Sense and Sensibility for Wireless Networks

Guest Speaker: Hari Balakrishnan, MIT Fujitsu Professor, Computer Science Date: June 4th, 2012 Time: 11:00am-Noon Location: Room 1202, CSE Building, UC San Diego Host: CSE Department

DESCRIPTION/ABSTRACT: Truly mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets are fast becoming the dominant mode of Internet access. People use these devices while moving through wide range of locations, often in quick succession. The rapid variations in network conditions experienced poses a significant challenge for wireless network protocols. This talk will motivate and describe three different cross-layer designs for achieving high throughput over time-varying wireless networks: sensor-augmented protocols, a richer abstraction between the physical and higher layers (SoftPHY), and a new class of rateless codes (spinal codes). SPEAKER BIO: Hari Balakrishnan is the Fujitsu Professor of Computer Science at MIT. His research is in networked computer systems. His current interests include network architectures and software for a world of truly mobile wireless devices and cloud computing systems. Previous work includes the RON overlay network, the Chord DHT, the Cricket location system, the CarTel mobile sensing system, cross-layer wireless protocols such as snoop TCP and SoftPHY, and an accountable Internet architecture (AIP). He has also contributed to verifiable BGP routing, congestion control, mobility protocols, network security, and data stream processing. He is an ACM Fellow, a Sloan Fellow, an ACM dissertation award winner, and has received several best-paper awards including the IEEE Bennett prize and the SIGCOMM \"Test of Time\" award.