Queen's University, Kingston, Canada



Tutorials


Gilles Brassard
INTRIQ and Université de Montréal

Quantum Information Processing

After the discovery of quantum mechanics one century ago, physics will never be the same again. Now, information theory and computer science are catching up in ways that could be just as revolutionary. Quantum information can be harnessed to accomplish wonders that are beyond the reach of classical information processing devices. For instance, quantum computers can perform more parallel computation in a single piece of hardware than would be possible for a classical computer the size of the Universe. They have the potential to bring to their knees most 
classical cryptographic schemes currently used on the Internet to protect transactions such as the transmission of credit card numbers. Fortunately, quantum cryptography fights back by making it possible to fulfill the cryptographer's age-old dream of unconditional confidentiality in communications. Quantum nonlocality gives rise to the possibility of computing in a distributed environment with the expenditure of spectacularly less information transfer between the participants than would be required classically, and sometimes we can do away with communication altogether: This is the mysterious realm of pseudo-telepathy. Speculation? Future will tell!

No prior knowledge of quantum mechanics or cryptography will be expected from the audience.




Hossam Hassanein
Queen's University

Wireless Ad hoc and Sensor Networks -- Challenges and Opportunities

As computing and communications are converging, wireless ad hoc and sensor networks have attracted more and more attention in recent years. These networks will revolutionize information gathering and processing in both urban environments and inhospitable terrain. A wireless ad hoc network is an autonomous system consisting of mobile hosts (serving as routers) connected by wireless links. Such networks can be quickly and widely deployed to serve a multiplicity of purposes. Example applications of wireless ad hoc and sensor networks include, among 
others, emergency search-and-rescue operations, decision making in the battlefield and data acquisition operations. Wireless sensor networks consist of tiny computing and sensing devices equipped with wireless (ad hoc like) multi-hop communication capability. Sensor networks have already entered many aspects of our lives. As a result, the last few years have witnessed a wealth of research ideas on ad hoc and sensor networks that are moving rapidly into commercialization and standardization. Such networks can be randomly and rapidly deployed and reconfigured and easily tailored to specific applications including civilian, military, entertainment, etc. Moreover, an ad hoc architecture is highly robust to node failure and can provide a high-level of fault tolerance due to nodal redundancy and its distributed nature. Several challenges are standing in the way to achieving ubiquitous deployment and usability of ad hoc and sensor networks. These include variable topology, device heterogeneity, limited power supply and the lack of effective energy-efficient design.

This tutorial will review wireless ad hoc and sensor networks, and look at the fundamental issues in their design, analysis, deployment and emerging applications. Localization, tracking and query processing will be used as examples to demonstrate the advantages and also expose the scalability constraints in ad hoc and sensor networks. The following topics will be covered: device deployment, coverage, connectivity, routing, data flow management, in-network query processing, distributed algorithmic techniques and peer-to-peer computing.