Dependable and Agile Services on Classes of Wireless Networks

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The synergistic integration of sensing, computation, actuation, and wireless communication has enabled the realization of various systems whose use as solution platforms has attracted significant research attention. Foremost among such systems are wireless sensor networks (WSNs), wireless sensor actuator networks (WSANs), underwater sensor networks (UWSNs), and radio-frequency identification (RFID) systems. Applications of such systems span a wide spectrum of scientific, industrial, military, and civil applications. Barriers to technology adoption arise when lack of evidence of dependable operation or cost-effectiveness exists. ***To increase the adoption of such technologies, advances along the following directions are needed: (a) Developing dependability measures that quantify their ability to work successfully in harsh environments where nodes can fail or move randomly. (b) Developing methods for increasing their agility to allow better sharing of resources among different applications. Increasing resource sharing of sensor networks results in extensible, reusable and cost-effective solution infrastructures. (c) Extending the use of such technologies as new solution platforms. Challenges in developing dependable and agile WSNs infrastructures arise since networks of interest may differ significantly in many aspects such as core network architecture, limitations and capabilities of individual node sensing and communication devices, nodal mobility aspects, properties of the phenomenon under observation, component failure modes, and patterns of node failure. For UWSNs, the presence of uncontrolled mobility due to water currents adds to such challenges.***To advance the area, the proposal seeks to make contributions along the following fundamental directions: (a) Advancing the design principles for dependable operation of sensor networks under probabilistic events of node failure and uncontrolled mobility. (b) Advancing the design principles for enabling resource sharing of sensor networks among different applications while satisfying application-specific quality of service requirements. (c) Advancing the theory and use of fast approximate counting methodologies, and group coding methodologies, in RFID systems to enable new classes of applications.***Training of highly qualified personnel will include experience in designing algorithms and protocols for solving reliability assessment problems, resource allocation problems, and quality of service provisioning problems, on the above classes of networks. The proposed program plans for training 3 PhD students, 5 Master's students, and a number of undergraduate students over a 5 year granting period. The training provided is expected to contribute to the on going efforts of strengthening the competitive edge of the Canadian industries in the Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) sector.**