Harvard CS144r/244r

Fall 2008

Parallel and Distributed Computing on Wireless Backplane

M, W 2:30-4, MD 223

Instructor: H. T. Kung

This course examines applications and systems which operate on mobile computation nodes connected by wireless ad-hoc networks. Concurrent computation over such ad-hoc wireless backplanes is a novel and interesting approach. Its inherent advantages, compared to systems based on wired interconnection, include flexibility in deployment and convenience in broadcasting data and control over the wireless medium. There are, however, challenges related to reliability and bandwidth limitations in wireless communication. Rapid advances in wireless technologies in recent years have provided new opportunities in addressing these challenges. The coursework will involve survey of related literature; design and implementation of protocols and algorithms; application and system building; lab experiments; and project presentations. Depending on their interests and background, students may focus on a subset of these tasks. Example course projects could be "wireless sorting of billion items," "wireless focus group," "integration of social and physical networking over Wi-Fi," "parallel face detection over wireless," and "simulated annealing with wireless pruning."