Seminar Series on Advances in Telecommunications, Networking and Computing

This seminar series is organized by the Department of Networked Systems and Services to provide unique opportunities to meet internationally recognized leading experts in the fields of Telecommunications, Networking and Computing. The lectures will be given in English by prominent foreign researchers from academia and industry, and they will be open to ALL interested colleagues, PhD students, and students. There is no fixed schedule for the seminar, but the lectures will be organized based on the availability of the invited lecturers, and they will be announced via various mailing lists. In addition, slides and up-to-date information on the program will be published on this site.

For further information, please, contact Dr. Levente Buttyán, Program Chair by e-mail (buttyan (at) hit.bme.hu) or telephone (+36 1 463 1803).

Past years: 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012

Program in 2013

Planned seminars:

Google calendar for ATNC seminars

Program in details

Analysis of stationary characteristics of queuing systems with special type of negative customers -- appoaches, methods, results

Abstract: Consideration will be given to Markovian queueing systems with negative customers, which do not remove work from the system but postpone it by moving arrived customers to the secondary queue wherefrom those are served with relative priority. Methods of analysis and some results concerning stationary characteristics (including waiting time) under different assumptions concerning service distribution will be presented.

Short bio: Rostislav Razumchik (born 1984, candidate of physical and mathematical sciences (2011)) is at present working at the Institute of Informatics Problems of Russian Academy of Sciences as senior researcher carrying out scientific research in the field of queueing theory. He also holds a position of senior lecturer in probability and statistics at the department of Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia.

Optimizing Resource Allocation in 60GHz MillimeterWave Wireless Access Networks

Abstract: MillimeterWave (mmW) communications have attracted the interest of academia, industry, and standardization bodies, although the technology was invented and used many decades ago, especially in the context of military applications. The continuous development of Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor technology, with low cost and low power consumption, has enabled the use of such a mmW spectrum in the communication of the user devices and in the provisioning of QoS-sensitive applications. Due to the 60 GHz mmW wireless networks great commercial potential, multiple industry-led efforts and international organizations have emerged for the standardization activities. Examples include IEEE 802.15.3, IEEE 802.15.3 Task Group 3c (TG3c), IEEE 802.11 standardization group, the task group IEEE 802.11ad, IEEE 802.11ad, the WirelessHD consortium, the Wireless Gigabit Alliance (WiGig), and many others. More than 5 GHz of unlicensed continuous bandwidth is available in many countries worldwide, which makes 60 GHz mmW systems particularly attractive for gigabit wireless applications such as gigabyte file transfer, wireless docking station, wireless gigabit ethernet, wireless gaming, uncompressed high definition video transmission and mobile data offloading. Thus, 60 GHz mmW radio technology is considered as one of the most promising candidates to boost wireless communication data rates to the order of multi-Gbps. However, there are several challenging aspects and potentialities that must still be addressed in 60GHz mmW communications. The high propagation loss in such a band poses major obstacles to the optimal utilization of the wireless resources, where the problem of efficient association of clients to access points (APs) is of vital importance. In this talk, the fundamental problem of optimizing the assignment of the clients to the available APs in 60 GHz mmW wireless access networks is presented. The AP utilization and the supported transmission rates over the rapidly vanishing millimeterWave communication links are the main parameters in the optimization. Because of the tricky non-convex and combinatorial nature of the client association optimization problem, a novel solution method is developed to guarantee balanced and fair resource allocation. A new distributed, lightweight and easy to implement association algorithm, based on Lagrangian duality theory and subgradient methods, is proposed. It is shown that the algorithm is asymptotically optimal as the relative duality gap diminishes to zero when the number of clients increases. The association approach is fully compliant with the existing WIFI and 60 GHz mmW protocols/standards (such as 802.11, 802.15.3 and 802.11ad) and it can be easily implemented on top of the medium access control (MAC) mechanisms that they define. Both theoretical and numerical results that evince numerous useful properties, such as fast convergence, scalability, time efficiency, and fair execution in comparison to existing association approaches are presented.

Short bio: Dr. George Athanasiou received the diploma in Computer and Communications Engineering from University of Thessaly in 2005. He obtained his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer and Communications Engineering from the same University, in 2007 and 2010 respectively, under the supervision of Prof. Leandros Tassiulas. Currently, he is a research scientist at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Electrical Engineering and ACCESS Linnaeus Center, Automatic and Networked Control Lab, Stockholm, Sweden. From December 2010 to November 2011 he was a senior researcher at the University of Piraeus Research Centre working on the EU research projects UniveSelf and OneFIT. From September 2005 to November 2011 he was a researcher at the Informatics and Telematics Institute (ITI) at the Centre for Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH) working on several EU and National research projects: OPNEX, N CRAVE, OneLab2, WIP, NEWCOMM, NEWCOM++, EuroNGI, EuroNF and CRUISE. From May 2009 to August 2009 he was an intern at Telefonica I+D, Inernet Research Group, Barcelona, Spain, where he worked on the “ClubADSL: Bundling Wireless Connections” research project. The project has been recently awarded by Telefonica R&D as the best project of 2010 of all the R&D groups (including the centers in Barcelona, Madrid, Valladolid, Granada, Sao Paulo, Huesca, Mexico City) for its innovation. From August 2006 to November 2006 he was an intern at Polytechnic Institute of New York University. He is also co-founder and CIO of Aukoti AB, a Swedish startup on sensor networking and building automation. His research interests include the design and performance evaluation of wireless networks, resource management, service and network management, cognitive networking and optimization techniques. He has authored numerous publications in these areas in international journals and refereed conferences. He is a member of the IEEE and ACM and the Technical Chamber in Greece.

