ECCS/PCAN/EAGER: Biologically Inspired Resource Harvesting in Mobile Wireless Networks

Auburn University, Auburn AL

Investigators

Abstract

"This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5)" Biologically Inspired Resource Harvesting in Mobile Wireless Networks This research proposal submitted to NSF EAGER program will provide techniques to harvest and manage two of the most important resources required by a wireless mobile device: energy and computing power. As manufacturers of mobile devices continue to wrangle with the power consumption implications of Moore's Law, managing the device's resources including its battery and processing ability becomes extremely important. For handheld devices like cellular phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and laptops, much of the existing research deals with design of low-power electronics and conservation of battery power via intelligent protocols and software. Instead, mobile devices need to be designed, at no extra cost, for self sufficiency and disaster readiness. This is especially pressing in the case of networked unattended sensor nodes. To achieve this one must look at intelligent ways to harvest, adapt, conserve and manage the resources on each constrained device. Since nature has tackled similar resource harvesting and management problems in the world around us, we plan to employ biologically inspired algorithms to efficiently harvest critical resources on mobile devices. In particular we look at the techniques developed and honed by social insects like bees, termites and ants to help us in achieving this goal. Intellectual merit: Our proposed research addresses the urgent need of harvesting and managing critical resources like battery energy and computational power in resource constrained mobile devices. By doing so, we can envision the creation and extension of new applications that are resource intensive for a handheld mobile devices and other networked wireless nodes. The contributions of this proposal are: i) developing a new distributed computing paradigm, primarily derived from biological research that are optimal and secure, ii) developing an optimized middleware architecture for mobile devices to efficiently harvest energy iii) simulation study for validating the above architectures and algorithms. Broader Impacts: Success of wireless networks is strongly correlated to the availability and sustainability of resources (examples include battery and computational power) within a mobile device. Systematic study and understanding of algorithms and methods that harvest such resources are long overdue. Proper collection and harnessing of critical resources like energy and computational power expand the reach of wireless networks into unchartered application spaces. New applications plant seeds for societal growth in the form of better, faster and timely communications, newly created employment opportunities, efficiency, and broader educational opportunities. Results from the proposed research will be submitted for publication in journals and conferences and made available in a timely manner to general audiences The PI will seek participation from graduate and undergraduate students especially female and minority students to participate in this proposed research and educational activities. Auburn University?s proximity provides opportunities for engaging underrepresented minority students from Tuskegee University (an HBCU) in the project.