Date: Friday, November 30
Time: 10:00 AM
Place: E & CS Auditorium, First Floor

             Using Mobility in k-Covered Wireless Sensor Networks:
                    A Curse or Blessing - or Blessed Curse?

Habib M. Ammari

Wireless Sensor and Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (WiSeMAN) Research Lab
Department of Computer and Information Science
University of Michigan-Dearborn

Abstract: The energy sink-hole problem is inherent to immobile wireless sensor
networks with constant data reporting. In this type of network, the sensors
nearer the sink are responsible for forwarding data on behalf of all other
sensors, thus, suffering from a severe battery power depletion problem. In this
talk, we present our study of the energy sink-hole problem in k-covered
wireless sensor networks, where each point in a field of interest is covered by
at least k sensors simultaneously. To remedy this type of problem, we introduce
another dimension - sensor mobility - so the neighbors of a sink change over
time. Specifically, we suggest the use of mobile proxy sinks to collect data
from the sensors and deliver it to an immobile sink. Thus, our proposed
three-tier architecture has immobile sensors, immobile sinks, and mobile proxy
sinks. First, we present our fundamental results for the design of k-covered
wireless sensor networks. Second, we provide the first formal analysis of the
performance of joint mobility and routing in this type of network. Precisely,
we investigate the best mobility strategy of mobile proxy sinks to minimize the
total energy consumption due to data collection. Third, we describe our joint
mobility and routing schemes based on the number of immobile sinks and mobile
proxy sinks, and give a thorough analytical model for them. Finally, we discuss
our main question whether sink mobility in k-covered wireless sensor networks
is a curse or blessing - or blessed curse.

Biosketch: Habib M. Ammari is an Associate Professor and the Founding Director
of Wireless Sensor and Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (WiSeMAN) Research Lab, in the
Department of Computer and Information Science at the University of
Michigan-Dearborn, since September 2011. He obtained his second Ph.D. degree in
Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Texas at Arlington, in
May 2008, and his first Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Faculty of Sciences
of Tunis, in December 1996. He published his first Springer book "Challenges
and Opportunities of Connected k-Covered Wireless Sensor Networks: From Sensor
Deployment to Data Gathering," in August 2009. He received several prestigious
awards, including the Certificate of Appreciation Award at the ACM MobiCom
2011, the Outstanding Leadership Award at the IEEE ICCCN 2011, the Best
Symposium Award at the IEEE IWCMC 2011, the Lawrence A. Stessin Prize for
Outstanding Scholarly Publication from Hofstra University in May 2010, the
Faculty Research and Development Grant Award from Hofstra College of Liberal
Arts and Sciences in May 2009, the Best Paper Award at EWSN in 2008, and the
Best Paper Award at the IEEE PerCom 2008 Google Ph.D. Forum. He is the
recipient of the Nortel Outstanding CSE Doctoral Dissertation Award in February
2009, and the John Steven Schuchman Award for 2006-2007 Outstanding Research by
a PhD Student in February 2008. He received a three-year US National Science
Foundation (NSF) Research Grant Award, in June 2009, and the US NSF CAREER
Award, in January 2011. He serves as Associate Editor of several international
journals, including ACM TOSN and IEEE TC. Also, he has served as
Program/Publicity Chair of numerous IEEE and ACM conferences, symposia, and
workshops.