welcome

The signal processing and information networking laboratory (spinlab) was founded in 2002 by Prof. D. Richard Brown III 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 has been provided by National Science Foundation, Army Research Office. DARPA, Raytheon BBN Technologies, 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 2022: Our paper "Modeling, Estimation and Bounds for Precision Two-way Time Transfer and Ranging" was published in the Proceedings of AEROCONF 2022. Please see the Publications page for more details.
  • July 2021: We submitted a paper to the 2022 IEEE Aerospace Conference (AeroConf). Please see the Publications page for more details.
  • May 2021: Our survey paper "Age of Information: An Introduction and Survey" was published in the Age of Information in Real-time Systems and Networks special issue of the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications. This issue also contains a guest editorial. Please see the Publications page for more details.
  • March 2021: Our paper "Tracking of Dynamical Processes with Model Switching Using Temporal Convolutional Networks" was published in the Proceedings of AEROCONF 2021. Please see the Publications page for more details.
  • March 2021: Our survey paper "Age of Information: An Introduction and Survey" was accepted for publication in the Age of Information in Real-time Systems and Networks special issue of the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications. Please see the Publications page for more details.
  • February 2021: Our book chapter "Age of Channel State Information" was finalized and accepted for publication in "Age of Information: Foundations and Applications". Please see the Publications page for more details.
  • December 2020: Our paper "Tracking of Dynamical Processes with Model Switching Using Temporal Convolutional Networks" was accepted for publication in the Proceedings of the 2021 IEEE Aerospace Conference (AeroConf). Please see the Publications page for more details.
  • November 2020: We (virtually) presented our paper "Maneuvering Target Tracking using Autoencoder Interacting Multiple Model Filter" at the 54th Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computers in Pacific Grove, CA. Please see the Publications page for more details.
  • October 2020: Rick Brown gave a Distinguished Lecture (virtually) at The Ohio State University on "Machine Learning for Joint Optimization of Communication Systems".
  • October 2020: We created a new web page for our NSF-sponsored collaborative project CNS-1836690 "Fundamental Limits on Information Freshness".
  • August 2020: Our paper "Maneuvering Target Tracking using the Autoencoder Interacting Multiple Model Filter" was accepted for publication in the Proceedings of the 54th Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems and Computers. Please see the Publications page for more details.
  • July 2020: We submitted a paper to the 2021 IEEE Aerospace Conference (AeroConf). Please see the Publications page for more details.
  • May 2020: We submitted a paper to the 2019 Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computers in Pacific Grove, CA. Please see the Publications page for more details.
  • May 2020: Congratulations to Dr. Shahab Farazi for successfully defending his Ph.D. dissertation entitled "Age of Information in Multi-Hop Status Update Systems: Fundamental Bounds and Scheduling Policy Design". See the Publications page for more information.
  • March 2020: Our paper "Average Age of Information in Update Systems with Active Sources and Packet Delivery Errors" was accepted for publication in IEEE Wireless Communications Letters. Please see the Publications page for more details.
  • January 2020: Our paper "Joint Coding and Modulation in the Ultra-Short Blocklength Regime for Bernoulli-Gaussian Impulsive Noise Channels Using Autoencoders" was accepted for publication in the Proceedings of the 45th IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP2020). Please see the Publications page for more details.
  • November 2019: We presented our papers "Age of Information with Unreliable Transmissions in Multi-Source Multi-Hop Status Update Systems" and "Average Age of Information in Multi-Source Self-Preemptive Status Update Systems with Packet Delivery Errors" at the 53rd Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computers in Pacific Grove, CA. Please see the Publications page for more details.
  • October 2019: We submitted a paper to the 45th IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP2020). Please see the Publications page for more details.
  • October 2019: We submitted a paper to IEEE Wireless Communications Letters. Please see the Publications page for more details.
  • September 2019: Ben Payeur joined spinlab. Please see the People page for more details.
  • August 2019: Two of our papers submitted to the 2019 Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computers in Pacific Grove, CA were accepted. Please see the Publications page for more details.
  • July 2019: We submitted a paper to the 2020 IEEE Aerospace Conference (AeroConf). Please see the Publications page for more details.
  • June 2019: Our paper "Fundamental Bounds on the Age of Information in Multi-Hop Global Status Update Networks" was appeared in the Journal of Communications and Networks (JCN) Special Issue on Age of Information. See the Publications page for more information.
  • May 2019: Rick Brown gave an invited talk entitled "Age of Information for Status Update Systems" at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
  • May 2019: We submitted three papers to the 2019 Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computers in Pacific Grove, CA. Please see the Publications page for more details.
  • April 2019: We presented our paper "Fundamental Bounds on the Age of Information in General Multi-Hop Interference Networks" at the 2nd Age of Information Workshop (AoI'19) at the IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM 2019). Please see the Publications page for more details.
  • April 2019: Our paper "Fundamental Bounds on the Age of Information in Multi-Hop Global Status Update Networks" was accepted to appear in the Journal of Communications and Networks (JCN) Special Issue on Age of Information. See the Publications page for more information.
  • April 2019: Sabah Razavi's Ph.D. dissertation entitled "Channel Estimation Error, Oscillator Stability And Wireless Power Transfer In Wireless Communication With Distributed Reception Networks" has been published. See the Publications page for more information.
  • February 2019: Our paper "Fundamental Bounds on the Age of Information in General Multi-Hop Interference Networks" was accepted to the 2nd Age of Information Workshop (AoI'19) at the IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM 2019). Please see the Publications page for more details.
  • January 2019: We submitted a paper to the 2nd Age of Information Workshop (AoI'19) at the IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM 2019). Please see the Publications page for more details.
  • January 2019: Congratulations to Dr. Sabah Razavi for successfully defending his Ph.D. dissertation entitled "The Problems of Channel Estimation Error, Oscillator Stability, and Wireless Power Transfer in Wireless Communication with Distributed Reception Networks". See the Publications page for more information.
  • December 2018: Rick Brown gave an invited talk entitled " Coherent Distributed MIMO Communication (and Wireless Power Transfer)" at Mathworks.
  • November 2018: Rick Brown gave an invited talk entitled "Age of Information for Status Update Systems" at The University of Connecticut.
  • November 2018: Rick Brown gave an invited talk entitled "Age of Information for Status Update Systems" at Tufts University.
  • November 2018: We submitted a paper to the Journal of Communication Special Issue on Age of Information. Please see the Publications page for more details.
  • October 2018: Prof. D. Richard Brown III was elected to serve on the Board of Governors for the Asilomar Conference of Signals, Systems, and Computers.
  • August 2018: Our paper "Optimal Precoder Design for Distributed Transmit Beamforming over Frequency-Selective Channels" was accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications. Please see the Publications page for more details.
  • July 2018: Prof. D. Richard Brown III's IPA appointment at NSF concluded and he has returned to the WPI ECE Department as the current Associate Department Head.
  • June 2018: We presented our paper "On the Age of Information in Multi-Source Multi-Hop Wireless Status Update Networks" at the 19th IEEE International Workshop on Signal Processing Advances in Wireless Communications (SPAWC 2018). Please see the Publications page for more details.
  • June 2018: We presented our paper "Age of Information in Energy Harvesting Status Update Systems: When to Preempt in Service?" at the 2018 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT 2018). Please see the Publications page for more details.