mics newsletter sept09

8/14/2019 MICS Newsletter Sept09

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SEPTEMBER 2009N E W S L E T T E R MICS Phase 3 geared on a com-mon reserach theme: environmen-tal monitoring.

Find out about all the projectswhich will be part o the new ad-venture.

Pages 2-12

The MICS Center welcomes a newindustrial liaison ocer: Roland

Pesty succeeds to Max Monti.

Page 15

Swisscom and the EPF Lausannebegan a partnership which shouldenable both institutions to carry

out joint projects and promote theexchange o inormation, researchactivities and innovation.

Page 13

lgende auteur


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page 2 | SEPTEMBER 2009 MICS NEWSLETTER

MICS PHASE 3 GEARED ON A

COMMON RESEARCH THEME

During the MICS annual workshopin June, the Director Karl Aberergave an outlook on the Centersphase 3. The nal proposal was sub-mitted in July and the new phase isexpected to start in November.

For this period o time, the NCCR-MICS will adopt a common researchtheme: the study o the whole datalie cycle using wireless technologyor capturing inormation rom theenvironment, providing platormsor personalized use and decisionmaking. Environmental monitoringor scientic purposes will remainthe specic ocus to exempliy thisapproach and a substantial ractiono the eort will directly or indi-

rectly contribute to this applicationspace.

The main objectives o MICS phase3 are to consolidate the researchwork o phases 1 and 2, includingthe technology transer to industry,the establishment o long-term re-search and collaboration structuresacross institutions, and to ensurethe long-term impact o the pro-

gram beyond its duration as a cen-tre.

Karl Aberer insisted on the act thatspecial programs such as the MICS

Spin Fund, the promotion o wom-en and communication activitieswill be pursued.

The total unding rom the SNF orthe phase 3 will amount to 7,6 MioSwiss rancs. It is hal o the budgetspent or each o the phases 1 and2.

The ollowing main research chal-

lenges have been identied: data management to deal withthe massively growing sensor datavolumes; practicability o wireless sensornetwork technology to enable itswide-spread use; wireless security to deal with po-tential threats.

FOUR MAIN AREAS

Research in MICS phase 3 will be or-ganized in our areas:

Cluster 1:

Environmental monitoring

Mountain River Dynamics (partici-pants: Christophe Ancey, EdoardoCharbon, Pascal Fua, Marc Parlange,

Sabine Susstrunk, Martin Vetterli) SensorScope II (participants: Mar-tin Vetterli, Marc Parlange, Guiller-mo Barrenetxea) Permasense III (participants: J. Beu-

tel, L. Thiele, S. Gruber, C. Tschudin)Cluster 2:

Wireless communication

High Throughput UWB Localisa-tion or Mobile Robots (partici-pants: Cyril Botteron, Jean-YvesLe Boudec, Catherine Dehollain,Alcherio Martinoli, Anja Skrivervik,Pierre-Andre Farine, John Farserotu,Stephan Robert)

Observability by Design (partici-pants: F. Mattern, K. Rmer, L. Thiele,J. Beutel)

Cluster 3: Wireless securityand cryptography

Cryptography or Ubiquitous Com-puting (participants: Willi Meier, S.Vaudenay) Design, Analysis, and Implementa-tion o Security Protocols or Wire-

less Networks (SecWiN) (partici-pants: David Basin, Srdjan Capkun,Jean-Pierre Hubaux)

Cluster 4:Inormation management

CUSTOMS: Customizing the worldo pervasive data (participants:Gustavo Alonso, Donald Kossmann,Nesime Tatbul, Roger Wattenhoer)

Eternal Sensor Data Store (partici-pants: Karl Aberer, Anastasia Aila-maki).

MICS/FL


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Mountain River Dynamics

This research activity ocuses onenvironmental monitoring or sci-entic purposes using innovativesensors and sensing paradigms.New sensors based on micro totalanalysis systems will be developedand existing sensors will be used inadvanced and innovative ways. Wa-

tershed and permarost, avalancheand landslides, rivers and lakes willbe the target o the research, withthe addition o new areas o inter-est, namely cities and extensivemanmade structures, such as damsand water distribution systems.

With the recent global weathertrends, the environmental sciencesare in desperate need o more dataand more advanced measurements.

The alpine region, in particular, dueto its ragile natural equilibrium,may be particularly exposed toenvironmental changes. This is themain thrust behind the develop-ment o new and more advanceddata collection networks and datainterpretation schemes that canhelp us model, predict, and visual-ize such changes more accuratelyand eectively using mobile sensor

networks.

