Speaker’s biography and abstract
Title: Utility-based Routing and its Applications in Wireless Networks
Reporter:Jie Wu
Jie Wuis the Associate Vice Provost for International Affairs at Temple Univer- sity. He also serves as Director of Center for Networked Computing and Laura H. Carnell professor. He served as Chair of Computer and Information Sciences from 2009 to 2016. Prior to joining Temple University, he was a program director at the National Science Foundation and was a distinguished professor at Florida Atlantic University. His current research interests include mobile computing and wireless net- works, routing protocols, cloud and green computing, network trust and security, and social network applications. Dr. Wu regularly publishes in scholarly journals, conference proceedings, and books. He serves on several editorial boards, including IEEE Transactions on Service Computing and the Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing. Dr. Wu was general co-chair for IEEE MASS 2006, IEEE IPDPS 2008, IEEE ICDCS 2013, ACM MobiHoc 2014, ICPP 2016, and IEEE CNS 2016, as well as program co-chair for IEEE INFOCOM 2011 and CCF CNCC 2013. He was an IEEE Computer Society Distinguished Visitor, ACM Distinguished Speaker, and chair for the IEEE Technical Committee on Distributed Processing (TCDP). Dr. Wu is a CCF Distinguished Speaker and a Fellow of the IEEE. He is the recipient of the 2011 China Computer Federation (CCF) Overseas Outstanding Achievement Award
Abstract: A paramount concern in wireless networks is efficient utilization of limited resources. The dynamic nature of wireless networks makes it difficult use limited resources in a cost-efficient way. The traditional single utility model, such as link quality, is inadequate for addressing this problem. In this talk, we discuss a composite utility model and use the routing problem in wireless networks as its applications. Specifically, we integrate cost and link quality into a single network utility metric together with the benefit of successful delivery of a routing packet to evaluate routing optimality. An efficient algorithm design, both centralized and distributed, is presented. Finally, several extensions to the basic model are discussed, including applications in sensor networks and dynamic contact networks.
Title: Spectrum Matching
Reporter:Baochun Li
Baochun Li received his B.Engr. degree from the Department of Computer Science and Technology, Tsinghua University, China, in 1995 and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, in 1997 and 2000.Since 2000, he has been with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto, where he is currently a Professor. He holds the Nortel Networks Junior Chair in Network Architecture and Services from October 2003 to June 2005, and the Bell Canada Endowed Chair in Computer Engineering since August 2005. His current research interests include cloud computing, wireless networking, and network coding.Dr. Li has co-authored more than 330 research papers, with a total of over15000citations, an H-index of 69 and an i10-index of 216, according to Google Scholar Citations. He was the recipient of the IEEE Communications Society Leonard G. Abraham Award in the Field of Communications Systems in 2000. In 2009, he was a recipient of the Multimedia Communications Best Paper Award from the IEEE Communications Society, and a recipient of the University of Toronto McLean Award. He is a member of ACM and a Fellow of IEEE.
Abstract: Dynamic spectrum access (DSA) redistributes spectrum from service providers with spare channels to those in need for them. Existing works on such spectrum exchange mainly focus on double auctions, where an auctioneer centrally enforces a certain spectrum allocation policy. In this talk, I will present some of our recent work that takes a different and new perspective: we propose to use matching as an alternative tool to realize DSA in a distributed way for a free market, which consists of only buyers and sellers, but no trustworthy third-party authority.Compared with conventional many-to-one matching problems, the spectrum matching problem is distinctively challenging due to the interference bound between buyers: the same channel can be reused by an unlimited number of non-interfering buyers, but must be exclusively occupied by only one of interfering buyers. In our work, we first formulate the spectrum matching problem as a many-to-one matching with peer effects, i.e., a buyer’s utility is affected by other buyers who are matched to the same seller. We then present a two-stage distributed algorithm that converges to an interference-free and Nash-stable matching result. I will briefly discuss our ongoing work in progress and some future research directions on this topic.
Title: Resource-Aware Crowdsourcing in Wireless Networks
Reporter:Guohong Cao
Guohong Cao( received his PhD degree in computer science from the Ohio State University in 1999. Since then, he has been with the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University, where he is currently a Professor. His research interests include wireless networks, mobile systems, Internet of things, wireless security and privacy. He has published more than 200 papers which have been cited over17000times, with an h-index of 66. He has served on the editorial board of IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, and has served on the organizing and technical program committees of many conferences, including the TPC Chair/Co-Chair of IEEE SRDS'2009, MASS'2010, and INFOCOM'2013. He was a recipient of the NSF CAREER award in 2001. He is a Fellow of the IEEE.
