EXPLORATORY WORKSHOP
Is Mobile Ad hoc Networking part of the future of mobile networking in Europe?

Hotel Cinque Terre - Monterosso al Mare - La Spezia (Italy)
10/12 October 2002

11 October 2002 - session 6

H. Karl, Making sensor networks useful: Distributed services in sensor networks, Technisches Universitat Berlin, Germany

(Presentation in pdf format 565kb)

While wired sensor networks are used in many application scenarios, wireless sensor networks are a fairly new area of research. They are enabled by progress in low-power electronics and simple yet efficient radio communication. Developing concepts and communication protocols that are suitable for the specific needs of wireless sensor networks has been and is the topic of many research projects. One of these projects is the new EYES project. This talk presented one of the aspects of the EYES project where it differentiates itself from other projects: It is claimed that simple sensor networks that are only capable of transporting bits from one node to another are only of limited usefulness and that adding distributed servives and algorithms to sensor networks is imperative for making them practical. Specifically, the EYES project will investigate group management, semantic addressing, aggregation and collaboration algorithms as well as supporting mechanisms like failure detection in the context of sensor networks. First results are expected within the next couple of months; more information can be found at http://www.eyes.eu.org and http://ww-tkn.ee.tu-berlin.de

L. Gambardella, BISON: ants in ad hoc networks, IDSIA, Switzerland

(Presentation in pdf format 1,7Mb)

BISON will explore the use of ideas derived from complex adaptive systems (CAS) to enable the construction of robust and self-organizing information systems for deployment in highly dynamic network environments. BISON will cast solutions to important problems arising in Ad-Hoc and Virtual networks, P2P and Grid computing systems as desirable global properties that systems should exhibit. It will then search for CAS, which can bring about these global properties. Yet BISON will seek to go even further than this, by working to systematize this process to develop a coherent set of heuristics that can guide the search for CAS giving a desired global behavior. Progress in this direction will give us a systematic framework for constructing solutions to the original problem that inherit the attributes of CAS, including self-repair and self-organization. We expect to achieve this goal by restricting the class of problems and by drawing inspiration from nature systems like insect colonies and immune networks. http://www.cs.unibo.it/bison/

S. Ostring, Technical,Economic and Regulatory Aspects of Spectrum Allocation in the Modern Era, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom

(Presentation in ppt format 76kb)

The current approach used by regulatory bodies in allocating spectrum, where bands are employed to ensure that interference between different groups of users does not occur, is being challenged by technologists and special task force groups within government agencies. It is considered that optimal use of spectrum is not being achieved, and that the theoretical capacity of radio spectrum can be approached by dynamic spectrum allocation. In this open spectrum paradigm, we have identified technical, economic and regulatory issues that need to be addressed. In particular, we seek a fundamental understanding of spectrum capacity and protocols that can approach these capacity limits. Coordination between users must also be addressed, as open spectrum no longer strictly defines bands in which these users can communicate. Finally, we consider the role of the regulator, which moves from having primary responsibility for spectrum allocation to a secondary role, where interactions between users are regulated. http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/jac22/out/cmi.pdf