Background and Proposal Process

Graduate education in communications at M.I.T. is most directly addressed by three EECS courses: Digital Communications (6.451), Data Networks (6.263), and Information Theory (6.263). There is great and widespread interest in communications in the department, but there is no formal venue in which to explore current and more advanced topics in the field.

In Spring 2000, after discussing this situation with Prof. Forney, a number of graduate students from several research groups gathered to brainstorm ways to remedy this deficiency. After meeting with Profs. Chan, Gallager, and Forney to obtain feedback on these ideas, our team reviewed the ideas and put them together into this proposal. We hope to achieve two things with this proposal. First, we hope to assess the level of interest among other students from research labs/groups such as, but not limited to, LIDS, SSG, DSPG, and LCS. Second, we hope to explore with the EECS Department the possibility of offering such a course in Fall 2000.