Department of Computer Science and
Engineering, and KINDI Laboratory for
Computing Research Joint Seminar
Title: An Information-Theoretic
Framework for Opportunistic Social
Networks
By
Speaker: Dr. Tamer ElBatt
Electronics & Communications Engineering Dept.
Faculty of Engineering,
Cairo University, Egypt
Date: Thursday. Feb. 20, 2014
Time: 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM
Bio
Tamer ElBatt received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in
Electronics and Communications Engineering from
Cairo University, Giza, Egypt, in 1993 and 1996,
respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical and
Computer Engineering from the University of
Maryland, College Park, MD, in 2000. From 2000 to
2006, he was with HRL Laboratories, LLC, Malibu,
CA as a Research Scientist. From 2006 to 2008, he
was with San Diego Research Center as a Senior
Research Staff Member. From 2008 to 2009, he was
with Lockheed Martin ATC, Palo Alto, CA as a
Senior Research Scientist leading the
Communications and Networking R&D group. In
July 2009, he joined the Electronics &
Communications Engineering Dept., Faculty of
Engineering, Cairo University, Egypt as an
Assistant Professor. He also has a joint
appointment with the Wireless Intelligent Networks
Center (WINC), Nile University. Dr. ElBatt research
has been supported by DARPA, General Motors
and Boeing and is currently being supported by
Qatar QNRF, the Egyptian NTRA, ITIDA, EU FP7,
General Motors, Microsoft and Google. He has
published more than 60 papers in prestigious
journals and international conferences. Dr. ElBatt
holds seven issued U.S. patents and few more
pending applications.
Dr. ElBatt is a Senior Member of the IEEE and has
served on the technical program committees of
major IEEE and ACM conferences in the areas of
wireless and sensor networks and mobile
computing. He has served as the Demo Co-Chair of
ACM Mobicom 2013 and has been the Publications
Co-Chair of IEEE Globecom 2012 and is currently
serving as the Publication Co-Chair of Mobiquitous
2014. Dr. ElBatt currently serves on the Editorial
Board of IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing
and Wiley International Journal of Satellite
Communications and Networking. Dr. ElBatt has
also seved on NSF, Fulbright and Misr ElKheir
review panels. He has been invited to participate in
Google’s EMEA Faculty Summit in Zurich, Feb.
2010. Dr. ElBatt was a Visiting Professor at the
Dept. of Electronics, Politecnico di Torino, Italy and
the FENS, Sabanci University, Turkey, in Aug. 2010
and Aug. 2013, respectively. His research has thus
far collected more than 2100 citations on the
Google Scholar Index and has been cited by media,
such as EE Times and Information Week. Dr. ElBatt
is the recipient of the 2002, 2004 HRL Achievement
Award and the 2013 Cairo University Incentive
Award in Enegineering Sciences.
His research interests lie in the broad areas of
performance analysis and design of wireless and
mobile networks with emphasis on cognitive radios
and networks, cooperative networking, cross-layer
optimization, MAC, sensor and vehicular networks
and emerging mobile applications. Dr. ElBatt is
listed in Cambridge Who’s Who in America 20092010 and Marquis Who’s Who in the World 20102011.
CSE Seminar Coordinator: Professor Ali Jaoua, Tel
: 66546122 or 44034249, jaoua@qu.edu.qa
Venue: BCR-E112 (corridor 5)
Abstract
In this talk, we present our progress on recent trends in wireless
networking and overview samples of recent research that could contribute
to shaping future networks and mobile services. In particular, we touch
upon opportunistic mobile social networks, models and potential
applications.
In the first part of the talk, we address the, inherently qualitative, notion
of similarity with focus on mobile users. We first introduce generalized,
non-temporal and temporal profile structures, beyond mere location, in
the form a probability distribution function. Afterwards, we analyze classic
and information-theoretic similarity metrics as well as introduce a novel
vectorised cosine metric to strike a balance between complexity and
capturing the temporal dimension, using publicly available data. The most
noticeable insight is that temporal metrics yield, on the average, lower
similarity indices, compared to the non-temporal ones, due to
incorporating the dynamics in the temporal dimension. The lessons
learned from this work are expected to play a key role in motivating future
research in this vibrant research area.
In the second part of the talk, we introduce a novel mathematical
framework that establishes fundamental limits and insightful results for
knowledge sharing among similar opportunistic users. We present
numerical results characterizing the, newly introduced notion of,
"knowledge capacity" for a user and the cumulative knowledge gain over
time, using publicly available data for the user behavior and mobility
traces, in case of fixed as well as mobile scenarios. The presented results
provide valuable insights confirming the role of the introduced
information-theoretic framework to motivate future research, study
diverse scenarios and use cases as well as future knowledge sharing
policies.
A demo for opportunistic recommendation systems, coined Oh' by the
way (O'BTW), was presented at ACM Mobisys 2013.