Large-Scale Industrial Software Systems: Research Opportunities and Challenges
Speaker: Dr. Srini Ramaswamy, , Head for Industrial Software Systems research at ABB India Corporate Research Center, in Bangalore, India
Date: Thursday October 20, 2011
Time: Registration and Networking: 06:00 p.m.; Seminar: 06:30 p.m. – 07:30 p.m
Location: Algonquin College, Room T129, T-Building, 1385 Woodroffe Ave., Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Parking: at the parking area # 9. Please respect restricted areas. No fee after 5:00 p.m.
ADMISSION: Free. Registration required. To ensure a seat, please register by e-mail contacting: Wahab Almuhtadi at almuhtadi@ieee.org.
Abstract:
Software systems development is fast becoming a globalized activity and this is an increasingly major trend within all industrial sectors. Due to the many benefits of globalization, from the integration of multiple ethnic / market perspectives driven idea generation to development cost structuring, middle and small-sized software companies are now beginning to establish worldwide development campuses / partners. Thus, globalization has become an overwhelming phenomenon in the software industry and is rapidly defining the nature of software development for the 21st century. For Industrial Automation companies like ABB in emerging markets such as India, these opportunities are both exciting we well as immensely challenging. They present problems that are incredibly different from similar-sized western markets and require a significant amount of innovation and creativity to develop robust, sustainable, yet significantly low-cost solutions for such markets. In this talk, I will present an overview of ABB in India and its research activities, specifically in the areas of Industrial Communications and Industrial Software Systems.
About the Speaker:
Dr. Srini Ramaswamy transitioned from an academic to a corporate research career in 2010, as the head for Industrial Software Systems research at ABB India Corporate Research Center, in Bangalore, India. His primary role is in research team building and leadership, developing university relationships and engaging in applied research for the creation and execution of projects with transformative value for the company’s power technologies and process automation business units. On the academic front, he also serves as a visiting professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and a honorary adjunct professor at the Indian Institute of Information Technology – Bangalore.
His research interests are on intelligent and flexible control, behavior modeling, analysis and simulation, software stability and scalability; particularly in the design and development of complex software systems. Specific applications include real-time control issues in automation and manufacturing, data mining and distributed real-time applications. His work is motivated by the desire to understand the various requirements to build scalable, intelligent software systems with the inherent ability to successfully respond to observed and reported behavioral changes in their environment.
Dr. Ramaswamy has over 150 publications including over 30 peer-reviewed journal articles in IEEE, Elsevier, Journal of Systems and Software, etc. Additionally he is also an active reviewer for the ACM Computing Surveys. Dr. Ramaswamy has actively participated in over 50 M.S student project and thesis works in Computer Science, Applied Sciences, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering and Information Systems. He has additionally participated in over 5 PhD student dissertations in Applied Computing, served as external co-advisor for 3 PhD students in France and served as evaluator for several PhD students in India.
Dr. Ramaswamy earned his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the Center for Advanced Computer Studies (CACS) at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette in 1994. He is a Senior member of the IEEE and a Senior member of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM). He is an active member of the IEEE SMCS Technical Committee on Distributed Intelligent Systems and also serves as an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, Part C: Applications and Reviews.
Autonomous Aero-Visual and Sensor Based Inspection Network for Power Grid Asset Monitoring
Speaker: Dr. Arun Somani, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA
Date: Thursday September 22, 2011
Time: Registration and Networking: 06:30 p.m.; Seminar: 07:00 p.m. – 08:00 p.m
Location: Algonquin College, Room T129, T-Building, 1385 Woodroffe Ave., Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Parking: at the parking area # 9. Please respect restricted areas. No fee after 5:00 p.m.
ADMISSION: Free. Registration required. To ensure a seat, please register by e-mail contacting: Wahab Almuhtadi at almuhtadi@ieee.org.
