Towards the Vision of Wireless Sensor Networks: Experiences from the FireWxNet and SensorFlock Application Deployments and Beyond

Abstract:

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have recently attracted strong 
interest in the computer science research community because they 
offer a powerful tool for enabling a host of new applications 
through the distribution of potentially millions of small networked 
wireless computing devices.  Researchers have prototyped 
applications of WSNs ranging from wildlife habitat monitoring to
atmospheric and oceanic characterization, structural monitoring
of bridges and buildings, seismic monitoring of volcanos, and even 
shooter localization.  This talk will describe the systems 
research and practical experiences gained by Prof. Han's research 
group during several small-scale experimental deployments of WSNs,
including FireWxNet, a WSN to monitor wildland forest fires in the
mountains of Idaho, and SensorFlock, an airborne WSN of micro-air 
vehicles to monitor toxic plumes.  The talk will also describe 
ongoing research deployments by Prof. Han's research group, 
including a WSN to help scientists understand the process of carbon 
sequestration in forests and its effect on global warming, a 
delay-tolerant WSN to facilitate the search for lost hikers, and 
a WSN to aid biologists in studying disease propagation among mule 
deer in the Colorado Rocky Mountains by measuring wildlife contact 
rates.


Bio:

Richard Han is an associate professor in the Department of Computer 
Science at the University of Colorado at Boulder.  Prof. Han's
research interests span wireless sensor networks (WSNs), mobile 
computing systems and applications, embedded operating systems, 
and wireless security and privacy. He is an NSF CAREER Award winner, 
an IBM Faculty award winner, and a Best Paper award winner at ACM 
MobiSys 2006 for FireWxNet, a WSN deployed in the Bitterroot
National Forest of Idaho to collect weather data surrounding 
wildland forest fires. 
His research group has published numerous papers focusing on 
experimental wireless systems, including the open source Mantis
sensor OS, http://mantis.cs.colorado.edu, the short preamble 
duty-cycled X-MAC protocol for WSNs, and the SensorFlock airborne 
WSN, as well as papers on secure routing and secure code 
distribution for WSNs.  He is an associate editor of IEEE 
Transactions on Mobile Computing, has served on the Technical
Program Committees of ACM MobiSys and ACM SenSys, and is general
co-chair for ACM MobiSys 2008.  He graduated from Stanford 
University in 1989 with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering with 
distinction, and graduated from the University of California at 
Berkeley in 1997 with a Ph.D in Electrical Engineering.