Projects:SensorNet

SensorNet

There is an explosive growth in deployments of novel networked systems. Applications that hitherto were considered computationally too demanding to be deployed in large distributed settings are becoming feasible because of an equally explosive evolution in hardware technology. Situation Awareness is an important application category in cyber-physical systems, and distributed surveillance is a good canonical example. Such applications are interactive, dynamic, stream-based, computationally demanding, and needing real-time or near real-time guarantees. These applications are characterized by a sense-fuse-actuate control loop. To support such a loop in a distributed manner, and to provide real-time guarantees, there are various challenges involved that can be categorized as the following three areas:

ASAP: Information Prioritization Strategies for Situation Awareness

• Prioritization support (ASAP): While Moore's law has held true for predicting the growth of processing power, the volume of data that applications are called upon to handle is growing similarly, if not faster. The enormous amount of sensing data continually generated for real-time analysis coupled with the inherent dynamism and computationally demanding nature, make situation awareness a challenging CPS domain for networked systems. To face this challenge, we propose to transition from the sense-fuse-actuate characterization of these applications to a new sense-prioritize-fuse-actuate characterization. Adding the prioritize step will help not only in an effective use of the available resources, but also in providing real-time guarantees in the presence of data deluge. Developing an integrated fusion and prioritization architecture for situation awareness is the focus of this ongoing research.

DFuse Network

• Distributed fusion support (DFuse): DFuse is an architectural framework for dynamic application-specified data fusion in sensor networks. It bridges an important abstraction gap for developing advanced fusion applications that takes into account the dynamic nature of applications and sensor networks. Elements of the DFuse architecture include a fusion API, a distributed role assignment algorithm that dynamically adapts the placement of the application task graph on the network, and an abstraction migration facility that aids such dynamic role assignment. Experimental evaluations show that the API has low overhead, and simulation results show that the role assignment algorithm significantly increases the network lifetime over static placement. This project is in its mature stage, and our current focus here is now to integrate fusion with prioritization algorithms as part of the ASAP project.

• Efficient use of ambient high computing resources (SensorGrid): This project is an ongoing research to develop abstractions and tools for efficient use of grid resources in sensor network environment.

For further details of the above projects, please browse through the following individual project links.