Advanced Communications

1
Advanced Communications Information Management
for Ubiquitous Computing

• A Brief Presentation of Research Activities
• at the University of Alberta

2
The People

• Computing Science
• Dr. Ioanis Nikolaidis
• Dr. Pawel Gburzynski
• Dr. Mario Nascimento

• Electrical Comp. Eng.
• Dr. Christian Schlegel
• Dr. James Miller
• Dr. Dil Joseph

3
Areas

• Services Infrastructure from Sensor Networks
• An OS Application-Specific Sensor Network
  Protocols
• Information Management in Sensor Networks
• Scalable Testbed for Advanced Wireless
  Communications
• Software Engineering for Web-Based Embedded
  Systems
• Heterogeneous Photonics Electronics for Imaging

4
Services Infrastructure from Sensor Networks

• Provide web applications access to sensor data,
  by transforming sensors to first class citizens
  of the cyberinfrastructure (a-la SOA).
• Technical Issues reliability, security, routing,
  energy consumption, hostile deployment
  environments, long-term maintenance.
• Challenges
• abstraction interface layer to express
  elementary sensor behaviors to make them
  accessible to programmers,
• multi-tiered code distribution tools
  architecture

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Services Infrastructure from Sensor Networks

• Proof-of-concept a mousetrap project. Habitat
  monitoring and reporting system linked with back
  end database, and integration with front-end GIS
  systems. (GIS integration appears to be a natural
  metaphor for user interaction with sensor
  applications.)

N. Boers, E. Stroulia, I. Nikolaidis, P.
Gburzynski (E. Bayne, BioSci scenarios) Support
from NSERC (equipment), Alberta Education
Technology, IBM
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Services Infrastructure from Sensor Networks

• Platform DM2200
• RFM TR8100
• TI MSP430F148
• 48 KB Flash
• 2 KB RAM
• 916.5 MHz
• 916.3-916.7
• OOK on BPSK spreading
• 9.6 kbit/sec

www.rfm.com
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An OS Application-Specific Sensor Network
Protocols

• PicOS better concurrency expressiveness than
  TinyOS.
• An arsenal of elementary application components
  (RTags, Tags Pegs, etc.)
• A flexible rule-driven routing protocol (TARP)
  geared to minimal space requirements.

Pawel Gburzynski (www.olsonet.com)
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An OS Application-Specific Sensor Network
Protocols

• Challenges
• Low capability platforms cannot afford the luxury
  of a full commodity grade OS select the right
  abstractions that fit the platforms.
• Enhance portability of applications in light of
  manufacturers little interest in software
  components outside those running on their own
  (sometimes proprietary) platform.
• The solution strategy
• PicOS is fairly portable (current platforms
  include Cyan eCOG, TI MSP430) and exposes a
  generic interface to networking devices (VNETI).

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An OS Application-Specific Sensor Network
Protocols
PicOS and its basic supporting functional blocks
.
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An OS Application-Specific Sensor Network
Protocols
VUEE a virtualized alternative for accelerated
development and evaluation cycle.
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Information Management in Sensor Networks

• Collect, store and manage data so that questions
  such as who/what was, is or will be where can
  be answered efficiently.
• Discover interesting and reliable patterns
  (a.k.a, data mining), both in time and space, of
  real-time or archived observations.
• Sensor networks provide large quantities of
  previously unavailable (or hard-to-gather) data,
  but care should be given to communication costs.
• Usually a query-driven mode is assumed
  increasingly the interest is on multimodal data.

M. Nascimento, J. Sander, A. Coman, B. Malhotra,
I. Nikolaidis
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Information Management in Sensor Networks
1. Multicast query
4. Construct RJ
5. Distribute A over RJ
2. Construct routing tree
What animals have been in both regions A and
B? SELECT animal FROM sensors S, sensors T WHERE
S.location IN RegionA AND T.location IN
RegionB AND S.animal T.animal
6. Broadcast B over RJ, join tuples, send answer
3. Collect information, send to join coordinator
A join query.
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Scalable Testbed for Advanced Wireless
Communications

• Numerous proposals for wireless system designs
  are evaluated analytically in various
  publications (e.g. consider all the MIMO system
  proposals).
• Lack of real testbed-based evaluation for large
  scale systems. Scale becomes important if we
  consider facets such as the interference of high
  numbers of densely deployed (and usually
  uncoordinated) transceivers a common trait of
  future ubiquitous and sensor networks.
• Improved understanding of physical layer
  characteristics not directly exploitable in
  testing large scale systems. Computationally
  demanding.

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Scalable Testbed for Advanced Wireless
Communications

• A network emulation environment (NEWAGE) which
  provides instantiations of nodes/objects and
  supports an arbitrary scale of interactions
  between real devices, virtualized/simulated
  devices and propagation environment.
• Where scalable performance is an issue, e.g., MAC
  behavior, channel models, etc. use reconfigurable
  hardware (FPGAs) to attain real-time operation.
• Objective to streamline the process of new
  protocol design from specification to
  implementation evaluation.

C. Schlegel / HCDC Lab
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Scalable Testbed for Advanced Wireless
Communications
Example NEWAGE configuration.
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Scalable Testbed for Advanced Wireless
Communications

• Synergy of NEWAGE and PicOS/VUEE
• Specification of protocols usually in the form of
  communicating finite machines.
• Communicating FSMs are the programming paradigm
  of PicOS.
• PicOS processes can execute over VUEE.
• VUEE can be used as the glue holding together
  simulated emulated devices/behaviors, including
  the components that implement behaviors on FPGAs.

One Stop Shop for Wireless Protocol and
Application Development
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Software Engineering for Web-Based Embedded
Systems

• Software Engineering all aspects of software
  production from the early stages of system
  requirements to maintaining the system after it
  has gone into use.
• Web Engineering Software Engineering for
  Web-based Software Systems.
• Software Engineering plus new topics
• Security - Phishing
• Privacy - On-line Identity
• Trust - Credibility

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Software Engineering for Web-Based Embedded
Systems

• Mobile Web Applications
• E-health
• Wearable Wireless Physiological Monitoring (WWPM)
• Smoking Cessation Support
• Readability on mobile devices
• Other Applications
• Engineering Embedded Multi-Media Comm. Systems
  (w/ Mike Smith (ECE, UofC)
• CAD/CAM, Supply Chain, Service (w/ Yongsheng Ma,
  MechE, UofA)

J. Miller
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Software Engineering for Web-Based Embedded
Systems
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Heterogeneous Photonics Electronics for Imaging

• CCDs and CMOS active-pixel sensors were the first
  two generations of solid-state imagers
• Vertical integration may be the way to make a
  substantial advance in imager technology
• (Canada has companies that sell image sensors)

Taken from John et al., Proc. of SPIE, Vol. 5152,
pp. 263270, 2003.
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Heterogeneous Photonics Electronics for Imaging

• The Imaging Science Lab is employing vertical
  integration to make a high dynamic range and high
  signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) camera.
• They have built a CMOS active-pixel sensor camera
  (the first University of Alberta solid-state
  imager) with high dynamic range.
• A chip-on-chip camera is being made with the help
  of CMC Microsystems and Micralyne.

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Heterogeneous Photonics Electronics for Imaging

• Photo from first camera (Dec. 2007)
  oppositethere are three arrays with different
  circuits
• Although not proven here, this camera is capable
  of high dynamic range.
• With chip-on-chip, SNR may be improved with more
  in-pixel circuits

D. Joseph
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