Invited Speakers

Hamid R. Arabnia, Ph.D. Professor The University of Georgia, USA

A BIO-INSPIRED COMMUNICATION TOPOLOGY PROGRESS REPORT

The two major issues in the formulation and design of parallel multiprocessor systems are algorithm design and architecture design. The parallel multiprocessor systems should be so designed so as to facilitate the design and implementation of the efficient parallel algorithms that exploit optimally the capabilities of the system. From an architectural point of view, the system should have low hardware complexity, be capable of being built of components that can be easily replicated, should exhibit desirable cost-performance characteristics, be cost effective and exhibit good scalability in terms of hardware complexity and cost with increasing problem size. In distributed memory multiprocessor systems, the processing elements can be considered to be nodes that are connected together via an interconnection network. In order to facilitate algorithm and architecture design, we require that the interconnection network have a low diameter, the system be symmetric and each node in the system have low degree of connectivity. The requirement of network symmetry ensures that each node in the network is identical to any other, thereby greatly reducing the architecture and algorithm design effort. For most symmetric network topologies, however, the requirements of low degree of connectivity for each node and low network diameter are often conflicting. Low network diameter often entails that each node in the network have a high degree of connectivity resulting in a drastic increase in the number of inter-processor connection links. A low degree of connectivity on the other hand, results in a high network diameter which in turn results in high inter-processor communication overhead and reduced efficiency of parallelism. Reconfigurable networks attempt to address this tradeoff. In a reconfigurable network each node has a fixed degree of connectivity irrespective of the network size. The network diameter is restricted by allowing the network to reconfigure itself into different configurations. In general, a reconfigurable system needs to satisfy the following criteria in order to be considered practically viable: (a) In each configuration the nodes in the network should have a fixed degree of active connectivity irrespective of network size, (b) The network diameter should be kept low via the reconfiguration mechanism and (c) The hardware for the reconfiguration mechanism (i.e. switch) should be of reasonable complexity. In this presentation, we discuss our design of a reconfigurable network topology that is targeted at medical applications; however, others have found a number of interesting properties about the network that makes it ideal for applications in Big Data initiatives as well as information engineering. We present some results and discuss our ongoing work in this area; we will also present a particular variation to our original reconfigurable network which is nature/biology inspired and our recent results.

About Hamid R. Arabnia, Ph.D.

Hamid R. Arabnia is an author, editor of research books, educator, and researcher. He received a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the University of Kent (Canterbury, England) in 1987. In 1987, he worked as a Consultant for Caplin Cybernetics Corporation (London, England), where he helped in the design of a number of image processing algorithms that were targeted at a particular parallel machine architecture. Arabnia is currently a Full Professor of Computer Science at University of Georgia (Georgia, USA), where he has been since October 1987. His research interests include Parallel and distributed processing techniques and algorithms, interconnection networks, and applications (in particular, in image processing and other computational intensive problems). Dr. Arabnia has chaired many national and international conferences and technical sessions in these areas; he is the chair of WORLDCOMP annual congress. He is Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Supercomputing (which is one of the oldest journals published by Springer) and is on the editorial and advisory boards of 26 other journals and magazines. Dr. Arabnia is the recipient of William F. Rockwell, Jr. Medal for promotion of multi-disciplinary research (Rockwell Medal is International Technology Institute's highest honor). In 2000, Dr. Arabnia was inducted to the World Level of the Hall of Fame for Engineering, Science and Technology (The World Level is the highest possible level for a living person). He has received a number of awards, including, The Johns Hopkins University National Search (Certificate of Achievement) in recognition of his contributions to the national program for enhancing the quality of life for people with disabilities through the application of computing technology (presented to him in December 1991 - signatories: co-directors of the National Search and President of Johns Hopkins U.) In 2006, Dr. Arabnia received the Distinguished Service Award in recognition and appreciation of his contributions to the profession of computer science and his assistance and support to students and scholars from all over the world; this award was formally presented to him on June 26, 2006 by Professor Barry Vercoe (Massachusetts Institute of Technology / MIT). More recently (October 14, 2007), he received an "Outstanding Achievement Award in Recognition of His Leadership and Outstanding Research Contributions to the Field of Supercomputing". This award was formally presented to him at Harvard University Medical School (signatories: Lawrence O. Hall, President of IEEE/SMC; Zhi-Pei Liang, Vice President of IEEE/EMB; Jack. Y. Yang, General Chair of IEEE BIBE and Harvard University; Mary Qu Yang, Chair of Steering Committee, IEEE BIBE and NIH).

