Project Title

NSF CAREER: Exploiting Sensing Diversity and Conquering Communication Reality to Meet User Requirements in Performance-critical Wireless Sensor Networks

Project Description

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are an important new class of networked systems that integrate sensing, communication, and computation capabilities on a single, inexpensive platform. The significant scale and deep integration with their environments enable WSNs to monitor the physical world and human subjects with unprecedented spatial and temporal granularity. Although first-generation WSNs were designed primarily for best-effort information gathering, they are increasingly deployed for numerous performance-critical application domains, such as security enforcement and military surveillance, natural and physical hazard detection, smart healthcare and assisted living, depression detection and social networking, etc. The WSNs designed for these performance-critical applications must achieve user requirements on both sensing and communication performance, such as high detection probabilities, low false alarm rates, and bounded time delays and throughputs. Failure to meet these requirements often leads to undesirable or even catastrophic consequences.

However, in order to meet such performance requirements, convenient, but unrealistic, sensing and communication properties cannot be assumed. In a real deployment, both the sensing diversity, i.e., the sensing capability differences among individual sensors or sensor clusters in the deployment, and the lossy, irregular, and heterogeneous WSN communication reality must be addressed. Three research thrusts are proposed to exploit sensing diversity and conquer communication reality so as to ensure user-requested sensing and communication performance in performance-critical WSNs. They are (1) exploiting sensing diversity to ensure sensing performance; (2) ensuring radio-agnostic multi-hop communication performance; and (3) utilizing results of accurate sensing to increase communication efficiency.

Personnel

1. Gang Zhou, faculty
2. Yongsen Ma, PhD student
3. Hongyang Zhao, PhD student
4. Amanda Watson, PhD student, woman student
5. Shuangquan Wang, PhD student
6. Woosub Jung, PhD student
7. Minglong Sun, PhD student
8. Kyle Wallace, PhD student, graduated in 2018, PhD dissertation title: Understanding and Enriching Randomness Within Resource-Constrained Devices, initial placement at MITRE
9. Qing Yang, PhD student, graduated in 2018, PhD dissertation title: Exploiting Power for Smartphone Security and Privacy, initial placement at Gemalto
10. Ge Peng, PhD student, woman student, graduated in 2017, PhD dissertation title: Enhancing Energy Efficiency and Privacy Protection of Smart Devices, initial placement at Google
11. David Nguyen, PhD student, graduated in 2016, PhD dissertation title: Enhancing Mobile Device System Using Information from Users and Upper Layers, initial placement at Facebook as Research Scientist
12. Daniel Graham, PhD student, minority student, graduated in 2016, PhD dissertation title: Enhancing the Sensing Capabilities of Mobile and Embedded Systems, initial placement at Microsoft, now Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia
13. Xin Qi, PhD student, graduated in 2015, PhD dissertation title: Improving Context Recognition and Leveraging Context Awareness in Mobile Systems, initial placement at VMware
14. Xiaoran Peng, Master student, graduated in 2018
15. Andrew Lyubovsky, undergraduate student
16. Jeffrey Buffkin, undergraduate student
17. Fei He, undergraduate student, woman student
18. Benjamin Powell, undergraduate student, graduated in 2018 with “Honor”, his Honored Undergraduate thesis title is “Turning Detection in Sandbar Sharks through Accelerometer Data”
19. George Stathopoulos, high school student

