Energy Efficient Optical Network

As the demand for new Internet services, such as 3-D online gaming, video conferencing and learning, video telephony and downloading, and high-definition video-on-demand, becomes more widespread, the amount of electricity used by servers, communication devices, and Internet infrastructure continue to be a major concern. Various studies show that in 2005 the total energy used by data centers (including their associated infrastructure) was about 1.5% of the total U.S. electricity consumption. This is equivalent to the electricity consumed by six million homes or about three billion dollars and eight million tons of CO2emission. It is estimated that the annual IP traffic in 2012 will be about eight times larger than its level in 2005, surging the total energy cost to about 24 billion dollars.

The objective of this research is to examine and compare the power consumption between optical cross-connect equipment based on electrical and photonic matrix switching. We also like to study modular optical node architecture that is capable of offering energy-awareness in QoS-enabled traffic grooming.

Status: Ongoing
Collaborators: University of Texas at Dallas, and Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Pisa, Italy
Publications: Click here...

General Purpose Data Logger with GPS

The purpose of this hand-held device is to record GPS position as well as readings from attached sensors. The device can later be connected to a PC and download all information. Google map can be utilized to map display the information.

track moving objects where installing a GPS is not practical. This device will be ideal for applications such as tracking birds, fish, small animals, learn about animals and their habitats, keeping track of moving bicycles, etc. Click on the figure for more information.

RFID-Based Tracking Device

The purpose of this device is track moving objects where installing a GPS is not practical. This device will be ideal for applications such as tracking birds, fish, small animals, learn about animals and their habitats, keeping track of moving bicycles, etc. Click on the figure for more information.

Energy Saving Products

The energy efficiency of network equipments and devices is important for economic as well as environmental reasons. Studies estimate the USA’s network infrastructure uses 24 TWh per year, or $24 billion. This includes network switches, access points, end-node NICs and servers. Consecutively, the theme of power reduction in various electronic devices is gaining tremendous momentum. Here are some interesting design ideas in this area:
1- A cell phone charger which shuts itself down when no load is present;
2- A router which goes into sleeping mode (or a Zigbee XCVR);
3- A room display encouraging users to save energy (measure energy usage in real-time) - can be installed in the building corridor;
4- A man-powered charging center on the campus with some displays and learning modules about ways to save energy (students can hookup their electronic devices and change them);

Configureable Remote Laboratory

Effectiveness of distance education systems deals with a number of factors which affect their success or failure. These include the influence of distance learning theory upon instructional design and delivery. In our project our goal is to design and implement an open-form platform in which each educator can design specific learning modules and simply add them to the knowledge-based platform. Each topic includes, theory, simulation, practice with the remote instrumentation, practice test, and quiz questions. Our main focus in this project is to utilize LabVIEW platform. A number of examples are already provided by NI site. Our proposed platforms has a series of unique features:

• Providing theory of operation;
• Allowing the user to perform simulation;
• Building the simulated test setup (automatically or manually- upon request)
• Comparing the simulated results and practical results;
• Answering practice test questions;
• Interacting users with an attendee for guidance and answering questions.

Here are a few examples of some preliminary ideas: Developing a Remote Laboratory and Webcam-based Remote Control.
This project requires developing a series of sub-systems (project proposals):
- Develop a configurable test setup using available measurement tools
- Develop a database to keep track of student activities
- Integrating audio, video, and text
- Allow remote users to use the switches and routers in the network laboratory remotely
- Design a simple approach to provide SMS-based distance learning for communities in which many users have access to cell phone.

Simulation Tools

We highly encourage students to examine various existing network-based simulation tools and become proficient in one or more. A number of surveys have been published including the one by Jianli Pan. A good comparative study is provided by V. Soares; refer to their work for more information and references. Also Begg compares a number of simulation tools for next generation networks. Here are some examples of available simulation tools:

OPNET

Network Simulator (NS)

SimReal

Tangram

Network Simulator 2: a Simulation Tool for Linux

ONE (The Opportunistic Network Environment)simulator- simulator specifically designed for evaluating DTN routing and application protocols. It allows users to create scenarios based upon different synthetic movement models and real-world traces and offers a framework for implementing routing and application protocols.

There are also other general network simulators which can help understanding how switches and routers operate. Use GNS3 as the graphical interface for any of these. 

• Dynamips, a Cisco IOS emulator.
• Dynagen, a text-based front end for Dynamips.
• Qemu, a generic and open source machine emulator and virtualizer.
• VirtualBox, a free and powerful virtualization software.

In addition, there are many simulators for wireless network. A number of surveys, including the work by Koksal, compare these simulators.

General Miscellaneous Projects

This page provides a wide variety of projects for undergraduate and graduate students. The main idea of this page is to give some general project ideas:
1- Design bidirectional communication system to transmit voice over fiber using low cost laser.

Green Optical Networking

The amount of energy spent for network infrastructures can be significantly reduces using energy-aware protocols. This in turn can reduce CO2 emission in order of million metric tons. Recently, the idea of energy conservation in network infrastructure has been presented in a number of works. However, thus far, less attentions are given on power-conserving issue for optical networks. Our research focus is to design new architectures and protocols to improve energy consumptions of optical networks. We are currently working on a number of approaches:
1- Using Optical Burst Switching as an underlying switching mechanism to reduce energy consumptions.
2- Designing an energy-aware approach to improve overall energy consumption of optical nodes.
3- A number of works in wireless sensor networks have suggested cluster-based energy-adaptive MAC protocols to conserve total network energy requirements. Similar approach can be used by utilizing bundle layer in optical networks.

Optical Burst Switching (OBS)

Optical burst switching (OBS) has been proposed as a new paradigm to achieve a practical balance between coarse-grained circuit switching and fine-grained packet switching, hence, better utilizing the available bandwidth. In this dissertation, we analyze a number of issues involving the development of OBS technology, including reactive and proactive contention resolution mechanisms with service differentiation capability, hardware implementation of the scheduler, and data burst grooming. We also propose OBS as an alternative technology to support computationally intensive Grid applications. You can read this introductory work to learn more about OBS. I am currently involved in the following projects in OBS:
1- Using general algorithm (GA) for anycast routing in Grip-over-OBS (GOBS)
2- Utilizing an OBS to conserve energy in optical networks.

Delay Tolerant Networks (DTN)

A number of DTN-based projects for graduate students are currently available. These projects are mainly for graduate students, however, undergraduate students are highly encouraged to participate. A very interesting and practical project for undergraduate students in this area is design of a DTN network using a Lego Mindstorms Nxt. Here is a tutorial paper about delay tolerant network. We are currently working on a number of issues in DTN:
1- Anycast routing and how to interface disconnected DTN regions to the Internet.
2- Security in DTN; each intermediate node can have the custody of its messages. New security measurements must be considered to ensure the intermediate nodes cannot access or modify messages they have custody of.
3- Implementing Car-to-Car Communication or a Vehicular-Delay-Tolerant Network.
4- Implementing a TCP/IP -based DTN protocols using a Linux based system.
5- Describing the Inter-domain protocols between a VDTN and a non-VDTN (e.g., Internet) or multiple VDTNs administered by different organizations.
6- Using the ONE simulator to implement a VDTN system with different routing protocols.
5- Using omni-directional wireless optical communication systems in Vehicular DTN, possibilities, and challenges.
6- Applications of Mobile-DTN: Tracking hikers, animals, etc. using Google map
7- Predictions of future connectivity information - the important issue here is how to choose an appropriate next hop in Vehicular-DTN.
8-and more...