The members o this consortiumare also involved in other programsocused on the environment. Some

Prototype o the 3D camera rom the AQUA EPFL group.

A measure o the light fight time allows to obtain a three-dimensional image.

STATEMENT FROM PROJECT LEADER:

Sediment management is likely to become a major issue in Alpine coun-tries in the coming years. For instance, in many populated valleys o Swit-zerland, most sediment dams (which trap sediment during foods to avoiddamage to buildings and roads) are lled; dredging operations are veryexpensive and pose substantial ecological problems, which leads local au-thorities to seek alternative approaches to managing sediment on longterm. Although sediment transport has been studied since the late 19th

century, engineers do not have many tools to predict sediment transportrate and most measurement systems used so ar in the eld are quite rudi-mentary. The project aims at providing new tools or monitoring transporto coarse sediment in Alpine rivers and gaining insight into the behavioro sediment under real-fow conditions.

o the highlights include projectssuch as SEC EM&M, the Swiss Ex-periment, APUNCH, ExtremeS,TRAMM, and other programsunded by CCES. The members arevery active in EU projects, such as

MEGAFRAME, where new sensingtopologies or biosensing and 3Denvironmental monitoring are be-ing researched, and PHAROS, wherethe join exploitation o multimodalsensor data is explored.


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SensorScope II

SensorScope is a collaborative proj-ect between environmental andnetwork researchers, which aims atproviding an ecient and inexpen-sive out-o-the-box environmen-tal monitoring system, based on awireless sensor network (WSN).

Based on the previous deployment

experience, the research axes oSensorScope during phase 3 will beto explore new routing algorithms,to reduce energy consumption orlong range communications, toset in-network processing, to orga-nize new deployments, to includepollution monitoring capabilities inthe SensorScope sensing stationsand to pursue the education pro-gram.

The nal goal o the SensorScopeproject is to design a completelyrobust, autonomous, reliable, andfexible environmental monitoringsystem. The system should be fex-ible enough to accommodate di-erent sensors (depending on theconcrete application) and reliablydeliver data under all circumstanc-es. This system will also include im-age capabilities with autonomous

low-power cameras attached to thesensing stations.

The SensorScope project is a keycomponent in the SwissExperiment.It takes also part in two project pro-posals submitted to Nano-Tera: oneconcerns pollution monitoring inbuild environments, and a secondone deals with camera networks. Itis related to two European projects:

WASP, which explores the use osensor network application in roadtransport, elderly care, and herdcontrol, and HYDROSYS, which aimsto provide a system inrastructureto support teams o users in the in-site monitoring o events

STATEMENT FROM PROJECT

LEADER:

In domains such as hydrology andmicro-meteorology, one quicklyaces the challenges o spatial het-erogeneity, as well as the strong di-urnal changes due to solar orcing.Most models attempt to capturethe distributed nature o the land-scape, but the availability o spatio-temporal data as input (initial andboundary conditions) has gener-

ally been lacking. In act, the typicalsituation in hydrology is that thereis at best a single expensive sens-ing station in a large watershed, sothat engineers are conronted withthe problem o making predic-tions without spatial inormation.An easy-to-deploy-and-congureWSN can greatly help in collect-ing the required data: this is whereSensorScope comes into play with

its fexibly networked stations. Ourobjective is to provide a low-cost,reliable WSN-based system or envi-ronmental monitoring, to improvedata collection techniques.


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Permasense III

Cold mountains are sensitive toclimate change. Corresponding re-search and early warning in this en-vironment o extreme lateral vari-ability, however, are data-limiteddue to dicult access and harshconditions. Here, the integrationo robust and reliable distributedmeasurement systems and com-

puter models is the most eectivemeans to achieve signicant prog-ress. In PermaSense I and II (NCCR-MICS phase 2), the scientists pio-neered wireless sensor networks astools or geo-scientists addressingthose questions.

Based on the WSN solution createdor sensing simple phenomena inhazardous environments, the proj-ect will extend this technology or

sensing at high data rates, usingadaptive sampling and lteringtechniques, actuation and real-timecontrol. This will allow transmittinge.g., live images, seismic data, sur-ace geo-electric and high reso-lution raw data traces rom long-term deployments in inaccessibleregions, urther enhancing todaysmodelling capabilities which is a re-quirement or reaching the goal o

data quality and reliability used orearly warning systems.