Abstract:
This talk introduces a theoretical and experimental program to develop the inspection and fault detection technology needed to integrate MAVs for persistent intelligence, reconnaissance, maintenance and surveillance for obscured or logistically challenging assets in non-urban environments. The design is explained using a context of heterogeneous deployment of wireless sensors for real-time asset monitoring by anticipating exceptional conditions and building the system to cope with them. The system converges towards an error-free state with self-stabilization, the ability to fall back to a safe mode in a financially feasible manner. This sophisticated mechanism requires a real-time capacity estimation capability to sustain the quality-of-service, which can be achieved by a distributed sensor network. We discuss issues in design and information propagation in such sensor clustered topology, optimization for power-aware networking, and link and node capacity assignment to achieve the desired goals.
About the Speaker:
Arun K. Somani is currently Anson Marston Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Iowa State University. Prior to that, he was a Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington, Seattle, WA and Scientific Officer for Govt. of India, New Delhi from. He earned his MSEE and PhD degrees in electrical engineering from the McGill University, Montreal, Canada, in 1983 and 1985, respectively. Professor Somani’s research interests are in the area of computer system design and architecture, fault tolerant computing, computer interconnection networks, WDM-based optical networking, and reconfigurable and parallel computer systems. He has taught courses in these areas and published more than 250 technical papers, several book chapters, and has supervised more than 100 graduate students (35 PhD students). He is the chief architects of an anti-submarine warfare system for Indian navy, Meshkin fault-tolerant computer system architecture for the Boeing Company, Proteus multi-computer cluster-based system for US Coastal Navy, and HIMAP design tool for the Boeing Commercial Company. He has served on several program committees of various conferences in his research areas, served as IEEE distinguished visitor and IEEE distinguished tutorial speaker, and delivered several key note speeches, tutorials and distinguished and invited talks all over the world. He received commonwealth fellowship for his postgraduate work from Canada during 1982-85, awarded Distinguished Engineer member of ACM, and elected a Fellow of IEEE for his contributions to “theory and applications of computer networks.”
Workshop: Two Seminars on Sept. 12, 2011
1- Monitoring-Based Key Revocation Schemes for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks
Speaker: Dr. Prof. Guang Gong, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
Date: Monday, September 12, 2011.
Time: 12:00 pm – 2:00 pm, Seminars: 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm, Discussion, Refreshments and Networking: 1:30 pm – 2:00 pm
Location: University of Ottawa, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, SITE Building, Room 5084 (Boarding Room), 800 King Edward Avenue, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
ADMISSION: Free. Registration required. To ensure a seat, please register by e-mail contacting: Qingsheng Zeng or Wahab Almuhtadi.
Abstract:
A primary security challenge in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) is the likelihood of node compromises caused by weak physical protection and hostile environments. As a result, key revocation is essential. In this talk, I will present our recent results on key revocation problems in MANETs. I will introduce some novel methods for the design of fully self-organized key revocation schemes for MANETs, which can be directly used in any pairing-based identity based cryptography (IBC) scheme, are adaptable to certificate revocation schemes in public-key infrastructure (PKI) solutions, and secret key-based schemes in MANETs as well. In the first scenario, the nodes monitor their neighbors, securely propagate their observations, and revoke keys once designed threshold accusations have been received. The solution is very efficient, completely thwart many attacks (including Sybil, impersonation and replay attacks as well as other attacks by insiders and outsiders) and is resilient to advanced attacks by colluding nodes and roaming adversaries. In the second scenario, the statistical Dirichlet multinomial model is introduced to key revocation processes. Each node keeps track of three categories of behavior, i.e., good, suspicious and malicious behavior, which is defined and classified by an external trusted authority, and updates its knowledge about other nodes’ behavior using 3-dimension Dirichlet distribution. It is worth to point it out that those methods have been extended to secure fully distribute peer-to-peer (P2P) network systems.