Abstract: Photos/videos obtained via crowdsourcing can be used in many applications. Due to the limitations of communication bandwidth, storage and processing capability, it is a challenge to transfer a large number of crowdsourced photos/videos through wireless networks. To address this problem, we quantify the quality of crowdsourced photos/videos based on the accessible geographical and geometrical information (called metadata) including the smartphone’s orientation, position and all related parameters of the built-in camera. From the metadata, we can infer where and how the photos/videos are taken, and then only transmit the most useful photos/videos. In this talk, I will present two metadata-based projects: SmartPhoto which focuses on selecting photos to achieve better coverage under resource constraints, and VideoMec which focuses on supporting scalable search and retrieval of crowdsourced videos from widely distributed mobile devices.
Title: Security and Privacy Assurance in Cloud Storage andCrowdsourcing Systems
Reporter:Xiaohua Jia
Xiaohua Jiareceived his BSc (1984) and MEng (1987) from University of Science and Technology of China, and DSc (1991) in Information Science from University of Tokyo. He is currently Chair Professor with Dept of Computer Science at City University of Hong Kong. His research interests include cloud computing and distributed systems, computer networks, and mobile wireless networks.Prof. Jia is an editor of IEEE Internet of Things, IEEE Trans. on Parallel and Distributed Systems (2006-2009), Wireless Networks, Journal of World Wide Web,etc.He is the General Chair of ACM MobiHoc 2008, Area-Chair of IEEE INFOCOM 2010 and 2015-2017, TPC Co-Chair of IEEE GlobeCom 2010 – Ad Hoc and Sensor Networking Symp,andTPC Vice-Chair of ICDCS 2015. He isFellow of IEEE.
Abstract: As the growth of cloud storage systems, more and more institutions and users (data owners) move their data to cloud systems for storage. In order to preserve the data privacy and security, data owners often choose to encrypt their data before uploading them to the cloud. Assuming cloud servers are not fully trustable, data owners would worry about whether their data will be lost, mishandled, or misused by illegal users. In this talk, we will first introduce a data auditing service against cloud servers to ensure integrity of the data stored in the cloud. Then, we will discuss an attribute-based access control scheme that gives data owners full control of data access. Following that, we will discuss secured search over encrypted data in the cloud, with focusing on a privacy-preserved task recommendation scheme in crowdsourcing platforms in the cloud. In such a platform, the cloud server cannot obtain any private information about the tasks or about the workers, but still beable to recommend crowdsourcing tasks to the suitable workers.
Title: Opportunities and Challenges in Crowdsourcing, Smart Device Authentication, and Vehicle to Grid Communications
Reporter:Guoliang Xue
Guoliang Xue is a Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at Arizona State University. He earned a PhD degree in Computer Science in 1991 from the University of Minnesota, an MS degree in Operations Research in 1984, and a BS degree in Mathematics in 1981, both from Qufu Normal University. His research interests include resource allocation in computer networks, and survivability and security issues in networks. He is a recipient of Best Paper Award at IEEE ICC’2012 and IEEE MASS’2011, as well as a Best Paper Runner-up at IEEE ICNP’2010. He is an Area Editor of IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications for the Wireless Networking Areaoverseeing 12 editors, and an Editor of IEEE Network. He is a past editor of IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, Computer Networks, and IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications. He was a TPC co-chair of IEEE INFOCOM2010 and is the vice chair of the INFOCOM Standing Committee. He was a co-General Chair of IEEE CNS2014 and a TPC member of ACM CCS2014 and CCS2015. He was a Keynote Speaker at IEEE LCN2011 and ICNC2014. He is an IEEE Fellow. He currently serves as the VP-Conferences of the IEEE Communications Society (ComSoc).
