John A. Stankovic

BP America Professor
Department of Computer Science
School of Engineering and Applied Science
University of Virginia

Control Challenges in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSN) composed of large numbers of small devices that self-organize are being investigated for a wide variety of applications. Applications, such as military surveillance and large scale assisted living facilities are key examples of applications that can benefit from WSN. Current research for WSN is widespread. However, many of the proposed solutions are developed with simplifying assumptions about wireless communication and the environment, even though the realities of wireless communication and environmental sensing are well known. Many of the solutions are evaluated only by simulation. In this talk I describe a fully implemented system, called VigilNet, consisting of a suite of more than 30 synthesized protocols (40,000 lines of code). The system supports a power aware surveillance, tracking and classification application running on 203 XSM motes and evaluated in a realistic, large-area environment. Technical details and evaluations are presented for several of the key services. In developing such systems various types of control challenges occur. I will also discuss a number of these challenges, possible solutions and open challenges.

Bio Sketch

Professor John A. Stankovic is the BP America Professor in the Computer Science Department at the University of Virginia . He recently served as Chair of the department, completing two terms (8 years). He is a Fellow of both the IEEE and the ACM. He won the IEEE Real-Time Systems Technical Committee's Award for Outstanding Technical Contributions and Leadership (inaugural winner). He also won the IEEE Distributed Processing Technical Committee's Award for Distinguished Achievement (inaugural winner). Professor Stankovic also served on the Board of Directors of the Computer Research Association for 9 years. Before joining the University of Virginia , Professor Stankovic taught at the University of Massachusetts where he won an outstanding scholar award. He has also held visiting positions in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie-Mellon University , at INRIA in France , and at the Scuola Superiore S. Anna in Pisa , Italy . He was the Editor-in-Chief for the IEEE Transactions on Distributed and Parallel Systems and was a founder and co-editor-in-chief for the Real-Time Systems Journal for 18 years. He was also General Chair for ACM SenSys 2004 and General Chair for ACM/IEEE Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN) 2006. He has won 3 Best Paper Awards including one at this year's ACM SenSys Conference. His research interests are in distributed computing, real-time systems, operating systems, and wireless sensor networks. Prof. Stankovic received his PhD from Brown University .