Amar Prakash Azad

Senior Researcher
Samsung Institute of Advanced Technology

(SAIT)
Samsung R&D Institute, Bangalore, India

Voice: +91-80-33413308
Cell:
+91-98-80067578
E-Mail: amarazad@gmail.com

AREAS OF INTERESTS
1. Core Areas: Network Optimization and Control, Markov Decision Process, Game
Theory, Stochastic Systems and Queueing Theory, Machine Learning, Analytics.
2. Application Areas: Internet of Things (IoT), Wireless and Complex Networks, Social
Networks, Distributed Systems, Smart Grid, Network Economics/Pricing.

EDUCATION

Ph.D. in Computer Science tres Honorable(Distinction with Honors) May 2007 Nov 2010
INRIA Sophia Antipolis and University Avignon, France
Thesis Supervisor: Prof. Eitan Altman, IEEE Fellow
Dissertation: Advances in Network Control and Optimization

M.Sc. (Engineering) in Electrical Communication Engineering

Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India
Thesis Supervisor: Prof. A. Chockalingam
Dissertation: Enhancing Network Lifetime in Wireless Sensor
Networks using Multiple Base Stations and Cooperative Diversity

Aug 2003 Jan 2006

B.Tech. in Electronics and Communication Engineering

Govind Ballabh Pant University of Agriculture and
Technology, Pantnagar, Uttaranchal, India

July 1994 July 1998

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Senior Chief Engineer, Samsung R&D Institute, Bangalore,

India

Dec 2013 Till Date

Design and Prototyping (embedded system) of B2B application

over Ultra Low Power WPAN (IEEE 802.15.4q) and Bluetooth Low
Energy system for IoT. Mathematical modeling and analysis for
energy efficiency scheduling algorithms.

Research Associate, Laboratory of signal and systems,

CNRS, France

Nov 2012 Nov 2013

Design and mathematical modeling of EV charging scheduling

and MicroGrid power management using dynamic optimal control
for SmartGrid.

PostDoc Researcher, University of California Berkeley

(NetEcon at EECS) and Santa Cruz (School of Engg.), USA
Game theoretic design of network resource allocation: Efficiency
analysis and bounding of resource allocation mechanism in
dynamic multistage market. Altruistic strategy and dynamic
learning in network routing games.

Dec 2010 Oct 2012

Visiting
Student
Researcher,
Coordinated
Science
Laboratory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA

May 2010 Aug 2010

Design of optimal resource scheduling mechanism for heavy

traffic networks.

Visiting
Student
Researcher,
Coordinated
Science
Laboratory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA

Apr 2009 May 2009

Energy efficient design of delay tolerant network using dynamic

optimal control for sleep and forwarding control.

Visiting Student Researcher, Tata Institute of Fundamental

Research, Mumbai

Jan 2009 Feb 2009

Design of online optimal control policies for power save mode

operation of wireless networks using markov decision process.

Student Research Assistant, WRL, ECE, IISc, Bangalore,

India

Jan 2004 Jan 2006

Design of energy efficient routing and optimal base station

placement for remote monitoring applications using sensor
network.

Engineer (D&E), Bharat Electronics Limited, Bangalore, India

Jul 2001 Jul 2003

Design and development of Ku-Ka band radar transmitter systems

and the safety control mechanism.

AWARDS AND HONOURS

Best paper award at IEEE IFIP Wireless Days conference, Paris 2009.

Nominated for Best paper at IEEE WoWMoM conference, Helsinki 2007.

Ranked 1st in CNRS concours in section 07/04, France 2012 (A national level
competition for researcher position).

Invited NSF (National Science Foundation) review panelist at Washington in 2012.

Obtained support from Indo-French Centre for Promotion of Advanced Research during
MS in 2005.

Appreciation award for successful trial and testing of Radar Transmitter at Merrut Army
cantonment as youngest engineer at BEL, Bangalore 2003.

