Ph.D. proposal 1 : Spontaneous information discovery

This thesis is related to the design of the software components enabling complex information discovery. In particular we have to cope with the following problems related to naming, addressing complex information. At the same time, we have also to address the fundamental issue of information confidentiality according to a user defined policy.

To reach these goals the following issues have to be considered carefully :

• Design of a lookup service satisfying the autonomy property of each node
• Progressive information disclosing to satisfy user confidentiality constraints.

Ph.D. proposal 2 : Mobility models and predictive schemas

The purpose of the thesis is to provide basic foundation for setting up SIS's. For example, we have to take into account, at the physical level, parameters such as the distance between two appliances or their relative speed. More precisely, we have first to design the following components in order to reach our objectives :

• Design of the component enabling physical neighborhood discovery, which allow one autonomous entity Ei to detect the other one that are close enough to initiate information exchanges with it. Such an entity belong to SIS(Ei, ti)
• Design of the position evaluation components which provide physical characteristics of the position of each entity Ei relative to an other detected one Ej. Such a position is ideally defined by three parameters : the distance between entities, the speed vector of the entity, and the angle between the speed vectors of two entities.
• Design of the power components which deliver information related to the power consumption and the power range of each considered entity.

Ph.D. proposal 3 : Information representation and transfer

The objective of this thesis is to design algorithms in order to access information which have discovered inside a SIS. The goal of this task is to design and implement the basic communication primitives (send and receive). These primitives will be designed to benefit of the predictive schema built from environment awareness (power, speed, …).

This research has also to design mechanisms to transfer structured information between SIS entities and stabilize them despite the highly volatile environment (user mobility and limited coverage of the communication interface,…).

To this end, we have to address the following issues :

• Adequate representation of the information
• Atomic information transfer
• Selective degradation of data according to estimated communication time

Conditions for Ph.D. application

PhD Candidates must have (or soon have) a MS in Computer Science (or equivalent). The appointment for the positions is for 3 years. The monthly salary (disposable) is about 8200 FF. Applicants should send the following items, preferably by email, to Michel Banâtre :

• Curriculum vitae (name, address, school degrees, etc)
• The names, fax numbers, and email addresses of two professional references
• A letter stating the candidate's motivation for applying for the position