Sara Alouf INRIA Sophia Antipolis - Projet MAESTRO 2004 Route des Lucioles B.P. 93 06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France Office: L115 Email: Sara(dot)Alouf(at)inria.fr Phone: +33 (0)4 9238 7199 Fax: +33 (0)4 9238 7971
Position		Associate researcher
Organization		INRIA
Research unit		Sophia Antipolis
Theme		Networks and Telecommunications
Project-Team		MAESTRO

Biography

I have obtained my Electrical and Electronics engineering degree in 1998 from the Lebanese University at Roumieh, Lebanon. Later on, I came to France where I obtained a Master degree in Computer Networking and Distributed Systems, in 1999, and a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science, in 2002, both from the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis. I have spent the three years of my doctorate at INRIA, within the project-team Mistral, under the supervision of Philippe Nain. From February 2003 until February 2004, I was a post-doctoral researcher at the Free University at Amsterdam, within the Optimization of Business Processes team of the Department of Mathematics. I worked mainly with Rob van der Mei and Ger Koole. In March 2004, I joined INRIA as an Associate Researcher within the project-team Maestro, which is devoted to the modeling of computer systems and telecommunication networks. In November 2000, I was a Visiting Scholar at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, MA, within Don Towsley's research group.

Research activities

My main research interests are:

• power saving in wireless networks;
• evolving forwarding schemes in delay-tolerant networks;
• peer-to-peer storage networks;
• wireless networks in general and the medium access control in particular;
• performance evaluation in general.

Advisor of:

• Nicaise Choungmo Fofack (co-supervision with Philippe Nain), expected graduation on Fall 2013.
• Amar Azad (co-supervised with Eitan Altman and Rachid El-Azouzi), graduated on November 2010.
• Abdulhalim Dandoush (co-supervised with Philippe Nain), graduated on March 2010.

Publications

Book Chapters

• S. Alouf, I. Carreras, A. Fialho, D. Miorandi, G. Neglia, "Autonomic Information Diffusion in Intermittently Connected Networks". In Autonomic Computing and Networking, M. K. Denko, L. T. Yang and Y. Zhang (editors), Springer, 2009, pages 411-433, chapter 17 (pdf).
• S. Alouf, E. Altman, J. Galtier, J.-F. Lalande, C. Touati, "Quasi-Optimal Resource Allocation in Multi-Spot MFTDMA Satellite Networks". In Combinatorial Optimization in Communication Networks, M. Cheng, Y. Li and D.-Z. Du (editors), Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2006, pages 325-365, chapter 12.

Papers in Journals

• A. Azad, S. Alouf, E. Altman, V. Borkar, G. Paschos, "Optimal Control of Sleep Periods for Wireless Terminals". IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, special issue on Energy-Efficient Wireless Communications, 29(8):1605-1617, September 2011.
• V. Mancuso , S. Alouf, "Reducing costs and pollution in cellular networks". IEEE Communications Magazine, special issue on Green Communications, 49(8):63-71, August 2011.
• S. Alouf, G. Neglia, I. Carreras, D. Miorandi, A. Fialho, "Fitting genetic algorithms to distributed on-line evolution of network protocols". Computer Networks, 54(18):3402-3420, December 2010.
• S. Alouf, E. Altman, C. Barakat, P. Nain, "Optimal estimation of multicast membership". IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, special issue on Signal Processing in Networking 51(8):2165-2176, August 2003.
• S. Alouf, F. Huet, P. Nain, "Forwarders vs. centralized server: an evaluation of two approaches for locating mobile agents". Performance Evaluation (Proceedings of Performance 2002 Conference, Rome, Italy) 49(1-4):299-319, September 2002. A more detailed version is available as INRIA research report RR-4440 (33 pages).