This project will create technologyand know-how that is applicable to

STATEMENT FROM PROJECT LEADER:

The PermaSense project is a ne example o a working inter-disciplinarycollaboration between inormation technology and geo-science. The long-term environmental monitoring is only beginning to show the rst scien-tic results based on the data gathered in these months, which is a truly

exciting period. With these results we hope to be able to not only increaseour knowledge, but equally contribute to solving a problem o societalimportance. The large team involved is very motivated, hard-working anddedicated. We are thrilled to be able to continue our work in MICS phase 3,concentrating on dierent and more elaborate ways o sensing.

a number o otherdomains in envi-ronmental moni-toring and is linkedto the SwissEx-periment. It is alsoworth mentioningthat several re-searchers on na-tional and interna-tional levels have

expressed theirinterest in using aunctional networksolution.


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page | SEPTEMBER 2009 MICS NEWSLETTER

High Throughput UWB Localization or Mobile Robots STATEMENT FROM PROJECTLEADER:

While many other positioningmethods than UWB-based are read-ily available or indoor localization,they all come with one or severalimportant drawbacks such as cu-mulative error, line-o-sight, low ac-curacy, low update rates, sensitivityto environment, and low battery

lie-time.

We believe that UWB is one poten-tially disruptive technology thatcan overcome these limitations toenable a reliable, scalable, low-cost,and low power localization solu-tion. Such a solution will be o highimportance not only or robots butor a whole range o applicationsthat require tracking o mobilepeople or objects.

In such context, the distributed andmobile robotic platorm that we willconceive within this last phase oMICS will serve as reliable, repeat-able emulator o any other naturalor articial device roaming aroundin the physical space.

In this project, we propose to capitalize on the research and know-howon Ultra Wide Band (UWB) technology as well as distributed mobile robot-ics acquired during previous MICS phases (both within and outside MICSsponsored projects).

The goal is to build a system that allows a team o mobile robots to lo-cate themselves with high precision (order o a ew centimeters), very re-quently (approximately once per second) and securely, in order to perormcollaborative actions on a two dimensional working area, such as distrib-

uted cleaning, search, coverage, or mapping.

In addition to the above goal, the project will also ocus on the develop-ment o low power implementations o integrated circuits at the emitterlevel and localization algorithms that merge the UWB-based ranging in-ormation with urther sensing and positioning signals available on the ro-botic platorms. Energy harvesting concepts will also be developed withinthis project to provide complete energy autonomy to the UWB transmit-ters.

Consequently, this project aims to outperorm current localization systemsby overcoming the shortcomings o present indoor localization technolo-

gies and providing reliable positioning inormation to multiple, potential-ly very smalland resource-constrainedmobile ob-

jects. It mightalso lead tothe develop-ment o novelsolutions andi n t e g r a t e d

circuits morea m e n a b l eto real-lieimplementa-tions.


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Observability by Design

The key objective o the proposedresearch project is to increase theobservability o sensor networks.This is motivated by the act thatsensor networks are deeply em-bedded into the physical world inorder to in-situ monitor real-world

phenomena.

The resulting close interaction be-tween the real world and an em-bedded sensor network entailsmany challenges. In particular, thedynamics o a real-world environ-ment negatively aects sensornodes (e.g., physical strain) and ra-

STATEMENT FROM PROJECTLEADER:

We experiment with sensor net-works or almost 10 years now.While during that time technologyhas improved much, one aspectremained particularly challeng-ing: Deploying and operating largesensor networks in a reliable way.Usually it is dicult or almost im-

possible to learn which nodes orlinks are malunctioning or wherea particular problem is located ithe application doesnt behave asexpected.

Our project should help to over-come that annoying situation andthus contribute to an easier use osensor networks. While previousattempts to deal with the problemmerely provided ad-hoc solutions

to specic cases, we intend to ap-proach the observation problemo sensor networks in a systematicway.

dio communication between them,oten leading to ailure o the sen-sor network to meet applicationgoals. The ability to observe theinternal state o the deployed net-work and nodes rom the outside isa crucial prerequisite or detecting,analyzing, and eliminating suchproblems.

Although selected systems have

been successully deployed, themore undamental principles be-hind observability are not well un-derstood in a general context. Thenovelty o the project lies in theact that we consider observabilityas a primary goal that drives the de-sign o a sensor network rom theoutset.


