Tao Jin
Ph.D. student

208 West Village H
360 Huntington Ave,
Boston, MA 02115

Email: taojin ( at ) ccs ( dot ) neu ( dot ) edu
CV: Download
Bio

NOTE: I am now a senior software engineer at Qualcomm Research, San Diego, where I work on the Snapdragon Flight, an SoC for Drones.

I received my Ph.D. from College of Computer and Information Science, Northeastern University in 2013. My advisor is Prof. Guevara Noubir. I received my B.S. from Department of Computer Science, Peking University in 2005.

My research interests are currently focusing on mobile and ubiquitous computing, wireless networks, distributed systems and anything about mobile. I love building systems and enjoy seeing abstract ideas prototyped and being used in the real world.

Ph.D. Thesis Proposal
Open Infrastructure: Boost the Urban Wi-Fi in the Era of Cloud - Energy Efficiency and Bandwidth Grouping
proposal page
Projects (being updated)
Open Infrastructure (web)
Open Infrastructure is a wireless network research framework that allows researchers to study wireless networks, and develop new technology under a uniform environment. In particular, it aims at leveraging residential brandband networks and routers to enable ubiquitous wireless access, and data storage in an efficient, reliable, low power, and low cost. It consists of customized wireless router firmware, a suite of management tools, and optional hardware extension devices.
WiZi-Cloud (web)

WiZi-Cloud is an open-source dual-radio solution for scalibility and energy efficiency of mobile phones' Internet access. It consists of a set protocols, and hardware/software components integrating WiFi and ZigBee radios on mobile phones and access points. WiZi-Cloud aims at providing:

  • ubiquitous connectivity,
  • high energy efficiency,
  • real time intra-device/inter-AP handover, that is transparent to the applications.

    • WiZi-Cloud is motivated by the ever increasing density of WiFi Access Points and large unlicensed RF bandwidth over which they operate. At the same time cellular networks are limited by deployment challenges and limited RF spectrum. However, maintaining connectivity through WiFi results in depleting the mobile phones battery in a very short time. The WiZi-Cloud dual radio solution overcomes this problem.

    Our prototype WiZi-Cloud system runs on Android G1 and OpenWRT compatible WiFi access points. Top popular mobile applications, such as VoIP, stream media, etc. run with good performance on WiZi-Cloud, and achieves 300% better energy efficiency. To check our the software/hardware prototype, demo video, and more detailed design information, please visit WiZi-Cloud project page.

    SWARM
    Boston WiFi Survey
    TCP NAT Traversal Protocol Design and Prototype

    I worked on this project when I interned at Nokia Research Center, Palo Alto. I designed a TCP NAT traversal protocol, which enables the two hosts behind NAT boxes to establish direct TCP connection. I implemented a C library which identifies the NAT box type, and applies proper mechanism to do NAT traversal. The library runs on Linux, maemo platform, and windows XP, and works for 90% of NAT boxes out there (at least in 2007).

    Publications
    Efficient Spread Spectrum Communications without Pre-Shared Secrets (pdf)
    A. Cassola, T. Jin, G. Noubir, B. Thapa, in IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, TMC, 2012
    WiZi-Cloud: Application-transparent Dual ZigBee-WiFi Radios for Low Power Internet Access (pdf | talk | demo)
    Tao Jin, Guevara Noubir and Bo Sheng, in Proceedings of INFOCOM, Shanghai, 2011
    Zero Pre-shared Secret Key Establishment in the presence of Jammers (pdf | talk)
    Tao Jin, Guevara Noubir and Bishal Thapa, in Proceedings of MobiHoc, New Orleans, 2009
    A Security-enabled Wireless Token Cluster MAC Protocol with Intelligent Token Policy
    Tao Jin, Chunxiao Chigan, in Proceedings of MILCOM,Orlando, 2007
    QoS-Aware Distributed Spectrum Sharing for Heterogeneous Wireless Cognitive Networks
    Chao Zhou, Tao Jin, Chunxiao Chigan and Zhi Tian, Elsevier Journal of Computer Networks: Special Issue on Cognitive Wireless Networks, Vol. 52 (4), pp.864-878, 2008
    Game-theoretic Distributed Spectrum Sharing for Wireless Cognitive Networks with Heterogeneous QoS (pdf)
    Tao Jin, Chunxiao Chigan and Zhi Tian, in Proceedings of GlobeCom, 2006
    Demos
    SNEAP: A Social Network-Enabled EAP Method: No More Open Hotspots (pdf)
    Aldo Cassola, Tao Jin, Harsh Kumar, Guevara Noubir, and Kamal Sharma, in Proceedings of NSDI Demo, Boston, 2011
    WiZi-Cloud: Integrating ZigBee into Mobile Phones for Energy Efficient Internet Access in WLANs (pdf | video)
    Tao Jin, Guevara Noubir, and Bo Sheng, in Proceedings of MOBICOM Demo, Chicago, 2010
    Service
    Reviewed papers for MobiCom, GlobeCom, V2VCOM, Transactions on Information Forensics & Security, SECON, Transactions on Networking
    Misc