Publications

1. TennisEye: Tennis Ball Speed Estimation using a Racket-mounted Motion Sensor, Hongyang Zhao, Shuangquan Wang, Gang Zhou, Woosub Jung, The 18th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN), Montreal, Canada, 2019 (TennisEye Dataset)
2. WiFi Sensing with Channel State Information: A Survey, Yongsen Ma, Gang Zhou, Shuangquan Wang, ACM Computing Surveys, 2019
3. IoT Botnet Detection via Power Consumption Modeling, Woosub Jung, Hongyang Zhao, Minglong Sun, Gang Zhou, ACM/IEEE Conference on Connected Health: Applications, Systems and Engineering Technologies (CHASE), Washington D.C., 2019
4. QoE Control for Dynamic Adaptive Video Streaming over HTTP at Access Point, Yukun Yuan, Shan Lin, Gang Zhou, the Second IEEE International Conference on Industrial Internet (ICII), 2019
5. BBAid: Using Smartwatches to Improve Back Blows, Amanda Watson, Gang Zhou, Elsevier Smart Health Journal, 2019
6. Turning Detection in Sandbar Sharks Through Accelerometer Data, Benjamin Powell, Gang Zhou, Daniel Crear, Kevin Weng, Wouter Deconinck, Shen X., Lin X., Zhang K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Wireless Networks, Springer, 2019
7. SignFi: Sign Language Recognition using WiFi, Yongsan Ma, Gang Zhou
   Yongsen Ma, Gang Zhou, Shuangquan Wang, Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies (IMWUT). Also presented at ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (Ubicomp), Singapore, 2018 (SignFi Dataset)
8. CADET: A Collaborative and Distributed Entropy Transfer Protocol, Kyle Wallace, Gang Zhou, Kun Sun, IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS), Austria, 2018
9. Eating Detection and Chews Counting through Sensing Mastication Muscle Contraction, Shuangquan Wang, Gang Zhou, Yongsen Ma, Lisha Hu, Zhenyu Chen, Yiqiang Chen, Hongyang Zhao, Woosub Jung, ACM/IEEE Conference on Connected Health: Applications, Systems and Engineering Technologies (CHASE), Washington, D.C., 2018
10. Ultigesture: A Wristband-based Platform for Continuous Gesture Control in Healthcare, Hongyang Zhao, Shuangquan Wang, Gang Zhou, Daqing Zhang, Elsevier Smart Health Journal, 2018
11. MobiGesture: Mobility-Aware Hand Gesture Recognition for Healthcare, Hongyang Zhao, Yongsen Ma, Shuangquan Wang, Amanda Watson, Gang Zhou, ACM/IEEE Conference on Connected Health: Applications, Systems and Engineering Technologies (CHASE), Washington, D.C., 2018
12. Using Data Augmentation in Continuous Authentication on Smartphones, Yantao Li, Hailong Hu, Gang Zhou, IEEE Internet of Things Journal, 2018
13. Sensor-based Continuous Authentication Using Cost-Effective Kernel Ridge Regression, Yantao Li, Hailong Hu, Gang Zhou, Shaojiang Deng, IEEE Access, 2018
14. BreathEZ: Using Smartwatches to Improve Choking First Aid, Amanda Watson, Gang Zhou, Elsevier Smart Health Journal, 2018
15. Pedestrian Walking Safety System based on Smartphone Built-in Sensors, Yantao Li, Fengtao Xue, Xinqi Fan, Zehui Qiu, Gang Zhou, IET Research Journals, 2018
16. A Video Optimization Framework for Tracking Teachers in the Classroom, Lele Ma, Yantao Li, Gang Zhou, The Second ACSIC Symposium on Frontiers in Computing (SoFC), Dallas, 2018
17. USB Side-channel Attack on Tor, Qing Yang, Paolo Gasti, Kiran Balagani, Yantao Li, Gang Zhou, Elsevier Computer Networks (COMNET), 2018
18. RoFi: Rotation-aware WiFi Channel Feedback, Yongsen Ma, Gang Zhou, Shan Lin, Haiming Chen, IEEE Internet of Things Journal, 2017
19. Gesture-enabled Remote Control for Healthcare, Hongyang Zhao, Shuangquan Wang, Gang Zhou, Daqing Zhang, ACM/IEEE Conference on Connected Health: Applications, Systems and Engineering Technologies (CHASE), Philadelphia, 2017