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Cryptography or Ubiquitous Computing

BLAKE: a SHA-3 candidate hash unction


The cryptography to be developedhas the potential or standardiza-tion and implementation in indus-trial products. The expected workon protocols is applicable to access

control and identication (e-iden-tity).

Some achievements o this projectwill be o direct use or high secu-rity applications in Swiss industry.It is anticipated that design and se-cure implementation o lightweightcryptography will remain challeng-ing topics beyond MICS phase 3.

In many applications, an appropri-ate level o security and privacy iso importance. For this purpose,established cryptography eitherappears to be costly rom a compu-tational point o view, has turnedout to be insecure, or has not beenproperly adapted to the devices at

hand.

The aim o this project is to developnew ecient designs and proto-cols or adequate encryption andauthentication in constrained en-vironments like sensor networks,to analyze their resistance againstattacks, and to provide optimizedproo-o-concept implementationso the newly proposed methodson a variety o popular lightweight

processors.

The need or new designs has be-come acute due to recent attackson nearly all o the commonly usedhash unctions. New methods andnew ideas that have not been pres-ent beore are required. Work in thisarea is particularly important dueto the very rapid market penetra-

tion o small electronic devices thatrequire adequate inormation pro-tection measures.

This project has links to the EU-FP7 NoE ECRYPTII project, wherelightweight cryptography as wellas hash unctions are ocus topics,and where the applicants are part-ners or associate members. In ad-dition, design and analysis o hashunctions is linked to the NIST SHA-

3 project.


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Design, Analysis, and Implementation oSecurity Protocols or Wireless Networks (SecWiN)

Sample response o an RFID tag embedded in new electronic

passports to a burst challenge. The response enables the iden-

tication o individual passports and their countries o issuance

and thus supports passport cloning detection.


LEADER:

The SecWin project is a continua-tion o our research eorts in theVerSePro project and the extensiono the project with the System Se-curity Group at ETH Zurich, led byS. apkun.

We aim to go the ull distance rommethodologies and tools or pro-

tocol design to new protocols com-plete with security proos and toworking implementations and op-timizations o them.

The main goal o this project is toprovide MICS with a set o correctlyproved and implemented securityprotocols or wireless networks,along with methods and tool sup-port or such verication.

The research directions include thedesign and development o the ol-lowing protocols or securing wire-

less networks: secure neighbor-hood discovery, secure positioningin all-wireless networks, privacy inwireless networking applications,and secure broadcast authentica-tion protocols. It is also planned todevelop protocols or secure time

synchronization, device identica-tion, and anti-jamming communi-cation.

ects AVANTSSAR and DEPLOY, theZurich Inormation Security Center,the SNF project on secure localiza-tion and location privacy, and proj-ects o each o the three investiga-tors (Basin, Capkun, Hubaux) withNokia at the new Nokia research

center at EPFL.

There is the potentialor technology transerrelated to practicallyall aspects o this proj-ect, rom new securityprotocols to the evalu-ation o tools and dem-onstrators. Technologytranser examples in-

clude saety and envi-ronmental applications(such as securing envi-ronmental monitoringsystems), protection ocritical inrastructures,secure data harvest-ing, location-based ac-cess control (e.g., to a-cilities), and tracking ovaluables.

The project is linked toother programs in manyways. This includes theEU 7th Framework proj-


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CUSTOMS: Customizing the world o pervasive data


LEADER:

MICS has done great work in thepast years developing a better un-derstanding or wireless systems,ad-hoc networks, and sensors. Inthis project we plan to consolidatethat knowledge and put it in prac-tice in realistic settings that go be-yond scientic applications.

Our targets are social networksand inormation dissemination at a

global scale. In doing this, we wouldlike to reach out to a larger pool opotential users and also bring MICSresults closer to industry and com-mercialization.

All the groups participating in thisinitiative are involved in numer-ous other projects (local projects,direct collaboration with industry,EU projects) that are related to thegoals o this eort. To mention oneo them, there is a collaborationwith Siemens on the digital home

project that has been instrumen-tal to shape some o the scientistsideas.

The project intends to provide ageneric distribution and data pro-cessing platorm or pervasive data

consumed in real time by bothpeople and applications througha mesh o networks and devices. Itwill ocus primarily on data gath-ered through sensors and monitor-ing systems. Furthermore, it will usethe application oriented projects oMICS phase 3 to provide sotwaresolutions in the orm o tools andsupport or data distribution anddissemination.

