From Dumb Wireless Sensors to Smart Networks using Network Coding

The vision of wireless sensor networks is one of a smart collection of tiny, dumb devices. These motes may be individually cheap, unintelligent, imprecise, and unreliable. Yet they are able to derive strength from numbers, rendering the whole to be strong, reliable and robust. Our approach is to adopt a distributed and randomized mindset and rely on in network processing and network coding. Our general abstraction is that nodes should act only locally and independently, and the desired global behavior should arise as a collective property of the network. We summarize our work and present how these ideas can be applied for communication and storage in sensor networks.Comment: To be presented at the Inaugural Workshop of the Center for Information Theory and Its Applications, University of California - San Diego, La Jolla, CA, February 6 - 10, 200

Interference Alignment in Regenerating Codes for Distributed Storage: Necessity and Code Constructions

Regenerating codes are a class of recently developed codes for distributed storage that, like Reed-Solomon codes, permit data recovery from any arbitrary k of n nodes. However regenerating codes possess in addition, the ability to repair a failed node by connecting to any arbitrary d nodes and downloading an amount of data that is typically far less than the size of the data file. This amount of download is termed the repair bandwidth. Minimum storage regenerating (MSR) codes are a subclass of regenerating codes that require the least amount of network storage; every such code is a maximum distance separable (MDS) code. Further, when a replacement node stores data identical to that in the failed node, the repair is termed as exact. The four principal results of the paper are (a) the explicit construction of a class of MDS codes for d = n-1 >= 2k-1 termed the MISER code, that achieves the cut-set bound on the repair bandwidth for the exact-repair of systematic nodes, (b) proof of the necessity of interference alignment in exact-repair MSR codes, (c) a proof showing the impossibility of constructing linear, exact-repair MSR codes for d < 2k-3 in the absence of symbol extension, and (d) the construction, also explicit, of MSR codes for d = k+1. Interference alignment (IA) is a theme that runs throughout the paper: the MISER code is built on the principles of IA and IA is also a crucial component to the non-existence proof for d < 2k-3. To the best of our knowledge, the constructions presented in this paper are the first, explicit constructions of regenerating codes that achieve the cut-set bound.Comment: 38 pages, 12 figures, submitted to the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory;v3 - The title has been modified to better reflect the contributions of the submission. The paper is extensively revised with several carefully constructed figures and example

Explicit Construction of Optimal Exact Regenerating Codes for Distributed Storage

Erasure coding techniques are used to increase the reliability of distributed storage systems while minimizing storage overhead. Also of interest is minimization of the bandwidth required to repair the system following a node failure. In a recent paper, Wu et al. characterize the tradeoff between the repair bandwidth and the amount of data stored per node. They also prove the existence of regenerating codes that achieve this tradeoff. In this paper, we introduce Exact Regenerating Codes, which are regenerating codes possessing the additional property of being able to duplicate the data stored at a failed node. Such codes require low processing and communication overheads, making the system practical and easy to maintain. Explicit construction of exact regenerating codes is provided for the minimum bandwidth point on the storage-repair bandwidth tradeoff, relevant to distributed-mail-server applications. A subspace based approach is provided and shown to yield necessary and sufficient conditions on a linear code to possess the exact regeneration property as well as prove the uniqueness of our construction. Also included in the paper, is an explicit construction of regenerating codes for the minimum storage point for parameters relevant to storage in peer-to-peer systems. This construction supports a variable number of nodes and can handle multiple, simultaneous node failures. All constructions given in the paper are of low complexity, requiring low field size in particular.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures, in the Proceedings of Allerton Conference on Communication, Control and Computing, September 200

Hormonal Changes Under Altitude Stress

The separate effects of exposure for six hours to cold (8 degree Celsius), hypoxia (4267 m.) and simulated altitude (8 degree Celsius at 4267 m.)have been studied on ten human subjects in a decompression chamber, with respect to the changes in blood cortisol, ADH and urinary catecholamines. Changes in blood cortisol, PBI, ADH urinary excretion of 17-keto steroids and urine volume have been recorded on another ten subjects on acute exposure to high altitude (3505 m.). Changes in the same parameters alongwith urinary testosterone level, have been recorded on another 20 subjects on prolonged exposure for two years to high altitude (3505 m.). The results have been discussed

Comparison of Entrainment Rate in Acrylonitrile Reactors Using Plant Data and CFD Simulations

Accurate entrainment rates are important in fluidized bed reactors for several reasons, including determination of cyclone loadings and efficiencies, sizing of diplegs, and inputs to population balance models. Entrainment correlations exist in the literature and from other sources to predict entrainment rates from fluidized beds, but they can vary by orders of magnitude. In addition, many correlations do not take into account effects of internals which are present in many types of industrial reactors. A study was undertaken to better understand entrainment rates from Sohiotype acrylonitrile fluidized bed reactors containing catalyst classified as a Geldart type A powder. As part of this study, full scale CFD models were developed using the Barracuda® computational particle fluid dynamics (CPFD®) software and validated with the help of data collected from multiple plant reactors. These models compared two different sizes of industrial-scale reactors and included all major internals including cooling coils, cyclones, cyclone diplegs and gas spargers. Data on the pressure profile and actual entrainment rate to the cyclones generated by the Barracuda models were compared to the measured pressure data and derived entrainment rate in the plant reactors. The results showed good agreement. Additionally, evaluation of using the slip factor in the model to compare the particle volume fraction in the freeboard to the actual entrainment rate was done to determine if this technique could be used in the plant setting. The slip factor as calculated by Barracuda was between 1.55-1.95 which is similar to other values in the literature