Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Texas at Dallas, 2007. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves105-108)

Thesis (M. S.)--Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2007. / Tentzeris, Manos, Committee Chair ; Laskar, Joy, Committee Member ; Papapolymerou, John, Committee Member.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Texas at Dallas, 2007. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 71-72)

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Texas at Dallas, 2007. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaf 39)

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Texas at Dallas, 2008. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 73-75)

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Texas at Dallas, 2008. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 148-150)

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Texas at Dallas, 2008. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 51-52)

This dissertation addresses the issue of optimum system design to achieve reliable communication in the presence of various types of interference. Multiobjective formulation is used with noncooperative and cooperative approaches owing to the nature of the problems under consideration. Since intentional Jamming is one of the most severe kinds of interference, anti-jam techniques are crucial for communications in a hostile environment. The jam and anti-jam problem is modeled as a two-person zero-sum game in which the communicator and the jammer have antagonistic objectives and are viewed as the two players. The concept of Nash equilibrium is introduced and its characterizations such as existence, uniqueness, stability, robustness, and sensitivity are investigated. This model is then applied to a frequency-hop spread spectrum M-ary frequency-shift-keying system where ratio-threshold diversity is used to combat partial-band noise and multitone jamming. Equilibrium performance in terms of cutoff rate and bit error rate is shown to be superior to that predicted by worst-case analysis. When mutual interference caused by simultaneous transmissions is the major concern in a heterogeneous packet network, a multiobjective framework is proposed in this dissertation with the objectives and constraints of the individual users taken into consideration. Near-far effect and Rayleigh fading may occasion packet capture and therefore create unfairness in favor of closer users. Thus, multiobjective optimality is introduced, in which criterion of fairness is embedded. Optimum strategies controlling transmission probability and/or power are examined to yield the Pareto optimal solution in a slotted ALOHA network. Then, the same control strategies are studied with the channel utilization being the maximization objective. Optimization results are obtained in various situations, and effectiveness of different strategies is compared. A multimedia direct-sequence spread spectrum system may support multiple services with different transmission rates and diverse quality-of-service requirements. To facilitate multimedia applications and maximize the system capacity, average power control, error correction coding, and time diversity are incorporated into the system. The capacity of such a system is evaluated in multipath Rayleigh fading channels. Average bit error rate, outage probability, and corresponding information theoretic bounds are discussed. Concatenation of Reed-Solomon codes and convolutional codes is considered for error correction to account for different quality and delay constraints. It is shown through a numerical example that the system capacity can be increased significantly by an appropriate system design. / Graduate