PUBLICATIONS
Journal Publications
1. E. Altman, A. P. Azad*, T. Basar, F. De-Pellegrini, Combined Optimal Control of
Activation and Transmission in Delay Tolerant Networks, In the proceeding of
IEEE/ACM Transaction of Networking, vol. PP, Issue 99, July 2012.
2. A. P. Azad*, S. Alouf, E. Altman,V. S. Borkar, G. paschos, Optimal Control of Sleep
Periods for Wireless Terminals, In the proceedings of IEEE Journal of Selected Area in

Communication, vol 29, no 8,pp-1605, September 2011.

3. Amar Prakash Azad*, Analysis and Optimization of Sleeping Mode in WiMAX via
Stochastic Decomposition Techniques, In the proceedings of IEEE Journal of Selected
Area in Communication, vol 29, no 8,pp-1630, September 2011.
4. A. P. Azad*, A. Chockalingam, Lifetime Limits of Wireless Sensor Networks Using
Multiple Data Sinks, In the proceedings of International Journal of Sensor Networks
Volume 9, Number 3/4 (Special Issue on: Advances in Theory and Application of
Wireless Ad Hoc and Sensor Networks) 2011
Conference Publications (selected)
5. A. P. Azad*, J. Musacchio, Efficiency of a Two-Stage Market for a Fixed-Capacity
Divisible Resource, Proceedings of IEEE/CSS NetGCoop 2012, Avignon, France.
6. H. Tembine, A. P. Azad*, Dynamic Routing Games: An Evolutionary Game Theoretic
Approach. Proceedings of IEEE CDC 2011, Florida, USA.
7. E. Altman, A. P. Azad*, T. Basar, F. De-Pellegrini, Optimal Activation and Transmission
Control in Delay Tolerant Networks, Proceedings of IEEE INFOCOM pp.1-5, March
2010, SanDiego.
8. A. P. Azad*, S. Alouf, E. Altman, V. S. Borkar, G. Paschos, Vacation Policy Optimization
with Application to IEEE 802.16e Power Saving Mechanism, Proceedings of IEEE IFIP
Wireless Days 2009, Paris, France [Awarded Best Paper].

9. A. P. Azad*, S. Alouf, E. Altman, V. S. Borkar, G. Paschos, Optimal Sampling for State

Change Detection with Application to the Control of Sleep Mode. Proceedings of IEEE
CDC 2009, Sanghai, China.
Conference Publications
10. A. P. Azad*, Sandhya Patil, Sujit Jos, Kiran Bynam , and Manoj Choudhary, CollisionFree CSMA for Low Power WPAN, Under publication.
11. K. Govindan, A. P. Azad*, K. Bynam, S. Patil, T. Kim, Modeling and Analysis of Non
Beacon Mode for Low-Rate WPAN, Proceedings of IEEE CCNC 2015, Las Vegas, USA.
12. K. Govindan, A. P. Azad*, End-to-end Service Assurance in IoT MQTT-SN,
Proceedings of IEEE CCNC 2015, Las Vegas, USA.
13. S. Patil, A. P. Azad*, Y. kim, K. Bynam, Augmented Conflict-free Scheduling for Low
Power WSNs, Proceedings of IEEE CCNC 2015, Las Vegas, USA.
14. A. P. Azad*, Olivier Beaude, Samson Lasaulce, and Laurent Pfeiffer, An Optimal Control
Approach for EV Charging with Distribution Grid Ageing, Proceedings of IEEE
Blackseacom 2013, Batumi, Georgia.
15. A. P. Azad*, J. Musacchio, Value of Unilateral Altruism in Atomic Routing Games,
Proceedings of IEEE/CSS NetGCoop 2011, Paris.
16. W. Chahin, R. Elazouzi, F. De Pellegrini, A. P. Azad*,Blind Online Optimal Forwarding in
Heterogeneous Delay Tolerant Networks, Proceedings of IEEE IFIP Wireless Days
2011, Canada.

