Since the VUB server had mail problems which may
have disturbed my initial announcement, I am
sending this again. Apologies if you receive
multiple copies...
You are hereby invited to a two-part seminar in
our sixth interdisciplinary
<http://ecco.vub.ac.be/?q=node/108>series on
Evolution, Complexity and Cognition (ECCO):
Topic:
Wilfried Elmenreich:
Robustness of Self-organizing Systems
Christian Bettstetter:
Synchronization and Dissemination in Self-Organizing Communication Networks
Time:
Thursday, Oct. 1, 2-5 pm.
Place:
Room B 0.036 (building B, level 0, close to the
human sciences computer rooms), on the
<http://www.vub.ac.be/english/infoabout/campuses/index.html>VUB
Campus Etterbeek (Brussels, Belgium), in
collaboration with MOSI. Coffee and drinks are
available. Free entrance: everybody welcome!
Abstracts:
Robustness of Self-Organizing Systems
<http://wwwu.uni-klu.ac.at/welmenre>Wilfried Elmenreich
(University of Klagenfurt, Austria)
A system is robust if it continues to function
when it it is subjected to perturbations, errors,
and even directed attacks. Most of the systems we
find in nature, such as organisms, ecosystems and
animal societies, are very robust. Traditionally
engineered systems, on the other hand, break down
very easily. What distinguishes these natural
systems from the artificial ones is
self-organization: their global functioning
emerges spontaneously from local interactions
between the components. No single component is
"in charge", and the organization is distributed
over the whole of the components. This makes the
system much less vulnerable to one or a few
components malfunctioning. This talk will explore
the general conditions that make a
self-organizing system robust, with particular
focus on how we can implement these conditions in
technological systems, such as communication
networks, so as to make them more robust.
Synchronization and Dissemination in Self-Organizing Communication Networks
<http://www.bettstetter.com/>Christian Bettstetter
(University of Klagenfurt, Austria)
Communication networks interconnect an increasing
number and diversity of entities, such as mobile
devices, wearable computers, sensors, and
embedded systems. This trend poses new challenges
to the design and operation of networking
algorithms and protocols. In particular, the
increased system dynamics demands for
adaptability, distributed operation, and
autoconfiguration. One approach to these
challenges is to increase the level of
self-organization in networks, i.e. to design
network functions in a way that centralized
control is avoided and the desired behavior of
the overall system emerges from local
interactions between the individual entities. In
this talk, we present two issues in
self-organizing communication networks:
synchronization and information dissemination.
The first part of the talk is about
synchronization in wireless networks, more
precisely on the synchronization of periodically
repeating "time slots". Such slot synchronization
is an essential building block for medium access,
scheduling of sleep phases, and collaborative
sensing, to give some examples. Having been
inspired by the biological phenomenon of
synchronous flashing of fireflies, we have
developed a method for self-organizing slot
synchronization in wireless systems. It is based
on the theory of pulse-coupled oscillators, but
goes beyond this theory - from an engineering
perspective - by taking into account inherent
characteristics and capabilities of radio
communications. The talk presents the basic ideas
and shows some performance results.
The second part of the talk is about information dissemination in networks.
A fundamental technique for information
dissemination is flooding, used e.g. in wireless
ad hoc networks and peer-to-peer networks. In its
most simple form, flooding leads to many
redundant and unnecessary transmissions. An
optimization goal is to minimize the number of
transmissions while still achieving "global
outreach" of the sent message. Modeling a network
as a random graph with given link probability
between nodes, we ask: What is the minimum
message forwarding probability of the nodes such
that a flooding message reaches each network node
with high probability? We show how to derive this
probability using techniques from stochastics and
graph theory.
Speaker bio:
Christian Bettstetter is professor and head of
the Networked and Embedded Systems institute at
the University of Klagenfurt. His main interests
are in mobile wireless networking, network
theory, and self-organization. He is also
scientific director and founder of Lakeside Labs
GmbH, a research and technology platform on
self-organizing networked systems.
He studied electrical engineering and information
technology at the Technische Universität München
(TUM), receiving the Dipl.-Ing. degree in 1998.
After a research stay at the University of Notre
Dame, Christian joined the institute of
communication networks at TUM, where he was a
staff member until 2003. His doctoral thesis on
ad hoc networks was awarded the Dr.-Ing (summa
cum laude) degree in 2004. Before becoming a
professor, Christian was a senior researcher at
DoCoMo Euro-Labs for two years, doing research on
medium access and ad hoc networks. Publications
received the 2008 best paper award at the IEEE
Vehicular Technology Conference and the 2004
outstanding paper award from the German ITG. He
also co-authored the Wiley textbook 'GSM -
Architecture, protocols and services.'
Relevant publications:
Sérgio Crisóstomo, Udo Schilcher, Christian
Bettstetter, and João Barros. Analysis of
Probabilistic Flooding: How do we Choose the
Right Coin? In Proc. IEEE Intern. Conf. on
Communications (ICC), Dresden, Germany, June
14-18, 2009
http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ICC.2009.5198745
Alexander Tyrrell, Gunther Auer, and Christian
Bettstetter. Biologically Inspired
Synchronization for Wireless Networks. In
Advances in Biologically Inspired Information
Systems: Models, Methods, and Tools, Eds. Falko
Dressler and Iacopo Carreras, in Series: Studies
in Computational Intelligence, Springer, vol. 69,
pp. 47-62, 2007.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-72693-7_3
Christian Prehofer and Christian Bettstetter.
Self-Organization in Communication Networks:
Principles and Design Paradigms. IEEE
Communications Magazine, Feature Topic on
Advances in Self-Organizing Networks, vol. 43,
no. 7, pp. 78-85, July 2005.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/MCOM.2005.1470824
Upcoming Seminars
8 Oct.
Jean-Paul Delahaye (Université des Sciences et Technologies de Lille):
Complexité de Kolmogorov et profondeur logique de Bennett
15 Oct.
Francis Heylighen (VUB):
Life is an adventure! An evolutionary-cybernetic
unification of narrative and scientific worldviews
22 Oct.
Clément Vidal (VUB):
Metaphilosophical criteria for worldview comparison
29 Oct.
Jon Echanove (EASE):
Leadership and human experience
5 Nov.
David R. Weinbaum (Tel Aviv Univ.):
Thoughts on the future of human evolution
12 Nov.
Petter Braathen (Memetix, Oslo):
How do social systems relate to paradox?
19 Nov. (postponed from Sep. 24)
Hector Zenil (University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne)
Is algorithmic the nature of Nature?
More info about the ECCO seminar program: http://ecco.vub.ac.be/?q=node/108
--
Francis Heylighen
Evolution, Complexity and Cognition group
Free University of Brussels
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/HEYL.html
"... a wealth of information creates a
poverty of attention" - Herbert A. Simon
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Simon>
