[Colloq] REMINDER: Talk, October 28 - Matt Welsh, Harvard University

[Rachel Kalweit]

The College of Computer and Information Science Colloquium Presents:

Title: A New Era of Resource Responsibility for Sensor Networks
Speaker: Matt Welsh, Harvard University

Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Time: 11:00am
Location: 366 WVH

Abstract:
Sensor networks have taken off, but they are still notoriously difficult
to program. Our group has deployed sensor networks for volcano
monitoring and rehabilitation medicine, and each time we find that  
tuning
the network to achieve the right tradeoff in terms of data quality,
battery lifetime, and bandwidth usage is quite painful. To make
things worse, resource availability fluctuates over time, as does the
load that the application places on those resources. The severely
constrained and decentralized nature of sensor networks makes this
problem fairly challenging.

In this talk, I will argue that the software for sensor networks
should be designed around the fundamental abstraction of
resource-aware programming. In this model, the application has direct
visibility and control over resources as a first-class primitive.
This requires the application code to take responsibility for its
own resource management decisions, since it cannot expect a "bailout"
from the OS. This approach enables much more effective adaptations to
changing conditions, and supports a rich space of resource-management
policies.

In this talk, I will present three related systems that leverage this
approach: Pixie, a new sensor node operating system; Lance, a
network-wide resource management plane; and Mercury, a platform for
maximizing data quality in a wearable sensor network. I will present
examples and evaluations based on our real-world deployments.

Bio:

Matt Welsh is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Harvard
University, where he has been on the faculty since 2003. His research
interests span many aspects of distributed systems, operating systems,
and programming languages. His current focus is on wireless sensor
networks including new OS and language designs to enable efficient,
high-data-rate applications. Prior to joining Harvard, he spent one
year at Intel Research, Berkeley. He completed his Ph.D. at UC
Berkeley and his B.S. at Cornell University.



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