**Distinguished Guest Speaker:

  Prof. Arun K. Somani, Iowa State University

** Topic: 

“Autonomous Aero-Visual and Sensor Based Inspection Network for Asset Monitoring”

**Abstract: 

This talk introduces a theoretical and experimental program to develop the inspection and fault detection technology needed to integrate Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs) for persistent intelligence, reconnaissance, maintenance and surveillance for obscured or logistically challenging assets in non-urban environments. The design is explained using a context of heterogeneous deployment of wireless sensors for real-time asset monitoring by anticipating exceptional conditions and building the system to cope with them. The system converges towards an error-free state with self-stabilization, the ability to fall back to a safe mode in a financially feasible manner. This sophisticated mechanism requires a real-time capacity estimation capability to sustain the quality-of-service, which can be achieved by a distributed sensor network. We discuss issues in design and information propagation in such sensor clustered topology, optimization for power-aware networking, and link and node capacity assignment to achieve the desired goals.

**Biography: 

Arun K. Somani is currently Anson Marston Distinguished Professor and Jerry R. Junkins Endowed Chair Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He earned his MSEE and PhD degrees in electrical engineering from the McGill University, Montreal, Canada, in 1983 and 1985, respectively. He has worked as Scientific Officer for Govt. of India, New Delhi from 1974 to 1982 and as a faculty member at the University of Washington, Seattle, WA from 1985 to 1997.

Professor Somani's current research focuses on scalable architectures and algorithms to manage optical fiber networks, reconfigurable architecture, and developing solution for critical infrastructure protection. He has published more than 250 technical papers, several book chapters, one book, and has supervised more than 60 MS and more than 25 PhD students. He has served as IEEE distinguished visitor and IEEE distinguished tutorial speaker. He has delivered several key note speeches, tutorials and distinguished and invited talks. In 1999, he was elected a Fellow of IEEE for his contributions to “theory and applications of computer networks.” He has been awarded a Distinguished Scientist member grade of ACM in 2006.

Location:

AT&T Labs

9505 Arboretum Blvd,

Austin, TX  78759

Date: October 26, 2011

Time: 6:00-8:00 pm