"In the name of God, most Gracious most Merciful"

Ahmed Helmy
Assistant Professor of Computer Networks, Computer Engineering Group
Founder and Director, Computer Networks Design and Testing Laboratory (the NOMADS group)
Department of Electrical Engineering
University of Southern California (USC)

helmy@usc.edu

Affiliations: The Information Sciences Institute (USC/ISI), The Integrated Media Systems Center (IMSC - USC)

Dr. Ahmed Helmy received his Ph.D. in Computer Science ('99) (Advisor: Prof. Deborah Estrin) from the University of Southern California (USC), M.S. in Electrical Engineering ('95) from USC, M.S. Engineering Math ('94) and B.S. in Electronics and Communications Engineering ('92) from Cairo University, Egypt. In 2002, Dr. Helmy received the National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award for his research on 'Multicast in Large-Scale Ad Hoc Networks'. His current research interests lie in the areas of systematic design and testing of multicast protocols, multicast routing protocols, IP mobility, and ad hoc networks protocol design.

Dr. Helmy is currently leading the MARS projects (funded by NSF and Intel) on efficient architectures and protocols for large-scale ad hoc and sensor networks. He is also leading the NSF/NASA funded project for highly dependable protocols. From 1998-2002 he has led the DARPA funded STRESS project to develop scenario generation algorithms for multicast protocols. He has also led the M&M project (funded by Nortel and Intel) to develop a multicast-based mobility protocol for efficient IP mobility support. He has worked on the VINT (NS-2) and PIM projects at USC and USC/ISI. In addition, he received the Zumberge award (2000) to pursue work on power-aware wireless routing protocols. He also founded and is currently directing the Electrical Engineering laboratory for wireless networking, as part of a grant he received from HP.

• Office hours for Spring '05 semester (unless noted otherwise): for EE555 Thursday 11:30-1:30pm, for EE579 Monday 12:00am-2:00.
  [For Thursday April 14, 05, Office hours will change to 11:00-11:45, and 1:30-2:00]



• Posted Oct 29, 04: EE-579 Wireless and Mobile Networks Design and Laboratory (Spring '05: this is a regularized version of the wireless networking lab courses EE-499 and EE-599 offered previously. Here is a tentative syllabus for EE-579. More details later. Visiting websites for 599/499 for previous years provides a relatively good idea of what you should expect out of this course. This semester's theme 'Boundless Mobile Classroom!'.)
  [Note: Students interested in taking the EE-599 course in Spring '05 please check the application process]
  
  
• EE-599 (Spring '04): Wireless and Mobile Networks Design and Laboratory (tentative syllabus for 599)
• EE-599 (Spring '03): Wireless Networking, Design & Analysis Laboratory.
• EE-555: Broadband Networks Architecture. (Fall ’99, Spring ’00, Fall ’00, Fall '01, Fall '02, Spring '03, Fall 2003, Spring 2004).
  
• EE-499 (Spring '02). : Introductory Computer and Wireless Networking Laboratory.
• EE-599 (Fall ’00): Special Topics on Internet Protocol Design, Simulation and Testing.

• ProTest: The Computer Networks Design and Testing lab (updated page at Nile server).
  My group is called the NOMADS group (with focus on design, analysis and testing of Networks Of Mobile Ad-hoc Devices and Sensors) .
• Students
• How to start research? (A personal note for networking students). [updated Feb. 6, 2004]
• Some achievements by some of my research and course students.
• Nobel prize winners I have met.
• Note for prospective graduate students. (Due to the large number of excellent students I already supervise, currently I am not accepting any new students in my group and do not have openings for RAships).

1. Technology Research News. Article: "Multicast promises lighter wireless Internet", June 2000.
2. For Technology Research News. Commentary on article: "Does heavy volume smooth Net traffic?", August 2001.
3. Technology Research News (TRN). Interview "Multicast in large, mobile ad hoc networks", September 2001.
4. Technology Research News (TRN). Article: " Shortcuts lighten wireless load", August 2002. [News interview: "Small World Wireless Networks", August 2002].

• Jan '05: Two journal papers accepted at Computer Communications Journal - Elsevier. Two book chapters on geographic routing accepted. Three posters accepted at IEEE INFOCOM 2005.
• Dec '04: Paper accepted at IEEE IPCCC 2005. Paper accepted at IEEE Communcations Letters.
• October 2004: Two papers accepted at IEEE INFOCOM 2005 (acceptance rate 17% out of 1420 submitted papers)
• July 2004: paper accepted at the ACM SenSys Conf '04 (acceptance rate 14.5% out of 145 submitted papers)
• June 2004: 5 posters accepted at the ACM SIGCOMM Conf '04
• May 2004: 5 papers accepted at the IEEE Vehicular Technology (VTC) Conference Fall '04.



