Tami's Telcordia Years

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...

I joined Telcordia Applied Research in 1992 when it was still Bellcore and was home to a truly amazing group of mathematicians and computer scientists.  Bellcore was created at the breakup of the Bell System in 1984, to provide research and development to the Baby Bells.  The Baby Bells shared ownership of Bellcore until 1997 when they sold it to SAIC (and later changed its name as a condition of the sale.)   In 2004, it was sold again to private "investors".   During this time Telcordia, and the telecom industry more broadly, went through a tremendous boom and a painful bust.

What follows is a stream of consciousness overview of some favorite things from my Telcordia years, where qualifying as a favorite implies neither recency nor relevance!

• Access Networks

While at Telcordia, I developed what can only be described as an inordinate fondness for access networks.  I worked on design optimization problems for all sorts of "broadband" access networks, especially DSL, FTTx, and cable. The nice thing about access networks is that they can often be modeled as trees, which makes them much easier to think about.  Here are a few things related to this work:

• A survey paper with Hanan Luss on access network design: [abstract]

“Telecommunications Access Network Design” in Handbook of Optimization in Telecommunications, M. Resende and P. Pardalos (eds.), Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2006.

• A paper with Martin Eiger, Paul Seymour and David Shallcross on optimizing the location of multiplexing equipment: [abstract]

“Node placement and sizing for copper broadband access networks”, Annals of Operations Research,106, 199-228, 2001.

• A talk that I've given to various student groups and high school teachers over the years.

• A related patent.

• Ring Networks

  Rings are another network structure that yields problems that are hard enough to be fun but structurally simple enough to think about while commuting in New Jersey traffic.  Ring problems were among the first that I encountered when I joined Bellcore.  Many people have worked on them before and since (proving stronger results) but here are a few things related to my earlier work:

  • An early DIMACS technical report, Demand Routing and Slotting on Ring Networks, with Steve Cosares and Iraj Saniee.

   

  • A paper with Steve Cosares, Joe Ganley and Iraj Saniee on a related problem in circuit design. [abstract]

"A simple approximation algorithm for two problems in circuit design," IEEE Transactions on Computers, 47, 1310-1312, 1998.

• A talk that I gave at the Institute for Mathematics and Its Applications (IMA).

• Transparent Optical Networks

I was part of the NIST-funded Photonic Computer-Aided Design (PCAD) project team, developing computational tools and techniques for designing systems with photonic elements.  My work mostly involved developing algorithms for routing and locating regenerating equipment in "transparent" optical networks.  These networks have the ability to switch traffic optically, at the possible cost of increased signal impairment.  These impairments grow with both the distance and the number of switching nodes traversed, but they can be repaired by performing optical-electrical-optical (OEO) regeneration.  OEO regeneration consumes expensive resources, so our work explored sparse placement of OEO resources in the network and efficient (selective) use of those resources.  We developed location methods based on dominating set ideas and constrained shortest path routing methods for effective use of regeneration.                              

• A short paper with Joel Gannett, Janet Jackel, David Shallcross and Ann Von Lehmen that sparsely locates OEO-capable nodes:

           Maximizing the Transparency Advantage in Optical Networks in Proceedings of the 2003 Optical Fiber Communication Conference.

• A short paper with Joel Gannett, Janet Jackel, Ron Menendez, David Shallcross and Ann Von Lehmen on routing for effective use of OEO resources:

  Cost-conscious Impairment-aware Routing in Proceedings of the 2004 Optical Fiber Communication Conference.

• Miscellaneous

I was on the winning team in the 2005 Applied Research Holiday Talent Show.  I achieved this honor by writing a mediocre song parody and then insinuating myself onto the proven winning team of Murray, Martin & John. I managed to do the same thing in 2006, demonstrating the true nature of my talent: persistence in the face of lack of talent. (This, incidentally, is the only thing in my career so far to have impressed my son.)

By joining Bellcore and then ultimately leaving, I qualified for the Bellcore alumni page.

I have a (mostly untapped) interest in exploiting new communication technologies and applying mathematical models and algorithms for emergency planning & response.  Shortly before leaving Telcordia, I was involved in the Red Cell project, that envisions cellular telephone networks as the means to enable geographically targeted alerting capabilities.