WINLAB
(Wireless Information Network Laboratory)

Mission

WINLAB’s research mission is to make fundamental contributions to the theory and practice of emerging wireless technologies and networks, working in close collaboration with industry and government. The center’s educational mission is to train the next generation of wireless technologists via advanced research experiences integrated with academic programs.

WINLAB (Wireless Information Network Laboratory), an industry-university cooperative research center focused on wireless technology, was founded at New Jersey’s Rutgers University in 1989. Its research mission is to advance the development of wireless networking technology by combining the resources of government, industry and academia. The center’s educational mission is to train the next generation of wireless technologists via graduate research programs that are especially relevant to industry.

WINLAB has enjoyed considerable success in achieving these goals. The center has completed over 30 years of research on wireless data networks, and has made a number of important technical contributions to mobile computing, high speed modem design, radio resource management, network architectures and protocols and programmable network/wireless testbeds . In fulfillment of its educational aims, to date WINLAB has also produced over 150 MS and PhD graduates specializing in wireless technology. These graduates are playing a key role within leading wireless technology and service companies as they work toward the center’s vision of deploying the Mobile Internet.

Since its inception, WINLAB has been supported by a broad cross section of leading wireless industry sponsors, including several major wireless equipment vendors, chip manufacturers and service providers based in the United States, Europe and Japan. The center has also received grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the New Jersey Commission on Science and Technology (NJCST). WINLAB operates the “ORBIT” Next-Generation Wireless Testbed and runs one of the campus network sites in the GENI/CloudLab/Fabric national-scale future Internet testbed, thus serving as a hub for experimental wireless and networking research for the community as a whole.  During the period 2010-19, a WINLAB-led team was awarded a major multi-institutional  “Future Internet Architecture” (FIA) grant from NSF to design, prototype and validate a comprehensive mobility-centric future Internet architecture called “MobilityFirst“.  WINLAB faculty are also leading a multi-university team on the COSMOS Platforms for Advanced Wireless (PAWR) program funded by NSF starting in 2018.  WINLAB faculty have also been awarded numerous research grants from NSF, DARPA, ARL (Army Research Laboratory), NRL (Naval Research Lab) and other agencies on topics ranging from energy efficient radio system and dynamic spectrum access to mobile content delivery and information security/privacy.

WINLAB sponsors benefit from a collaborative relationship to advance the development of wireless technology. The center serves as a forum for industry-university collaboration involving peer-level technical interchange between faculty, affiliated researchers and sponsor staff.