The seminar is sponsored by NYU-ECNU Institute of Mathematical Sciences at NYU Shanghai.
Abstract:
A principal focus of research in computer science today is on dynamic networks, in particular mobile networks, in which nodes moving in space cooperate to relay packets on behalf of other nodes, without any centralized infrastructure. Examples of such networks are vehicular networks (where sensors are attached to cars, buses or taxis), pocket-switched networks based on mobile devices such as cellphones, and networks arising in surveillance and disaster recovery applications, where mobile robots are deployed to explore an unsafe region (e.g., due to an earthquake).
Although the static structure of such networks is by now quite well understood mathematically, node mobility brings several additional challenges (for example, long-range dependences), that render classical techniques ineffective.
In this talk we discuss two fundamental questions: target detection (the time until the presence of a given target, which may be either fixed or moving, is detected by the network), and information broadcast (the time until a given node is able to spread a piece of information to all the other nodes of the network).
We will present several results on these questions, revealing interesting connections and problems in percolation theory, point processes and stochastic geometry.
Biography:
Alexandre Stauffer is a researcher at the University of Bath, UK. He got a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, and was a post-doc at Microsoft Research, Redmond, and Universita Roma Tre.
His research interests include probability, in particular interacting particle systems and Markov chain mixing time, and theoretical computer science.