 2012), Princeton, NJ, Mar 21 - 23, 2012. See the Publications page for more details.
January 2012: We submitted "Receiver-Coordinated Distributed Transmit Nullforming with Channel State Uncertainty" to the 46th Annual Conference on Information Sciences and Systems (CISS 2012), Princeton, NJ, Mar 21 - 23, 2012. See the Publications page for more details.
January 2012: Our paper "Receiver-Coordinated Distributed Transmit Beamforming with Kinematic Tracking" was accepted to appear at the 37th International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP2012), Kyoto, Japan, March 25 - 30, 2012. See the Publications page for more details.
January 2012: Our paper "Fundamental Limits on Phase and Frequency Tracking and Estimation in Drifting Oscillators" was accepted to appear at the 37th International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP2012), Kyoto, Japan, March 25 - 30, 2012. See the Publications page for more details.
December 2011: Our special session on Distributed Synchronization, Localization, and Beamforming was accepted at SSP 2012. We submitted one paper to this session. See the Publications page for more details.
November 2011: Raghu Mudumbai presented our paper "DSP-Centric Algorithms for Distributed Transmit Beamforming" at the Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computers in Pacific Grove, CA. See the Publications page for more details.
November 2011: Our paper "Two-Way Synchronization for Coordinated Multicell Retrodirective Downlink Beamforming" appeared in IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing. See the Publications page for more details.
September 2011: Our special session on Distributed Transmit Beamforming was accepted at ICASSP 2012. We submitted two papers to this session. See the Publications page for more details.
July 2011: Our paper "DSP-Centric Algorithms for Distributed Transmit Beamforming" was accepted to appear at the Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computers in Pacific Grove, CA. See the Publications page for more details.
June 2011: Our paper "A Game Theoretic Study of Energy Efficient Cooperative Wireless Networks" appeared in the Journal of Communications and Networks. See the Publications page for more details.
April 2011: Our paper "Cost-Aware Bayesian Sequential Decision-Making for Domain Search and Object Classification" was accepted to appear in IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems. See the Publications page for more details.
April 2011: Yizheng Liao completed his Master's thesis entitled "Phase and Frequency Estimation: High-Accuracy and Low-Complexity Techniques". See the Publications page for more information.
April 2011: Pu Liu presented our paper "EMG-to-Force Modeling for Multiple Fingers" at the the 2011 IEEE 37th Annual Northeast Bioengineering Conference in Troy, NY. See the Publications page for more details.
February 2011: We submitted "EMG-to-Force Modeling for Multiple Fingers" to the 2011 IEEE 37th Annual Northeast Bioengineering Conference. See the Publications page for more details.
December 2010: Yue Wang presented our paper "Cost-Aware Bayesian Sequential Decision-Making for Domain Search and Object Classification" at the the 49th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control. See the Publications page for more details.
November 2010: We presented "Low-Complexity Real-Time Single-Tone Phase and Frequency Estimation" at the 2010 Military Communication Conference. See the Publications page for more details.
October 2010: Min Ni presented our paper "An Experimental Study of Acoustic Distributed Beamforming Using Round-Trip Carrier Synchronization" at the 2010 IEEE International Symposium on Phased Array Systems and Technology. See the Publications page for more details.
August 2010: Min Ni completed her Master's thesis entitled "An Optimized Software-Defined-Radio Implementation of Time-Slotted Carrier Synchronization for Distributed Beamforming". See the Publications page for more information.
July 2010: Our paper "Low-Complexity Real-Time Single-Tone Phase and Frequency Estimation" was accepted to appear at the 2010 Military Communication Conference. See the Publications page for more details.
July 2010: Our paper "Cost-Aware Bayesian Sequential Decision-Making for Domain Search and Object Classification" was accepted to appear in the the 49th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control. See the Publications page for more details.
June 2010: We presented "Cost-Aware Sequential Bayesian Tasking and Decision-Making for Search and Classification" at the 2010 American Control Conference. See the Publications page for more details.
April 2010: We submitted "Low-Complexity Real-Time Single-Tone Phase and Frequency Estimation" to the 2010 Military Communication Conference. See the Publications page for more details.
March 2010: We submitted "Cost-Aware Bayesian Sequential Decision-Making for Domain Search and Object Classification" to the the 49th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control. See the Publications page for more details.
March 2010: We submitted "Cost-Aware Bayesian Sequential Decision-Making for Domain Search and Object Classification" to IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems. See the Publications page for more details.
March 2010: D. Richard Brown presented "Retrodirective Distributed Transmit Beamforming with Two-Way Source Synchronization" at the CISS 2010 conference in Princeton, NJ on March 18.
March 2010: D. Richard Brown gave a seminar on "Carrier Synchronization for Retrodirective Collaborative Transmit Beamforming" at MITRE in Mt. Arlington, NJ on March 17.
March 2010: Our paper "An Experimental Study of Acoustic Distributed Beamforming Using Round-Trip Carrier Synchronization" was accepted to appear at the 2010 IEEE International Symposium on Phased Array Systems and Technology. See the Publications page for more details.
February 2010: Our paper "Retrodirective Distributed Transmit Beamforming with Two-Way Source Synchronization" was accepted to appear in the 44th Annual Conference on Information Sciences and Systems (CISS 2010). See the Publications page for more details.
February 2010: We submitted "Conducting Electrical and Computer Engineering Capstone Design Projects Abroad: The Limerick Experience" to the 2010 Capstone Design Conference. See the Publications page for more details.