• April 2004: US News & World Report: USC Engineering ranked '6'th Nation-wide, and '3'rd among private universities (with only MIT (No. 1) and Stanford (No. 2) ranking higher).
  Click here for more.



• Jan 2004: acceptance of 10 publications: 3 papers at IEEE ICC, 2 papers at IEEE WCNC, 2 papers at IEEE/ACM IPCCC EWCN, 1 paper at IEEE/ACM IPDPS WMAN, 1 paper at IEEE/ACM IPSN, 1 book chapter.
• October 2003: "Five" ( 5 ) posters accepted at the IEEE ICNP Conference 2003 (out of 22 refereed posters accepted in total by ICNP) with: S. Begum, J. Faruque, S. Wang, A. Das & D. Dutta, S. Tanachaiwiwat & P. Dave & R. Bhindwale. [List of accepted posters at ICNP]
• September 2003: "Five" ( 5 ) posters accepted at the ACM MOBICOM Conference 2003 (out of 17 refereed posters accepted in total by Mobicom) with: K. Seada (2), J. Faruque, S. Wang, D. Son & J. Park. [List of accepted Mobicom Posters]
• USC Today (4/5/02): 'Seven' Junior USC Engineering Faculty Win NSF Early Career Awards.
• USC Chronicle (4/8/02): NSF Early Career Awards Go to Seven Junior Engineering Faculty.
• USC School of Engineering (USC News) (4/6/02): A Bright Future: 7 Early CAREER Awards.



• April 2003: US News & World Report: USC Engineering ranked '8'th Nation-wide for the 2nd year in a row. [School of Engineering News].
• US News: USC School of Engineering ranks "8th" in the top 10 Engineering Schools for 2002/03. (up from 11th in 2001, 12th in 2000, 16th '99, ~20th '98).
  USC Computer Networks (EE, CS and ISI) ranked 3rd among academic institutions.
  For more information click here.
• TRN News Journal: Shortcuts lighten wireless load, August 2002. (TRN).
  Also, in ACM TechNews, Volume 4, Issue 391, August 26, 2002.
• October 2002: CS News [ MMNS 2002 (Best Paper Award)] USC Engineering School Recent Best Paper Honors, NSF Honors.

