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Ronald Pose's Selected Research Projects
See Publications and Presentations pages for downloadable papers and presentations on these research projects.
Suburban Ad-Hoc Network (SAHN) Project
TopThe Suburban Ad-Hoc Network (SAHN) project involves all aspects of a wireless ad-hoc cooperative network in which there is no centrally owned or controlled infrastructure. The project was conceived by Carlo Kopp and Ronald Pose in 1997. All equipment is owned and operated by the end users in a cooperative manner. In order to make this work effectively the network is self-configuring and is secure in that only 'members' of the community of users can gain access to the network. Facilities are available for monitoring network traffic and resource use. The accounting system may be used for a charging system, but in general in such a cooperative network it is hoped that it would only be necessary to charge for services provided by say gateways onto the Internet. The aim is to provide broadband connectivity using cheap network node hardware with a moderate initial set-up cost, but no ongoing charges. The motivation is that the Telcos do not provide a service that is fairly priced and of adequate quality. In particular the bandwidth offered by commercial provider tends to be asymmetric, making it unsuitable for file serving, and the traffic charges are high. Those user communities wanting essentially secure internal communication resent having to set up a VPN and pay full Internet traffic charges. The SAHN is good for them. Suitable communities include branch office networks, and employees connecting to corporate networks from home. The project looks at all protocol layers, optimizing them for a wireless, ad-hoc environment. It even looks at antenna design and RF propagation. Security is considered at all levels as is user specified Quality of Service. In 2001, three CS honours students set up a hardware testbed and did prelinimary studies on network management, routing, security and quality of service provision. One, Adrian Bickerstaffe, won the Siemens Innovation Award, Victorian State final for this project. Work is progressing in the routing algorithms. Other aspects of the project are awaiting funding and resources to accelerate progress.
Password-Capability based Secure Distributed Operating System
TopThe Monash Multiprocessor and its Password-Capability System originated in 1982 led by Prof. Chris Wallace with Mark Anderson and Ronald Pose. The aims were to create an environment in which data and other resources could be shared in a controlled manner without regard to their physical locations. The platform was to be a shared-memory multiprocessor, but the system was intended to be distributed across the world, sharing a global, persistent virtual memory. Access to objects (files) in this virtual memory was mediated by Capabilities. By 1990 the system was in operation. A second generation system (Walnut) was implemented on an IBM PC in the mid-1990s by Maurice Castro and Chris Wallace. Ronald Pose proposed a novel architecture in which such a system could be extended into a massively parallel machine. It is planned to implement a third generation system on a modern 64-bit RISC platform. Funding and resources are being sought. Systems of this kind are of great interest in that they deal with the weaknesses that make current systems vulnerable to viruses and SPAM.
Low Latency Virtual Reality Display System Project
TopOne of the grand challenges of computing has been the challenge of providing a virtual reality system that doesn't suffer from unacceptable lag in response to head movement and that provides high quality, realistic, steroscopic images. Most systems trade off image quality for low latency, giving reasonably responsive, but cartoon-like, non-realistic images, destrying the illusion of reality. Alternatively the images quality is realistic but the system response is hopelessly inadequate. The Address Recalculation Pipeline (ARP) invention allows for delayed viewport mapping, so that the response to head rotational movement is decoupled from the graphics rendering, solving the latency problem. Another invention, Priority Rendering, enables the graphics computation to be performed on highly parallel hardware in an optimal manner that allows for the best image quality possible for a given computational capacity. This technology has been patented and a Californian startup company formed to commercialize it. Further R&D is continuing at Monash University led by Ronald Pose. Matthew Regan won a best Australian CS Ph.D. award for his Ph.D. thesis on the ARP and Priority Rendering. The technology has further applications in telerobotics, interactive TV, and other interactive graphics and video applications.
Other Research Topics
Top
C Kopp and R D Pose.
Computer Architecture '97 Selected Papers of the 2nd Australasian Conference, Springer-Verlag Singapore Pte Ltd, Singapore, 269-287, 19pp.
