[8-1]Taming the Uncertainty in Supporting Distributed Sensor Applications

Date:2008-07-31

Title：Taming the Uncertainty in Supporting Distributed Sensor Applications
Speaker：Dr. Qi Han   （Colorado School of Mines）
Time：10:00 am, Aug. 1, 2008 
Venue：Room 813
Abstract：
With the advances in computational, communication, and sensing capabilities, large-scale sensor-based distributed environments are becoming a reality. However, the dynamic nature of wireless sensor networks causes many uncertainties in supporting applications. In this talk, I will focus on approaches in taming one aspect of the uncertainties - data accuracy. Since sensors are resource constrained, often sensor data is collected into a sensor database that resides at more powerful servers. A natural tradeoff exists between the sensor resources (bandwidth, energy) consumed and the quality of data collected at the server. Blindly transmitting sensor updates at a fixed periodicity to the server results in a suboptimal solution due to the differences in stability of sensor values and due to the varying application needs that impose different quality requirements across sensors. This talk presents an adaptive data collection mechanism for sensor environments that adjusts to these variations while at the same time optimizing the energy consumption of sensors. I will also touch upon how we deal with other aspects of the uncertainties - latency and reliability. I will conclude with some brief discussions on our ongoing interdisciplinary project that uses wireless sensor networks for subsurface contaminant monitoring.

Bio.：
Dr. Qi Han is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematical and Computer Sciences at the Colorado School of Mines. She received the Ph.D. degree from the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Science at the University of California, Irvine in 2005. Her doctoral thesis work was on quality-aware context data collection. Before that, she received the Master’s degree from Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology. Her Master’s thesis was on transaction processing for real-time and active databases. Her current research interests include wireless sensor networks, distributed systems support for pervasive computing, and network-aware data management. Dr. Han has served on the technical program committees of various professional conferences and workshops. Her current research is being funded by the National Science Foundation.