About the Speaker:
Guang Gong received a B.S. degree in mathematics in 1981, a M.S. degree in applied mathematics in 1985 and a Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering in 1990, from universities in China. She received a Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Fondazione Ugo Bordoni, Rome, Italy, and spent the following year there. After return from Italy, she was promoted to an Associate Professor at the University of Electrical Science and Technology of China. During 1995-1998, she had worked with several internationally recognized outstanding coding experts and cryptographers including Dr. Solomon W. Golomb at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. She joined University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, in 1998, an Associate Professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in September 2000. She is a full Professor since 2004. Her research interests are in the areas of signal processing for wireless communications, communication and network security, and lightweight cryptography. She has authored or co-authored more than 200 technical papers and one book, co-authored with Dr. Golomb, entitled as Signal Design for Good Correlation — for Wireless Communication, Cryptography and Radar, published by Cambridge Press in 2005. She serves/served as Associate Editors for several journals including an Associate Editor for Sequences for IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, and served on a number of technical program committees of conferences. Dr. Gong has received several awards including the Best Paper Award from the Chinese Institute of Electronics in 1984, Outstanding Doctorate Faculty Award of Sichuan Province, China, in 1991 and the Premier’s Research Excellence Award, Ontario, Canada, in 2001, and NSERC Discovery Accelerator Supplement Award, 2009, Canada.
2- Waveguide (Fiber)-based Ultrafast All-optical Signal Processors for Applications in Computing, Telecommunication and Measurement
Speaker: Dr. Prof. José Azaña, Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique – Centre Energie, Matériaux et Télécommunications (INRS-EMT), University of Québec, Montréal, Québec, Canada
Date: Monday, September 12, 2011.
Time: 12:00 pm – 2:00 pm, Seminars: 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm, Discussion, Refreshments and Networking: 1:30 pm – 2:00 pm
Location: University of Ottawa, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, SITE Building, Room 5084 (Boarding Room), 800 King Edward Avenue, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
ADMISSION: Free. Registration required. To ensure a seat, please register by e-mail contacting: Qingsheng Zeng or Wahab Almuhtadi.
Abstract:
This talk will review recent work on the development of fundamental signal processors operating on ultrafast optical signals, in particular all-optical temporal differentiators and integrators, implemented in fiber-optics or integrated-waveguide technologies. Applications in computing (e.g. differential equation solving), telecommunication (e.g. pulse shaping, optical switching), and measurement (e.g. temporal phase reconstruction) will be also briefly discussed.
About the Speaker:
José Azaña received the Telecommunication Engineer degree (six years engineering program) and Ph.D. degree in telecommunication engineering from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), Spain, in 1997 and 2001, respectively. He completed part of his PhD research at University of Toronto, ON, Canada (1999) and University of California, Davis, CA, USA (2000). Following some postdoctoral research at McGill University (2001-2003), he was appointed as an Assistant Professor at the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique – Centre Energie, Matériaux et Télécommunications (INRS-EMT) in Montreal, where he is presently a Full Professor. His research interests cover a wide range of topics, including all-fiber grating technologies, ultrafast photonic signal processing, optical pulse shaping, fiber-optic telecommunications, all-optical computing, measurement of ultrafast events, light pulse interferometry and microwave waveform generation and manipulation. He has to his credit more than 260 publications in top scientific journals and leading technical conferences, including more than 130 publications in high-impact peer-review journals, and many invited review journal papers and invited presentations in international meetings. Some of his published works have been very highly cited by his peers. Prof. Azaña is a member of IEEE and OSA. He has served as a Guest Editor of two monographs devoted to the area of Optical Signal Processing, published by EURASIP J. Appl. Signal Proc. (2005) and J. of Lightwave Technol. (2006). He has been recognized with a number of prestigious research awards and distinctions, including the XXII national prize for the best doctoral thesis in data networks from the Association of Telecommunication Engineers of Spain (2002), the extraordinary prize for the best doctoral thesis from his former university, UPM (2003), the 2008 IEEE-Photonics Society (formerly LEOS) Young Investigator Award, and the 2009 IEEE-MTT Society Microwave Prize.
Time Domain Adjoint Sensitivities and their Applications:
State of the Art
Speaker: Dr. Prof. Bakr from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Date: Friday September 16, 2011
Time: Registration and Networking: 10:00 a.m..; Seminar: 10:30 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.
Location: University of Ottawa, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, SITE Building, Room 5084 (Boarding Room), 800 King Edward Avenue, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
ADMISSION: Free. Registration required. To ensure a seat, please register by e-mail contacting: Qingsheng Zeng or Wahab Almuhtadi.
Abstract:
The design process of high frequency structures is usually carried out using Electromagnetic (EM) simulators. A model of the structure under consideration is constructed and a number of key variables controlling its response are chosen. An optimization algorithm (optimizer) drives the simulator to determine the optimal set of values of the designable parameters that satisfies the design specifications. Gradient-based optimizers are robust with well established convergence proofs. They, however, require sensitivity information which may require large number of extra simulations for each design step.