17. G. Kesidis, E. Altman, A. P. Azad*, Y. Jin, Stable Nash Equilibria of Medium Access
Games under Symmetric Socially Altruistic Behavior, Proceeding of IEEE CDC 2010,
Atlanta, USA.
18. A. P. Azad*, E. Altman, R. El-Azouzi, From Altruism to Non-Cooperation in Routing
Games, International Workshop on Wireless Networks IFIP/CSS WNC3 2010 (with
WiOpt 2010).
19. R. Elazouzi, Habib B.A. Sidi, J. Rojas-Mora, A. P. Azad*, Delay Tolerant Networks in
Partially Overlapped Networks: A Non-cooperative Game Approach, Proceedings of IFIP
Bionetics 2009, Avignon.
20. S. Alouf, E. Altman, A. P. Azad*, Analysis of an M/G/1 Queue with Repeated
Inhomogeneous Vacations with Application to IEEE 802.16e Power Saving Mechanism,
Proceedings of IEEE QEST 2008, Saint-Malo, France.
21. S. Alouf, E. Altman, A. P. Azad*, M/G/1 Queue with Repeated Inhomogeneous
Vacations Applied to IEEE 802.16e Power Saving Performance Evaluation Review,
ACM Sigmetrics, 36(1):451-452, June 2008, Annapolis Maryland, USA.
22. S. Vashistha, A. P. Azad*, A. Chockalingam, Energy Efficient Area Monitoring Using Information Coverage in Wireless Sensor Networks, Proc. IEEE WoWMoM 2007, Helsinki,
Finland [Nominated Best Paper].
23. S. Vashistha, A. P. Azad*, A. Chockalingam, Energy Efficient Area Monitoring Using
Information Coverage in Wireless Sensor Networks, Proc. IEEE COMSWARE 2007,
Bangalore, India.
24. A. P. Azad*, A. Chockalingam, Bounds on the Lifetime of Wireless Sensor Networks
Employing Multiple Mobile Data Sinks, Proceedings of IEEE GLOBECOM 2006, San
Francisco.
25. A. P. Azad*, A. Chockalingam, Mobile Base Stations Placement Algorithms and Energy
Aware Routing in Wireless Sensor Networks, Proceedings of IEEE WCNC 2006, Las
Vegas.
26. A. P. Azad*, and A. Chockalingam, Energy Efficient Mobile Base Stations Placement
Algorithms in Wireless Sensor Networks, Proceedings of NCC 2006, IIT Delhi.
Book Chapters
27. W. Chahin and F. Pellegrini, R. El-Azouzi, and A. P. Azad*, Online Algorithms for
Adaptive Optimization in Heterogeneous Delay Tolerant Networks, In Adhoc Networks,
Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and
Telecommunications Engineering, pp 332-350, vol. 111, Springer 2013.
28. *Amar Prakash Azad, Enhancing Network Lifetime using Multiple Base Stations in WSN,
VDM Verlag Dr. Miller. October 2010, ISBN-10: 363926472X.
White Paper

29. WiMAX Application Layer Performance, M. Airy, A. P. Azad and A. Puri, Beccem
Communications Inc

Patent
1. Scheduling and transmitting uplink packets within uplink sub-frames of a wireless system,
US patent no. 2008/0285511 A1, November 20, 2008 (International Classifications:
H04Q)
2. Collision Free CSMA for Beacon enabled system, (Samsung internally graded patent,
being filed for US patent).

