MAC/PHY Co-Design of CSMA Wireless Networks Using Software Radios

To my family ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my sincere gratitude to many people who helped me during my graduate study. First, I am deeply grateful to my advisor, Professor Shin, for his guidance and support throughout my Ph.D. study. Professor Shin created a perfect research envi-ronment where I can focus on research and pursue interesting projects. He imparts not only knowledge, but also methodologies for managing time, distilling innovative ideas, leading and mentoring other researchers, etc. He has also been a role-model for me in keeping a peaceful mind and maintaining an energetic and enthusiastic state even under pressure-filled situations. The spirits that I inherited from him will continue inspiring me throughout my career and life. I would also like to thank Professors Brian Noble, Prabal Dutta and Achilleas Anastasopoulos for serving on my thesis committee. I thank them for spending time to review the thesis and provide valuable feedback. I am thankful to colleagues in the Real-Time Computing Laboratory (RTCL), who have contributed to the development of this thesis. Eugene Chai has been my mentor in launching software radio based projects. Many ideas in my thesis benefited from stimulating discussions with him and the extensive comments from him. Alex Min taught me the basics in cognitive radio networks and pointed me to important problems in this area. Fangjian Jin, Caoxie Zhang, Kyu-Han Kim, Hyoil Kim, Ash-wini Kumar, Hahn-Sang Kim and Jaehyuk Choi offered very detailed comments in my research projects. I am also grateful to Karen Hou, Xin Hu, Yuanyuan Zeng, ii