Invited Speakers

Dr. Mohammad S. Obaidat Dr. Bezalel Gavish Dr. Han-Chieh Chao Dr. Mohammad S. Obaidat President, The Society for Modeling and Simulation International, SCS Fellow of the IEEE and Fellow of SCS Professor, Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering, Monmouth University, USA Recent Trends and Challenges in Wireless Networking   The field of wireless network systems has witnessed tremendous growth in recent years causing it to become one of the fastest growing segments of the telecommunications technology. As wireless networks evolve with increasing size and profitability, they will be able to integrate with other wireless technologies enabling them to support mobile computing applications and perform as efficient as wired networks. Due to the difficulties posed by the wireless transmission medium and the increasing demand for better and cheaper services, the area of wireless networks is also an extremely rich field for research and development.   The fast growth of wireless systems in recent years, together with the exponential growth of the Internet is increasing the demand for wireless data services. Traffic on upcoming wireless systems is expected to be a mix of real-time traffic such as multimedia teleconferencing, real-time voice, and data-traffic such as WWW browsing and file transfers, with users desiring diverse Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees for different types of traffic. Guaranteeing the QoS for these traffic types is considered a challenge and on-going research activity.   This keynote will address the current trends in research and development in wireless networks and communications. Also, it will shed some light on the future and challenges facing the progress in this fascinating technology. We will review the fundamental techniques in the design, operation, and evaluation of wireless networks and systems. We will present some of our recent research results including new protocols for wireless networks. Among these, an adaptive MAC protocol for distributed wireless LANs that is capable of operating efficiently under bursty traffic conditions. According to the proposed protocol, the mobile station that is granted permission to transmit is selected by means of a neural-based algorithm. Another new protocol for dynamically setting 802.11 wireless LAN waveforms and transmission power levels based on the wireless channel's signal to noise ratio will be introduced. Our method, known as Signal-to-Noise Ratio-Waveform Power Adaptation (SNR-WPA), changes the power in discrete steps matched to each of the 802.11 data rate-waveform steps. By matching the power to the spreading symbol rate, our technique maximizes the network throughput while minimizing MAC layer contention. We present a new scheme to authenticate and authorize 802.11 wireless nodes within a network. This new layer of security relies on a neural network decision engine that restricts network access to mobile nodes whose physical location is within a threshold distance from the wireless access point or the controller of the network. This method gives an extra layer of security and allows enforcing policies by which network access is only allowed from a certain section of the network.   We will also introduce a new security scheme that attempts to fix a flaw in the disassociation mechanism of the WPA protocol. Other related wireless research efforts by our group will be presented. About Dr. Mohammad S. Obaidat   Mohammad S. Obaidat is an internationally well known academic, researcher, and scientist. He received his Ph.D. and M. S. degrees in Computer Engineering with a minor in Computer Science from The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA. Dr. Obaidat is currently a full Professor of Computer Science at Monmouth University, NJ, USA. Among his previous positions are Chair of the Department of Computer Science and Director of the Graduate Program at Monmouth University and a faculty member at the City University of New York. He has received extensive research funding. He has authored or co-authored six books and over four hundred and twenty (420) refereed scholarly journal and conference articles. Dr. Obaidat has served as a consultant for several corporations and organizations worldwide and is editor of many scholarly journals including being the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Communication Systems published by John Wiley. He is also an Editor of IEEE Wireless Communications. In 2002, he was the scientific advisor for the World Bank/UN Workshop on Fostering Digital Inclusion. Recently, Dr. Obaidat was awarded the distinguished Nokia Research Fellowship and the Distinguished Fulbright Award. Dr. Obaidat has made pioneering and lasting contributions to the multi-facet fields of computer science and engineering. He has guest edited numerous special issues of scholarly journals such as IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, IEEE Wireless Communications, IEEE Systems Journal, Elsevier Performance Evaluation, SIMULATION: Transactions of SCS, Elsevier Computer Communications Journal, Journal of C & EE, and Wiley, Security and Communication Network Journal, and Wiley International Journal of Communication Systems, among others. Obaidat has served as the steering committee chair, advisory Committee Chair, honorary chair, and program chair of many international conferences. He is the founder of the International Symposium on Performance Evaluation of Computer and Telecommunication Systems, SPECTS and has served as the General Chair of SPECTS since its inception. Obaidat has received a recognition certificate from IEEE. Between 1994-1997, Obaidat has served as distinguished speaker/visitor of IEEE Computer Society. Since 1995 he has been serving as an ACM distinguished Lecturer. He is also and SCS Distinguished Lecturer. Prof. Obaidat is the founder of the SCS Distinguished Lecturer Program (DLP) and its present director. Between 1996 and 1999, Dr. Obaidat served as an IEEE/ACM program evaluator of the Computing Sciences Accreditation Board/Commission, CSAB/CSAC. Between 1995 and 2002, he has served as a member of the board of directors of the Society for Computer Simulation International. Between 2002 and 2004, He has served as Vice President of Conferences of the Society for Modeling and Simulation International SCS. Between 2004-2006, he has served as Vice President of Membership of SCS. Between 2006-2009, he served as the Senior Vice President of SCS. He is currently the President of SCS. He has been invited to lecture and give keynote speeches