Flying in the dark: Controlling autonomous data ferries with partial observations
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Date: 03-29-2010
Start Time:
11:00am
End Time: 12:00pm
Speaker: Dr. Ting He
, Research Staff Member
From:
IBM Research
Location: Mudd 644
Hosted by:
Prof. Gil Zussman
Abstract:
Mission-critical MANETs can impose severe challenges on communications.
In applications such as military tactical operations and
search-and-rescue operations, task nodes can cover a large field with
little or no connectivity between them due to obstacles, limited range,
poor channel conditions, etc. Moreover, the mobility of task nodes is
dictated by mission needs and may not coincide with the mobility
required to provide sufficient contacts. In this talk, we present a
solution to this problem using controllable mobile data ferries, with
the focus on the mobility control of these ferries. While existing
ferry control techniques assume either stationary nodes or complete
ferry observation of node locations, we address the more challenging
scenario of highly mobile nodes and partial ferry observations. Using
the tool of Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDP), we
develop a comprehensive framework where we expand the solution space
from predetermined trajectories to control policies that can map ferry
observations to navigation actions dynamically. Under this framework,
we present an optimal and several efficient heuristic policies. We
compare the proposed policies with predetermined control through
analysis and simulations with respect to multiple node mobility
parameters including speed, locality, activeness, and range of
movement. The comparison shows a significant performance gain in cases
of high uncertainty. In cases of low uncertainty, we give a sufficient
condition under which the predetermined control is optimal.
Biography of the Speaker:
Ting He is a Research Staff Member in the Networking Technologies group
at IBM T.J. Watson Center, Hawthorne, NY. She received the Ph.D. degree
from the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Cornell
University, in 2007 and the B.S. degree in Computer Science from Peking
University, China, in 2003. At IBM, Ting works under the International
Technology Alliance (ITA) program funded by US ARL and UK MoD, the ARRA
program funded by NIST, and other business-related projects on network
science and technologies. Previously at Cornell (2003-2007), Ting was a
member of the Adaptive Communications & Signal Processing Group
(ACSP) under the supervision of Prof. Lang Tong.
Ting is a member of IEEE. She received the Best Student Paper Award at
the 2005 International Conference on Acoustic, Speech and Signal
Processing (ICASSP). She was an Outstanding College Graduate of Beijing
Area and an Outstanding Graduate of Peking University in 2003. She was
a winner of the Excellent Student Award of Peking University during
1999-2002 and a recipient of Canon, Sony, and Yang-Wang Academicians
scholarships.
Ting has worked on nonparametric change detection and estimation in
sensor networks, stepping-stone detection in Internet, and general
information flow detection in wireless ad hoc networks. Her recent
research includes controlled mobility in communication networks,
detection and throughput analysis of clandestine information flows,
network optimization in coalition networks, and modeling and control of
cloud computing networks. Her general research interests include
detection and estimation theory, stochastic control, statistical signal
processing, information theory, and network security.