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Type

of Talk: UTCS Colloquium

Speaker/Affiliation:  Geoffrey Challen

/Harvard University

Date/Time: Friday, November 13, 2009/ 1:00 p.m.
until 2:30 p.m.

Location: ACES 2.402

Host: Mike Dahlin

Title: "Managing Sensor Network Resource Usage and Monitoring Active
Volcanoes"

Talk Abstract:

Sensor networks composed of la

rge numbers of self-organizing embedded devices are an increasingly valuabl

e tool for understanding our world. Deployed networks allow scientists to o

bserve phenomena at a scale and resolution that challenge existing instrume

ntation. Some call this new instrument the macroscope.

My proje

ct uses sensor networks to monitor active volcanoes. Due to the high data r

ates and stringent fidelity requirements of this application, providing ou

tput suitable for scientific analysis requires carefully directing the limi

ted resources available at each node. In this talk I will present Lance, a
general approach to bandwidth and energy management targeting reliable dat

a collection for sensor networks.

By combining an application-l

evel determination of value with a system-level estimation of cost, Lance

maximizes the value of the data returned to the application by optimally al

locating bandwidth and energy devoted to signal collection. Lance''s design
decouples data collection policy from mechanism, allowing its optimizatio

n metrics to be customized to suit a variety of application goals. I will m

otivate and describe the Lance architecture, present results from the lab

and the field, and discuss continuing efforts in this area, including sin

gle-node and network-wide architectures for distributed energy management.<

/p>

Speaker Bio:

Geoffrey Challen (né Werner-Allen) is a Ph

.D. Candidate in Computer Science at the Harvard University School of Engin

eering and Applied Sciences, advised by Matt Welsh. His research addresses
the systems and networking challenges necessary to enable high-fidelity se

nsing applications, focusing specifically on maximizing the usage of the l

imited resources available to sensor network nodes. Working with geoscienti

sts, he has helped perform three sensor network deployments on active Ecua

dorean volcanoes. He built and maintains MoteLab, a wireless sensor networ

k testbed used by researchers worldwide, and is a co-editor of a forthcomi

ng book on sensor network deployments. Geoffrey is a 2009 Siebel Fellow, a