IBM Israel Research Seminars

There is a growing interest in the use of wireless communications for vehicular and road applications, as a result of recent advances in enabling technologies. Much of the research attention has gone into direct vehicle-to-vehicle communications (e.g. for highway safety), but practical deployment has been slow due to the need for major vehicle manufacturers to reach common agreements and standards. On the other hand, applications that do not require vehicle manufacturer involvement have seen much faster progress. In this talk, we overview two research projects in this space, involving the Networks and Pervasive Computing research group at National ICT Australia (NICTA), Sydney. Project OCEAN (On-board Communications, Entertainment and iNformation), conducted in collaboration with the University of New South Wales, studies issues in the deployment of on-board high-speed LANs in public transport vehicles, designed to offer a seamless and efficient connectivity solution to passengers without requiring them to use individual mobile network providers. A key part of this project is designing network protocols capable of utilising the repetitive, predictable nature of public transport routes and timetables to improve the network performance and quality of service. The other project, named STaR (Smart Transport and Roads) and supported by the state's Road and Traffic Authority, considers the use of static wireless mesh networks as the communications layer of traffic control systems in metropolitan areas. Such systems feature low data rates but very strict requirements of reliability and latency between the traffic control centre and roadside infrastructure, and call for specially-tailored wireless mesh protocols at the link and routing layers. This talk will review the research challenges and opportunities in both of the above projects, and present a sample of recent results and progress.

About the Speaker
Lavy Libman received his Ph.D from the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology in 2003. He then joined National ICT Australia (NICTA), Sydney, where he is currently a researcher in the Networks and Pervasive Computing program. He also holds a conjoint appointment in the School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications, University of New South Wales. His research interests include cooperative communications and error control in wireless networks, performance evaluation and protocol optimization for mobile nodes and networks, and applications of game theory in network analysis and design. Dr. Libman is a member of the IEEE. He is the track chair for the Cross-Layer Design and Optimization track of ICCCN 2007. He was a co-chair of the Workshop on Networking in Public Transport, held in conjunction with QShine 2006. He also serves on the technical program committees of several international conferences, including IEEE Infocom, IEEE LCN, IEEE VTC, QShine, and WiOpt.