Globally applicable Local Dynamic Map for Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems

Topics covered:

• Short introduction of Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems (C-ITS)
• The ITS standardisation arena: who is involved and doing what
• Standards for Release 1 of C-ITS procurement
• Local Dynamic Map as a key element of C-ITS: The work of PT1604

Short bio: Dr. Fischer made his PhD in Digital Spread Spectrum Systems at the University of Kaiserslautern. He worked first with Standard Elektrik Lorenz on research for digital communications, and then with Telefunken company in Ulm on the design and development of digital algorithms for radio communications at high frequencies and microwave including backscatting systems. In 1997 he founded ESF GmbH. He contributed to the introduction of the European Electronic Toll Service based on Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC). He made the specifications for the Norwegian AutoPASS System, and the GNSS/CN-based German Toll-Collect system. He assisted Autostrade and ST Microelectronics in Italy in the design of the dual-protocol chip-set combining the European DSRC and the Italian Telepass protocols, both operating at 5.8 GHz. Dr. Fischer holds positions in CEN, ETSI and ISO, which work on communications and applications for Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems. He is editor of a large number of ITS standards. He was member of the EU/US Task Force Harmonization Work Groups 1 & 3. He is leader of CEN TC278 PT1601 and ETSI STF 455, both funded by the EC under mandate M/453.

Efficiently Operating Wireless Nodes Powered by Renewable Energy Sources

Abstract: We consider a node in a multi-hop wireless network that is responsible for transmitting messages in a timely manner while being prudent about energy consumption. The node is powered by batteries that are charged by renewal energy sources such as wind or solar. To strike a balance between latency and availability, we consider a multi-timescale model. At a faster timescale, the node makes decisions based on local information such as queue lengths of packets in input buffers and available energy levels. The decisions include scheduling packets on the output buffers that would be transmitted at the next opportunity. At the slower timescale we model the energy levels in the battery using a stochastic fluid-flow model to determine the availability. Ultimately we present a unified framework that iteratively sets model parameters to satisfy latency and availability targets. The methods are based on Markov decision processes, Markov chains and semi-Markov process analysis.

Short bio: N. Gautam is an associate professor and Jill and Charles F. Milstead '60 Faculty fellow in Industrial and Systems Engineering at Texas A&M University. He holds a courtesy appointment in the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Prior to joining Texas A&M University in 2005, he was on the Industrial Engineering faculty at Penn State University for eight years. He received his Ph.D. and M.S. in Operations Research from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and his B.Tech. in Mechanical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. Gautam's interests are in optimal design, control and performance evaluation of stochastic systems, with an emphasis on computer networks, energy and biology. He directs the Group for Research on Engineering ENergy-efficiency (GREEN) housed in the Laboratory for Energy-Sustainable Operations. Gautam's research articles have appeared in journals published by INFORMS, IIE, IEEE and ACM. He has worked on multi-disciplinary projects funded by NSF, AFOSR, DARPA, ONR and U.S. Marine Corps. Gautam received the Outstanding Young Industrial Engineer Award (education category) bestowed by IIE in 2006. In addition, he has won a few teaching awards and best paper awards. He published a book in 2012 - Analysis of Queues: Methods and Applications. Gautam serves as an associate editor for IIE Transactions, INFORMS Journal on Computing and OMEGA.

Security for Vehicular Buses: from Cryptography to Physically Unclonable Characteristics

Abstract: Despite realistic concerns, cryptographic security is still absent from vehicular buses (such as CAN, FlexRay, etc.) mostly due to technical challenges: low bandwidth and processing power, low cost margins, etc. In this talk I will present the main concepts behind some of our proposals for assuring security in CAN networks, e.g., LiBrA-CAN, as well as our recent on-going projects SeA-CAN (Secure Automotive CAN) and PSI-CAN (Physical Source Identification for CAN). Our protocol design, starts from simple symmetric crypto-primitives and exploits more innovative procedures such as key splitting and MAC mixing in Galois Fields. While automotive manufacturers were always opaque with their specifications, and previous academic proposals are not based on clear automotive scenarios, in our work we also try to bring some light on real world constraints and design protocol variants that are highly flexible in order to set way on different trade-offs that are suitable for in-vehicle networks. Finally, in one of our most recent proposals, we search patterns in the physical signal to distinguish between senders. This approach may set steps for a solution that is completely backward compatible to the existent infrastructure. We also present experimental results for our cryptographic protocols on state-of-the-art controllers equipped with Infineon TriCore cores which are contrasted with low-end Freescale S12X cores (both wide spread devices from the automotive industry). Our experimental setup is done within the ContiLab platform - a laboratory developed by Continental Coporation (a leading German automotive manufacturer) at Politehnica University of Timisoara.

Short bio: Bogdan Groza received the Dipl.Ing. and Ph.D. degrees from Politehnica University of Timisoara (UPT) in 2004 and 2008 respectively. He is currently a lecturer at the Faculty of Automatics and Computers (UPT). His research interests are in the field of information security and cryptography with focus on provable security, authentication protocols and applied cryptography in embedded and industrial systems. Since 2004, he has directed and participated in several national and international research projects in this field.