CAREER: Towards a Marketplace of Networked Services for the Next Billion Devices

汽车和传感器等众多设备最近都获得了互联网连接和强大的计算能力。今天许多网络研究的目标是利用这些设备来实现新的、跨设备的用户应用。例如，外部传感器可以使用蜂窝和Wi-Fi网络向一组运行增强现实应用程序的智能手机发送测量数据；然后，这些智能手机可以协同工作，分析传感器数据，并向用户显示正确的信息。但是，只有在设备所有者同意相互合作的情况下，应用程序才能使用多个设备。这项工作的目标是通过开发激励这种合作的机制来实现跨设备应用。该项目的研究结果将纳入一项教育计划，该计划强调用户和应用需求在塑造基于互联网的技术发展中的作用。该计划包括，为鼓励女性进入工学领域，开发新的本科和研究生课程，并为初高中学生开设短期研修课程。研究人员将把研究结果发表在面向公众的在线博客文章中，并将寻求行业合作和向跨学科研究社区推广。提出的工作有两个主要目标：(1)推导设备的算法，以最佳方式买卖带宽和计算资源，以及(2)根据参与设备的利益分析表征由此产生的市场结果。它将分为三个研究重点，每个重点都解决两个目标。首先，考虑一种简单类型的市场，其中设备既可以是用户，也可以是提供商。用户设备决定是否从一个或多个提供程序设备订阅带宽或计算资源。其次，考虑了一个更动态的市场，在这个市场中，用户可以根据他们的特定需求动态地与提供商协商带宽和计算资源。第三个研究重点是建立在前两个重点的用户和供应商策略的基础上，并考虑能够动态决定是否充当用户和供应商的设备，以便从参与带宽和计算资源市场中获得最大的利益。每一项研究都将产生新的模型、定理和决策算法，这些模型、定理和决策算法解释了用户带宽和计算资源需求的动态和相互依赖关系。小规模的人体实验和大规模的虚拟试验台实验将用于验证理论工作。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Multitudes of devices like vehicles and sensors have recently acquired both Internet connectivity and significant computing power. Much networking research today aims to harness these devices to enable new, cross-device user applications. For instance, external sensors may use cellular and Wi-Fi networks to send measurements to a group of smartphones running augmented reality applications; these smartphones can then work together to analyze the sensor data and display the right information to their users. However, applications can only make use of multiple devices if the device owners agree to cooperate with each other. The goal of this work is to enable cross-device applications by developing mechanisms that incentivize such cooperation. The findings from this project will be integrated into an education plan that emphasizes the role of user and application needs in shaping the evolution of Internet-based technologies. This plan includes developing new undergraduate and graduate courses and short workshop courses for middle and high school students that encourage girls to enter engineering fields. The researcher will incorporate the findings in online blog posts aimed at the general public, and will pursue industry collaborations and outreach to interdisciplinary research communities.The proposed work has two main objectives: (1) to derive algorithms for devices to optimally buy and sell bandwidth and computing resources, and (2) to analytically characterize the resulting marketplace outcomes in terms of the benefit to participating devices. It will be divided into three research thrusts that each address both objectives. First, a simple type of marketplace is considered, in which devices can be either users or providers. User devices decide whether to subscribe to bandwidth or computing resources from one or more provider devices. Second, a more dynamic marketplace is considered, in which users can dynamically negotiate for bandwidth and computing resources from providers, depending on their specific needs over time. The third research thrust builds on the user and provider strategies from the first two thrusts, and considers devices that can dynamically decide whether to act as users and providers, so as to maximize their benefits from participating in bandwidth and computing resource marketplaces. Each research thrust will result in new models, theorems, and decision algorithms that account for the dynamics and inter-dependencies of users' bandwidth and computing resource needs. Small-scale human subject experiments and large-scale virtual test-bed experiments will be used to validate the theoretical work.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.