The project will exploit new archi-tectural possibilities such as virtual-ization and the notion o Sotwareas a Service. It will also work under

the assumption o permanent net-work access either through a xednetwork or through wireless chan-

nels, including cellular networks.Under those assumptions, the proj-ect will concentrate on the type osotware platorm and hardwaredevices that can best support thenotion o personalized pervasivedata.

The main target applications arelarge sensor, monitoring, and datagathering systems that need to be

seamlessly connected to a mul-titude o users and subscribers,through a wide range o commu-nication channels, and where dataprocessing on the fy is needed.


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Eternal Sensor Data Store

Large amounts o sensor datastreams will be generated throughthe growing use o wireless sen-sor networks, mobile devices andWeb applications. An importantproblem will be trusted, long-termstorage and preservation o thegenerated sensor data. This re-quires reliable storage, ecient ac-

cess, and support or data analysisand data provenance. Developingspecial purpose data managementplatorms or each application will

not scale with rapidly growing andchanging storage demands withthe growing number o sensor net-work deployments.

Building on previous work in MICSon peer-to-peer data management,sensor data management and se-mantic interoperability and tak-ing into account experiences romreal sensor network deployments

in environmental science that aregathered currently in particular inthe Swiss Experiment, the projectpropose to develop concepts and


Scientists today manage their sen-sor data either using tools devel-oped or business needs (in the

good case) or in ad-hoc ways andmanually (in the bad case). Recentdevelopments show that systemsor managing large scale databasesbecome increasingly domain-spe-cic, such as or web search or busi-ness intelligence.Huge perormance benets can bereaped rom understanding andexploiting the domain-specicproperties o the data generated

by sensor networks. We will explorethese benets and so provide tothe applications in MICS highly per-orming sensor data managementsystems.

prototypes or scalable, sharedplatorms or long term sensor datapreservation.

This project will be perormed inclose collaboration with groupsdeploying sensor networks or realapplications, such as SensorScope,the Swiss Experiment or BuildingMonitoring. Such groups are in ur-gent demand o a solution or reli-

able, fexible yet inexpensive andeasy to use long term storage andprovide a rich set o realistic re-quirements.

Model-based data stream management. This gure illustrates the management o distributed sensor

data streams using predictive models. When values o a data stream at remote node can be derived

rom other sensor data streams available at the same node using a model (e.g. S3 can be derived romS2 at node N3), the values o the data stream need not to be transmitted as long as the originator node

can veriy that the model values are correct (in the example N2 has not to transmit values o S3 to N3).

In that way communication cost can be substantially reduced. Similarly, using models storage require-

ments can be reduced by storing the model parameters instead o directly the raw data.


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OTHER PERSPECTIVES

FOR THE MICS CENTER...

SNF contribution tobolstering the economy

In February, the Federal Councildecided to submit to parliament aproposal or an additional CHF 700million to stabilise the economy. Othis amount, CHF 10 million are ear-marked or the Swiss National Sci-ence Foundation which intends to

use the money to boost knowledgeand technology transer throughthe National Centres o Compe-tence in Research.

Research unding by the SNF isaimed at long-term economic andsocial eects and is undamentallynot suitable or measures aimed atbolstering the economy. However,the National Centres o Compe-tence in Research (NCCR) currently

represent an interesting area oradditional investment: many othe rst round o ourteen NCCRsare now showing impressive suc-cesses in knowledge and technol-ogy transer ater eight years oresearch.

In 2009, as they enter their nalour-year unding phase, the SNFcan only provide 50% on average o

the previous nancing. This meansthat the potential or implementa-tion cannot be ully exploited.

Funding rom the ederal govern-

ments stabilization program shouldenable them to launch additionalapplication and transer projects(e.g. development o prototypes)promising a swit multiplicator e-ect in the economy.

The SNF will, however, only undthose high-calibre projects whichcan be launched in 2009 or, at thelatest, by the beginning o 2010.

Additionally, they must be suited,at least in the medium term, or ad-ditional private sector investmentin technology and product devel-opment.

For MICS, the stabilization programwill in particular help the ollowingprojects: StreamForge GmbH (Rog-er Wattenhoer, Pascal von Ricken-bach - CHF 300000), SensorScopeSrl (Martin Vetterli, Sudharshini

Ariarajah - CHF 420000), Univer-sitt Zrich / Art o Technology AG(Jan Beutel, Stephan Gruber / RolSchmid - CHF 320000) and Shock-sh SA (Joachim Buhmann, RogerMeier - CHF 180000).

