Sotiris Nikoletseas is a Professor at the University of Patras, and the Director of the SensorsLab at the Computer Technology Institute, Greece. He has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. His research interests include algorithmic aspects of wireless sensor and mobile networks, random graphs and probabilistic algorithms.

He has served as the PC and SC Chair of several Conferences, and as Editor of major Journals. He has co-initiated international events related to sensor networks, like the Algorithmic Aspects of Wireless Sensor Networks (ALGOSENSORS) and the Distributed Computing in Sensor Systems (DCOSS). He has delivered several invited talks and tutorials.

He has coordinated several EU funded R&D Projects related to fundamental aspects of modern networks.

The efficient and robust realization of large, highly-dynamic, complex, sensor networks is a challenging technological and algorithmic task, because of the unique characteristics and severe limitations of sensory devices. This talk will present and discuss several important aspects of the design, deployment and operation of sensor networks. In particular, we will discuss possible models used to abstract such networks, present some key algorithmic design techniques (like randomization, adaptation and hybrid synthesis), and provide representative state of the art protocols for important problems like data propagation, energy balance and mobility management, along with an evaluation of crucial performance properties (correctness, efficiency, fault-tolerance) of these protocols.

We study the problem of gathering information from the nodes of a multi-hop radio network into a predefined destination node under reachability and interference constraints. This problem has been asked by France Telecom in the context of how to bring Internet in villages; it appears also in collecting data in sensor networks.

In such a network, a node is able to send messages to other nodes within reception distance, but doing so it might create interference with other communications. Thus, a message can only be properly received if the receiver is reachable from the sender and there is no interference from another message being simultaneously transmitted. The network is modeled as a graph, where the vertices represent the nodes of the network and the edges, the possible communications. The interference constraint is modeled by a fixed integer d, which implies that nodes within distance d in the graph from one sender cannot receive messages from another node. We mainly consider the case where each node has one (or more) unit-length message to transmit and, furthermore, we suppose that it takes one unit of time (slot) to transmit a unit-length message and during such a slot we can have only calls which do not interfere (called compatible calls).

A set of compatible calls is refered to as a round. We give protocols and lower bounds on the minimum number of rounds for the gathering problem for various networks and under various hypothesis (like the possibility or not to store messages in transit nodes). We also consider the dynamic version of the problem where we want to give to each node some bandwidth.

Dr Srdjan Krco, is a Senior Researcher in Ericsson Ireland Research Centre where he leads a team working on research issues related to the role of wireless sensor networks and M2M communication in the network of the future. He is the project coordinator of the EU FP7 funded project Prosense and is active in the EU FP7 integrated project SENSEI. Sensor based applications and services, particularly in the health/fitness and environment monitoring are among his research interests as well. Srdjan holds a PhD degree from the University of Novi Sad, Serbia for his work in the area of mobile personal health monitoring systems. He was with the University of Novi Sad from 1994 until 2000 working initially as a research associate and then as a lecturer. From September 2000, he is with Ericsson Ireland, where he held a number of positions: senior system engineer, project manager, system manager, and currently senior research engineer. He has worked in and managed a number of 3G product developments and wireless communication related research projects. Srdjan represented Ericsson Ireland at international research organizations like Wireless World Research Forum (WWRF) and Bluetooth SIG.

Srdjan has published more than 40 peer reviewed papers and has 18 invention disclosures (1 approved patent, 7 pending). He received the Innovation Engineer of the Year award in December 2007 from the Engineers Ireland for his work in the area of wireless sensor networks and mobile networks. He has served as a reviewer for several journals and international conferences (IEEE Communication Letters, MSN, PIMRC'08, EUC'08, IWWAN'07, WSAN'08, etc.) and organized special sessions and summer schools on wireless sensor networks and their applications (senZations'06 and '07, ACM SenseID 07 collocated with SenSys'07, ACM Hetersenet '08 collocated with Mobihoc'08, PhD-NOW'08). He is an editor of the Ad Hoc & Sensor Wireless Networks international journal.

Internet and the mobile network infrastructures have become the technological backbone of our society, with a large number of businesses, social interactions and public services such as government, health and education, heavily relying on it on a daily basis. More recently, sensing and interacting with the physical world have gained a lot of attention, which has resulted in a range of useful application proposals that have exploited the context of a person, an object or an area, to provide novel services to users or enterprises. These applications often served immediate and specialized needs (e.g. maps showing nearby restaurants or busy intersections) and hence were designed as isolated enclaves, i.e. as closed, vertical, standalone systems built with one specific purpose in mind. In the realm of the network of the future, people, sensors, objects, and spaces will be intertwined in both virtual and physical realms while collaborating and sharing information in an unobtrusive manner. WSNs will enable inclusion of the physical world context into the new intelligent, invisible and autonomous applications and services as well as enhancement and enrichment of the existing communication services (person-person, person-machine, mobile-machine, person-content, and machine-machine). The role of the sensor networks in the network of the future is thus to provide the missing link between the virtual and the physical world. Therefore, it is necessary to take into account the physical world factors when developing new service and network infrastructures and to embed interfaces to the physical world, regardless of how interaction with the physical world is realised. A number of challenges like design of an open sensor and actuator framework, design of horizontal solutions reusable across multiple applications, platforms and domains, business enablers, scalability, interoperability, security, have to be overcome before such a ubiquitous communication, computing, sensing and actuation environment can be created.

In this presentation an approach to design of the architecture of a ubiquitous sensing and actuation framework in the context of the Future Internet design that addresses some of the challenges mentioned above is given.

Xuemin (Sherman) Shen (M'97-SM'02) received the B.Sc.(1982) degree from Dalian Maritime University (China) and the M.Sc. (1987) and Ph.D. degrees (1990) from Rutgers University, New Jersey (USA), all in electrical engineering. He is a University Research Chair Professor and the Associate Chair for Graduate Studies, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Waterloo, Canada. His research focuses on mobility and resource management in interconnected wireless/wired networks, UWB wireless communications systems, wireless security, and ad hoc and sensor networks. He is a co-author of three books, and has published many research papers and book chapters in wireless communications and networks. Dr. Shen serves as the Technical Program Committee Chair for IEEE Globecom'07, General Co-Chair for Chinacom’07 and QShine’06, the Founding Chair for IEEE Communications Society Technical Committee on P2P Communications and Networking. He is the Founding Editor-in-Chief for the Peer-to-Peer Networking and Applications Journal (Springer), and the Founding Book Series Editor - Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing (Wiley). He also serves as a Founding Area Editor for IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications; Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology; KICS/IEEE Journal of Communications and Networks, Computer Networks; ACM/Wireless Networks; and Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing (Wiley), etc. He has also served as Guest Editor for IEEE JSAC, IEEE Wireless Communications, and IEEE Communications Magazine. Dr. Shen received the Excellent Graduate Supervision Award in 2006, and the Outstanding Performance Award in 2004 from the University of Waterloo, the Premier’s Research Excellence Award (PREA) in 2003 from the Province of Ontario, Canada. Dr. Shen is a registered Professional Engineer of Ontario, Canada.

It is evidenced that there is increasing number of personal communication devices around the body, and the new sensing and monitoring devices for in-body and near-body use. Those devices form a huge self-organized sensor and ad hoc network, which is called Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs). WBANs introduce new applications in Health monitoring and entertainments. They also present new research challenges due to signal propagation characteristics of in and around human body, power and device size constrains and the need for secure transmission of critical information over the WBAN. In this talk, we will focus on Technology, Applications and Challenges of WBANs. We will also discuss the related quality of service (QoS) and Security/Privacy Issues.