Raheleh B. Dilmaghani

Interest propagation in named data manets

Named Data MANETs (NDM) is a recently emerging research area. The in-network chunk-based caching feature of NDN is beneficial in coping with the mobility and intermittent connectivity challenges in MANETs. In this paper, we conduct both simulation and emulation study of NDM forwarding designs: NDN Forwarding (NDNF), Listen-First, Broadcast-Later (LFBL), and the proposed Neighborhood-Aware Interest Forwarding (NAIF). NAIF aims for reducing the bandwidth usage induced by indiscriminate interest flooding in NDNF. It decreases the interest traffic by letting eligible relays work cooperatively, each forwards only a fraction of interest packets. The results show that NAIF achieves the best performance in multi-consumer scenarios. In particular, compared to NDNF, NAIF reduces bandwidth usage by up to 54%, shortens response time in low-mobility scenarios, and achieves high completion ratio.

An information-centric architecture for data center networks

We propose a new Data Center Network (DCN) architecture, based on the principles of Information-Centric Networking (ICN). Our Info-Centric Data Center Network (IC-DCN) addresses many of the pain-points in current DCNs, such as network scalability, host mobility, etc. At the same time, IC-DCN introduces a number of new features to the current information-centric network architectures. We achieve this goal by decoupling the control-plane and data-plane functionalities. The control-plane is implemented in a centralized manner, while the data-plane is fully distributed. We show that IC-DCN effectively addresses many of the ICN challenges in the data center, such as routing scalability, full network utilization, and name space management.

Policy-Aware Service Composition in Sensor Networks

Sensor applications are typically composed of a number of functional components that run distributedly on the nodes of a sensor network, communicating and interacting with one another. Service composition is emerging as a viable approach towards the automatic synthesis of such sensor applications. However, for service composition to be practical, it has to comply with policies that define security and management constraints on the use of these service components and the interconnections amongst them. Prior research efforts have primarily focused on efficient evaluation of security policies during the composition process, which is not sufficient when generic network management constraints need to be expressed and evaluated. In this work, we propose a policy model and evaluation approach that enables us to define and check attribute-based policies, for controlling the sensor service composition process. Attribute-based policies are generic and allows us to express a wider spectrum of constraints than currently possible. Using this model and based on a previously-proposed sensor service composition algorithm, we introduce a policy evaluation method that allows for efficient checking of policy constraints. We further present a novel implementation of the proposed approach in the IBM Sensor Fabric, a middleware framework that simplifies the development of distributed, sensor network services. We also present preliminary performance evaluation results using our prototype.

Supervisory decision making in emergency response application

Two main causes of failure in an emergency response scenario are in communication leading to limited or delayed access to the information and delayed or poor decision making. A good choice of communication infrastructure to provide reliable and in-time delivery of information in early stage of an emergency response saves lives and money. Given that a wireless mesh is deployed or another communication infrastructure exists, the next effort is to send data from the field to decision makers off the field to improve decision making. In this paper, we use discrete event system modeling technique to illustrate how use of supervisory control solutions on on a discrete event system model can improve communication at organizational level. We present challenges and lessons learned from several real-life drills we have participated such as unclear termination or incomplete message transfer. We delineate a supervisory control solution that with higher authority and expertise can improve decision making by canceling a path and enforcing a deadlock-free path.