Invited (Selected) Talks

1. Efficiency of a Two Stage Capacity Allocation Mechanism, SKP speaker at AlcatelLucent Bell Labs, Paris, October 18, 2013.
2. Dynamic Control for Smart EV charging for Distribution Micro-grid, at IEEE
Blackseacom Conference, Batumi, Georgia, July 5, 2013.
3. Value of Unilateral Altruism in Routing Games, NetEcon Seminar (EECS), University of
California Berkeley, August 16, 2011.
4. Optimal Activation and Transmission Control in Delay Tolerant Networks, IEEE
Infocom, SanDiego, March 15, 2010.
5. Cooperative Routing Game: From Altruism to Egoism, Coordinated Science Laboratory,
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, June 10, 2010.
6. Markov Decision Process Approach for Optimal Sleep Mode Control for Wireless
Networks, ANR WINEM Review, Avignon, France, Dec 5, 2009.
7. Altruistic Routing Games, at Networking and Electronic Commerce Research
Conference, Lake Garda, Italy, October 9 2009.
8. Delay Tolerant Network: Optimal Control and Games Theoretic Approach at INRIA
Maestro Review, Avignon, France, Sept 23, 2009.
9. Optimal Dynamic Decisions Making for Power Save Control in Wireless Networks,
Coordinated Science Laboratory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, April 22,
2009.
10. An Energy-Efficient Architecture for Delay Tolerant Network: Centralized and
decentralized approaches at ARC POPEYE, Avignon, France April 9, 2009
11. Queueing Theoretic Approach for Optimal Power Saving in Wireless Access Networks,
Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, India, Feb 17, 2009.
12. Energy Efficient Routing and Lifetime Bounds of Wireless Sensor Network, at INRIA
Maestro Review, GrandMot, France, June 10 2007

PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES

Panel

Conference Organizations
o
o
o
o

Journals: IEEE/ACM Transaction on Networking (TON)

IEEE JSAC
Springer Journal on Discrete Event Dynamic Systems
Elsevier Journal on Computer Networks
Elsevier Journal on Performance Evaluation
International Journal of Sensor Networks (IJSNet)
Conferences: IEEE Globecom06 Wireless Communications & Networking
IEEE WCNC 06,07 - Networks
IEEE Secon 09, CDC 09,10
IEEE INFOCOM 2011 C&C Workshop, WiOpt 2015

Co-Advise MS Research Thesis

o

IEEE COMSNETS 2015

RawNets 2015 (In conjuction with Wiopt)
IEEE VTC 2013-Fall, IEEE VTC 2013-Spring
IEEE WDN 2010 (with WiOpt 2010)
IEEE ValueTools 2012
IEEE NetGCoop 2011
IEEE Globecom 07,08,09
IEEE Wireless Communications & Networking (WNC3) 2011
ACM Sigmetrics 2010 (Shadow)

Reviewer
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o

IEEE WiOpt 2012 (Publicity Chair)

IEEE ICST NetGCoop 2011 (Publicity and Session Chair)
ICST Bionetics 2009 (Publicity Chair and Local Organizer)
ICST NSTools 2009 (Session organizer)

Technical Programm Committee Member

o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o

Invited NSF (National Science Foundation) review panelist for ICES at Washington in
2012 (ICES: Interface between Computer Science and Economics & Social Sciences.)

Wissam Chahin, Univ. of Avignon, France (Currently a Phd. student). Thesis title:
Optimal Policies and Auto-Organization in Heterogenous Delay Tolerant Networks.

Teaching
o

Guest Lecturer, Course: Probability Theory, Spring session UCSC, USA.

SKILLS

SOFTWARE: Matlab, C/C++, Embedded system programming, Java,

CPLEX, NS, OPNET, Linux, Python.
Technology and Standards: Wireless and Networking technologies and
standards, such as Zigbee, 6LoWPAN, BLE, Wireless Adhoc/Mess Networks, LTE,
WiMAX, WiFi, Sensor Networks, 3GPP, CDMA, OFDM, MIMO, TCP/IP, MQTT.