20. EliMO: Eliminating Channel Feedback from MIMO, Yongsen Ma, Gang Zhou, Shan Lin, IEEE SMARTCOMP, Hong Kong, 2017 (Invited Paper)
21. Continuous Authentication with Touch Behavioral Biometrics and Voice on Wearable Glasses, Ge Peng, Gang Zhou, David Nguyen, Xin Qi, Qing Yang, Shuangquan Wang, IEEE Transactions on Human-Machine Systems, 2016
22. Determining Driver Use Leveraging Smartphone Sensors, Yantao Li, Gang Zhou, Yue Li, Du Shen, Springer Multimedia Tools and Applications, 2016
23. Improving Web Performance in Home Broadband Access Networks, Yantao Li, Gang Zhou, Bin Nie, Springer Wireless Personal Communications, 2016
24. HIDE: AP-assisted Broadcast Traffic Management to Save Smartphone Energy, Ge Peng, Gang Zhou, David Nguyen, Xin Qi, Shan Lin, The 36th IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS), Nara, Japan, 2016
25. A Smartphone Compatible SONAR Ranging Attachment for 2D Mapping, Daniel Graham, Gang Zhou, Ed Novak, Jeffrey Buffkin, IEEE Internet of Things Journal, 2016
26. HMOG: New Behavioral Biometric Features for Continuous Authentication of Smartphone Users, Zdenka Sitova, Jaroslav Sedenka, Qing Yang, Ge Peng, Gang Zhou, Paolo Gasti, Kiran Balagani, IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, 2016
27. Prototyping Wearables: a Code-First Approach to Designing Embedded Systems, Daniel Graham, Gang Zhou, IEEE Internet of Things Journal, 2016
28. Toward Sensor-Based Random Number Generation for Mobile and IoT Devices, Kyle Wallace, Kevin Moran, Ed Novak, Gang Zhou, Kun Sun, IEEE Internet of Things Journal, 2016
29. Arbitrating Traffic Contention for Power Saving with Multiple PSM Clients, Dachuan Liu, Haining Wang, Gang Zhou, Weizhen Mao, Boyang Li, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, 2016
30. A Context-aware Framework for Reducing Bandwidth Usage of Mobile Video Chats, Xin Qi, Qing Yang, David T. Nguyen, Ge Peng, Gang Zhou, Bo Dai, Daqing Zhang, Yantao Li, IEEE Transactions on Multimedia, 2016
31. Poster: A Continuous and Noninvasive User Authentication System for Google Glass, Ge Peng, David T. Nguyen, Gang Zhou, Shuangquan Wang, ACM The 13th International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services (MobiSys), Florence, Italy, 2015
32. Poster: CrowdWatch: Pedestrian Safety Assistance with Mobile Crowd Sensing, Qianru Wang, Bin Guo, Ge Peng, Gang Zhou, Zhiwen Yu, ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (Ubicomp), Heidelberg, Germany, 2016
33. Poster: Microsleep Prediction Using an EKG Capable Heart Rate Monitor, Amanda Watson, Gang Zhou, The First IEEE Conference on Connected Health: Applications, Systems and Engineering Technologies (CHASE), Washington, D.C., 2016
34. RunBuddy: A Smartphone System for Running Rhythm Monitoring, Tian Hao, Guoliang Xing, Gang Zhou, ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (Ubicomp), Osaka, Japan, 2015
35. CARE: Chewing Activity Recognition Using Noninvasive Single Axis Accelerometer, Shuangquan Wang, Gang Zhou, Lisa Hu, Zhenyu Chen, Yiqiang Chen, (Poster), ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (Ubicomp), Osaka, Japan, 2015
36. Poster: A Continuous and Noninvasive User Authentication System for Google Glass, Ge Peng, David T. Nguyen, Gang Zhou, Shuangquan Wang, (Poster), ACM International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services (MobiSys), Florence, Italy, 2015