Papers in Proceedings of Refereed Conferences

• A. Chatzipapas, S. Alouf, V. Mancuso , "On the Minimization of Power Consumption in Base Stations using on/off Power Amplifiers". IEEE GreenCom'11, online conference, September 2011.
• V. Mancuso , S. Alouf, "Power save analysis of cellular networks with continuous connectivity". IEEE WoWMoM 2011, Lucca, Italy, June 2011.
• D. Carra, K. Avrachenkov, S. Alouf, A. Blanc, P. Nain, G. Post, "Passive Online RTT Estimation for Flow-Aware Routers using One-Way Traffic". IFIP/TC6 NETWORKING 2010, Chennai, India, May 2010. A more detailed version is available as INRIA research report RR-7124.
• A. Azad, S. Alouf, E. Altman, V. Borkar, G. Paschos, "Optimal Sampling for State Change Detection with Application to the Control of Sleep Mode". IEEE CDC 2009, Shanghai, China, December 2009. A more detailed version is available as INRIA research report RR-7026.
• G. Neglia, G. Reina, S. Alouf, "Distributed Gradient Optimization for Epidemic Routing: a Preliminary Evaluation". IFIP Wireless Days 2009, Paris, France, December 2009.
• A. Azad, S. Alouf, E. Altman, V. Borkar, G. Paschos, "Vacation Policy Optimization with Application to IEEE 802.16e Power Saving Mechanism". IFIP Wireless Days 2009, Paris, France, December 2009. Best paper award. A more detailed version is available as INRIA research report RR-7017.
• A. Dandoush, S. Alouf, P. Nain, "A realistic simulation model for P2P Storage Systems" (invited paper). NsTools 2009, Pisa, Italy, October 2009.
• A. Dandoush, S. Alouf, P. Nain, "Simulation analysis of download and recovery processes in P2P storage systems". ITC-21 2009, Paris, France, September 2009.
• A. Dandoush, S. Alouf, P. Nain, "Performance analysis of centralized versus distributed recovery schemes in P2P storage systems". Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 5550:676-689, 2009 (Proceedings of IFIP/TC6 Networking 2009, Aachen, Germany, May 2009).
• S. Alouf, E. Altman, A. Azad, "Analysis of an M/G/1 Queue with Repeated Inhomogeneous Vacations with Application to IEEE 802.16e Power Saving Mechanism". Proceedings of QEST 2008 Conference, Saint-Malo, France, pages 27-36, September 2008. A more detailed version is available as INRIA research report RR-6488 (31 pages).
• S. Alouf, E. Altman, A. Azad, "M/G/1 Queue with Repeated Inhomogeneous Vacations Applied to IEEE 802.16e Power Saving". Performance Evaluation Review (Proceedings of ACM Sigmetrics 2008 Conference, Annapolis, Maryland), 36(1):451-452, June 2008.
• S. Alouf, I. Carreras, D. Miorandi, G. Neglia, "Embedding evolution in epidemic-style forwarding". BioNetworks 2007 Workshop, Pisa, Italy, October 2007 (Proceedings of MASS 2007). A more detailed version is available as INRIA research report RR-6140.
• S. Alouf, A. Dandoush, P. Nain, "Performance analysis of peer-to-peer storage systems". Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 4516:642-653, 2007 (Proceedings of ITC-20 2007, Ottawa, Canada, June 2007). A preliminary version is available as INRIA research report RR-6044.
• M. Ibrahim, S. Alouf, "Design and Analysis of an Adaptive Backoff Algorithm for IEEE 802.11 DCF mechanism". Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 3976:184-196, 2006 (Proceedings of IFIP/TC6 Networking 2006 Conference, Coimbra, Portugal, May 2006).
• S. Alouf, E. Altman, J. Galtier, J.-F. Lalande, C. Touati, "Quasi-optimal bandwidth allocation for multi-spot MFTDMA satellites". Proceedings of IEEE Infocom 2005 Conference, Miami, Florida, March 2005.
• S. Alouf, E. Altman, C. Barakat, P. Nain, "On the dynamic estimation of multicast group sizes" (invited paper). Proceedings of MTNS 2004 Conference, Leuven, Belgium, July 2004.
• S. Alouf, E. Altman, C. Barakat, P. Nain, "Estimating membership in a multicast session". Performance Evaluation Review (Proceedings of ACM Sigmetrics 2003 Conference, San Diego, California), 31(1):250-260, June 2003.
• S. Alouf, E. Altman, P. Nain, "Optimal on-line estimation of the size of a dynamic multicast group". Proceedings of IEEE Infocom 2002 Conference, New York City, New York, volume 2, pages 1109-1118, June 2002.
• S. Alouf, F. Huet, P. Nain, "Forwarders vs. centralized server: an evaluation of two approaches for locating mobile agents (extended abstract)". Performance Evaluation Review (Proceedings of ACM Sigmetrics 2002 Conference, Marina Del Rey, California), 30(1):278-279, June 2002.
• S. Alouf, P. Nain, D. Towsley, "Inferring network characteristics via moment-based estimators". Proceedings of IEEE Infocom 2001 Conference, Anchorage, Alaska, volume 2, pages 1045-1054, April 2001.

