Code Offloading on Opportunistic Computing

You are cordially invited to attend the PhD Dissertation Defense of Alan Ferrari on Thursday, May 12th 2016 at 13h30 in room 254 (Main building)

Abstract:
Computational offloading is the standard approach to running computationally intensive tasks on resource-limited smart devices, while reducing the local footprint, i.e., the local resource consumption. The natural candidate for computational offloading is the cloud, but recent results point out the hidden costs of cloud reliance in terms of latency and energy. It would be preferable for a smart device to be able to offload to another smart device with enough resources. I refer to this form of computation offloading as AnyRun computing.

There are three main challenges that has to be addressed to have a fully functional AnyRun computing solution:

• Foundation (Perform Offloading following the paradigm) Where the main challenge consists in partitioning the application and dynamically select the best device in the closest proximity to satisfy the offloading request.
• Security and Privacy Where the goal is to determine why a given offloading-partner is willing to accept the offloading request and in which circumstances it is considered secure.
• Rigorous and quantitative testing methodologies Where the goal is to find the rigorous and quantitative methodologies to evaluate the proposed solution.

In this dissertation I propose a solution for each one of the aforementioned challenges. The core solution is ARC: a novel framework for AnyRun computing and its extension to Code Mobility. In conjunction I present a novel authentication mechanism based on human social interaction and a novel methodology to manage sensible information inside any android application. The dissertation concludes covering POEM and DroidLab, two novel strategies that allow researchers to study the performances in distributed and opportunistic systems.

Dissertation Committee:

• Prof. Luca Maria Gambardella, Istituto Dalle Molle di Studi sull’Intelligenza Artificiale, Switzerland (Research Advisor)
• Prof. Silvia Giordano, SUPSI, Switzerland (Research co-Advisor)
• Prof. Mehdi Jazayeri, Università della Svizzera italiana, Switzerland (Internal Member)
• Prof. Cesare Pautasso, Università della Svizzera italiana, Switzerland (Internal Member)
• Prof. Mario Gerla, University of California, USA (External Member)
• Prof. Bernhard Plattner, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Switzerland (External Member)