RESEARCH SUMMARY

Senior Researcher at Samsung R&D Institute, Bangalore

(Dec 2013 Till Date)

Algorithms Design and Development for Low Power IoT Applications

Design and prototyping of Bluetooth Mesh for B2B Applications in IoT
- Design of Bluetooth Mesh over BLE 4.0/2 for scalable and reliable networking.
Development of prototyping for POC over various embedded system (BLE development
platform), e.g. Raspberry Pi, Nordic nRF8001 and CSR !energy Kit and performance
analysis.
Collision Free-CSMA for Low Power IEEE 802.15.4 (potentially adaptable to CSMA
systems)
- Conceptualizations and design of a collision free multiple access algorithm over CSMA
using a coordination mechanism in a distributed manner. The algorithm is mainly based
on modulo prime algebra. The CF-CSMA ensures that the nodes attempts the
transmission in orthogonal time slots which results in collision elimination and
improves the performance drastically. Further, the collision elimination allows to shrink
the backoff window and can reduce the backoff delay arbitrarily small in limits. This can
be compared to distributed TDMA which enjoys the distributed nature of CSMA and
efficiency as high as TDMA.
Multi-Rate Support Design for Ultra-Low Power WPAN (IEEE 802.15.4q).
- Design and prototype development of an energy efficient algorithm for dynamic fast rate
adaptation for IEEE 802.15.4q. The rate selection algorithm using both the PHY/MAC.
- Design of energy optimal dynamic rate selection algorithm for robust (estimation errors
and device level variations) performance using online learning method.
Modelling, Design and Analysis of MQTT-SN in IoT Paradigm
- Design of an pub/sub architecture based data centric sensor network using light-weight
MQTT based transport mechanism overlaid with clustered sensor network for an end-toend energy efficient health care application.
-Modeling and analysis of Pub/Sub connection less architecture for MQTT combined with
connection oriented clustered sensor (composed of normal node and gateway nodes).
Characterization of an end-to-end performance metrices, e.g. delay, throughput and
energy, to provide system design guidelines for QoS guarantees.
Modeling and analysis of Non-Beacon mode unslotted IEEE 802.15.4 low power system
and performance characterization using Markov chain node state model.
Conflict free scheduling for Low Power WSNs in IoT framework for monitoring services,
e.g. health care patient monitoring. The scheduling algorithm entails efficient utilization of
available bandwidth for improved scalability and delay performance for periodic traffic.

Research Associate at LSS-CNRS, France

(Nov. 2012 Nov 2013)

Design of Dynamic Scheduling Algorithms for Energy Distribution Network

- Design of EV charging schedule over a microgrid for residential distribution network.
Modeling and analysis of a microgrid residential network considering the impact of ageing
and temporal losses due to EV loading. The analysis and algorithm design is mainly
based on dynamics optimal control approach where the scheduling algorithms aim to
minimize the cost of EV charging and its temporal impact over the last mile energy
distribution network.

Post Doc Researcher at UC Santa Cruz and Berkeley

(Dec 2010 Oct. 2012)

Efficiency and Arbitrage in Dynamic Resource Allocation

Study of network resource allocation in a dynamic market
- Game theoretic modeling and efficiency analysis of a two-stage resource allocation
mechanism, which is capable of handling the demand shocks in real time trading as well
as benefits from adequate planning time.

- Showed the worst-case efficiency is lower bounded by 82.8% (2 2 2) in a two-stage

market compared to the well known single stage market of 75%(Johari et. al 2004).
Dynamic Network Routing Game and Strategic Learning
- Proposed an evolutionary game theoretic framework to study the dynamic routing
games.
- Provided a Boltzman gibbs dynamics based algorithm for the optimal strategy learning
in a dynamic environment. Further, showed that users need not to have same learning
rule for the convergence to the equilibrium.
Unilateral Altruism in Network Routing Games
-A counterintuitive phenomenon in altruistic games that a user can improve his
performance by acting unilaterally altruistic instead of acting selfishly is shown by taking
an example of routing games. Quantifying the benefit of altruism over selfishness as
Value to Unilateral Altruism (VoU), amazingly, the VoU can also be arbitrarily large in
certain situations.