Abstract: Smart devices, smart grids, and Internet of Things (IoT) are changing our life style. With the ever increasing popularity of mobile devices interconnected via wireless networks, crowdsourcing has emerged as is a new computing paradigm, which uses collective intelligence to accomplish computing tasks. In this talk, we discuss opportunities and challenges in crowdsourcing, smart device authentication, and vehicle to grid communications.For crowdsourcing, we will discuss the computing paradigm, truthful incentive mechanisms, Sybil attacks to popular incentive mechanisms, and counter-measures. For smart device authentication, we will discuss opportunities for fingerprint based authentication mechanisms. For vehicle to grid communications, we will discuss the importance of anonymous communications, attacks to an existing system, and a revocable anonymity based solution
Title: Code Hopping Multiple Access Based on Orthogonal Complementary Codes
Reporter:Hsiao-Hwa Chen
Hsiao-Hwa Chen is currently a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Engineering Science, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan. He obtained his BSc and MSc degrees from Zhejiang University, China, and a PhD degree from the University of Oulu, Finland, in 1982, 1985 and 1991, respectively. He has authored or co-authored over 400 technical papers in major international journals and conferences, six books and more than ten book chapters in the areas of communications. He served as the general chair, TPC chair and symposium chair for many major international conferences. He served or is serving as an Editor or/and Guest Editor for numerous technical journals. He is the founding Editor-in-Chief of Wiley’s Security and Communication Networks Journal ( He is the recipient of the best paper award in IEEE WCNC 2008 and a recipient of IEEE Radio Communications Committee Outstanding Service Award in 2008. He received prestigious IEEE 2016 Jack Neubauer Memorial Award on Sept. 20, 2016. He also served as the Editor-in-Chief for IEEE Wireless Communications from 2012 Feb to 2015 June, and an elected Member at Large of IEEE ComSoc from2013-2016. He is a Fellow of IEEE, and a Fellow of IET.
Abstract: Code hopping multiple access (CHMA) is a newly emerging multiple access technique with its potential to offer a high security and capacity. Unfortunately, orthogonality amongst user signals in existing CHMA schemes can be preserved only in synchronous channels under an assumption that neither multipath interference (MI) nor multiple access interference (MAI) exists. Exploiting their ideal orthogonality, we apply orthogonal complementary codes to CHMA systems to overcome the problems with existing CHMA schemes. In particular, we will show that the application of orthogonal complementary codes can significantly improve the performance of a CHMA system due to its unique collision resistant capability. The properties and BER performance of the proposed system are analyzed for both uplink and downlink applications, where the system may suffer MI and MAI simultaneously. Simulation results show that the complementary coded CHMA with channel coding can provide a high capacity and a robust performance.
Title: Data-Driven Analysis of Human DynamicsUsingWi-Fi
Reporter:Jian-Nong Cao
Jian-Nong Cao is currently a chair professor and head of the Department of Computing at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Hong Kong. His research interests includeparallel and distributed computing, wireless networks and mobile computing, big data and cloud computing, pervasive computing, and fault tolerant computing. He has co-authored 3 books, co-edited 9 books, and published over 300 papers in major international journals and conference proceedings. He is a fellow of IEEE, a senior member of China Computer Federation, and a member of ACM. He was the Chair of the Technical Committee on Distributed Computing of IEEE Computer Society from 2012 - 2014. Dr. Cao has served as an associate editor and a member of the editorial boards of many international journals, including ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks, IEEETransactionson Computers, IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, IEEE Networks, Pervasive and Mobile Computing Journal, and Peer-to-Peer Networking and Applications. He has also served as a chair and member of organizing / program committees for many international conferences, including PERCOM, INFOCOM, ICDCS, IPDPS, ICPP, RTSS, DSN, ICNP, SRDS, MASS, PRDC, ICC, GLOBECOM, and WCNC. Dr. Cao received the BSc degree in computer science from Nanjing University, Nanjing, China, and the MSc and the Ph.D degrees in computer science from Washington State University, Pullman, WA, USA.
Abstract: Human dynamics refer to movement and interactions of large crowd. Analysis of human dynamics is important forbothsocial science and computer science. It enables a wide range of applications inmanyareas like marketing, management, and sociology. For example, understanding customers’ shopping behaviors is vital for retailers to adapt their marketing strategies. However, studying human dynamics requires massive data, which is non-trivial to collect. Previous research mainly focuseson phone call records collected bynetwork operatorsto study coarse-grained human activities. Nowadays, Wi-Fi-enabled smartphones are increasingly ubiquitous throughoutthe world and open up a great opportunity to collect massive human activity data in aneffectiveandefficientway.On the other hand, however, it also raisesnew challengesdue tovulnerability and sparsity of wireless signal. Besides, how to extract effective features fromWi-Fi packetsstillremains an open challenge. In this talk, I will introduce recent advances in human dynamics and then discuss opportunities and challenges followed by future research directions. I willalsodescribe our recent work on analysis of human dynamics using Wi-Fi.