Such devices are often constrained in their computational and energy resources and are often organized in networks that do not rely on wired infrastructures and that contribute to the realization of the Internet of Things (IoT).
The realization of such systems requires new solutions in the design of algorithms and protocols for wireless ad hoc networks connecting large numbers of devices. Such net- works might be very large and operate in a highly dynamic environment: sensor nodes move, enter and exit the system and are prone to faults, while communication links are often noisy and unreliable. As a consequence, adopted solutions should be simple, ef- ficient, and robust; in particular, since energy is usually provided by batteries, energy efficiency must always be considered as a primary goal. The scale and nature of perva- sive systems requires networks able to react to unexpected events and to operate beyond the complete understanding and control of the designer and of the user. In fact, these sys- tems should achieve an appropriate level of self-organization and integration to adapt to continuously changing environments and to cope with unforeseen faults.
Our research focuses on the design, analysis, experimentation and implementation of algorithms and protocols for the Internet of Things.
We are also interested in solving complex communications primitives such as service discovery and event-based data diffusion, with the final goal of characterizing sensors networks as a data storage and retrieval. In these context, interesting security and pri- vacy issues emerge that due to the limited resources and the distributed nature of the ap- plications, require the development of new techniques and algorithms. We complement our research with an extensive experimental work that is based on simulations (using network simulators such as NS2, OMNET++ and Shawn), and on test-beds (e.g. we run a permanent test-bed of wireless sensor network to monitor the ancient roman remains at the basement of DIAG and we have about 600 active tags to collect and analyse the so called proximity graph, namely a graph in which nodes are users and there is a link between two nodes if their are in proximity).
More recently we have started a research activity on decentralized applications and the employment of blockchain technologies to support the development of a new distributed architectures beyond the classical client/server paradigm.