37. ATPC: Adaptive Transmission Power Control for Wireless Sensor Networks, Shan Lin, Fei Miao, Jingbin Zhang, Gang Zhou, Gu Lin, Tian He, John A. Stankovic, Sang Son, George Pappas, ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks, 2015
38. Towards Stable Network Performance in Wireless Sensor Networks: A Multilevel Perspective, Shan Lin, Gang Zhou, Motza AI-Hami, Yafeng Wu, Kamin Whitehouse, John Stankovic, Xiaobing Wu, Hengcheng Liu, ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks, 2015
39. A Software Based Sonar Ranging Sensor For Smart Phones, Daniel Graham, George Simmons, David T. Nguyen, Gang Zhou, IEEE Internet of Things Journal, 2015
40. Throughput Assurance for Multiple Body Sensor Networks, Zhen Ren, Xin Qi, Gang Zhou, Haining Wang, David T. Nguyen, IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, 2015
41. Towards an EEG-based Brain-Computer Interface for Online Robot Control, Yantao Li, Gang Zhou, Daniel Graham, Andrew Holtzhauer, Springer Multimedia Tools and Applications, 2015
42. Energy Modeling and Optimization for BSN and WiFi Networks using Joint Data Rate Adaptation, Yantao Li, Gang Zhou, Ge Peng, Ad Hoc & Sensor Wireless Networks, 2015
43. A Review on Radio Based Activity Recognition, Shuangquan Wang, Gang Zhou, Elsevier Digital Communications and Networks, 2015 (Invited Paper)
44. Poster Abstract: A Multimodal Data Set for Evaluating Continuous Authentication Performance in Smartphones, Qing Yang, Ge Peng, Xin Qi, David T. Nguyen, Gang Zhou, Zdenka Sitova, Paolo Gasti, Kiran S. Balagani, (poster), ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (SenSys), Memphis, TN, 2014
45. A Theoretical Analysis of Path Loss Based Activity Recognition, Iberedem Ekure, Shuangquan Wang, Gang Zhou, IEEE 11th International Conference on Mobile Ad Hoc and Sensor Systems (MASS), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 2014
46. A Learning-based Approach to Confident Event Detection in Heterogeneous Sensor Networks, Matthew Keally, Gang Zhou, Guoliang Xing, David T. Nguyen, Xin Qi, ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks, 2014
47. Providing Reliable and Real-time Delivery in the Presence of Body Shadowing in Breadcrumb Systems, Hengchang Liu, Pan Hui, Zhiheng Xie, Jingyuan Li, David Siu, Gang Zhou, Liusheng Huang, John A. Stankovic, ACM Transactions in Embedded Computing Systems, 2014
48. Exploiting the Data Sensitivity of Neurometric Fidelity for Optimizing EEG Sensing, Zhen Ren, Xin Qi, Gang Zhou, Haining Wang, IEEE Internet of Things Journal, 2014
49. Remora: Sensing Resource Sharing Among Smartphone-based Body Sensor Networks, Matthew Keally, Gang Zhou, Guoliang Xing, Jianxin Wu, ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Quality of Service (IWQoS), pages 1-10, 2013
50. AdaSense: Adapting Sampling Rates for Activity Recognition in Body Sensor Networks, Xin Qi, Matthew Keally, Gang Zhou, Yantao Li, Zhen Ren, Proceedings of the 19th IEEE Real-Time and Embedded Technology and Applications Symposium (RTAS), Philadelphia, PA, 2013
51. Communication Energy Modeling and Optimization through Joint Packet Size Analysis of BSN and WiFi Networks, Yantao Li, Xin Qi, Matthew Keally, Zhen Ren, Gang Zhou, Di Xiao, Shaojiang Deng, IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, pages 1741 – 1751, 2013
52. Discrete-time Markov Model for Wireless Link Burstiness Simulations, Yantao Li, Daniel Graham, Gang Zhou, Xin Qi, Shaojiang Deng, Di Xiao, Springer Wireless Personal Communications, pages 1-19, 2013

K-12 Outreach Activity

We organized an outreach activity for local high schools. Here are the flyer and photos.