*****

The MICS Spin Fund

Until now, the NCCR-MICS hasgranted our Spin Funds. These pro-vide the complete salary or one or

two persons teaming, or up to 12months and 20kCHF or material.This program will be pursued withthe MICS phase 3. It will be even amajor ocus or the Center.The MICS Spin Fund aims at oster-ing the creation o economic valueout o the Center-related technolo-gies, through the creation o start-ups or the generation o intellec-

tual property (IP) business.

All technologies, IP and know-howclose to MICS technical ocus willbe considered, provided they havebeen generated by a laboratory orby any other activity, including ex-ternal, having a strong link with aMICS laboratory.

*****

Panel Visit

The Panel Visit is held this year atEPF Lausanne on 15 and 16 Sep-tember. It will ocus on the ull pro-posal or the MICS Phase 3.


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Swisscom and the EPF Lausannebegan a partnership, inaugurated

on July 8th at an ofcial ceremo-ny. This collaboration should en-

able both institutions to carry outjoint projects and promote the ex-

change o inormation, researchactivities and innovation.

The partnership between EPFL andSwisscom is based on a letter ointent signed in 2009 and a uturecontract that will establish a fex-ible collaboration. Two employeeso Swisscom have thus installedtheir oce - the Swisscom Lablet -on EPFL campus. As a rst step, thecollaboration will ocus on networkinrastructure and improved ser-vice.

EPFL, A FLAGSHIP FOR SWISSCOM

The eld o work will concentrateon IP network dierentiation, saysDaniel Rodellar, Head o Develop-ment. We have also two new pro-posals on network dierentiationor multimedia streams.

Some discussions have already oc-cured, among which one regardingthe SensorScope project and onewith Pro. Jean-Pierre Hubaux on

wireless security. The NCCR-MICSis therore directly concerned withthis partnership as it could involvesome o its communication proj-ects.

The key challenge is to combinetwo worlds, one thinking technol-ogy, the other talking product,says Walter Steinlin, Head o TrendScouting and Academic Relations,Strategy and Innovation at Swiss-

com. Concretely, the company islooking or applications that cantake advantage o its inrastructureand that leverage its diversity. It isalso interested in supplementarynetwork unctionalities.

In exchange? Swisscom oers itsexperience, its knowledge o users,some opportunities or students(or example, internships), opera-

tional data.

For Adrienne Corboud, EPFL Vice-President or Innovation and Tech-nology Transer, It is good that acompany like Swisscom chooseEPFL to pursue its innovation ob-

jectives. Because innovation hasindeed become undamental orthe Swiss operator.

FLorenCe Luy

Awards - Awards - Awards

The Best Paper Award was given to Proessor Jean-Yves Le Boudec, to his doctoral student Nikodin Ristanovic(both rom EPFL) and to Augustine Chaintreau, rom the Laboratories Thomson, at the annual conerence ACMSigmetrics 2009, or their research entitled The Age o Gossip: Spatial Mean Field Regime.

During the International Conerence on Systems o Mobile Data Management (MDM 2009), the demo GSNMiddleware or Streaming World conceived by Ali Salehi (EPFL), Mehdi Riahi (Isahan University o Technology,

Iran), Karl Aberer and Sebastian Michel (EPFL) received the Best Demo Award.

Satish Babu Korada (LTHC) and Eren Sasoglu (LTHI) have received a Best Student Paper Award at ISIT 2009 inSeoul or their paper Polar codes: characterization o exponent, bounds, and constructions (co-authored withR. Urbanke).


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An event or the 1000th Internet girl

A thousand! The Equal Opportunities Oce at EPF Lausanne celebrated the thousandth participant to the courseInternet or girls, aimed to attract students rom 10 to 13 years in this eld. The girls go to the School eleven Sat-urdays morning in order to develop their own website. For the rst time this year, a course was set up in Delmont(Jura). To celebrate this success, EPFL organized an event on June 20 on the theme Exploring Science.

Alain Herzog

On July 12, two young men died atthe Grand Combin, in the Swiss Alps.One o them, Patrick Denantes, col-laborated to the MICS Center. Since2007, he was a doctoral assistantat the Computer Communicationsand Applications Laboratory (Insti-tute o Communication Systems),at EPFL.

