3/29/2014

Mobile and Pervasive Computing Research in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon

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Mobile and Pervasive Computing Research in the

Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon
Research Areas -

CSD faculty: Anind Dey (HCII), David Garlan, David OHallaron, Jason
Hong (HCII), Eric Paulos (HCII), Adrian Perrig (ECE ), Mahadev
Satyanarayanan (Satya), Bradley Schmerl, Srini Seshan, Dan Siewiorek ,
Asim Smailagic (ICES), Peter Steenkiste

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Mobile computing and pervasive computing represent major evolutionary steps

in a line of research dating back to the mid-1970s. Figure 1 illustrates this
evolution from a systems-centric viewpoint. New problems are encountered as
one moves from left to right in this figure. In addition, the solutions of many
previously-encountered problems become more complex as the modulation
symbols suggest, this increase in complexity is multiplicative rather than
additive. It is much more difficult to design and implement a mobile computing
system than a distributed system of comparable robustness and maturity; a
pervasive computing system is even more challenging. As Figure 1 indicates,
the conceptual framework and algorithmic base of distributed systems
provides a solid foundation for mobile and pervasive computing.

Search

Figure 1: Evolution of Mobile and Pervasive Computing from Distributed Systems

Mobile computing was born in the early 1990s with the advent of full-function
laptop computers and wireless LANs. Although many basic principles of
distributed system design continued to apply, four key constraints of mobility
forced the development of specialized techniques. These constraints are: (a)
unpredictable variation in network quality; (b) lowered trust and robustness of
mobile elements; (c) limitations on local resources imposed by weight and size
constraints; (d) concern for battery power consumption. Mobile computing is 1/5
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Mobile and Pervasive Computing Research in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon

constraints; (d) concern for battery power consumption. Mobile computing is

still a very active and evolving field of research, whose body of knowledge
awaits codification.
By 2000, mobile computing research began to touch upon issues that we now
identify as the purview of pervasive computing. The founding manifesto of
pervasive computing, also known as ubiquitous computing, was a seminal
1991 paper entitled The Computer for the 21st Century by Mark Weiser of
Xerox PARC. He observed that The most profound technologies are those that
disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they
are indistinguishable from it. Thus, the essence of pervasive computing is the
creation of environments saturated with computing and communication, yet
gracefully integrated with human users. When articulated in the early 1990s,
this was a vision too far ahead of its time the hardware technology needed
to achieve it simply did not exist. It is only now, nearly 20 years later, that the
computing and wireless communications technologies needed for its realization
are becoming easily available. Carnegie Mellon is at the forefront of institutions
pursuing this vision. As Figure 1 shows, pervasive computing shares many
research themes in common with mobile computing. In addition, it addresses
four key issues:
Smart Spaces: embedding computing infrastructure in building
infrastructure brings together two worlds that have been disjoint until
now. The fusion of these worlds enables mutual sensing and control of
these worlds.
Invisibility: the ideal expressed by Weiser is complete disappearance of
pervasive computing technology from a users conciousness. In practice,
a reasonable approximation to this ideal is minimal user distraction. If a
pervasive computing environment continuously meets user expectations
and rarely presents him with surprises, it allows him to interact almost
at a subconcious level.
Localized Scalability: as smart spaces grow in sophistication, the
intensity of interactions between a users personal computing space and
its surroundings increases. This has severe bandwidth, energy and
distraction implications for a wireless mobile user. Scalability, in the
broadest sense, is thus a critical problem in pervasive computing. Like
the inverse square laws of nature, good system design has to achieve
scalability by severely reducing interactions between distant entities.
This directly contradicts the current ethos of the Internet, which many
believe heralds the death of distance.
Masking Uneven Conditioning: Uniform penetration of pervasive
computing technology into the infrastructure is many decades away. In
the interim, there will persist huge differences in the smartness of
different environments. This large dynamic range of smartness can be
jarring to a user, detracting from the goal of making pervasive
computing technology invisible. One way to reduce the amount of
variation seen by a user is to have his personal computing space
compensate for dumb environments. As a trivial example, a system
that is capable of disconnected operation is able to mask the absence of
wireless coverage in its environment.