worldwide. One of his recent co-authored papers has received the best paper award in the IEEE AICCSA 2009 international conference. In 2009, Dr. Obaidat received the McLeod Founder's Award for Distinguished Service to the Profession. His research interests are: wireless communications and networks, modeling and simulation, performance evaluation of computer systems, and telecommunications systems, security of computer and network systems, high performance computing/computers, applied neural networks and pattern recognition, security of e-based systems, and speech processing. During the 2004/2005 academic, he was on sabbatical leave as the Fulbright distinguished Professor and Advisor to the President of Philadelphia University (Dr. Adnan Badran who became in April 2005 the Prime Minster of Jordan). Prof. Obaidat is a Fellow of the Society for Modeling and Simulation International SCS, and a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Dr. Bezalel Gavish Professor, ITOM Department, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX, USA Are there Hard Limits on the Growth of the Internet and Computing Capacity   The last few years have seen an explosion in the deployment and use of the Internet, computing and telecommunication technologies. This was followed by significant increases in the speed and capacity of computing, for example Petaflop supercomputers are becoming common. We will examine some of the developments; explain their importance and potential impact.   Many forecasts and predictions have been made about the impact of the increases of computing capacity and the growth of the Internet and the world wide web. In this talk we will introduce some of the favorite predictions and will analyze the possibilities for their realization in the long run. The analysis shows that there exist hard limits on the growth of the Internet and the increase in computing capacity. They prove that it is unlikely that some of the predictions will hold in the long run. The bounds are based on basic physical and economic limitations, which generate tight bounds on the realization of such predictions. The bounds will occur much faster than expected by simple forecasting methods.   A surprising outcome of this line of research is that it also provides as a byproduct upper bounds on the processing ability of the brain and of human beings. We will present the bounds and how they are derived. The results have direct impact on research in cognitive abilities of human beings. About Dr. Bezalel Gavish   Professor Bezalel Gavish holds the Eugene J. and Ruth F. Constantin Distinguished Chair in Business at the Edwin L. Cox School of Business at the Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. He was the Chairman of the Information Technology and Operations Management (ITOM) department at the Cox business School. Professor Gavish is the founding Chairman of the International Conference on Telecommunications Systems Management and the International Conference on Telecommunications and Electronic Commerce. He is the Editor-in-Chief of two top ranked research oriented journals, the Telecommunication Systems Journal, and of the Electronic Commerce Research Journal. Dr. Han-Chieh Chao Professor & Dean, College of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, Director, Computer & IT Center, National Ilan University, I-Lan, Taiwan, ROC Towards Service Oriented Cognitive Networks over IP Multimedia Subsystems (IMS)   Cognitive Radios (CR) is an innovative wireless technology to improve the efficiency of spectrum use and network performance. Its concept comes from the radio sensing and learning, spectrum opportunity, and spectrum re-configure, etc. Cognitive Networks (CN) focus on the end-to-end communications for the global optimization and based on Cognitive Radios and Software Defined Radios (SDR). This presentation provides an overview of SDR, CR, and CN. However, there are many challenges to realize Cognitive Network includes Global Control Plane, Message Exchange, and Multi-Objective Optimization. IP Multimedia Subsystems (IMS) is one of the solutions. The concept of IMS is to merge telecommunication technologies, wireless networks and wired networks under the All-IP environment to provide more extensible services at 3G and even future 4G networks. Finally, we present the design of CogIMS architecture to overcome these challenges of Cognitive Networks. About Dr. Han-Chieh Chao   Professor Han-Chieh Chao is a joint appointed Full Professor of the Department of Electronic Engineering and Institute of Computer Science & Information Engineering. He also serves as the Dean of the College of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science and Director of Computer & IT Center for National Ilan University, I-Lan, Taiwan, R.O.C. His research interests include High Speed Networks, Wireless Networks, IPv6 based Networks, Digital Creative Arts and Digital Divide. He received his MS and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University in 1989 and 1993 respectively. He has authored or co-authored 4 books and has published about 140 refereed professional research papers. He has completed 50 MSEE thesis students. Dr. Chao has received many research awards, including Purdue University SRC awards, and NSC research awards (National Science Council of Taiwan). He also received many funded research grants from NSC, Ministry of Education (MOE), RDEC, Industrial Technology of Research Institute, Institute of Information Industry and FarEasTone Telecommunications Lab. Dr. Chao has been invited frequently to give talks at national and international conferences and research organizations. Dr. Chao is also serving as an IPv6 Steering Committee member and co-chair of R&D division of the NICI (National Information and Communication Initiative, a ministry level government agency which aims to integrate domestic IT and Telecom projects of Taiwan), Co-chair of the Technical Area for IPv6 Forum Taiwan, the executive editor of the Journal of Internet Technology and the Editor-in-Chief for International Journal of Internet Protocol Technology and International Journal of Ad Hoc and Ubiquitous Computing. Dr. Chao has served as the guest editors for Mobile Networking and Applications (ACM MONET), IEEE JSAC, IEEE Communications Magazine, Computer Communications, IEE Proceedings Communications, the Computer Journal, Telecommunication Systems, Wireless Personal Communications, and Wireless Communications & Mobile Computing. Dr. Chao is an IEEE senior member and a Fellow of IET (IEE). He is also a Chartered Fellow of British Computer Society.