Tutorials
T1: Programming Wireless Sensor Networks: From Theory to Practice
Tuesday, December 2. 9:00am - 17:30pm
Location: Salons Georges - Adriaansalon (level 2)
by: Luca Mottola, Bruno Kessler Foundation, Italy, mottola@fbk.eu and Gian Pietro Picco, University of Trento, Italy, picco@dit.unitn.it

Abstract: Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are distributed systems composed of tiny computing devices able to sense various environmental data, e.g., temperature, light, and vibration. WSNs enable a wide range of sophisticated applications, from structural monitoring to supply-chain management.

A recent report from market research firm ONWorld predicts that the global market for WSNs will grow tenfold by 2011. However, the same report also identifies ease of programming as the major barrier to the adoption of WSN technology. Researchers are addressing this issue with several programming and middleware approaches, which differ along many dimensions, and for which a systematic characterization is still missing.

In this tutorial, we describe a taxonomy of WSN programming solutions, providing a foundation to compare and evaluate the various approaches. Next, attendees experience hands-on the programming of WSN applications using real nodes. The tutorial targets researchers interested in the challenges posed by WSNs, and students starting off in this field. Practitioners can nonetheless benefit from the systematic overview and hands-on introduction to this interdisciplinary topic.

If you intend to attend this tutorial, the following document t1_instructions.pdf contains information on how to prepare a laptop machine for the hands-on part of the session as well as pointers to additional reading material.

Bio: Luca Mottola has just completed his Ph.D. studies at Politecnico di Milano (Italy) with a thesis titled "Programming Wireless Sensor Networks: from Physical to Logical Neighborhoods". The contributions described in his thesis have been published in major WSN and closely related conferences, such as EWSN (European Conf. on Wireless Sensor Networks), DCOSS (Int. Conf. Distributed Computing on Sensor Systems), PerCom (Int. Conf. on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Communications), and ACM/USENIX Middleware. He has extensive expertise in building WSN software, as demonstrated in public research demos at top WSN conferences, e.g., SenSys (Int. Conf. on Sensor Systems) where, along with G. P. Picco, he received the Best Demo Award in 2007. He was deeply involved in the EU IP project RUNES, whose focus was adaptable middleware for networked embedded systems. His research interests include programming abstractions and distributed computing on sensor networks, and formal verification of distributed software architectures.

Gian Pietro Picco is an Associate Professor at the Department of Information and Communication Technology of University of Trento, Italy. Previously, he has been on the faculty of Washington University in St. Louis, MO, USA (1998-1999) and Politecnico di Milano, Italy (1999-2006). The goal of his current research is to support the development of modern distributed systems through the investigation of appropriate programming abstractions, along with communication protocols to efficiently support them. His work spans the research fields of software engineering, middleware, and networking, and is geared in particular towards wireless sensor networks, mobile computing, and largescale distributed systems. In 2007, he was awarded at the Int. Conf. on Software Engineering the Most Influential Paper Award from ICSE'97.


T2: Peer-to-Peer Publish/Subscribe Systems: The Design Space, the Solutions, and their Classification
Tuesday, December 2. 9:00am - 12:30pm
Location: Salons Georges - Salon Fiere Margriet (level 3)
by: Peter Triantafillou, University of Patras, peter@ceid.upatras.gr

Abstract: Publish/Subscribe (a.k.a. pub/sub) is rapidly emerging as the paradigm of choice for designing several modern network applications. Many of these applications at the same time demand scalability, which largely depends on the adoption of a peer-to-peer overlay as the network infrastructure. The tutorial is to present an overview of the key problems and related solutions that have emerged in the general area of scalable publish/subscribe (pub/sub) systems. In particular, it will focus on the research concerning the intersection of pub/sub and peer-to-peer technologies.

The tutorial material will be structured so as to reflect the state of the art solutions grouped along the key characteristics of the overlay network (e.g., structured versus unstructured), the types of pub/sub solutions desired (e.g., topic/group-based versus content-based), and other key desired solution features such as being network (in)dependent, statefull/stateless, etc.

The central aims of the tutorial will rest on the delivery of an understanding of:
  • the related historical R & D developments,
  • an appreciation of the related problems and solutions,
  • the overall solution design space,
  • the fundamental characteristics of the various solutions and a classification of solutions according to these haracteristics, and
  • the effectiveness and trade-offs associated with each solution.
Bio: Peter Triantafillou is a Professor with the Department of Computer Engineering and Informatics at the University of Patras, being the Director of the Software Division and the Director of the Network-Centric Information Systems laboratory. Peter received the Ph.D. degree from the University of Waterloo in 1991. He has also held professorial positions at Simon Fraser University and at the Technical University of Crete. Peter's main research efforts concentrate in the areas of large-scale distributed systems and algorithms and range from Data Management, to Information Retrieval, and to Systems issues.


T3: Fast Prototyping for Mobile Phones with Python S60
Tuesday, December 2. 14:45pm - 18:00pm
Location: Salons Georges - Zaal 't Schaakbord (level 2)
by: Agathe Battestini, Nokia Research Center, Palo Alto, USA

Abstract: Mobile phones have become powerful platforms for developing applications in a wide-range of fields: voice and text communication, video and imaging, location-awareness, productivity tools, social networking, business, traveling, blogging, games, sensors, distributed networks, web services, and more.

Since its availability in 2005, Python For S60 (available for smartphones that run Symbian Series 60) has become a programming language of choice for researchers, students and developers who seek to quickly prototype and deploy mobile applications.

This tutorial provides:
  • An overview of the Python modules specific to the phone: location, positioning, contacts, camera, sensor, telephone, messaging
  • An overview of the UI components: lists, canvases, input fields, graphical functions
  • A sketching approach for fast prototyping
  • An overview of the connectivity capabilities: access to Internet resources, 3G/GPRS/Bluetooth/Wifi connections
  • A walkthrough of code and applications that demonstrate what Python For S60 can do
The tutorial consists of lectures, demonstrations and offers the possibility for attendees to get hands-on experience. A knowledge of Python is a plus for the attendees, but is not required, as Python For S60 is a relatively lightweight scripting language.

Bio: Agathe Battestini joined the Nokia Research Center in Helsinki in 2004. She is located now at the Nokia lab in Palo Alto. She holds Masters degrees in Computer Science from University of Technology of Compiegne (2001) and Georgia Tech (2003).

Her primary research interests are context awareness and mobile user data. She explores mobile applications that generate and adapt to context data, and how they can be integrated into novel web-based services and bridge the mobile device and the web. As part of the Semantic Graphics project in Palo Alto, she explores how different sources of heterogeneous information can be mixed and composed into compelling interactive visualizations.

Since the release of Python S60 in 2005, she has used it as the main development language for prototyping low- and high-fidelity mobile applications in the fields of context-awareness, sensor data processing, and web-based services.