Short Bio
I'm currently a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Rutgers University working in the Wireless Information Network Laboratory
(WINLAB). I received my Ph.D. in Computer
Science in 2011 from the University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign under Robin Kravets. During that time, I was a
member of the Mobius Research group and
affiliated with the Illinois Center for
Wireless Systems (ICWS) and the Information Trust Institute (ITI). In
2009, I received my Masters Degree in Computer Science from UIUC under Robin
Kravets. During the summers of 2008 and 2009, I interned at BBN Technologies working on both core Internet
routing and DTN routing. I received my B.S. Magna Cum Laude in Computer Science
and B.A. in Mathematics in 2006 from Bucknell
University.
For more information, please see my CV.
Research
My general research interests include finding practical and efficient solutions for
routing, transport, and security in wireless networks lacking infrastructure,
such as delay and disruption tolerant networks (DTNs).
MobilityFirst - Future Internet Architecture
I'm currently working on the NSF-funded MobilityFirst FIA project at
WINLAB, Rutgers University. This is a three-year project aimed at a clean-slate
design and validation of a mobility-centric Internet architecture.
MobilityFirst is founded on the premise that mobile, wireless communication
is replacing the historic fixed-host/server model, and hence the future Internet
architecture must provide inherent support for these mobile devices. In
particular, I am interested in developing global and local routing protocols
that meet the many new challenges of a mobility-centric Internet, such as link
quality fluctuation, a large variance in connectivity levels, and
security/privacy issues.
Phoenix Project - Efficient DTN Routing
Disruption-tolerant networking allows communication between mobile ad-hoc
devices without reliance on static infrastructure, such as cellular towers and
access points. By utilizing store-carry-and-forward techniques, along with smart
replication, DTNs are able to route data through highly varying levels of
connectivity and partitioning. As part of the Phoenix Project, I
developed a highly efficient DTN unicast routing protocol, called
Encounter-Based Routing (EBR). EBR, found in the IEEE INFOCOM 2009
proceedings, achieves two objectives that are
seemingly at odds with one another: (1) resource-friendliness and (2) high
message delivery. By learning and utilizing mobility structure, EBR is able to
heavily limit replication while at the same time getting replicas to high-value
nodes.
Flexible and Robust DTN Routing
Many DTNs exhibit human-centric behavior, in that mobility and communication
patterns tend to following human-based social interactions. Therefore,
group-based communication is a very natural and useful form of communication in
DTNs. To this end, I have developed a series of routing techniques and
protocols to enable one-to-many forms of communication, such as anycast,
manycast, and multicast. Furthermore, due to the inherently untrustworthy
environment found in DTNs along with the high probability of disconnection from
a centralized trust authority, I have developed a robust group management
protocol that is accurate even in the face of multiple attacks and runs
without the need for cryptography. Two interesting works from this series can
be found in the ACM CHANTS 2010 proceedings.
Professional Activities
TPC Committee Member: ACM MobiHoc 2011
Reviewer: IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing journal, IEEE/ACM Transactions
on Networking journal, IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology journal, Ad Hoc
Networks journal, IEEE Pervasive Computing and Communication (PerCom)
conference, IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC)
conference.
Panelist: Future Internet session of Wireless and Optical
Communications Conference (WoCC) 2011
Extras
-
In my free time, I created a small Android game called
Lightning
Letters. You can find more information, including a QR code to the market
link, at NelApps.com
-
Need to quickly process simulation data and get confidence intervals? Check out
my confidence interval script - [confidence.pl]
-
Interested in sports? Check out my Rutgers Sports
Calendar webapp.
-
How are music and states linked? Check out my Songs about
States webapp.
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Papers and Related Software
2011
Mehedi Bakht, Samuel C. Nelson, Nathaniel Thompson, and Robin Kravets. Mercury: Leveraging
Clustering in Opportunistic Networks (short paper/poster). To appear in
Proceedings of IFIP Wireless Days 2011.
Ivan Seskar, Kiran Nagaraja, Samuel C. Nelson and Dipankar Raychaudhuri.
