Synapse

Monthly Newsletter from CNI

Issue - February 2024

Join us at the upcoming talk on "Power Allocation for Generalized Gaussian MAC" by Prof. Lakshmi Narasimhan Theagarajan from IIT Madras on 13/02/2024 at 17:00 hrs IST.

16th International Conference on COMmunication Systems & NETworkS (COMSNETS 2024 ) took place from January 3-7, 2024. It was attended by reasearchers from academia, industry, business and government leaders. CNI was one of the bronze sponsors for the event. 1 main conference paper and 6 demos & exhibits, presented in the conference, featured contributions from some of the CNI members.

Dr. T V Prabhakar, Chief Research Scientist at DESE, IISc Bangalore, and Faculty at CNI, collaborated on the impactful work titled "l-Detect: Life Detection under Debris in Disaster Zones" by Lakshmi Poola, Luis Henrik John, Shrutkirthi S. Godkhindi, Preetham Reddy, Deeksha P Rao, T V Prabhakar, R Venkatesha Prasad—an accepted paper at COMSNETS 2024. The authors present l-Detect, a low-cost, low-power life detection platform using a thermopile-based sensor and communication device weighing under 20 gm, costing $30 per unit. The technology, deployable on battery-powered toy bugs and robots, achieves human detection accuracy from 100% to 88% within a range of 0.5m to 4.5m, showcasing robust performance in challenging conditions and partial exposure scenarios. 

Sequential Clustering of Data Streams from Unknown Distributions

In this talk Prof. Sara Alouf discussed similarity caching in which one serves a request for an item with a similar item. After giving a brief overview of various similarity caching policies like SIM-LRU and RND-LRU, she discussed the need for performance analysis of the hit ratio of such policies. To estimate the hit ratio, they introduce the RND-TTL cache model which mimics the behavior of RND-LRU when the parameters are appropriately tuned. The parameter tuning is achieved via solving a fixed-point system numerically. They further validate their approach empirically by evaluating it on both synthetic and real-world traces.   

Trade-offs between Security and Privacy in Linear Dynamical Systems

In this talk, Prof. Vaibhav Katewa discussed the trade-off between security and privacy in interconnected dynamical systems, focusing on local attack detection and the privacy of subsystem states. He introduced a novel framework to compare privacy mechanisms by quantifying privacy levels based on estimation error and proposed a local attack detection scheme that does not require knowledge of global system dynamics. He emphasized their counter-intuitive findings where increasing privacy can improve attack detection performance. 

Cracking Software Engineering interviews for Fresh Grads

Mr. Ashish Sharma, Technology Consultant/Scientist at CNI, shared his personal journey and strategies used by him for preparing for Algorithm and Data Structure (Algo/DS) interviews, particularly for FAANG companies. He shared his transition from entrepreneurship to seeking engineering management roles, emphasizing the challenges and the approaches to mastering Algo/DS questions. He highlighted the importance of methodical preparation, making best use of platforms like Leet code, and engaging in mock interviews and contests to enhance problem-solving skills. Some of the highlights of the talk included overcoming initial failures, utilizing resources efficiently, and the significance of practical interview readiness over theoretical knowledge. His insights serve as a valuable guide for aspiring tech professionals, especially those from non-CS backgrounds or returning to the job market.