• I attend Wayne State University in Detroit, MI
• I'm a senior majoring in computer science
• My advisor/mentor is Prof.Jennifer Welch from Texas A&M University, Dept. of Computer Science
  • Her research interests includes: Theory of Distributed Computing, Algorithm Analysis, Distributed Systems, Mobile Ad Hoc Networks, and Distributed Data Structures

Research Plan:

My current project centers around mobile ad hoc network( MANET ). MANET is a collaborative group of mobile nodes forming a network which incorporates wireless communication links between nodes. I will study the renaming problem in MANETs. In the renaming problem, each node begins with a unique id drawn from a large space of possible ids and each node must choose a new unique id drawn from a significantly smaller space of ids. This problem has been studied extensively in traditional wired, static networks (Attiya et al. 1990). On application in MANETS for solutions to this problem, identified by Vaidya (2002), is the automatic dynamic assignment of IP addresses to nodes --- in a MANET it is not usually feasible to rely on a central server to assist with this process and MAC addresses or serial numbers are too long for some routing protocols to handle. Vaidya (2202) weakens the problem statement by allowing the new ids (the IP addresses in his application) to not be unique with some small probability; he then proposes a solution that ensures that, even if duplicate addresses are chosen all packets sent to the same address will be delivered to the same node (which is one of the nodes with that address).

In addition to Vaidya's algorithm, I will study the more general renaming algorithms of Attiya et al. in order to determine in what ways they fail to work, or fail to work efficiently, in a MANET, and to develop modifications, as necessary, for the MANET environment. The TAMUSim simulator (under development in Dr. Welch's research group) will be used to automate these various algorithms. The TAMUSim simulator is aimed at helping people understand the behavior of MANET algorithms by providing support for simulating example executions and possible counter-examples. As I explore the behavior of the renaming algorithms, I will look for other improvements and/or variations on the algorithms and also automate them with TAMUSim, and compare them with the previous versions. The ultimate goal of my research is to come up with efficent new algorithms for doing renaming in MANETs; my summer work will be laying the foundations for this larger term goal.

Hagit Attiya, Amotz Bar-Noy, Danny Dolev, David Peleg, and Ruediger Reischuk, "Renaming in an Asynchronous Environment," Journal of the ACM, vol. 37, no. 3, July 1990, pp. 524-528.

Nitin Vaidya, "Weak Duplicate Address Detection in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks," Proceedings ACM MOBIHOC, 2002. pp.206-216.


Take a look at my research presentation

My Journal:

• week 1: My mentor, Prof. Welch picked me up from the airport and gave me a little tour of the building I'll be working in. Wow! I said to myself, this campus( Texas A&M ) is huge. I really enjoyed the campus tour, so much information and history behind the school. My map and I became extremely good friends...lol! After that I got settled into my apartment for the summer. I mostly began my research by reading alot of papers dealing with Mobile Ad Hoc Networks. There were so many things I didn't understand, so I spent alot of time looking up terminology and rereading the papers to get a better understanding of the material.


• week 2: There were three luncheon seminars this week and boy was it delicious. Each research student received the chance to introduce themselves by stating their name, what they were doing research on and who they were working with. And of course, I read more papers, repeating the whole cycle I began in week 1.


• week 3: All the research participants were required to attend a hour long seminar( which basically explained the whole research process, what it includes and what it does not. This seminar is scheduled every week on Tues. and Thurs. The research plan( ie. research goals and tasks to complete by a certain time) is due this week, but our group is actually ahead of everyone else, being that we turned in ours last week.


• week 4: Since we are using Java to program in I'm refreshing my skills by going over necessary items in the language which will assist me greatly when I began to program. Hopefully, we will start working with the TAMUSim simulator, doing so will give me more insight on how the algorithms I design work. This is probably the area I will definitely need to spend some quality time in, because I'm no expert when it comes to this. Really I don't consider myself much of a good programme$I willing to learn. Trying to understand the code for the TAMUSim simulator is truly a headache....there are so many .java files to search through. In order to even attempt to implement my algorithm, I must first understand the things I need to work with, change, or add to the TAMUSim simulator....this part is tiresome and frustrating!


• week 5: Abstracts are due this week, but thank goodness I finished mine last week. I wanted to get a head start, since I hate doing things at the last minute...it causes too much stress! I've began to write pseudo-code for the renaming algorithm, so things are beginning to look good. Hopefully I'll be done in a few weeks. Well, I believe I have come to the fun part...if I must say. I have begin coding the renaming algorithm in Java, and things are starting to shape up. There are only a few things I have to figure out in order to get the code working right.


• week 6: I'm beginning to make alot of progress in coding the renaming algorithm, besides alot of debugging I have to work out, things seem to be coming along good. I'm really desiring to be finished sometime next week.


• week 7: The coding part of my research is more involved than what I thought it would be. Debugging programs can be fun, but when you don't know where the error is being generated from, things can start to become frustrating, as it did in my case. Thank goodness I was able to correct alot of the bugs with the help of the grad student I'm working with.


• week 8: My program is finally up and running, the simulations are so cool! The module I've coded simulates a "flooding" mechanism in order to send a message to every node in the network. I've also begin writing my final paper, which is due on the last day( Aug. 11th ). Hopefully, I can get everything done that's left to complete and spend some time to relax, shop, and enjoy the few weeks I have remaining.


• week 9: This week I'll probably be focused on completing my final paper and also, I have to make a poster board that presents the summer project I've done, which has to be done by Aug. 6th. For the next two weeks, I'll be wrapping things up.


• week 10: Right now, I'm working on both my final paper and poster. By this Friday, my poster has to be completed, since the presentations are scheduled for that day. So, I'm juggling back and forth between my poster and my paper. However, I'm so excited that I'm very close to finishing both my paper and my poster. I just have a couple things to add to it and they'll be completed. I recently found out that I'm not required to do a poster, but I gonna do one anyway....I think it'll be good experience. I'll be participating in a practice poster session where I'll get to present my summer work and also, see the work that other students have done.