1 Research Thrusts
From the earliest days of mobile computing, Carnegie Mellon has been a major
contributor of fundamental ideas, systems, and experimental validations. For
example, the Wireless Andrew project transformed Carnegie Mellon into the
worlds first campus with complete wireless coverage. The Coda file system
pioneered the concepts of disconnected and weakly-connected operation, and
the Odyssey project introduced the concept of application-aware adaptation.
Carnegie Mellon created the term wearable computing which employs usercentered design methodologies to seamlessly integrate into current end-user
work flows while dramatically improving user productivity. The entire February
1996 issue of IEEE Personal Communications was devoted to mobile
computing at Carnegie Mellon. This early momentum continues unabated.

http://www.csd.cs.cmu.edu/research/areas/mopercomp/

Cloudlet-based Mobile Computing: Mobile computing has typically assumed a

2-level hierarchy: mobile device and cloud. Satyanarayanan and Siewiorek are
exploring future architectures for mobile computing that include a third layer
called a cloudlet. This layer is part of the fixed infrastructure but is located
close to the mobile device (typically one Wi-Fi hop away) in order to ensure low

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close to the mobile device (typically one Wi-Fi hop away) in order to ensure low
end-to-end latency. A cloudlet enables a mobile device to offload computeintensive and data-intensive processing within tight latency bounds. This
avoids the long WAN latencies between a mobile device and a public cloud,
thus enabling an entirely new class of highly interactive and resource-rich
mobile applications. For example, a user with a lightweight body-worn
computer could take advantage of a cognitive assistance application that
executes sophisticated computer vision and language assistance algorithms at
near real-time speeds. A cloudlet can be viewed as a "data center in a box".
It is self-managing, requiring little more than power, Internet connectivity, and
access control for setup. Virtual machine (VM) technology plays a central role
cloudlet design and implementation.
Context-Aware Networking: Srini Seshan is exploring a new network
architecture where redundancy elimination (RE) is a network-supported
primitive that is accessible in a uniform fashion to all applications, protocols
and flows. Since it operates in an application-agnostic fashion, RE allows all
applications to obtain the benefits of caching and enables caching of content
between different applications. RE also extends caching benefits to below the
application object granularity. Initial work has shown how Internet service
providers could benefit from the RE because it allows them to manage their
network resources better, especially under overload conditions such as flash
crowds. This work goes beyond the basic RE design to consider how Internet
routing protocols should change if RE were widely deployed.
Programming Support for Context-Aware and Sensor-Rich Environments:
Anind Dey is exploring the creation of tools that facilitate the development and
deployment of context-aware applications. The term "context" refers to
environmental information that is part of an application's operating
environment and that can be sensed by the application. Key elements of this
work include software encapsulation of sensors, access to context data
through a network API, abstraction of context data through interpreters,
sharing and storage of context data through a distributed infrastructure, and
access control.
User-Controllable Security & Privacy for Pervasive Computing: Capturing
end-user security and privacy policies in pervasive computing environments is
difficult but essential. Jason Hong's research in this space is working towards
(1) developing novel user interfaces, (2) weaving learning, dialog, and
explanation technologies to minimize end-user burden, and (3) conducting
field studies to evaluate combinations of these techniques. Srini Seshan's
research explores the design of systems with better tradeoffs between privacy
and functionality. For example, his group developed SlyFi, an 802.11-like
wireless link layer protocol that obfuscates all transmitted bits to increase
privacy, and developed WiFi-Reports, a system that enables users to
crowdsource reviews of WiFi access points without revealing their location or
identity.
Urban Computing: Focusing on lifestyles and technologies within the context
of public urban spaces, Eric Paulos' research establishes a new framework for
deconstructing and analyzing technology and urban life across people, place,
infrastructure, architecture, and flow. The research challenges in this space
differ from those found within the home where technologies readily intermingle
across intimate relations with friends and family members. It diverges from
office and work environments where productivity and efficiency often dominate
computing tools.
Wearable Computing: Carnegie Mellon has been a pioneer in the creation
and use of wearable computing systems. Dan Siewiorek, in collaboration with
Asim Smailagic of the Institute for Complex Engineered Systems (ICES), has led
this effort since 1990. Current research in this area explores how wearable
computing can be effective in pervasive computing environments. This poses a
number of research challenges: developing social and cognitive models of
applications; integrating input from multiple sensors and mapping them to
social and cognitive user states; anticipating user needs; and interacting with
users. These challenges are being explored in the development of a Virtual
Coach, that represents a wearable augmented cognition platform.
Self-Managing Chaotic Wireless Networks: Until recently, most dense
deployments of wireless networks were in campus-like environments, where
experts carefully plan cell layout. The rapid deployment of cheap 802.11
hardware and other personal wireless technology (2.4Ghz cordless phones,
bluetooth devices, etc.), however, is quickly changing the wireless landscape.