1. "RUGGED: RoUting on finGerprint Gradients in sEnsor Networks", Paper presentation at the IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Services (ICPS), American University of Beirut (AUB), Lebanon, July 2004. (Best viewed using power point 2003 or its viewer)
2. "Analysis of Wired Short Cuts in Wireless Sensor Networks", Paper presentation at the IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Services (ICPS), American University of Beirut (AUB), Lebanon, July 2004.
3. "Research Directions in Wireless Ad Hoc and Sensor Networks: Mobility Modeling and Robust Geographic Routing", Seminar talk at the University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign, IL (host: Prof. Nitin Vaidya), June 2004.
4. "Research Directions in Wireless Ad Hoc and Sensor Networks: Mobility Modeling and Robust Geographic Routing", Seminar talk at the University of Maryland, College Park, MD (host: Prof. Samrat (Bobby) Battacharjee), June 2004.
5. "A Plan for Empirical Evaluation of Dependability Using the STRESS Approach", Project presentation at the NSF/NASA DHCP PI meeting on dependable computing and communications at the University of Maryland, College Park, MD, June 2004.
6. "Research Directions in Wireless Ad Hoc and Sensor Networks: Robust Geographic Routing and Mobility Modeling", Seminar talk at the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS), UCLA (host: Prof. Deborah Estrin), May 2004.
7. "On the Effect of Localization Errors on Geographic Face Routing in Sensor Networks", Presentation at the IEEE/ACM IPSN Conference, Berkeley, CA, April 2004. (with K. Seada)
8. "The Effect of Mobility-induced Location Errors on Geographic Routing in Ad Hoc Networks: Analysis and Improvement using Mobility Prediction", Paper presentation at IEEE WCNC Conference, Atlanta, March 2004.
9. "Research Directions in Wireless Ad Hoc and Sensor Networks: Mobility Modeling and Robust Geographic Routing", Seminar talk at Georgia Institute of Technology (host: Prof. Mostafa Ammar), March 2004.
10. "TRANSFER: Transactions Routing for Ad-hoc NetworkS with eFficient EneRgy", Paper presentations at IEEE GlobeCom Conference, San Francisco, December 2003. (Slides in power point (.ppt) with animations [5.5MB], Slides in PDF [750KB]).
11. "On the Effect of Localization Errors on Geographic Face Routing in Sensor Networks", Poster presentation at the First ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (ACM SenSys), November 2003 (with K. Seada).
12. "Secure Locations: Routing on Trust and Isolating Compromised Sensors in Location-aware Sensor Networks", Poster presentation at the First ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (ACM SenSys), November 2003 (with S. Tanachaiwiwat and P. Dave).
13. "Impact of Location Inconsistencies on Geographic Routing in Wireless Networks", Paper presentation at the Sixth ACM International Workshop on Modeling, Analysis and Simulation of Wireless and Mobile Systems (MSWIM), in conjunction with ACM MOBICOM, San Deigo, CA, Sept 2003.
14. "Rendezvous Regions: A Scalable Architecture for Service Location and Data-Centric Storage in Large-Scale Wireless Networks", Poster presentation at the ACM MOBICOM (The Ninth Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking), San Diego, CA, Sept 2003. [with K. Seada]
15. "On the Effect of Location Inaccuracy on Geographic Face Routing in Wireless Networks", Poster presentation at the ACM MOBICOM (The Ninth Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking), San Diego, CA, Sept 2003. [with K. Seada]
16. "Effects of Small Transfers and Traffic Patterns on Performance and Cache Efficacy of Ad Hoc Routing", Poster presentation at the ACM MOBICOM (The Ninth Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking), San Diego, CA, Sept 2003. [with S. Wang]
17. " Gradient-Based Routing in Sensor Networks", Poster presentation at the ACM MOBICOM (The Ninth Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking), San Diego, CA, Sept 2003. [with J. Faruque]
18. "Mobility-Induced Location Errors and its Effect on Geographic Routing in Ad Hoc Networks: Analysis and Improvement using Mobility Prediction", Poster presentation at the ACM MOBICOM (The Ninth Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking), San Diego, CA, Sept 2003. [with D. Son]
19. Project presentation "Resource Discovery, Query Resolution & Rendezvous in Large-Scale Wireless Networks: Architectural Design & Analysis" at the ECS NSF Workshop on sensor networks and systems, CENS, UCLA, Sept 8, 2003. [Poster (.ppt)], [ Short abstract (html), (.pdf)]
20. Paper presentation "PATHS: Analysis of PATH Duration Statistics and their impact on reactive MANET routing protocols", ACM MobiHoc, June 3, 2003.
21. "Research Directions in the Wireless and Computer Networks Design and Testing Lab: Birds-eye View", a talk to Conexant Systems Inc. visit to the Electrical Engineering department at USC, June 2003.
22. Paper presentation "The ACQUIRE Mechanism for Efficient Querying in Sensor Networks", Sensor Networks Protocols and Applications (SNPA) workshop, part of IEEE ICC, May 11, 2003, Anchorage, AK. [by N. Sadagopan.]
23. Paper presentation "Contact Based Architecture for Resource Discovery (CARD) in Large Scale MANets", Third IEEE/ACM International Workshop on Wireless, Mobile and Ad Hoc Networks (WMAN), part of IEEE/ACM IPDPS 2003, April 26, 2003, Nice, France.
