An autonomous wireless local area network (AWLAN) is a collection of wireless computers that can be rapidly deployed as an ad hoc network without the aid of any established infrastructure or centralized administration. However, existing routing protocols for such networks neither scale nor function on the Internet. Therefore, a solution is required that provides a gateway between the ad hoc network and the Internet. In this paper, we propose a protocol-independent Internet gateway for ad hoc networks, the Cluster Gateway (CG). The proposed Cluster Gateway (CG) provides Internet access by acting as both a service access point and a Mobile IP foreign agent for ad hoc networks. In this paper, we describe the requirements for supporting the CG in any ad hoc routing protocol, the messages sent in order to provide CG support, and several optional enhancements for the CG. Finally, we briefly describe an implementation of the CG over an existing ad hoc routing protocol.

An agent architecture called ABPEM (Agent-Based Planning, Execution and Monitoring) is presented that utilizes a dynamically reconfigurable data-flow network for planning, execution and monitoring on large-scale multi-information-source systems. This approach is applicable to a broad range of systems, such as transportation, logistics, manufacturing and information-gathering systems, especially where the domain is characterized by dynamic environments that change during the course of execution. It is currently being applied to the problem of validating and verifying airlift cargo schedules. Given an airlift cargo mission schedule, relevant data is identified and collected and then used to (a) validate the future scheduled missions, and (b) verify the completion of executing missions (or reporting unexpected results).

Presents a miniature robotic system ("scout") useful for reconnaissance and surveillance missions. A large number of scout robots are deployed and controlled by humans and/or larger "ranger" robots. The specially designed and constructed scouts are extremely small (roughly 116cc volume) yet are readily deployable (by tossing or launching), have multiple mobility modes, have multiple sensing capabilities, can transmit and receive data and instructions, and have a limited capability for autonomous action. The rangers are significantly larger vehicles, based on a commercial-off-the-shelf platform, augmented with scout launchers, radios, and additional sensors. Together, the scouts and rangers form a hierarchical team capable of carrying out complex missions in a wide variety of environments.

Distributed robotics uses multiple robots through coordination of task to solve problems. Developing a distributed robotic system introduces a number of challenges, one of which is the intra-robot communication and networking of data and commands. Due to the characteristics of the targeted robotic missions and environments, the wireless networking requirements impose stringent constraints in terms of available memory, processing, and power consumption. Designing under these constraints and still providing support for such functions as synchronous commands and proxy processing is the true challenge. This paper discusses research in providing a lightweight wireless routing/networking solution that can dynamically tune the intra-robotic networking to adapt to the robotic team's mission needs and the environment situation encountered.

An approach for a software tool, the Science and Technology Literacy Desktop, that can organize disparate online educational content into coherent lesson plans, automatically generate links to related reference material, and provide assessment of student comprehension is presented. Based on an enhanced Web browser concept it allows access to a wide variety of material and formats, yet provides the controls necessary for an instructor to administer effective lessons. This software takes a significant step beyond current educational software that lack extensibility to a range of information as broad as that found on the Internet.

Conventional routing protocols used in wireline and wireless networks are not designed to operate in an autonomous (or ad hoc) wireless local area network (AWLAN) environment with asymmetric (i.e. unidirectional) links. This paper presents the design of a routing protocol called source-initiated adaptive routing algorithm (SARA), for AWLAN environments that may contain asymmetric links. To allow efficient operation in a symmetric network while ensuring correct operation in asymmetric networks, SARA supports two different modes of protocol operation: one optimized for symmetric networks and the other providing additional capabilities needed for operation in asymmetric networks at a higher cost. The ability of SARA to adapt its mode of operation and optimize its execution for each network environment is one of its major advantages and distinguishes it from existing routing protocols for, wireless networks. Furthermore, within each of its operating modes, SARA supports best-effort as well as policy-based routing.

Network shared memory (NSM) is a low-cost approach for clustering the processing elements of commodity workstations into a single, shared-memory, mid-range parallel computer. This approach is based upon a new way of looking at the role of communication networks in multi-computer systems. The simulation results indicate that the NSM approach has the potential to outperform existing approaches for workstation clustering. In the NSM approach, each workstation has an add-on interface card, called the Network Memory Interface (NMI) card, that is used to interconnect workstations processing elements into a parallel computer. Collectively, the NMIs implement network shared memory, i.e., the coherent, shared address space of all the processors in the cluster. The authors focus on the protocol that is used by the NMIs to communicate with one another.

In this paper, we describe a new approach for clustering workstations into a dedicated, medium-sized, shared memory parallel processor. This new approach, called the network shared memory (NSM) approach, is based upon a new way of looking at the role of communication networks multi-computer system. We develop an implementation model of the architecture of an NSM based workstation cluster. This model serves as the basis for simulations that we use to assess the performance of NSM based workstation clusters. We also use simulations to evaluate the performance of architectures representative of existing approaches for workstation clustering as well architectures representative of commercial symmetric multi-processors. The results of the performance assessment show that the NSM approach outperforms existing approaches for clustering workstations.

In this paper, we define a new approach for implementing the media transport service for video retrieval applications. We present an end-to-end transport protocol called the Video Retrieval Protocol (VRP) for transporting compressed, stored video over a wide-area ATM network to a remotely connected equipment for real-time playback of the transported video stream. VRP is designed to operate over the ABR and VBR+ services of ATM and is targeted for use by next-generation video retrieval applications. The design of VRP is based on the application of three new techniques called spectral filtering, spectral data segmentation and spectral packetizing. We used simulations to assess the performance of VRP as well as that of two existing transport protocols: TCP and UDP. The simulations were driven by a synthetic video stream. The yardstick used to compare the performance of the three protocols was their ability to preserve the perceptual quality of the transported video stream under various network congestion conditions. We show that VRP performs better than TCP and UDP in terms of the overall perceptual quality of the displayed video stream.