Science Of Sensor Systems Software - Reliable Reconfiguration of Sensor Networks

A PhD position is offered in the Department of Computer Science starting in October 2018, and associated with the Science of Sensor Systems Software (http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/research/S4/) research programme. This position is available to both UK and EU students and we are looking for outstanding candidates able to undertake PhD study on formal verification for wireless sensor networks. For more details see http://cgi.csc.liv.ac.uk/~clare/projects/S4PhDStudentship.html

This could cover a broad range of systems/protocols, such as synchronization protocols, gossip protocols, ad-hoc networks, etc. and a wide variety of potential formal verification techniques, such as theorem-provers, model-checkers, SMT solvers, runtime verification, etc. Generally, we wish to study, formalise and utilise commonality and abstractions across these systems, for example in terms of sensor geography, shape, neighbours, movement, protocol, reliability, etc. The project is flexible within this general area given the applicant’s background and interests and a sample project is given below.

Reliable Reconfiguration of Sensor Networks
One or more distinguished agents within the network have self-awareness and fault tolerance responsibilities. The agent knows the current `goal’ of network and can monitor the network’s behaviour and detect when the network is not functioning appropriately. As well as the network activity, the agent controls the network architecture (i.e. interconnections and internal node programming). When something concerning the world/software/hardware/goal changes, the agent must ensure that the network remains effective. How can it achieve this? And how can we formally verify this?