24. Paper presentation "IMPORTANT: A framework to systematically analyze the Impact of Mobility on Performance of RouTing protocols for Adhoc NeTworks", IEEE INFOCOM Conference, San Francisco, April 2003. [by F. Bai]
25. "Highly Dependable Communication Protocols" NASA Ames Research Center, NSF/NASA PI meeting, Mountain View, CA, Feb. 2003.
26. "Wireless Mobile Networking for Flight Maintenance and Monitoring" Pratt&Whitney Institutue, IMSC, USC, Jan 03. [by S. Narayanan]
27. Research directions "Service Provisioning in Large-scale Infrastructure-less Wireless Networks (.ppt [3.18MB])" (.pdf [2.4MB]), presented to Intel research delegation visiting the wireless networking laboratory at USC, Nov. 2002.
28. "Sensor networks for on-board information technology" Pratt&Whitney visit to IMSC, USC, Nov. 02.
29. Best Paper presentation "Fair Stateless Aggregate Marking using Active Queue Management Techniques", IEEE/IFIP MMNS Conference, Santa Barbara, CA, October 8, 2002. [Presented by D. Dutta]
30. Panel presentation "Is the Internet ready for Multimedia?" at the IEEE/IFIP MMNS Conference, Santa Barbara, CA, October 8, 2002.
31. Poster presentation "Efficient Resource Discovery for Large Scale Ad hoc Networks using Contacts", at the ACM SIGCOMM Conference, Pittsburgh, PA, August 22, 2002.
32. Poster presentation "Modeling of Mobility-Induced Losses in MANETs (MILMAN)", at the ACM SIGCOMM Conference, Pittsburgh, PA, August 22, 2002.
33. Paper presentation "Architectural Framework for Large-Scale Multicast in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks" at the IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC), New York, NY, April 29, 2002.
34. Paper presentation "State Analysis and Aggregation for Multicast-based Micro Mobility" at the IEEE ICC, New York, NY, May 1, 2002.
35. Project presentation "STRESS: Ad hoc Wireless MAC and Multicast Congestion Control" at the DARPA NMS PI meeting, Atlanta, GA, October 22, 2001. [Joint presentation and poster/demo with Prof. Sandeep Gupta]
36. Project presentation "STRESS" at the Information Sciences Institute (ISI) to the SAMAN group, April 23, 2001.
37. Project presentation "STRESS: Systematic Testing of protocol Robustness by Evaluation of Synthesized Scenarios" project at the DARPA Network Modeling and Simulation (NMS) PI meeting, at UC-San Diego supercomputing center, San Diego, CA, April 2, 2001. [Joint poster presentation and demo with Prof. S. Gupta]
38. Invited presentation "Research Directions in IP Mobility and Ad-hoc Networks: Integrating Ad-hoc Networks into the Internet (Vision and Challenges)" at the Integrated Media Systems Center (IMSC), USC, March 29/30, 2001. [Research collaboration meeting with a delegation from the Graduate School of Information Technology and Telecommunications at the Inha University, Inchon, Korea],
39. Paper presentation "A Multicast-based Protocol for IP Mobility Support", at ACM NGC 2000, in Stanford University, Palo Alto, California, on November 9, 2000. [best viewed with Power Point '97]
40. "Multicast-based Architecture for IP Mobility: Analysis and Comparison with Mobile IP", Invited presentation at Nortel Networks Wireless Forum IX, in Ottawa, Canada, on October 31, 2000.
41. "IP Technology for Wireless Networks, University View", Invited talk at the International Engineering Consortium (IEC) National Communications Forum (NCF 2000) in Chicago, IL, on October 19, 2000.
42. Paper presentation "Systematic Testing of Multicast Routing Protocols: Analysis of Forward and Backward Search Techniques" at the 9th International Conference on Computer Communications and Networks (IEEE ICCCN 2000), in Las Vegas, Nevada, on October 18, 2000.
43. Invited one-day tutorial on 'IP Multicast', Nortel Networks, March 2000.
44. Project presentation "STRESS: Systematic Testing of Robustness by Examination of Synthesized Scenarios" at the DARPA Next Generation Internet (NGI) PI meeting, Arlington, VA, December 1999. (Also presented as invited seminar talks at University of California at Irvine (UCI) and University of Southern California (USC), April 1999).
45. Invited presentation "Research Directions in Networking", at the Integrated Media Systems Center (IMSC), University of Southern California, Los Angeles, October 1999.
46. Paper presentation "Fault-oriented Test Generation for Multicast Routing Protocol Design", at FORTE XI/PSTV XVIII in Paris, France, November 1998.
47. Project presentation "STRESS: Systematic Testing of Robustness by Examination of Synthesized Scenarios", at the DARPA Next Generation Internet (NGI) PI meeting, Arlington, VA, October 1998. [STRESS poster. Joint STRESS presentation with the VINT project at ISI. Also presented at a meeting with Nortel executives at ISI/USC, November 1998.]
48. Paper presentation "Simulation-based `STRESS' Testing Case Study: A Multicast Routing Protocol", at MASCOTS, in Montreal, Canada, July 1998.
49. "Scalable Conferencing" Invited talk at Universiti Telecom (Multimedia University), Melaka, Malaysia, July 1998.
50. "Protocol Independent Multicast (PIM): Deployment Guidelines", Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) presentation at the Inter-domain Multicast Routing (IDMR) working group, San Jose, CA, December 1996.
51. "Protocol Independent Multicast (PIM): Implementation", IETF presentation at the IDMR working group, San Jose, CA, December 1996.