Previously, he had obtained his

M.S. in EE-Systems at the Univer-sity o Michigan and his Dipl.-Ing.Degree in Electrical Engineering atthe TU Munich. His research inter-

A MICS COLLABORATORDIES IN THE SWISS ALPS

ests ocused, among other topics,on social networks and on complexnetworks.

The other victim was Julien Geller,a graduate student rom EPFL. Allour thoughts go to Patrick, Julienand to their amily.

FL


15/17


Swiss Experiment scienceproject is approved

In its meeting o June 10, basedon a recommendation by the ETHZurich research commission, theCCES Steering Board approved CHF400000 or the Swiss Experimentscience project or two years. Thenancial means or this activityhad been reserved by the Steering

Board when approving the SwissExperiment research platorm in2008.

The science part o the Swiss Ex-periment complements the inra-structure project by contributingto a better understanding o land-atmosphere interactions in themountains and based on this animproved warning rom hydrologi-cal hazards.

CoMM.

A new industrial liaison ocer

The MICS Center welcomes a new industrial liaison ocer: Roland Pestysucceeds to Max Monti.

Roland Pesty has more than 27 years experience in inormation technol-ogy. His proessional background is ocused on innovation management,with dierent and complementary responsibilities: managing director,business development director, alliance manager, consultant in strategyand co-ounder o start-ups. His expertise has been developed and provenin multi-cultural environments, both at the strategic and operational lev-

els.

Roland Pesty is an entrepreneur, a leader, a manager o change and is al-ways ocused on results. He is well linked to innovations networks. He hasa good work ethic and his strongly attached to the principles o honesty,loyalty and solidarity.

The MICS team wishes him the best or this new proessional challenge!


16/17


NEW PUBLICATIONSJournal papers:

Niclass, C.; Favi, C.; Kluter, T.; Mon-nier, F.; Charbon, E., Single-PhotonSynchronous Detection, Journal oSolid-State Circuits, Volume 44, Is-sue 7, July 2009.

Gersbach, M.; Richardson, J.; Nicla-

ss, C.; Grant, L.; Henderson, R.; Char-bon, E., Low-Noise Single-Photon De-tectors in 130-nm CMOS Technology,Solid-State Electronics, Volume 53,Issue 7, July 2009, Pages 803-808.

Gersbach, M.; Boiko, D. L.; Niclass,C.; Petersen, C.; Charbon, E., FastFluorescence Dynamics in Non-ra-tiometric Calcium Indicators, OpticsLetters, June 2009, vol. 34, no 3, p.362-364.

Ancey, C.; Cochard, S., The dam-break problem or Herschel-Bulkleyviscoplastic uids down steep umes,Journal o Non-Newtonian FluidMechanics, Volume 158, Issues 1-3,May 2009.

S. Cochard, C. Ancey, Experimen-tal investigation o the spreading o

viscoplastic uids on inclined planes,

Journal o Non-Newtonian FluidMechanics, Volume 158, Issues 1-3,May 2009. C. Ancey, S. Cochard, N. Andreini,The dam-break problem or viscous

uids in the high-capillary-numberlimit, Journal o Fluid Mechanics,Vol. 624, no 1, 2009.

Conerence papers:

Korada, Satish Babu; Urbanke, Ru-diger, Polar Codes are Optimal orLossy Source Coding, ITW; Taormina,october 11-16.

Zhou, Y; Salehi, A; Aberer, K, Scal-able Delivery o Stream Query Result,35th International Conerence onVery Large Data Bases; Lyon, France,August 24-28, 2009.

Richardson, J.; Walker, R.; Grant, L.;Stoppa, D.; Borghetti, F.; Charbon,E.; Gersbach, M.; Henderson, R. K.,A 32x32 50ps Resolution 10 bit Time

to Digital Converter Array in 130nmCMOS or time Correlated Imaging,

International Image Sensor Work-shop; Bergen, 25-28 June 2009. Piorkowski, Michal, Sampling Ur-ban Mobility through On-line Re-

positories o GPS Tracks, The 1stACM International Workshop onHot Topics o Planet-scale MobilityMeasurements, HotPlanet; Krakow,Poland, June 22, 2009.

Achanta, Radhakrishna; He-

mami, Sheila; Estrada, Francisco;Ssstrunk, Sabine, Frequency-tunedSalient Region Detection, IEEE Inter-national Conerence on ComputerVision and Pattern Recognition;

Three NCCRs participateto Telecom 09

International TelecommunicationUnion (ITU) Telecom World is heldthis year in Geneva rom 5 to 10October. The meeting is devoted tothe global telecommunication andinormation communication tech-nology.

