Toronto Networking Seminar



Exploring Delay Tolerant Applications

Mehul Motani
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
National University of Singapore 

Date:  Monday, September 10,   11am
Location: BA2185 (Bahen Center)


Abstract:

Handheld devices such as mobile phones and PDAs have evolved into multi-functional platforms with significant computational, storage and networking capabilities. Device manufacturers are also embedding tiny sensors into these devices for environmental and personal health monitoring. The natural question in this context is how to share the data stored on these devices. In delay tolerant applications, query propagation and information access is via opportunistic exchange of information amongst mobile devices in proximity of one another. In this talk, we will explore the design space of delay tolerant applications. Understanding user interactions is essential to designing efficient algorithms and enhancing user experience. We will describe experiments carried out on campus to glean human contact patterns and the lessons learned. To effect information exchange, mobile devices need to become aware of other devices in their environment. This device discovery process is energy intensive and motivates the need for energy efficient contact probing mechanisms. We will discuss recent results on the design of algorithms which offer a favorable trade-off between energy and performance.

Bio:

Mehul Motani is an Assistant Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the National University of Singapore. He graduated with a PhD from Cornell University.  Prior to that, he was a member of technical staff at Lockheed Martin in Syracuse, New York for over four years. Recently he has been working on research problems which sit at the boundary of information theory, communications and networking, including the design of wireless ad-hoc and sensor network systems. He was awarded the Intel Foundation Fellowship for work related to his PhD in 2000, won the Telecom Italia prize at Simagine 2003 and advanced to the Semifinals at Startup@Singapore 2005.  He has been on the organizing committees for ISIT 2006 & 2007 and the technical program committees of MobiCom 2007, Infocom 2008, SECON 2008 and other conferences. He participates actively in IEEE & ACM/Sigmobile and has served as the secretary of the IEEE Information Theory Society Board of Governors.