Rendezvous in Distributed Systems ― Theory, Algorithms and Applications

This book introduces novel solutions to the rendezvous problem in distributed systems, a fundamental problem that underpins the construction of many important functions in distributed systems and networks. The book covers rendezvous theories, distributed rendezvous algorithms, and rendezvous applications in practical systems, presents state-of-the-art rendezvous results and highlights the latest methods of rendezvous in distributed systems. It provides in particular an in-depth treatment of the blind rendezvous and oblivious blind rendezvous problems and their solutions. Further, it sheds new light on rendezvous applications in cognitive radio networks and rendezvous search in graphs. As such, it will also be of interest to readers from other research fields such as robotics, wireless sensor networks, and game theory.

Zhaoquan Gu is a post-doctoral researcher at The University of Hong Kong, China, where his work primarily involves arithmetic and computing in distributed networks and systems. He received his PhD degree and BS degree, both in computer science, from Tsinghua University (THU) in 2015 and 2011, respectively. During his undergraduate studies, he joined the Special Pilot Class (“Yao Class”) at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Science (IIIS). His doctoral dissertation was awarded as one of the best PhD theses by the THU. He has published many articles in journals and for international conferences on arithmetic design in wireless sensor networks, cognitive radio networks, and distributed computing.

Yuexuan Wang is an honorary professor and research scientist at Department of Computer Science at the University of Hong Kong. She was a full professor of Computer Science and Deputy Dean of Institute Information Sciences (IIIS) at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. Prof. Wang has been appointed as visiting professor at Mathematics and Computer Science Division of Argonne National Laboratory (USA), University of Texas at Dallas, the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the City University of Hong Kong. She was the recipient of China National Teaching Achievements Award First Prize in 2014, Beijing Higher Education Achievement Award Grand Prize and Tsinghua University Teaching Achievements Grand Prize in 2012. Her research interests focus on Network Science and Distributed Computing, especially distributed algorithms in wireless networks and next-generation Internet. She is program chair/member of several international conferences, including WASA 2015, INFOCOM2014, HPC2014, WiOpt2013, AAAS2012, CWSN2011, and etc.

Qiang-Sheng Hua is currently an associate professor at the School of Computer Science and Technology of Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST). Before joining HUST, from 2011 to 2014, he was an assistant professor at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences (IIIS), Tsinghua University. He received his PhD degree in computer science in 2009 from The University of Hong Kong, where he remained for the next two years as a post-doctoral fellow. He received his B. Eng. and M. Eng. degrees, both in computer science, from Central South University, China. He has published more than 40 articles for international conferences and journals, as well as several book chapters. He is an editor for KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems and has served as a reviewer for many journals. He is a technical program committee member for many international conferences including INFOCOM and ICPADS. He is also actively involved in research projects sponsored by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NNSFC).

Francis Chi Moon Lau is a professor at The University of Hong Kong. He received his BSc degree in computer science from Acadia, and his M.Math and PhD degrees in computer science from Waterloo. He joined the Department of computer science at The University of Hong Kong in 1987 and served as the department head from 2000 to 2005. He is currently an Associate Dean of the Faculty of Engineering. His chief research interests include systems research (both practical and theoretical), and the application of computing to the arts, in particular music. He is editor-in-chief of the Journal of Interconnection Networks, and several other journals. He has co-authored two books and published more than 300 articles for journals and conferences.