Patents

• A. Blanc, S. Alouf, K. Avrachenkov, G. Post, "Flow Aware Congestion Avoidance Method and System". Filed as European patent number 10290431.5, filing date July 30, 2010.
• A. Blanc, S. Alouf, K. Avrachenkov, G. Post, "Binary Search Method And System For Congestion Avoidance". Filed as European patent number 10290432.3, filing date July 30, 2010.
• D. Carra, K. Avrachenkov, S. Alouf, P. Nain, G. Post, "Method for Estimating a Round Trip Time of a Packet Flow". Filed as European patent number 09305207.4 - 2416, filing date March 5, 2009.

Theses

• S. Alouf, "Parameter estimation and performance analysis of several network applications", Ph.D. thesis, Department of Sciences, University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis, France, November 2002.
• S. Alouf, "Inferring Congestion in the Internet via Moment-Based Estimators", Master thesis, ESSI, University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis, France, June 1999.

Reports

• S. Alouf, E. Altman, A. Azad, "Analysis of an M/G/1 queue with repeated inhomogeneous vacations - Application to IEEE 802.16e power saving". INRIA research report RR-6488, March 2008.
• A. Dandoush, S. Alouf, P. Nain, "P2P storage systems modeling, analysis and evaluation". INRIA research report RR-6392, December 2007.
• S. Alouf, I. Carreras, D. Miorandi, G. Neglia, "Evolutionary epidemic routing". INRIA research report RR-6140, May 2007.
• S. Alouf, E. Altman, J. Galtier, J.-F. Lalande, C. Touati, "Un algorithme d'allocation de bande passante satellitaire". INRIA research report RR-5172, April 2004.

Teaching activities

• Polytech'Nice Sophia Antipolis School: I am in charge of the course on Probabilities and Statistics (course in French).
• Free University at Amsterdam: I was a lecturer in two courses: the first (with Ger Koole, Spring 2003), entitled Optimization of Business Processes, concerned yield management and inventory theory, and the second (with Rob van der Mei and Thilo Kielmann, Fall 2004) dealt with Performance Analysis of Communications Networks. Both courses were in English. I was also in charge of correcting the homeworks in both courses.
• Eurecom Institute: I have assisted Jacques Labetoulle (in 2000) and Philippe Nain (in 2001-2002) in the Performance Evaluation course (course in French).

Professional service

Techninal program committee member

• 2012: ValueTools, ITC, WiOpt, IEEE VTC Spring Green Networks Track
• 2011: Performance, WiOpt
• 2010: ACM MobiHoc, Performance, ITC-22, WiOpt, JDIR
• 2009: IEEE Infocom, ACM SIGMETRICS/Performance, WiOpt, ASMTA, ICCCN NAPE Track, ACM SAC Computer Networks track
• 2008: ACM SIGMETRICS, ACM SIGMETRICS Student Thesis Panel, AEP9
• 2007: ITC-20, Valuetools, IEEE Globecom PMQRS Track, ACM SIGMETRICS Student Workshop
• 2006: Valuetools

Conference organization

• Publicity chair of the ACM SIGMETRICS 2010 conference.
• Workshops co-chair of Valuetools 2008.
• Publication chair of Valuetools 2007 and of its 4 workshops: GameComm 2007, Inter-Perf 2007, SMCtools 2007 and NSTools 2007.
• Publicity chair and webmaster of the Performance 2005 conference.

Community service

• Doctoral committee member at INRIA.
• Technical manager of project-team Maestro.

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