“Network Resource Management in Cyber-Physical Systems”

Title: “Network Resource Management in Cyber-Physical Systems”
Speaker: Dr. Xiabo Sharon Hu, University of Notre Dame, USA

Date and Time: Friday, November 17, 2017 at 2:00PM-3:00PM

Location: ICS 432

Abstract:

A cyber-physical system (CPS) is a system built from close integration of computational fabrics and physical components. Examples of such systems include avionic systems, industrial control and civil infrastructure monitoring. In a CPS, sensors and actuators are used to monitor and control the physical components while the computational fabrics determine the control values for the actuators based on the sensed data. All CPSs require timely delivery of sensed data from sensors to the computing fabrics and control signals from the computing fabrics to actuators. Managing the limited resources (e.g., computation power and communication bandwidth) to meet the timing requirements in a CPS is a challenging task. Even more challenging is that CPSs should degrade gracefully in the presence of various external disturbances such as failure in critical civil infrastructures and malicious attacks.

In this talk, I first give a general introduction of WNCSs and the challenges that they present to network resource management. In particular, I will discuss the complications due to external disturbances and the need for dynamic data-link layer scheduling. I then highlight our recent work that aims at tackling this challenge. Our work balances the scheduling effort between a gateway (or access points) and the rest of the nodes in a network. It paves the way towards decentralized network resource management in
order to achieve scalability. Experimental implementation on a wireless test bed further validates the applicability of our proposed research. I will end the talk outlining our on-going effort in this exciting and growing area of research.

Xiaobo Sharon Hu is a professor in the department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana, USA. Her research interests include low-power system design, real-time embedded systems, circuit and architecture design with emerging technologies, and hardware/software co-design. She has published more than 300 papers in these areas, and received the Best Paper Award from the Design Automation Conference in 2001 and from the IEEE Symposium
on Nanoscale Architectures in 2009. She is the General Chair of Design Automation Conference in 2018. She is an Associate Editor for ACM Transactions on Cyber- Physical Systems, and also served as Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on VLSI, etc. Sharon Hu is a Fellow of the IEEE.

Biography:

Xiaobo Sharon Hu is a professor in the department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana, USA. She also holds a joint appointment in the department of Electrical Engineering at the same university. She received B.S. degree from Tianjin University, China, M.S. degree from Polytechnic University of New York, and Ph.D. degree from Purdue University. She worked for General Motors Research Labs for almost 4 years before she started her academic career. Between 1993 and 1996, she was an assitant professor in the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA.

Her research interests include analysis and design of low power, real-time, and embedded systems, computing with emerging technologies, and computational medicine. She has published more than 200 referred papers in these areas and received numerous research grants from both the U.S. government agencies and private industry. She received the CAREER award from U.S. National Science Foundation in 1997. She received the Best Paper Award from the ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conference in 2001 and from the IEEE Symposium on Nanoscale Architectures in 2009. Another paper of hers was named one of “The Most Influential Papers of 10 Years Design, Automation, and Test in Europe Conference (DATE)”.

Sharon is currently Associate Editor for ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing and Co-Chair of the Technical Program Committee of 2014 Design Automation Conference (DAC). She also served as Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on VLSI and ACM Transactions on Design Automation of Electronic Systems. She has served as guest editors for several different journals/magazines such as the IEEE Computer Magazine and IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics. She was the Technical Program Co-Chair of the 9th International Symposium on Hardware/Software Codesign (CODES’2001) and the General Co-Chair of the same conference in 2002. She also served or is serving on the program committee of a number of conferences such as Design Automation Conference (DAC), International Conference on Computer-Aided Design (ICCAD), Design, Automation and Test in Europe Conference )DATE), IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium (RTSS), and IEEE Real-Time and Embedded Technology and Applications Symposium (RTAS), etc.

At the University of Notre Dame, Sharon had been the Director of Graduate Studies for 10 years in the department of Computer Science and Engineering, and was Senior Assistant Provost for ND International between 2012–2013. Currently, she is the Associate Dean for Professional Development at the Graduate School.