Seminar by Dr. Sajal K. Das

Mobility and Resource Management in Smart Home Environments

Dr. Sajal K. Das, Director
Center for Research in Wireless
Mobility and Networking (CReWMaN)
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
The University of Texas at Arlington, USA
Date: Wed, Aug 04, 2004
Time: 3:00 PM
Venue: CS-101

Abstract

Rapid advances in mobile, wireless and sensor networks have enabled us to develop smart homes. Learning and prediction of meaningful "contexts" is the key to the realization of such intelligent environments. User mobility or location is perhaps the most important context to be managed so as to provide scalable, technology-independent, mobility-aware services in smart spaces. In this talk, we will characterize smart environments and develop a predictive, information-theoretic framework for mobility tracking in smart homes. We will show that continuous "path-update" is more informative than intermittent "position-update" to capture inhabitant's mobility profiles. A compressed dictionary of path-updates helps in optimal learning of such profiles in the symbolic domain, and efficiently predicting future locations as well as the most likely path-segments with good accuracy. We will demonstrate how successful prediction helps in pro-active, mobility-aware resource management and on-demand operations of automated devices along the inhabitant's future paths at near-optimal cost. Simulation results from a typical smart home floor plan will corroborate the high prediction success and show sufficient reduction in daily energy-consumption and manual device operations.

[This research is funded by the US National Science Foundation. It also forms the content of a Keynote address in the International Conference on Embedded and Ubiquitous Computing (EUC), Aug 25-27, 2004, Japan.]

About the Speaker

Dr. Sajal K. Das is a Professor of Computer Science and Engineering and also the Founding Director of the Center for Research in Wireless Mobility and Networking (CReWMaN) at the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA). His current research interests include resource and mobility management in wireless networks, mobile and pervasive computing, wireless multimedia and QoS provisioning, sensor networks, mobile Internet protocols, distributed processing and grid computing. He has published over 250 research papers, directed numerous funded projects, and holds 5 US patents in wireless mobile networks. He received the Best Paper Awards in ACM MobiCom'99, ICOIN'01, ACM MSWIM'00, and ACM/IEEE PADS'97. Dr. Das is also a recipeint of UTA's Outstanding Faculty Research Award in Computer Science in 2001 and 2003, nd UTA's College of Engineering Excellence in Research Award in 2003. He serves on the Editorial Boards of IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, ACM/Kluwer Wireless Networks, Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing, Parallel Processing Letters, Journal of Parallel Algorithms and Applications. He served as General Chair of IEEE PerCom'04, IWDC'04, CIT'03 and IEEE MASCOTS'02, ACM WoWMoM'00-02; General Vice Chair of PerCom'03, ACM MobiCom'00 and HiPC'00-01; Program Chair of IWDC'02, WoWMoM'98-99; TPC Vice Chair of ICPADS'02, IEEE ICC'03; and as TPC member of numerous IEEE and ACM conferences. He is the Vice Chair of IEEE TCPP and TCCC Executive Committees and on the Advisory Boards of several companies.

Prior to 1999, Dr. Das was a professor of computer science at Univeristy of North Texas where he twice (1991 and 1997) received the Student Association's Honor Professor Award for best teaching and scholarly research. He received B.Tech. degree in 1983 from Calcutta University, M.S. degree in 1984 from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, and PhD degree in 1988 from the University of Central Florida, Orlando, all in Computer Science.

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