Leonard Barolli, Ph.D. Professor Fukuoka Institute of Technology (FIT), Japan

Implementation of P2P Platforms for Vehicle Networks and Robot Control

Peer to peer (P2P) systems have become highly popular in recent times due to their great potential to scale and the lack of a central point of failure. Thus, P2P architectures will be very important for future distributed systems and applications. In such systems, the computational burden of the system can be distributed among peer nodes of the system. Therefore, in decentralized systems users become themselves actors by sharing, contributing and controlling the resources of the system. These characteristics make P2P systems very interesting for the development of decentralized applications. In this research, we consider the P2P paradigm to build applications for Inter-Vehicular networks and robot control in wireless and wired environment. We implement and investigate the performance of different routing protocols in V2V scenarios using CAVENET simulation system, NS2 and NS3. We propose and experimentally evaluate the performance of the application of secure robot control using JXTA-overlay P2P platform. The experimental results show that JXTA-overlay can be successfully used to control the robot in a smoothly way. P2P systems allow decentralized data sharing by distributing data storage across all peers in a P2P network. But, peers can join and leave the system at any time so the shared data may become unavailable. To cope with problem, we propose and implement a fuzzy-based P2P system for data replication over the JXTA-overlay P2P network and evaluate its performance by computer simulations. Replication techniques assure the availability since the same data can be found at multiple peers. The simulation results show that the proposed system have a good behavior. In this talk, I will introduce the JXTA-Overlay Platform and the simulation system for Vehicular Networks. Finally, I will give some future research directions and real applications of proposed platforms.

About Hamid R. Arabnia, Ph.D.

Leonard Barolli received BE and PhD degrees from Tirana University and Yamagata University in 1989 and 1997, respectively. From April 1997 to March 1999, he was a JSPS Post Doctor Fellow Researcher at Department of Electrical and Information Engineering, Yamagata University. From April 1999 to March 2002, he worked as a Research Associate at the Department of Public Policy and Social Studies, Yamagata University. From April 2002 to March 2003, he was an Assistant Professor at Department of Computer Science, Saitama Institute of Technology (SIT). From April 2003 to March 2005, he was an Associate Professor and presently is a Full Professor, at Department of Information and Communication Engineering, Fukuoka Institute of Technology (FIT). Dr. Barolli has published about 300 papers in referred Journals, Books and International Conference proceedings. He was an Editor of the IPSJ Journal and has served as a Guest Editor for many International Journals. Dr. Barolli has been a PC Member of many International Conferences and was the PC Chair of IEEE AINA-2004 and IEEE ICPADS-2005. He was General Co-Chair of IEEE AINA-2006 and AINA-2008, Workshops Chair of iiWAS-2006/MoMM-2006 and iiWAS-2007/MoMM-2007, Workshop Co-Chair of ARES-2007, ARES-2008, IEEE AINA-2007, ICPP-2009, CISIS-2010 and IEEE AINA-2010. Dr. Barolli is the Steering Committee Chair of CISIS and BWCCA International Conferences. He is Steering Committee Co-Chair of IEEE AINA, IEEE INCoS, NBiS, IMIS, EIDWT, 3PGCIC International Conferences. He is organizers of many International Workshops. Dr. Barolli has won many Awards for his scientific work and has received many research funds. He got the “Doctor Honoris Causa” Award from Polytechnic University of Tirana in 2009. His research interests include network traffic control, fuzzy control, genetic algorithms, agent-based systems, ad-hoc networks and sensor networks. He is a member of SOFT, IPSJ, and IEEE.