The three NCCRs MICS, QP andMaNEP organize together an eventon Quantum Leap or Telecommu-nications - Today and Tomorrow,on Thursday 8 October, rom 4 pmto 6 pm. It will gather participantsrom the industry, start-up and re-search sectors.

The guest speakers will includeJacques Neirynck, National Coun-selor, Proessor at EPFL; Erwan Bi-

gan, Director o R&D, Swisscom;Ueli Maurer or Stean Wol, Cryp-tography, Proessors ETHZ; GabyLenhart, Senior Research Ocer atthe European TelecommunicationsStandards Institute (ETSI); GrgoireRibordy, CEO o id-Quantique;Nicolas Gisin, Proessor, Universityo Geneva.

An artistic perormance using su-

perconducting levitation will con-clude the happening.

FL


17/17


Editor : Florence LuyMail : [email protected]

The National Centres o Competence

in Research are a research instrument

o the Swiss National Science Foundation

EPFL IC NCCR MICS

Station 14CH-1015 Lausanne

Tel +41 (0)21 693 8106

Fax +41 (0)21 693 8140

www.mics.org | [email protected]

Miami Beach, Florida, June 20-25,2009.

Heiko Sturzrehm, Pascal Fel-ber, Christo Fetzer, TM-STREAM:an STM Framework or DistributedEvent Stream Processing, 11th In-ternational Workshop on Java andComponents or Parallelism, Distri-bution and Concurrency, Roma, 25May 09.

Jan S. Rellermeyer, Michael Duller,Gustavo Alonso, Engineering theCloud rom Sotware Modules, Work-shop on Sotware EngineeringChallenges in Cloud Computing inconjunction with ICSE 2009, Van-couver, Canada, May 23 2009.

Freudiger, Julien; Vratonjic, Neve-na; Hubaux, Jean-Pierre, TowardsPrivacy-Friendly Online Advertising,

IEEE Web 2.0 Security and Privacy;Oakland, Caliornia, May 21.

Salehi, Ali; Riahi, Mehdi; Michel,Sebastian; Aberer, Karl, KnowingWhen to Slide: Ecient Scheduling

or Sliding Window Processing, 10thInternational Conerence on Mo-bile Data Management (MDM 09);Taipei, May 18-21 2009.

Hormati, Ali; Roy, Olivier; Lu, YueM.; Vetterli, Martin, Distributed Sens-ing o Sparse Signals under a Sparse

Filtering Model, 8th InternationalConerence on Sampling Theory

and Applications (SAMPTA); Mar-seille, France, May 18-22, 2009.

Lochmatter, Thomas; Martinoli, Al-cherio, Theoretical Analysis o ThreeBio-Inspired Plume Tracking Algo-rithms, IEEE International Coner-ence on Robotics and Automation(ICRA 2009); Kobe, Japan, May 12-17.

Markus Waelchli, Reto Zurbuchen,Thomas Staub, Torsten Braun, Grav-ity-based Local Clock Synchroniza-tion in Wireless Sensor Networks,Networking 2009, Aachen, 11 - 16May 2009.

Kolundzija, Mihailo; Faller, Christo;Vetterli, Martin, Spatio-TemporalGradient Analysis o Diferential Mi-

crophone Arrays, AES 126th Con-vention; Munich, May 7-10, 2009.

Kolundzija, Mihailo; Faller, Christo;Vetterli, Martin, Sound Field Recon-struction: An Improved Approach

For Wave Field Synthesis, AES 126thConvention; Munich, May 7-10.

CONFERENCES

9th International Conerence on

Peer-to-Peer Computing, Seattle,Washington, USA, 8-11 September.

First International Conerence onAd Hoc Networks (Adhocnets 2009),

Niagara Falls, USA, 23-25 Sept.

34th IEEE Conerence on LocalComputer Networks (LCN), Zrich,22-23 Oct.

7th ACM Conerence on Embed-ded Networked Sensor Systems,Berkeley, Caliornia, 4-6 November.

European Conerence on Wire-

less Sensor Networks , Coimbra,Portugal, 1-19 February 2010.

Inos on http://ewsn2010.uc.pt/

th ACM Conerence on Embed-ded Networked Sensor Systems,

ETH Zurich, 3-5 November 2010.

mics newsletter sept09

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