The adjoint variable methods (AVM), aim at efficiently estimating the response sensitivities. Using at most one extra EM simulation of an adjoint system, the response sensitivities with respect to all parameters are estimated regardless of the number of parameters. For the case of network parameters, this extra simulation can be eliminated. The same simulations supplying the network parameters supply their sensitivities as well. This makes gradient-based optimization more efficient.I
n this talk we review the state of the art of the time-domain AVMs and their applications. We discuss recent techniques that make this approach more efficient in terms of speed and memory storage. We show a number of interesting applications in microwave imaging, antenna design, and design of photonic devices. Open points for research are also addressed.
About the Speaker:
Mohamed H. Bakr received a B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Electronics and Communications Engineering and Engineering Mathematics from Cairo University, Egypt in 1992 and 1996, respectively with distinction (honors). He earned the Ph.D. degree in September 2000 from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, McMaster University. In November 2000, he joined the Computational Electromagnetics Research Laboratory (CERL), University of Victoria, Victoria, Canada as an NSERC Post Doctoral Fellow. Between July 2008 and June 2009, he was with Research In Motion (RIM) as a senior researcher during his Sabbatical leave. His research areas of interest include computer-aided design and modeling of microwave and photonic circuits, neural network applications, efficient optimization using time/frequency domain methods, and bioelectromagnetism. He is a recipient of a Premier’s Research Excellence Award (PREA) from the province of Ontario in 2003, and a Discovery Accelerator Award (DAS) in 2011. He is currently an associate professor with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, McMaster University.
Geometrical Probability in Wireless Networks
Speaker: Professor Jianping Pan, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada
Date: Monday August 15, 2011/ 10:30 am – 11:20 am.
Time: Registration and Networking: 09:50 a.m.; Seminar: 100:0 a.m. – 11:20 a.m
Location: Room HP 4351, Carleton University, 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada , K1S 5B6
ADMISSION: Free. Registration required. To ensure a seat, please register by e-mail contacting: Wahab Almuhtadi at almuhtadi@ieee.org, or Jun Li at jun-li@ieee.org .
Organized by: IEEE Ottawa ComSoc/BTS/CES Joint Chapter, and SP/OE/GRS Joint Chapter
Co-sponsored by: IEEE Ottawa Joint Chapters of ComSoc/BTS/CES and SP/OE/GRS, School of Mathematics and Statistic of Carleton University, and Communication Research Centre Canada
Abstract:
Electric Many performance metrics in wireless networks are ultimately nonlinear functions of the distances between transmitters, receivers and interferers. For a given network coverage and a distribution of random users within the network, how to characterize the distances among these users becomes a challenge and a prerequisite to accurate system modeling and analysis. This talk presents some recent results in Geometrical Probability for random distances associated with rhombuses (e.g., directional antennas) and hexagons (e.g., cellular systems).
About the Speaker:
Dr Jianping Pan is currently an associate professor of computer science at the University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. He received his Bachelor’s and PhD degrees in computer science from Southeast University, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China, and he did his postdoctoral research at the University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. He also worked at Fujitsu Labs and NTT Labs. His area of specialization is computer networks and distributed systems, and his current research interests include protocols for advanced networking, performance analysis of networked systems, and applied network security. He received the IEICE Best Paper Award in 2009 and the Telecommunications Advancement Foundation’s Telesys Award in 2010, and has been serving on the technical program committees of major computer communications and networking conferences including IEEE INFOCOM, ICC, Globecom, WCNC and CCNC. He is a senior member of the ACM and a senior member of the IEEE.
Communications for the Smart Grid
Speaker: Dr. Stephen Bush, Researcher at General Electric Global Research, Niskayuna, NY, USA
Date: Tuesday April 12, 2011
Time: Registration and Networking: 06:30 p.m.; Seminar: 07:00 p.m. – 08:00 p.m
Location: Algonquin College, Room T129, T-Building, 1385 Woodroffe Ave., Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
ADMISSION: Free. Registration required. To ensure a seat, please register by e-mail contacting: Wahab Almuhtadi at almuhtadi@ieee.org.
