A Programming Language for Ad-hoc Networks of Mobile Devices

Wednesday September 1, 2004
Hamerschlag Hall 1112
2:30 pm

Please note the special day, time, and location!

Uli Kremer
Rutgers University

Mobile ad-hoc networks of wireless computing devices like PDA's and cell phones represent the next computing platform. The fact that they are mobile, dynamic and embedded within the physical environment poses new challenges to hardware, operating systems, and language designers. In this talk, I will present a programming model and programming language for mobile ad-hoc networks.

Spatial Views is a programming language for dynamic networks of mobile devices and embedded systems. In such environments, the physical locations of nodes are crucial. Spatial Views allows a programmer to specify a virtual network based on common node characteristics and location. Nodes in such a virtual network can be visited using an iterator. Execution migration, node discovery, and routing are transparently supported.

This new language provides high-level abstractions for dynamic service discovery, location-awareness, and in-network aggregation, but hides many implementation details. Such details are left to the compiler, which generates code that uses light-weight execution migration and property based routing. Preliminary results will be reported for the prototype compiler and its runtime system.

Ulrich Kremer is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Rutgers University. His research interests include advanced optimizing compilers, performance prediction models, compiler optimizations for location-aware programs on mobile target systems, and compiler support for power/energy management. He has been a Principal Investigator and Co-Investigator on several NSF and DARPA funded projects, including an NSF CAREER award. He received his PhD and MS in computer science from Rice University in 1995 and 1993, respectively, and his diploma in computer science from the University of Bonn, Germany, in 1987.