Abstract

IoT applications are expected to become ubiquitous in everyday life. This means that there will be many independent networks -- operating in the same location. Because these networks operate in unlicensed spectrum and are based on a wide range of enabling technologies, there is no basis for common administrative control.  Increasingly crowded spectrum and inter-network interactions therefore pose a significant challenge to successful deployment of this technology.

Cross-technology interference (e.g. among IEEE 802.11, IEEE 802.15.4 and Bluetooth) has been widely studied and interference mitigation continues to be a topic of active research.  This discussion therefore focuses on interactions between networks that use the same PHY layer -- the diverse protocols based on IEEE 802.15.4 are a motivating example.

I present some preliminary results that examine interactions between co-located IEEE 802.15.4 networks in more detail and highlight some complex behaviors.  These results suggest that there is a need for re-consideration of protocol performance in the presence of such interactions.  I also discuss the implications of these issues for IoT architectures and for broader commercial and technical trends.

This is joint work with Viktoria Fodor at KTH.  Michael Frey at Humboldt University also contributed to the project during his study-visit at SICS.

Bio

Laura Marie Feeney has been a member of the research staff at the Swedish Institute of Computer Science since 1999 and is also affiliated with Uppsala University as an industry doctoral researcher in the Communication Research Group at the Division of Computer Systems.

Laura's research interests are broadly in networking and systems, with a mix of industry and academic work. Most of her current activities are directed toward decentralized wireless networks such as ad hoc, opportunistic and sensor networks, particularly battery-efficient networking, performance evaluation, and practical network operations.

Though much of her research is based on developing novel measurement techniques, she is also active in the OMNeT++ simulation community and participates in the OMNeT++ Steering Committee.

Laura has authored 19 refereed papers in journals and international conferences and co-supervised four M.Sc. theses. She has given two keynote presentations and been a general or TPC co-chair or member of the organizing committee for a number of international conferences, including ACM MSWiM, IFIP Networking, and the OMNeT++ Workshop. She has been a visitor at the Santa Fe Institute Complex Systems Summer School, University of Rome La Sapienza, and Technical University Berlin.

Before coming to Sweden, Laura was a member of the Real Time Computing Group at the OSF Research Institute in Cambridge, MA, where she worked on distributed real-time communication for the Mach microkernel.

Previously, she was a software engineer at BBN, developing the SIMNET distributed warfighting simulation for the US DoD and has also worked at several startups, most notably the computer game developer, Looking Glass Studios. She was a mathematics undergraduate at MIT.