Abstract:
Electric power grids around the world are rapidly evolving to make more extensive use of communication technology. New intelligent electronic devices are being developed and deployed in which communications is becoming a ubiquitous and natural part of power systems allowing new forms of collaborative behavior. An analogy is often made between the interconnection of personal computers many decades ago resulting in the rise of the Internet and what is happening within the power grid today. However, the power grid is a large and complex machine with many aspects; it comprises a very broad set of topics. This hour-long talk will begin with a review of power systems and focus upon emerging communications capabilities within the power grid including: metering and demand-response, distributed generation, fault detection isolation and restoration, and a brief overview of emerging standards. We will end with a discussion of more speculative innovations that may impact the smart grid further into the future.
About the Speaker:
Stephen F Bush received the B.S. degree in electrical and computer engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, the M.S. degree in computer science from Cleveland State University, Cleveland, OH, and the Ph.D. degree from the University of Kansas, Lawrence. He is currently a Researcher at General Electric Global Research, Niskayuna, NY. Before joining GE Global Research, he was a Researcher at the Information and Telecommunications Technologies Center (ITTC), University of Kansas. He has been the Principal Investigator for many DARPA and Lockheed Martin sponsored research projects including: Active Networking (DARPA/ITO), Information Assurance and Survivability Engineering Tools (DARPA/ISO), Fault Tolerant Networking (DARPA/ATO), and most recently, Connectionless Networks (DARPA/ATO), an energy aware sensor network project. He is the author of Nanoscale Communication Networks (Norwood, MA: Artech House, 2010). He coauthored a book on active network management, titled Active Networks and Active Network Management: A Proactive Management Framework (New York, NY: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 2001). He has taught Quantum Computation and Communication at RPI and Computer Communications at the State University of New York at Albany. Dr. Bush is the past chair of the IEEE Emerging Technical Subcommittee on Nanoscale, Molecular, and Quantum Networking. He is also on the steering committee for the IEEE Smart Grid Vision Project.
Green Power and the Modern Grid
Speaker: Jerry Ramie, ARC Technical Resources Inc., San Jose, CA , USA
Date: Thursday, March 3, 2011
Time: Registration: 06:00 p.m; Refreshments and Networking: 06:30 p.m.; Seminar: 07:00 p.m. – 08:00 p.m.
Location: FIDUS SYSTEMS Inc., 900 Morrison Drive, Suite 203, Ottawa, ON, K2H8K7
ADMISSION: Free and is on a first to reply basis. Preference given to IEEE EMC, MTT/AP, PES and ComSoc/BTS/CES members. Seating is limited. E-mail Reservation is required. Pizza and soft drinks will be served.
REGISTRATION: Pre-registration required. To ensure a seat, please register by e-mail contacting: qiubo.ye@crc.gc.ca.
ORGANIZED BY: IEEE EMC Ottawa Chapter, MTT/AP Ottawa Joint Chapter, IEEE PES Ottawa Chapter, and IEEE ComSoc/BTS/CES Ottawa Joint Chapter.
CONTACT: details – Syed Bokhari, Qiubo Ye, Wahab Almuhtadi.
Abstract:
This talk is a general presentation on the Smart Grid. It describes the seven attributes of the smart grid, presents the DOE’s modern grid strategy and some typical architectures. It covers the choices in wired and wireless utility communications media that will be needed for deploying the Advanced Metering Infrastructure and presents Standards testing to address physical (including EMC) threats to the infrastructure
About the Speaker:
Jerry Ramie is a 26 year veteran of the EMC, communications and power industries and has authored six books on substation EMC for the Electric Power Research Institute. (EPRI) He has published articles on grid modernization and sits on the EMC Committee of the American Radio Relay League, (ARRL) on the Board of Directors of the Santa Clara Valley EMC Society, is a voting member of the IEEE-P1775 committee on EMC in BPL installations, a member of the IEEE Standards Association, an iNARTE-certified EMC technician, Secretary of the ANSI Accredited Standards Committee C63R on EMC and a Senior Member of the IEEE. He can be reached at jramie@arctechnical.com.