Some Thoughts on Sensor Some Thoughts on Sensor Network ResearchNetwork Research

Krishna KantKrishna KantProgram DirectorProgram Director

National Science FoundationNational Science FoundationCNS/CSR ProgramCNS/CSR Program

What are the big challenges?What are the big challenges?

• Technology and Services

• Large Scale Applications

• Science of Sensing

• Design for Sustainability

Technology & ServicesTechnology & Services• What will sensors will look like in 5-10 yrs & what apps

will they enable?– Drivers to consider

• New technologies (nano, FS optical, >60GHz, …) & Moore’s law, smart energy harvesting/mgmt, smart multi-attribute sensing, …

• Miniaturization– Implanted, micro sensors in blood stream. Will this fuse CS &

Bio? What does this imply?– Other environments with micro-sensors fused in?

• Smart phones/PDAs: Service & service provider perspective – What innovative services do we want and what HW, SW and

protocol features would it require? • Example: What does it take to enable collaborative threat or

environmental monitoring?

Large Scale ApplicationsLarge Scale Applications

• Smart buildings, smart transportation, smart homes, … Smart cities– What would it take to put it all together?– Protocols, discovery, information assimilation,

security, privacy, …• Sensing for Climate change prediction &

adaptation– Planet wide scale, heterogeneous, specialized to

location, challenging environments– Correlation of sensor data which isn’t even measuring

the same thing• Working with partial info, unreliable, intermittent, info,

correlations, …

Other IssuesOther Issues

• Science of Sensing– Underlying theory for contextual collaborative sensing &

computing?– Many questions

• How do you formalize context?• How do you formalize collaborative sensing?• What additional power do context & collaboration provide?• Impossibility & complexity results?

– Formalism to study end to end communication and computation complexity tradeoffs?

• Sustainable Design– Increasing pile of junk of mobile devices. – Sensors will follow – perhaps much larger quantities– Eco-friendly sensor designs?

CISE Core ProgramsCISE Core Programs

• Algorithmic foundations• Communications & info

foundations• SW & HW foundations

CCFComputing and

CommunicationsFoundations

Sampath Kannan

CNSComputer and

NetworkSystemsTy Znati

IISInformation and

IntelligentSystems

Haym Hirsch

Office of theAssistant Director

for CISEJeannette Wing

• Computer Systems research

• Networking Technology & Systems

• Education & workforce

• Human centered computing

• Information integration & informatics

• Robust intelligence

CSR Program ScopeCSR Program Scope

• Computer systems– Architecture, OS, compiler/run-time systems, parallel

systems, systems mgmt, storage & network systems– System modeling (perf, power, dependability, …)

• Distributed systems– Synchronization, communication, scalability,

middleware, …• Mobile Systems

– Pervasive computing, sensor systems, mobile services• Embedded and hybrid systems

– All aspects – architecture, verification, assurance, robustness, etc.

Some Areas of Interest to CSRSome Areas of Interest to CSR

• Not intended to be “preferred” or emphasis areas; listed here for clarification

– Energy efficiency issues at all levels• Including sensors, mobile devices, client/server

systems, data centers, cloud.– Sustainable IT and IT supporting sustainability.– Issues in enabling large scale science via IT

systems– Many other current/emerging system areas

• Includes multi/many core systems & embedded/pervasive computing systems.