Reasons for writing the book In recent years, there has been a growing trend in applying optimization approaches to study wireless networks. Such an approach is usually necessary when the underlying goal is to pursue fundamental performance limits or theoretical results. This book is written to serve this need and is mainly targeted to graduate students who are conducting theoretical research in wireless networks using optimization-based approaches. This book will also serve as a very useful reference for researchers who wish to explore various optimization techniques as part of their research methodologies.

To prepare a graduate student in either electrical and computer engineering (ECE) or computer science (CS) to conduct fundamental research in wireless networks, an ideal roadmap would include a series of graduate courses in operations research (OR) and CS, in addition to traditional communications and networking courses in ECE. These OR and CS courses would include (among others) linear programming, nonlinear programming, integer programming from OR, and complexity theory and algorithm design and analysis from CS. Today, these courses are typically offered as core courses within the respective disciplines. Instructors in OR and CS departments typically have little knowledge of wireless networks and are unable to make a connection between the mathematical tools and techniques in these courses and problem-solving skills in wireless networks. ECE/CS students often find it difficult to see how these courses would benefit their research in wireless networks. Due to this gap between teaching scopes and learning expectations, we find that the learning experience of our ECE/CS students in these courses is passive (or “blind”) at best, as they do not have a clear picture of how these courses will benefit their research.