PhD research scholar at Maestro group, INRIA Sophia Antipolis, France

(May 2007 Nov. 2010)
Energy Efficient Architecture of Delay Tolerant Networks (DTNs) (Collaboration with
UIUC, USA and Create-Net, Italy)
Joint dynamic optimal control for the energy conservation with the coupled activation and
transmission (data as well as signaling) of mobiles in Delay Tolerant Networks (DTNs)
- Mean field approximation approach to capture the spatial dynamics of random nodes
mobility.

- A novel method to solve the dynamic coupled control problem of mobiles activation and
data transmission (forwarding). Derivation of the joint optimal dynamic policy that
maximizes the packet delivery rate under the limited energy budget using Pontryagin
maximum principle. Game theoretic analysis and design of distributed learning algorithm
in multi population and heterogeneous DTNs for energy efficient optimal throughput data
transmission protocol.
Energy Management Mechanism in Wireless Access Networks (Collaboration with
TIFR, India) Sleep mode analysis, performance evaluation and optimization for wireless
access network user terminal (such as WiMAX, LTE, . . .)
- Modelling of the sleep cycle as an M/G/1 queue server with repeated independent and
inhomogeneous vacation distribution and analyzed using the Stochastic decomposition
approach (applicable to large classes of sleep policies).
- Optimization framework and comparative study of the performance of the optimal power
save policies with the IEEE 802.16e standard protocol. Control of sleep mode via optimal
sampling for state change detection for user equipment
- Markov decision process based modelling and algorithm design to obtain the optimal
sleeping period and the optimal policy by system state estimation for an arbitrary traffic.
- Parametric optimization based approach to obtain optimal sleep policies for UE within
the restricted class of policies (of practical implementation significance).
Egoism, Cooperation and Altruism in Routing Games and Aloha games
(Collaboration with Penn State Univ., USA, Sup elec, France)
- Modelling and analysis of routing games in a cooperative framework revealing various
structural properties, e.g. cessation of Nash equilibriums uniqueness, etc. Discovered a
new paradox, called as Cooperation paradox.
- Studied the impact of altruism in an Aloha network within a game theoretic framework
revealing various structural properties, e.g. stable interior Nash equilibrium.

Staff Engineer System Design, Beceem Communications (April 06 - April 07)

(Acquired by Broadcom), Bangalore
Analysis and algorithm development for MAC/PHY of IEEE 802.16e (WiMAX)
- Development of MAC layer simulator using C++, NS and integrated with detailed PHY
simulator developed in Matlab.
- Study of the network performance at the cell level for DL and UL for various types of
traffic and load conditions (e.g. web, voip, video streaming, FTP) and with various
features (HARQ, Antenna management). Part of the work resulted in a white paper.
- Algorithm development for performance enhancement (throughput and outage)
especially for cell boundary users. Part of this work resulted in a patent.
- Efficient algorithm design and network performance evaluation (e.g, throughput, delay)
for power save mode of the IEEE 802.16e via MAC/PHY simulations for various network
traffic (from 3GPP) conditions and PHY configurations (e.g. MCS selection, antenna
configurations) for user terminal.

Student Research Scholar, IISc, Bangalore

(Aug 2003 April 2006)

Energy Efficient Algorithms for Wireless Sensor Networks

Study of multiple base station approach in sensor network
- Modelling and analysis of multiple base station approach for energy efficient routing.
Derived the network lifetime bounds for multiple BSs.
- Developed routing and scheduling algorithms to enhance network lifetime with multiple
BSs.
- Exploiting cooperative diversity and transmit power control, developed routing and
scheduling algorithms to enhance the network lifetime.

Engineer (D&E), Bharat Electronics Limited, Bangalore (July 01- July 03)
- Design and development (system and software modules) of Ku, Ka band
communication radar systems, test zig and integration of surveillance systems.

REFERENCES
Available on request.