CIS 700-5: Advanced Topics in Systems - Sensor Network Programming

Spring 2005

Instructors and Location

Zachary Ives, E Christopher Lewis
Location: Towne 321, Fridays 1:30-3:00

Description

The hot new trend in many computer science fields is sensor networks. Generally wireless, highly redundant, and having very limited resources, sensor networks force us to rethink many of our algorithms and programming models. This semester our primary focus will be on programming models and mechanisms for sensor networks, including issues related to optimization, power, and security.

This is a one-half-credit seminar focusing on reading and discussing recent research papers, and on presenting current systems-related research going on here at Penn. Students are expected to read and participate in discussion for each week's paper(s), and they will be asked to lead the discussion for at least one paper (or to present their own research). Independent study projects relating to the material of this course are encouraged.

Weekly Schedule

Date	Topic	Readings	Presenter
1/14	Organization	(Brief overview, format, assignments).	E + Zack
1/21	(no class)	No class due to Black Friday
1/28	Systems@Penn	15-minute talks by Penn students working on topics related to systems	Hopefully you!
2/4		Practice Talk	Marc
2/11		Practice job talk	Yi
2/18		The nesC Language: A Holistic Approach to Networked Embedded Systems (PDF)	Aaron Slides
2/25		WiP	Matt
3/4		Practice Talk (PDF)	Yun
3/11	Spring break
3/18		Beyond Average: Towards Sophisticated Sensing with Queries (IPSN '03) (PDF)	Nitin
3/25		Bridging the Gap: Programming Sensor Networks with Application Specific Virtual Machines (TR '04) (PDF)	Prashant
4/1		Hood: a neighborhood abstraction for sensor networks (MobiSys '04) (PDF)	Marc
4/8		Model-Driven Data Acquisition in Sensor Networks by Deshpande et al. (VLDB '04) (PDF)	Madhukar
4/15		Region Streams: Functional Macroprogramming for Sensor Networks by Newton and Welsh (DMSN '04) (PDF)	Tingting
4/22		WiP Talk	Aaron

Interesting papers:

• David Gay, Phil Levis, Rob von Behren, Matt Welsh, Eric Brewer, and David Culler. The nesC Language: A Holistic Approach to Networked Embedded Systems, In Proceedings of Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI) 2003, June 2003, PDF
• Philip Levis and David Gay and David Culler. Bridging the Gap: Programming Sensor Networks with Application Specific Virtual Machines, Sixth Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation, Under Submission, 2004, PDF
• Joseph M. Hellerstein and Wei Hong and Samuel Madden and Kyle Stanek. Beyond Average: Towards Sophisticated Sensing with Queries, 2nd International Workshop on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN '03). PDF
• T. Abdelzaher and B. Blum and Q. Cao and D. Evans and J. George and S. George and T. He and L. Luo and S. Son and R. Stoleru and J. Stankovic and A. Wood. EnviroTrack: Towards an Environmental Computing Paradigm for Distributed Sensor Networks, IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems, 2004 PDF
• Kamin Whitehouse and Cory Sharp and Eric Brewer and David Culler. Hood: a neighborhood abstraction for sensor networks, Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on Mobile systems, applications, and services, 2004. PDF
• Matt Welsh and Geoff Mainland. Programming Sensor Networks Using Abstract Regions, Proceedings of the First USENIX/ACM Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI '04). PDF
• Ryan Newton and Matt Welsh. Region Streams: Functional Macroprogramming for Sensor Networks, Proceedings of the First Workshop on Data Management for Sensor Networks (DMSN 2004). PDF
• Madden TinyDB paper
• Madden et al. VLDB 04 paper

Prior Semesters' Systems Seminars

• Fall 2004: Machine virtualization
• Spring 2004: Ad hoc distributed and peer-to-peer computing