15149925
A Formal Theory of Undirected Graphs in Higher-Order Logic
This paper describes a formal theory of undirected (labeled) graphs in higher-order logic developed using the mechanical theoremproving system HOL. It formalizes and proves theorems about such notions as the empty graph, single-node graphs, finite graphs, subgraphs, adjacency relations, walks, paths, cycles, bridges, reachability, connectedness, acyclicity, trees, trees oriented with respect to roots, oriented trees viewed as family trees, top-down and bottom-up inductions in a family tree, distributing associative and commutative operations with identities recursively over subtrees of a family tree, and merging disjoint subgraphs of a graph. The main contribution of this work lies in the precise formalization of these graph-theoretic notions and the rigorous derivation of their properties in higher-order logic. This is significant because there is little tradition of formalization in graph theory due to the concreteness of graphs. A companion paper [2] describes the application of this formal graph theory to the mechanical verification of distributed algorithms.
14479349
Understanding and verifying distributed algorithms using stratified decomposition
Designers of autonomous distributed algorithms ( i.e., algorithms whose complete input is available before the start of execution) customarily refer to temporal ordering in describing the behavior of their algorithms-statements like “after A, task B is performed.” In the absence of an explicit termination detection for A built into the algorithm such a statement should be puzzling. However, the available proof methodologies do not seem to hinge on such statements. This paper provides firm theoretical ground for such as*Supported by NSF Presidential Young Investigators Award under grant DCR84-51396 and matching funds from IBM Faculty Development Award under grant D840622. Permission to copy without fee all or part of this material is granted provided that the copies are not made or distributed for direct commercial advantage, the ACM copyright notice and the title of the publication and its date appear, and notice is given that copying is by permission of the Association for Computing Machinery. To copy otherwise, or to republish, requires a fee and/ or specific permission.
12857629
Simple Proof Techniques for Property Preservation via Simulation
Let s1 and s2 be two reactive systems related by simulation. For what kind of properties φ can one infer s1 ≒ φ (s1 satisfies φ) from s2 ≒ φ, or vice versa? This problem has been treated in the literature for various logics in which to express φ. In this paper we make two simple observations by which such results can be proved very easily: 
1. 
(1) proofs of property preservation can be made compositional, and 
 
2. 
(2) infinitary logics are very expressive. Neither observation is new, but together they yield modular proofs of nontrivial results.
38950443
Mechanical Verification of Distributed Algorithms in Higher-Order Logic
The only practical way to verify the correctness of distributed algorithms with a high degree of confidence is to construct machine-checked, formal correctness proofs. In this paper we explain how to do so using HOL an interactive proof assistant for higher order logic developed by Gordon and others. First, we describ how to build an infrastructure in HOL that supports reasoning about distributed algorithms,including formal theories of predicates, temporal logic, labeled transitions systems, simulation of programs, translation of properties, and graphs. Then we demonstrate, via an exemple, how to use the powerful intuition about eventsand causality to guide and structure correctness proofs of distributed algorithms. The example used is the verification of PIF (propagation of information with feedback), which is a simple but typical distributed algorithm due to Segall.
29521519
Linear Broadcast Routing
Abstract In this paper we examine the problem of performing broadcasts in networks where the messages are constrained to follow linear paths. Many high speed networks, where routing is done in specialized hardware, have this characteristic. We show that the general problem is NP-complete but find a polynomial time approximation algorithm which is guaranteed to provide a solution which is within twice the optimal. We also suggest some generalizations of this work and propose several open problems.
33219681
Linear Broadcast Routing
38703217
Design of Scalable Continuous Media Servers
Multimedia applications place high demands for quality-of-service (QoS), performance, and reliability on systems. These stringent requirements make design of cost-effective and scalable systems difficult. Therefore efficient adaptive and dynamic resource management techniques in conjunction with data placement techniques can be of great help in improving performance, scalability, and reliability of such systems. This is the focus of our paper.
1923772
An energy efficient select optimal neighbor protocol for wireless ad hoc networks
We propose two location-aware select optimal neighbor (SON) algorithms that are suitable for CSMA/CA based MAC protocols for wireless ad hoc networks. Both algorithms optimize the energy efficiency by reducing the effective number of neighbors and thus reduce the transmission power as well as the overhearing power consumption at irrelevant receivers. NS-2 simulations show that our algorithms can achieve about 28% and 38% average energy savings per node compared to CSMA/CA based MAC protocols such as IEEE 802.11.
5473639
Large-scale data collection: a coordinated approach
In this paper we consider the problem of collecting a large amount of data from several different hosts to a single destination in a wide-area network. Often, due to congestion conditions, the paths chosen by the network may have poor throughput. By choosing an alternate route at the application level, we may be able to obtain substantially faster completion time. This data collection problem is a nontrivial one because the issue is not only to avoid congested link(s), but to devise a coordinated transfer schedule which would afford maximum possible utilization of available network resources. In this paper we present an approach for computing coordinated data collection schedules, which can result in significant performance improvements. We make no assumptions about knowledge of the topology of the network or the capacity available on individual links of the network, i.e., we only use end-to-end information. Finally, we also study the shortcomings of this approach in terms of the gap between the theoretical formulation and the resulting data transfers in wide-area networks. In general, our approach can be used for solving arbitrary data movement problems over the Internet. We use the Bistro platform to illustrate one application of our techniques.
921044
The design and evaluation of a hybrid sensor network for cane-toad monitoring
This paper investigates a wireless, acoustic sensor network application-monitoring amphibian populations in the monsoonal woodlands of northern Australia. Our goal is to use automatic recognition of animal vocalizations to census the populations of native frogs and the invasive introduced species, the cane toad. This is a challenging application because it requires high frequency acoustic sampling, complex signal processing and wide area sensing coverage. We set up two prototypes of wireless sensor networks that recognize vocalizations of up to 9 frog species found in northern Australia. Our first prototype is simple and consists of only resource-rich Stargate devices. Our second prototype is more complex and consists of a hybrid mixture of Stargates and inexpensive, resource-poor Mica2 devices operating in concert. In the hybrid system, the Mica2s are used to collect acoustic samples, and expand the sensor network coverage. The Stargates are used for resource-intensive tasks such as fast Fourier transforms (FFTs) and machine learning. The hybrid system incorporates three algorithms designed to account for the sampling, processing and communication bottlenecks of the Mica2s (i) high frequency sampling, (ii) compression and noise reduction, to reduce data transmission by up to 90%, and (iii) sampling scheduling, which exploits the sensor network redundancy to increase the effective sample processing rate. We evaluate the performance of both systems over a range of scenarios, and demonstrate that the feasibility and benefits of a hybrid systems approach justify the additional system complexity.
9337287
Detection and Recovery for Disconnection Failures in a Web-based Medical Teleconsultation System
With the progress of advanced technology, people anticipate better quality in the medical health care service. Due to more robust requirements in medical environments, higher availability and reliability are expected. This paper describes a recovery scheme for disconnection failures in a Web-based medical teleconsultation system. With the support, the disconnected clients can re-enter the system to resume the unfinished discussion using the synchronization mechanisms. The experiments have shown that the mechanism performed successfully. The lazy synchronization further reduced the required time that the clients had to wait for joining the consultation after network disconnections