Tuesday March 25, 2014
9:00 - 10:40AM

  

Dr. Amir G. Aghdam
Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering
Concordia University
Montreal, Quebec, Canada

 

 

 

 

Title: Distributed Connectivity Assessment of Underwater Sensors Network

Abstract:

In this keynote, the problem of distributed connectivity assessment for a network of underwater sensors is presented. Motivated by a sufficient condition for asymptotic almost-sure consensus in a network represented by a random directed graph (digraph), vertex connectivity of the expected communication graph is used as a measure of the connectivity of the underwater sensor network. A distributed update scheme is proposed in which the sensors update their perception of the expected communication graph. A learning algorithm is employed by each sensor to update its belief of the probabilities of different graph edges using the broadcast messages it receives. Each sensor uses a polynomial-time algorithm to estimate the degree of vertex connectivity of the expected graph based on its perception of the network graph. The proposed algorithms can also handle changes in the topology of the network such as node addition, node deletion, and time-varying probabilities. A weighted vertex connectivity degree is also proposed which takes the randomness of the network into consideration in the connectivity measure. The results are subsequently used to evaluate the importance of each node in the overall connectivity of the network. The performance of the algorithms is validated by simulation.

Biography:

Professor Amir G. Aghdam received the B.A.Sc. degree from Isfahan University of Technology, Isfahan, Iran and the M.A.Sc. degree from Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran, both in Electrical Engineering. He received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Toronto in 2000 and worked as a development engineer at Voyan Technology, Santa Clara, California from 2000 to 2001. He was a postdoctoral researcher at the systems control group of the University of Toronto for six months and then joined Concordia University in 2002, where he is currently a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Dr. Aghdam is a member of Professional Engineers of Ontario and a senior member of the IEEE. He served as Chair of the IEEE Montreal Section and Chair of the Control Systems Chapter of the IEEE Montreal Section (2005-2006), and Chair of the IEEE Eastern Canada Area (2007-2009). He was the Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Canadian Review (2010-2012), and General Chair of the 2012 IEEE Canadian Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering. Dr. Aghdam is a member of the Conference Editorial Board of IEEE Control Systems Society, Co-Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Systems Journal, an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology and European Journal of Control. He has been a Technical Program Committee Member of a number of conferences including IEEE Conference on Control Applications, IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, and American Control Conference. Since August 2013, he has been a member of Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) ECE Evaluation Group. He is a recipient of the 2009 IEEE MGA Achievement Award, and 2011 IEEE Canada J. J. Archambault Eastern Canada Merit Award. His research interests include multi-agent networks, graph theory, optimization and sampled-data systems.


Thursday March 27, 2014
9:00 - 10:40AM

  Professor Sang Hyuk Son
Real-Time Cyber-Physical Systems Research Laboratory
Department of Information and Communication Engineering
Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology

 







Title: Computing for the Smart New World

Abstract:

With continuing miniaturization and increased wireless connectivity, the computing systems are becoming deeply embedded into everyday life and interact with processes and events of the physical world. This cyber-physical interaction has the potential to transform how humans interact with and control the physical world. Systems featuring a tight combination of, and coordination between, the system's computational and physical elements are broadly called cyber physical systems (CPS). Examples of CPS include medical devices and systems, aerospace systems, transportation systems, smart grids, robotic systems, and smart spaces. Advances in key technologies are changing how these types of systems operate. For instance, the level of uncertainty in which these systems operate is increasing, creating the need for greater robustness. Pervasive wireless access is pushing these systems to unprecedented dynamic and non-deterministic situations. There is a critical demand for CPS to be adaptive to provide robustness to meet the requirements. In this talk, we will illustrate few examples of CPS, and discuss some of the research challenges in providing robustness in CPS.

Biography:

Professor Sang Hyuk Son is IEEE Fellow and Department Chair of Information and Communication Engineering at DGIST. He has been a Professor of Computer Science Department at the University of Virginia, and WCU Chair Professor at Sogang University. He received the B.S. degree in electronics engineering from Seoul National University, M.S. degree from KAIST, and the Ph.D. in computer science from University of Maryland, College Park. He has been a Visiting Professor at KAIST, City University of Hong Kong, Ecole Centrale de Lille in France, and Linkoping University and University of Skovde in Sweden.

Professor Son has served as the chair of the IEEE Technical Committee on Real-Time Systems during 2007-2008. He is serving as an Associate Editor for Real-Time Systems Journal and Journal on Self Computing, and has served on the editorial board of IEEE Transactions on Computers and IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems. He is also serving as a member of the steering committee for RTCSA, Cyber physical Systems Week, and SEUS. He received the Outstanding Contribution Award form ACM/IEEE Cyber Physical Systems Week in 2012. His research interests include cyber physical systems, real-time and embedded systems, database and data services, and wireless sensor networks. He has written or co-authored over 290 papers and edited/authored four books in these areas. His research has been funded by National Science Foundation, DARPA, Office of Naval Research, Department of Energy, National Security Agency, and IBM.