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bluetooth devices, etc.), however, is quickly changing the wireless landscape.

First, while campus deployments are carefully planned to optimize coverage
and minimize cell overlap, many recent deployments result from many
independent people or organizations each setting up one or a small number of
APs. Second, configuring and managing wireless networks is difficult. Peter
Steenkiste and Srini Seshan are investigating protocols and techniques for
making such chaotic networks self-configuring and self-managing.
VM-based Hands-free Mobile Computing: In the Internet Suspend/Resume
(ISR) project, Dave O'Hallaron and Satyanarayanan are exploring a hands-free
approach to mobile computing that appears well suited to future pervasive
computing environments in which commodity hardware may be widely
deployed for transient use. The key insight of ISR is that VM migration can be
made efficient enough to extend the suspend/resume metaphor of mobile
hardware to situations where a user carries no hardware. In other words, one
can logically suspend a machine at one Internet site, travel to some other site
and then seamlessly resume work there on another machine.
Secure interactions and trust establishment: In the context of using physical
trust to achieve digital trust, Adrian Perrig's research team is studying on how
we can leverage physical encounters to establish trust in on-line entities, such
as an email address, a social network identity, or a bank web site. An
advantage of this approach is that users can relate well to physical encounters
and thus trust the digital entities.
Living Analytics: This research aims for near real-time analysis of the
streams of information collected about user behavior and context from
devices such as cell phones. In this project Srini Seshan is tackling: 1) the
system-level challenges of collecting large-volumes of user context information
in a scalable and energy-efficient fashion; 2) the privacy issues associated with
the limiting access to the collected context information; and 3) the algorithm
design challenges associated with analyzing large volumes of user context
data in real-time.

Overlap with Other Research

Figure 1 above represents a focused perspective on the research ancestory of
mobile and pervasive computing. Looking ahead, Figure 2 below presents a
broader perspective of the research challenges we face in this area. As this
figure shows, mobile and pervasive computing share many research topics
with other areas discussed in this briefing book.

Figure 2: How Mobile and Pervasive Computing Relate to Other Areas

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2 Education
A graduate course that focuses on recent developments in mobile and
pervasive computing has been developed by M. Satyanarayanan and Dan
Siewiorek. The course is cross-listed both by the School of Computer Science
(15-821) and by the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (18843). Originally entitled Mobile Computing Systems and Applications, the
course is now called Mobile and Pervasive Computing to refiect the
broadening of its scope over time. It has been offered once a year since Fall
2000, and has proved very popular with computer science and electrical
engineering students.
Another relevant course, developed by Dan Siewiorek and Asim Smailagic in
the HCI Institute and cross-listed by the Computer Science Department, is
entitled Rapid Prototyping of Computer Systems. (15-540/05-540). It is
offered every spring, and draws students from Computer Science, Electrical
and Computer Engineering, Design, Human-Computer Interaction, and
Mechanical Engineering. Students work in interdisciplinary teams of up to three
dozen students to develop a functional prototype system for an industrial
application.
Peter Steenkiste's course on Wireless Networking focuses on topics at the
physical and link layers, with light treatment of higher layers. The format of the
course loosely follows that of the mobile and pervasive computing course
describe above (15-821/18-843), and complements its content.

3 Research Community Leadership

In keeping with their pioneering role in mobile and pervasive computing,
Carnegie Mellon faculty have consistently played a leadership role in shaping
the research community. Papers on mobile and pervasive computing topics by
Carnegie Mellon authors are widely used in the reading lists of graduate
courses worldwide. Dan Siewiorek was the founding general chair of the
MobiSys series of conferences, and Satyanarayanan and Srini Seshan have
served as its program chair. Siewiorek was instrumental in founding the
International Symposium on Wearable Computing, and was the founding chair
of the IEEE Technical Committee on Wearable Information Systems.
Satyanarayanan was the founding program chair of the HotMobile series of
workshops, the oldest research forum in mobile computing. He was also the
founding Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Pervasive Computing, and the founding Area
Editor for Mobile and Pervasive Computing in the Synthesis lecture series by
Morgan and Claypool. Both Siewiorek and Satyanarayanan are recipients of
ACM SIGMOBILE's Outstanding Contributions Award.
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