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:

• renewable energy in cellular networks;
• power saving in wireless networks;
• wireless networks in general;
• performance evaluation in general.

Past research interests include:

• evolving forwarding schemes in delay-tolerant networks;
• peer-to-peer storage networks;
• the medium access control in wireless networks.

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

Papers in Journals

• S. Alouf, V. Mancuso, N. Choungmo Fofack, "Analysis of power save and its impact on web traffic in cellular networks with continuous connectivity". Pervasive and Mobile Computing, 8(5):646~661, October 2012.
• V. Mancuso, S. Alouf, "Analysis of power saving in cellular networks with continuous connectivity". Computer Networks, 56(10):2481-2493, July 2012.
• A. Azad, S. Alouf, E. Altman, Analysis and Optimization of Sleeping Mode in WiMAX via Stochastic Decomposition Techniques". IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, édition spéciale sur Energy-Efficient Wireless Communications, 29(8):1630-1640, septembre 2011.
  The full paper lists only one author, this has been corrected here (IEEE JSAC 30(4):846)).
• 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).

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 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, publication number EP2413542, publication date 1 Feb 2012.
• A. Blanc, S. Alouf, K. Avrachenkov, G. Post, "Binary Search Method And System For Congestion Avoidance". Filed as European patent, publication number EP2413543, publication date 1 Feb 2012.
• 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, publication number WO/2010/100151, publication date 10 Sep 2010.

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

Professional service

Technical program committee member

• 2013: ITC, IEEE VTC Spring
• 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

• Member of MASTIC at INRIA.
• Doctoral committee member at INRIA.
• Technical manager of project-team Maestro.
• Accounting for the monthly Project-Teams Committee meetings.

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