Within NSF's Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Directorate, there are four research programs with activities relevant to networking and communications.
In addition to supporting their respective research areas described below, these four programs also jointly support, where appropriate, interdisciplinary research crossing traditional technical boundaries.
The goal of the four programs is to find and support, to the extent possible by available funding, the very best research in the technical areas relevant to the creation of the global information infrastructure.
The kinds and scopes of sponsored research vary widely. They include both theoretical and/or application-driven investigations as well as projects with either short-term or long-term implications. Innovative technical approaches representing a distinct break with current practice - techniques requiring a revolutionary "paradigm shift" - are welcomed, as are more evolutionary projects that promise significant progress within the currently-accepted networking/communications framework. Because there are many relevant technical disciplines - among them, electrical engineering, computer science, and mathematics - interdisciplinary investigations are also appropriate vehicles for NSF-funded support.
The four programs have distinct, but closely related, research agendas. The following descriptions are intended not as an exhaustive list of supported research areas, but rather are provided to indicate each program's "center of mass" and to suggest the relationships among the programs.
The Digital Signal Processing Systems program focuses on the sciences and technologies that facilitate the conversion of signals into a form useful for a particular purpose. The signals of interest include those representing speech, images, video, sensor data, music, and medical data; the specific purposes include transmission, storage, display, diagnosis, and interpretation. Some of the research areas that fall within this program include signal compression, linear and non-linear filtering techniques, equalization, noise suppression, image enhancement, smart antenna array processing, and radar processing.
The Communications Research program focuses on the sciences and technologies that facilitate the efficient representation and transmission of information through possibly unreliable media. Some of the research areas that fall within this program include; compression of speech, images, video, and data; efficient modulation and coding for the reliable transmission of information over inherently unreliable (and/or constrained) communication channels; multiple-access methodologies; communications signal processing, including algorithms for the detection of signals in noise as well as the estimation, acquisition, and tracking of signal parameters; and information theory, including fundamental assessments of what is achievable and what is not achievable in the various communications functions.
The Networking Research program focuses on the sciences and technologies that facilitate the efficient, high-speed transfer of information through networks and distributed systems. Projects funded in the Networking Research program span the entire spectrum, from network design and performance evaluation, to middleware and software frameworks in support of applications running on top of networks and distributed systems. Also supported are projects addressing how networks and distributed systems interact with underlying communications technology and other related disciplines. Some of the research areas that fall within this program include; high speed networks, optical networks, wireless and mobile networks, traffic control, resource management, quality of service, protocols, multicast, network security, network design, network management, performance evaluation, network architectures, network systems, object-oriented frameworks for networks, agent-based networks, multimedia applications, and multiple access protocols.
Special Projects in Networking and Communications Research funds networking/communication research projects that are different from those typically supported though the other related programs. These include: larger and/or more multidisciplinary projects; specialized infrastructure for networking and communications systems research; and mechanisms for developing research agendas and enhancing community development.
Research projects supported by this program focus on networking and/or communications issues and may include work from other disciplines of computer science and engineering - such as distributed systems, operating systems, databases, software, signal processing, control theory, and devices. The theoretical research addresses the next generations of networking and communications systems and typically requires small teams of researchers. The experimental research demonstrates proofs of concept for novel networking and communications systems ideas and may range in scope from laboratory experimentation to national collaborations.
This program periodically announces a "Special Area of Opportunity" for consideration and funding. For example, in 1997 the "Special Area of Opportunity " was Wireless and Mobile Networking and Communications, identified for special emphasis in the 1994 Airlie House Report, "Research Priorities in Networking and Communications" (NSF-94165 or http;//www.cise.nsf.gov/ncri/arliehou.txt). In accordance with the recommendation of the above report, on March 24-26, 1997 NSF sponsored a "Wireless and Mobile Communications Workshop" during which the participants identified a research agenda that is the main content of the report.