MobilityFirst Future Internet Architecture Project (invited talk/paper). In Proceedings of ACM
AINTec 2011.
Samuel C. Nelson, Gautam Bhanage, and
Dipankar Raychaudhuri. GSTAR: Generalized Storage-Aware
Routing for MobilityFirst in the Future Mobile Internet.
In Proceedings of ACM MobiArch 2011.
Samuel C. Nelson, Yih-Chun Hu, and Robin Kravets. Anycast, Multicast and
Beyond: The Role of Manycast in DTN Communication. UIUC Tech Report. Handle:
http://hdl.handle.net/2142/18709. 2011
Samuel C. Nelson and Robin Kravets. Securing Vehicular Networks with
VIBES. UIUC Tech Report. Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/2142/18707. 2011.
Ph.D. Thesis: Samuel C. Nelson. Leveraging Structure for
Communication in Human-Centric DTNs. UIUC. Advisor: Robin Kravets. 2011.
2010
Book chapter contributor for Chapters 14 (Gravity Mobility) and 15 (Mobility
Vector Model) in Handbook of
Mobile Ad Hoc Networks for Mobility Models. Radhika Ranjan Roy. Springer
Science+Business, LLC. December 2010. ISBN
978-1-4419-6048-1.
Samuel C. Nelson and Robin Kravets. For Members Only: Local and Robust Group Management in
DTNs. In Proceedings of the ACM MobiCom Workshop on Challenged Networks
(CHANTS 2010).
Samuel C. Nelson and Robin Kravets. Achieving Anycast in DTNs by Enhancing Existing
Unicast Protocols. In Proceedings of the ACM MobiCom Workshop on
Challenged Networks (CHANTS 2010).
Nathaniel Thompson, Samuel C. Nelson,
Mehedi Bakht, and Robin Kravets. Retiring Replicants:
Congestion Control for Intermittently Connected Networks. In
Proceedings of IEEE INFOCOM 2010.
2009
Samuel C. Nelson, Mehedi Bakht, and Robin
Kravets. Encounter-based Routing in DTNs. In
Proceedings of IEEE INFOCOM 2009.
- ONE router file [EBRRouter.java] -
The settings used in the paper are, unless otherwise noted: "EBRRouter.nrofCopies=11", "EBRRouter.alpha=0.85", and "EBRRouter.updatePOPInterval=30"
Samuel C. Nelson, Mehedi Bakht, Robin
Kravets, and Albert Harris III. Encounter-based Routing in DTNs (Poster
Abstract). In ACM SIGMOBILE Mobile Computing and Communications
Review. Volume 13, Issue 1. January 2009.
2008
Samuel C. Nelson, Mehedi Bakht, Robin Kravets, and Albert Harris. Poster: Encounter-Based Routing in
DTNs. In ACM MobiCom 2008, Sept 2008
- Second place award winner for ACM MobiCom Student Research Competition
Masters Thesis: Samuel C. Nelson. Encounter-based Routing in Disaster Recovery Networks.
Advisor: Robin Kravets. UIUC. 2008.
2007
Samuel C. Nelson, Albert
F. Harris III, and Robin Kravets. Event-driven, Role-based Mobility in
Disaster Recovery Networks. In Proceedings of the
ACM MobiCom Workshop on Challenged Networks (CHANTS
2007).
- [paramGen.cc] - Generates parameter file for mobility simulation
- [disasterSimONE.cc] - Runs mobility simulation and outputs a ONE trace file
2006
Luiz Felipe Perrone and Samuel
C. Nelson. A Study of On-Off
Attack Models for Wireless Ad Hoc Networks. In
Proceedings of First IEEE International Workshop on
Operator-Assisted (Wireless Mesh) Community Networks
(OpComm 2006).
Undergraduate Honors Thesis: Samuel C. Nelson. A Simulation
Study of Connectivity Metrics for Wireless Ad Hoc Networks. Advisor: Luiz
Felipe Perrone. Bucknell. 2006.
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