January 2010: Our paper "Cost-Aware Sequential Bayesian Tasking and Decision-Making for Search and Classification" was accepted to appear in the 2010 American Control Conference. See the Publications page for more details.
January 2010: D. Richard Brown III was elevated to the rank of IEEE Senior Member.
January 2010: We submitted "Retrodirective Distributed Transmit Beamforming with Two-Way Source Synchronization" to the 44th Annual Conference on Information Sciences and Systems (CISS 2010). See the Publications page for more details.
December 2009: We submitted "An Experimental Study of Acoustic Distributed Beamforming Using Round-Trip Carrier Synchronization" to the 2010 IEEE International Symposium on Phased Array Systems and Technology. See the Publications page for more details.
October 2009: We submitted "Cost-Aware Sequential Bayesian Tasking and Decision-Making for Search and Classification." to the 2010 American Control Conference. See the Publications page for more details.
September 2009: Our paper "Natural Cooperation in Wireless Networks: When Can Selfish Nodes Cooperate Without Extrinsic Incentive Mechanisms?" appeared in the September 2009 issue of IEEE Signal Processing Magazine. See the Publications page for more details.
August 2009: Min Ni joined spinlab as a Ph.D. candidate. See the People page for more information.
August 2009: Our paper "On the Endogenous Formation of Energy Efficient Cooperative Wireless Networks" was accepted for presentation at the Forty-Seventh Annual Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Computing. See the Publications page for more details.
June 2009: Our paper "Cooperation Without Extrinsic Incentive Mechanisms in Wireless Networks with Selfish Nodes" was accepted to appear in the September 2009 issue of IEEE Signal Processing Magazine (note that the title may change before publication). See the Publications page for more details.
May 2009: Fatemeh Fazel joined spinlab as a post-doctoral associate. See the People page for more information.
May 2009: Boyang Zhang completed his Master's thesis entitled "Real-Time Software-Defined-Radio Implementation of Time-Slotted Carrier Synchronization for Distributed Beamforming". See the Publications page for more information.
May 2009: Our paper "Opportunistic Collaborative Beamforming with One-Bit Feedback" appeared in the May 2009 issue of IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications. See the Publications page for more details.
May 2009: Our paper "Cooperation Without Extrinsic Incentive Mechanisms in Wireless Networks with Selfish Nodes" was accepted for publication in IEEE Signal Processing Magazine. See the Publications page for more details.
February 2009: Our article "Digital Background Calibration Algorithm for 'Split ADC' Architecture" appeared in the February issue of IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems. See the Publications page for more information.
February 2009: Jie Yang defended her PhD dissertation "Energy Efficient Cooperative Communication". See the Publications page for more information.
February 2009: Our article "Distributed Transmit Beamforming: Challenges and Recent Progress" appeared in the February issue of IEEE Communication Magazine. See the Publications page for more information.
January 2009: Our paper "Opportunistic Collaborative Beamforming with One-Bit Feedback" was accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications. We also submitted "Cooperation Without Extrinsic Incentive Mechanisms in Wireless Networks with Selfish Nodes" to IEEE Signal Processing Magazine. See the Publications page for more details.
January 2009: Matt Murdy and Boris Svirchuk joined spinlab. See the People page for more information.
January 2009: D. Richard Brown gave a seminar on "Round-Trip Carrier Synchronization for Distributed Transmit Beamforming" at MERL in Cambridge, MA.
December 2008: D. Richard Brown presented "Secret Communication With Feedback" at the ISITA 2008 conference in Auckland, New Zealand. See the Publications page for more information.
November 2008: Our paper "Time-Slotted Round-Trip Carrier Synchronization for Distributed Beamforming", by D.R. Brown III and H.V. Poor, appeared in IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing. A copy of this paper can be found on the Publications page.
October 2008: D. Richard Brown gave a seminar on "Round-Trip Carrier Synchronization for Distributed Transmit Beamforming" at BBN in Cambridge, MA.
August 2008: Boyang Zhang joined spinlab. See the People page for more information.
July 2008: D. Richard Brown presented "Opportunistic Collaborative Beamforming with One-Bit Feedback" at the SPAWC 2008 conference in Recife, Brazil. See the Publications page for more information.
June 2008: Several preprints and summaries added to the Publications page.
April 2008: D. Richard Brown gave a seminar on "Round-Trip Carrier Synchronization for Distributed Transmit Beamforming" at Columbia University in New York, NY.
March 2008: Jie Yang presented "Resource Allocation for Cooperative Relaying" at the CISS 2008 conference at Princeton University. See the Publications page for more information.
November 2007: D. Richard Brown gave a seminar on "Round-Trip Carrier Synchronization for Distributed Transmit Beamforming" at Polytechnic University in Brooklyn, NY.
November 2007: Ipek Ozil presented "Time-Slotted Round-Trip Carrier Synchronization" at the Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computers in Pacific Grove, CA.
November 2007: Jie Yang presented "Energy Efficient Relaying Games in Cooperative Wireless Transmission Systems" at the Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computers in Pacific Grove, CA.
October 2007: D. Richard Brown gave a seminar on "Round-Trip Carrier Synchronization for Distributed Transmit Beamforming" at Princeton University in Princeton, NJ.
August 2007: Our paper "On throughput efficiency of geographic opportunistic routing in multihop wireless networks", by K. Zeng, W. Lou, J. Yang, and D.R. Brown III, received the best paper runner-up award in QShine 2007, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, August 14-17, 2007.
July 2007: Tyson Coey successfully defended his Master's thesis entitled "Round-Trip Time-Division Distributed Beamforming". See the Publications page for more information.