Some Thoughts on Sensor Network Research

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Some Thoughts on Sensor Network Research

• Krishna Kant
• Program Director
• National Science Foundation
• CNS/CSR Program

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What are the big challenges?

• Technology and Services
• Large Scale Applications
• Science of Sensing
• Design for Sustainability

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Technology Services

• What will sensors will look like in 5-10 yrs
  what apps will they enable?
• Drivers to consider
• New technologies (nano, FS optical, gt60GHz, )
  Moores law, smart energy harvesting/mgmt, smart
  multi-attribute sensing,
• Miniaturization
• Implanted, micro sensors in blood stream. Will
  this fuse CS Bio? What does this imply?
• Other environments with micro-sensors fused in?
• Smart phones/PDAs Service service provider
  perspective
• What innovative services do we want and what HW,
  SW and protocol features would it require?
• Example What does it take to enable
  collaborative threat or environmental monitoring?

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Large Scale Applications

• Smart buildings, smart transportation, smart
  homes, ? Smart cities
• What would it take to put it all together?
• Protocols, discovery, information assimilation,
  security, privacy,
• Sensing for Climate change prediction
  adaptation
• Planet wide scale, heterogeneous, specialized to
  location, challenging environments
• Correlation of sensor data which isnt even
  measuring the same thing
• Working with partial info, unreliable,
  intermittent, info, correlations,

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Other Issues

• Science of Sensing
• Underlying theory for contextual collaborative
  sensing computing?
• Many questions
• How do you formalize context?
• How do you formalize collaborative sensing?
• What additional power do context collaboration
  provide?
• Impossibility complexity results?
• Formalism to study end to end communication and
  computation complexity tradeoffs?
• Sustainable Design
• Increasing pile of junk of mobile devices.
• Sensors will follow perhaps much larger
  quantities
• Eco-friendly sensor designs?

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CISE Core Programs
Office of the Assistant Director for
CISE Jeannette Wing
CCF Computing and Communications Foundations Sampa
th Kannan
CNS Computer and Network Systems Ty Znati
IIS Information and Intelligent Systems Haym
Hirsch

• Human centered computing
• Information integration informatics
• Robust intelligence

• Computer Systems research
• Networking Technology Systems
• Education workforce

• Algorithmic foundations
• Communications info foundations
• SW HW foundations

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CSR Program Scope

• Computer systems
• Architecture, OS, compiler/run-time systems,
  parallel systems, systems mgmt, storage network
  systems
• System modeling (perf, power, dependability, )
• Distributed systems
• Synchronization, communication, scalability,
  middleware,
• Mobile Systems
• Pervasive computing, sensor systems, mobile
  services
• Embedded and hybrid systems
• All aspects architecture, verification,
  assurance, robustness, etc.

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Some Areas of Interest to CSR

• Not intended to be preferred or emphasis areas
  listed here for clarification
• Energy efficiency issues at all levels
• Including sensors, mobile devices, client/server
  systems, data centers, cloud.
• Sustainable IT and IT supporting sustainability.
• Issues in enabling large scale science via IT
  systems
• Many other current/emerging system areas
• Includes multi/many core systems
  embedded/pervasive computing systems.