Current Research Projects

Databases on Embedded Devices and Applications of Environmental and Industrial Sensors

This project has built low-cost sensor nodes for use in irrigation and environmental monitoring and a relational SQL database engine for embedded sensors. Research is focused on system deployment issues including minimizing energy consumption by intelligent design of algorithms for flash memory storage and database algorithms. Our goal is to build a complete database system for embedded devices with maximum performance and a minimum memory footprint. We are deploying our research in environmental monitoring domains including irrigation management. Our sensor-based irrigation system reduced water usage by up to 50% when deployed in a City of Kelowna park.

Publications:

• EmbedDB: A High-Performance Database for Resource-Constrained Embedded Systems Too Small for SQLite, In The 39th ACM/SIGAPP Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC ’24), April 8–12, 2024, Avila, Spain. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3605098.3636116
• Using Learned Indexes to Improve Time Series Indexing Performance on Embedded Sensor Devices, In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Sensor Networks, February 2023, ISSN 2184-4380, ISBN: 978-989-758-635-4, DOI: 10.5220/0011692900003399, pages 23-31.
• Performance Evaluation of Embedded Time Series Indexes Using Bitmaps, Partitioning, and Trees. Sensor Networks. Springer. Invited and revised papers of SENSORNETS 2021. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1674.125-151. ISBN 978-3-031-17717-0. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-17718-7_7 Sept 2022.
• Efficient External Sorting for Memory-Constrained Embedded Devices with Flash Memory, ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems, March 2021, Article No. 29, pages 1-21, https://doi.org/10.1145/3446976.
• Improving the Efficiency of Embedded Data Logging on NAND Flash for IoT Systems, CCECE 2021, pages 1-6.
• Adaptive Flash Sorting for Memory-Constrained Embedded Devices, 36th Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC’21).
• Bridging the Last Mile: Utilizing QR codes, e-Paper and Smartphones to Link Low-Power IoT Data Collection Devices to the Internet, 2021 IEEE Sensors Applications Symposium (SAS'21), pp. 1-6, DOI: 10.1109/SAS51076.2021.9530131.
• An Efficient B-tree Implementation for Memory-Constrained Embedded Systems, The 19th Int'l Conf on Embedded Systems, Cyber-physical Systems, and Applications (ESCS'21).
• Efficient Flash Indexing for Time Series Data on Memory-constrained Embedded Sensor Devices, 10th Intl. Conference on Sensor Networks (SENSORNETS'21), ISBN 978-989-758-489-3, pages 92-99.
• Practical Precision Agriculture with LoRa Based Wireless Sensor Networks, 10th Intl. Conference on Sensor Networks (SENSORNETS'21), ISBN 978-989-758-489-3, pages 131-140.
• Efficient External Sorting for Memory-Constrained Embedded Devices with Flash Memory (ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems, March 2020).
• Linear Hashing Implementations for Flash Memory. Enterprise Information Systems. Springer. Invited and revised papers of ICEIS 2019. 386-405. ISBN 978-3-030-40783-4. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-40783-4_18 Feb 2020.
• Adapting Linear Hashing for Flash Memory Resource-Constrained Embedded Devices, 21st International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS 2019).
• Faster Sorting for Flash Memory Embedded Devices, IEEE Canadian Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering 2019 (CCECE 2019).
• Experimental Evaluation of Hash Function Performance on Embedded Devices, IEEE Canadian Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering 2018 (CCECE 2018).
• Continuous Integration Platform for Arduino Embedded Software, IEEE Canadian Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering 2017 (CCECE 2017).
• TEFS: A Flash File System for Use on Memory Constrained Devices, IEEE Canadian Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering 2016 (CCECE 2016).
• Efficient SQL Querying on Embedded Devices using Pre-Compilation, Applied Computing Review, June 2016, Volume 16, Number 2, pages 42-47.
• Write Improvement Strategies for Serial NOR Dataflash Memory, IEEE Canadian Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering 2016 (CCECE 2016).
• Improving SQL Query Performance on Embedded Devices using Pre-Compilation, 31st Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC'16), pages 961-964. Best Paper Award.
• Key-Value Store Implementations for Arduino Microcontrollers, IEEE Canadian Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering 2015 (CCECE 2015), pages 158-164.
• LittleD: A SQL Database for Sensor Nodes and Embedded Applications, 29th Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC'14). [23% Acceptance Rate]
• A Holistic Framework for Water Sustainability and Education in Municipal Green Spaces, IEEE Canadian Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering 2012 (CCECE'12), May 2012. Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
• Fast Sorting on Flash Memory Sensor Nodes, International Database Engineering and Applications Symposium (IDEAS'10), 105-113. Montreal, Canada. [17% Acceptance Rate]
• Reducing Turfgrass Water Consumption using Sensor Nodes and an Adaptive Irrigation Controller, IEEE SAS 2010 - IEEE Sensors Applications Symposium [60% Acceptance Rate - Best Student Paper of 17 student papers], February 2010.
  
• Cluster Head Selection using RF Signal Strength, CCECE 2009 - IEEE Canadian Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering 2009, St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada, May 2009.
  

AI-Driven Systems for Education

This project develops systems for education with focus on software that provides automation including leveraging AI and chatbots. The HelpMe system supports virtual and in-person office hours and labs allowing for fairness of support and efficient tracking of help sessions.

Publications:

• HelpMe: Student Help Seeking using Office Hours and Email, Proceedings of the 55th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 1 (SIGCSE 2024), Portland, OR, USA. ACM. 7 pages.
• Evaluation of Submission Limits and Regression Penalties to Improve Student Behavior with Automatic Assessment Systems, ACM Transactions on Computing Education, September 2023, Vol. 23, Number 3, pages 1-24, http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3591210.
• Mastery or AI Deception? Analyzing ChatGPT’s Assessment Proficiency and Evaluating Detection Strategies, 2023 International Conference on Computational Science and Computational Intelligence (CSCI 2023). 7 pages.
• Using Assignment Incentives to Reduce Student Procrastination and Encourage Code Review Interactions, 2023 International Conference on Computational Science and Computational Intelligence (CSCI 2023). 6 pages.
• Learning UML Database Design and Modeling with AutoER, ACM/IEEE 25th International Conference on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems (MODELS '22 Companion), October 23-28, 2022, Montreal, QC, Canada, Oct 2022, pages 42–45, https://doi.org/10.1145/3550356.3559091. [68% Acceptance Rate]
• Automatic Generation and Marking of UML Database Design Diagrams, SIGCSE 2022: Proceedings of the 53rd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, Feb 2022, pages 626–632, https://doi.org/10.1145/3478431.34993762021.

Information on Past Projects