The Communication and Information Foundations (CIF) program seeks proposals addressing foundational computer science and engineering research and education to advance the areas of communication, information theory, signal processing and networking. Broad topics of interest within CIF are listed below.

Communications topics include but are not limited to:

• Link-layer wireless communications including system new system architectures and improved system models and channel models.
• Adaptive communication systems and cognitive radio
• New techniques exploit cognition in wireless systems
• Biological and quantum communication systems

Information Theory topics include but are not limited to:

• Information theory and coding
• Fundamental performance limits for wireless systems for various operating environments
• Date representation and compression

Signal Processing Systems topics include, but are not limited to:

• Traditional topics in 1-D DSP, IMDSP, SASP and COMSP
• Collaborative/Distributed Signal Processing for Sensor Networks
• Energy aware processing, to network or not?
• Killer application/s?
• Multi-sensor data fusion (and everything that entails), anomaly detection, and distributed control
• Signal and pattern extraction from massive spatio-temporal data
• Novel integrated sensing and processing systems
• Impact of the "glass-wired world"
• Signal processing for new applications enabled by fat data pipes – virtual reality, telepresence, enhanced reality, etc.
• Signal processing at the human/computer interface to allow humans to effectively process large quantities of information
• New techniques for processing speech and vision
• Application-specific signal processing
• Bioinformatics and genomics
• Biomedical signal and image processing
• Network tomography
• Monitoring the Nation's critical infrastructure especially the power grid

Networking topics include but are not limited to:

• Network information theory and network coding
• Cross-layer network optimization, especially at the lower layers
• Impact of physical-layer impairments at the higher layers and techniques for mitigating the impact of physical-layer impairments at the network levels
• Sensor networks at the physical-layer and at the higher layers

Broadening Scope and Support through cross-disciplinary research:

• Control – distributed control, control over networks
• Biology – bioinformatics, genomics, inter- and intra-organism communication
• Materials – "smart materials" that respond to sensor measurements
• Network tomography

Grand Challenges include:

• Universal language translation in real time, both spoken and written
• Non-invasive and minimally-invasive medicine and health care
• Sensor networks that monitor and increase the reliability of the Nation's critical infrastructure and environment, especially the power grid
• Energy efficient, reliable and safe personal transportation systems with automated navigation
• Transparent, secure, inexpensive communications with a full range of "telepresence" as facilities permit