A social network often has numerous interesting attributes. When an attribute is quantified, a social tomography would arise from the underlying social network. One of the most interesting attributes is crime hotspots, whose existence has been strongly supported by observations that serious crimes ranging from residential burglary to homicide are strongly patterned in time and space, and by mathematical modeling. So far, however, the structures of hotspots, including their size distributions, have not been adequately studied. Here, we focus on a special type of hotspots, the sex offender clusters, in the United States, and show that their size distribution, where size is defined as the ratio between sex offender population and total population in a 5-digit zip code area, follows a power-law distribution. In contrast, such local total population, both general and sex offenders, do not quite follow power-laws. A heavy-tailed power-law distribution is fundamentally different from a thin-tailed distribution such as a Poisson distribution, and can be used as an objective criterion for defining sex offender clusters. More fundamentally, a power-law is a defining property of self-similarity or fractal behavior. Therefore, our finding indicates that sex offender clusters, size-wise, self-organize into a fractal, due to interplay of economic conditions of offenders, policies and public perceptions.

Patterns of animate and inanimate systems show remarkable similarities in their aggregation. One similarity is the double-Pareto distribution of the aggregate-size of system components. Different models have been developed to predict aggregates of system components. However, not many models have been developed to describe probabilistically the aggregate-size distribution of any system regardless of the intrinsic and extrinsic drivers of the aggregation process. Here we consider natural animate systems, from one of the greatest mammals - the African elephant (Loxodonta africana) - to the Escherichia coli bacteria, and natural inanimate systems in river basins. Considering aggregates as islands and their perimeter as a curve mirroring the sculpting network of the system, the probability of exceedence of the drainage area, and the Hack’s law are shown to be the the Korˇcak’s law and the perimeter-area relationship for river basins. The perimeter-area relationship, and the probability of exceedence of the aggregate-size provide a meaningful estimate of the same fractal dimension. Systems aggregate because of the influence exerted by a physical or processes network within the system domain. The aggregate-size distribution is accurately derived using the null-method of box-counting on the occurrences of system components. The importance of the aggregate-size spectrum relies on its ability to reveal system form, function, and dynamics also as a function of other coupled systems. Variations of the fractal dimension and of the aggregate-size distribution are related to changes of systems that are meaningful to monitor because potentially critical for these systems.

An introduction to the key topics in the cognitive science of cyber defence analysis including an overview of the challenges that exist and need to be faced in the field.

The advent of technologies that can seamlessly operate in different environments with differing levels of security present new challenges to the cybersecurity specialist seeking to ensure the safety of data, process or output of a complex system. This paper reviews the human dimension of cybersecurity. The Human Factors Integration (HFI) framework is employed as a structure with which to consider the many ways in which the human can differentially affect the security of a system both positively and negatively. We conclude that when the human factors element is analysed when specifying and designing secure and safe systems, it is far more likely that the human can assist and increase the overall level of security. As in other high technology sectors such as aviation or petrochemical, if not considered, the human can often ‘bulldoze’ through the most carefully considered and designed security or safety barriers

Future conflicts will necessitate the ability to conduct effective military operations in a contested information environment. The building and maintaining of robust situational awareness, protection of decision-making effectiveness of individuals and teams, fighting through information attacks from both in, and through, the cyberspace domain, will be essential. Increasing the knowledge of the mechanisms involved in degrading task performance and decision-making during cyber attacks will enable the development of advanced human-centered defensive techniques that aid fight-through capability. In this position paper, the development and evaluation of software that simulates real-time and persistent manipulation of the information environment is discussed. Results of the evaluation indicated that the task performance of a team of decision-makers performing collaborative tasks could be degraded through real-time manipulation of cyberspace content and operation. The paper concludes with a discussion of focus and direction for future research and development. It is suggested that the building of a deeper understanding of the perceptual and cognitive factors that are significant in the relationship between information environment manipulation and reduction in task performance is required. This understanding will aid in the defence of cyberspace attacks, will aid in fight through and mission assurance, and will aid the Information Operations community.

Cyber insider threat is intentional theft from, or sabotage of, a cyber system by someone within the organization. This article explores the use of advanced cognitive and instructional principles to accelerate learning in organizational supervisors to mitigate the cyber threat. It examines the potential advantage of using serious games to engage supervisors. It also posits two systematic instructional approaches for this training challenge – optimal path modelling and a competency-based approach. The paper concludes by discussing challenges of evaluating training for seldom occurring real world phenomena, like detecting a cyber-insider threat.

Cyber analysis is a complex task that requires the coordination of a large sociotechnical system of human analysts working together with technology. Adequate situation awareness of such a complex system requires more than aggregate situation awareness of individuals. Teamwork in the form of communication and information coordination is at the heart of team-level situation awareness. In this position paper, we report observations from previously conducted cognitive task analyses that suggest that teamwork is lacking in many cyber analysis organizations. Communication is ineffective, team roles are inconsistent across organizations, reward structures and selection may thwart collaboration, and the environment is conducive to individual work. Suggestions for improving teamwork in the cyber domain are offered.

In this paper we argue for a human-in-the-loop approach to the study of situation awareness in computer defence analysis (CDA). The cognitive phenomenon of situation awareness (SA) has received significant attention in cybersecurity/CDA research. Yet little of this work has attended to the cognitive aspects of situation awareness in the CDA context; instead, the human operator has been treated as an abstraction within the larger human-technology system. A more human-centric approach that seeks to understand the socio-cognitive work of human operators as they perform CDA will yield greater insights into the design of tools and interfaces for CDA. As support for this argument, we present our own work employing the Living Lab Framework through which we ground our experimental findings in contextual knowledge of real-world practice.

Antenna design for footwear is an essential part of enabling reliable wireless links with lower-limb sensors used in body centric networks. Sensors can report biomechanical pressure data to analyse kinematic and posture parameters for a range of medical and sporting applications. Consideration is given to antenna shapes, the fit with shoe shapes, the positioning on the shoe and the radiation patterns suited to on body and off-body communications.

Cardiopulmonary information can be extracted from the temporal variations of the input reflection coefficient of a single wearable antenna placed in close proximity of the human thorax. In a previous paper, the authors have shown the potentials of such non-invasive measurement technique through experimental results; as a proof of concept, phase samples were collected by using a Vector Network Analyzer, and conventional non-linear filtering techniques were used to isolate the spectral components related to heartbeat and respiration rate. To get more realistic measurement data, a first prototype of a low-cost RF sensor has been implemented, and improved algorithms have been developed to estimate both heartbeat and breathing rate. Preliminary measurement results are shown to validate the approach, and the effects of the human body movements are discussed.

The radio propagation signal between a pair of low-power wireless sensor nodes is analysed with the aim to identify and retrieve embedded physiological features. The latter is post-processed using popular time-frequency analyses, such as such as the Fast Fourier transform (FFT). The results show initial evidence that the electromagnetic wave propagation contains bio-mechanical markers, such as gait pattern and thoracic displacements.

Body Sensor Networks are an interesting emerging application to improve healthcare and the quality of life monitoring. In this paper, we compare the performances of multi-hop cooperative and single-hop networks with real-world sensor networks based on Zigbee technology. The network reliability, the data flow rate, the packet delivery ratio and the energy consumption are included as performances criteria. It is shown experimentally that the cooperative approach can provide a network more robust to link losses at the expenses of a lower bit rate and higher energy consumption. Specifically, for a packet delivery ratio >0.9, the cooperative scheme can provide the network with a link gain up to 14 dB traded off with an energy demand up to 30.7% higher and a data flow rate about 20% lower than a single-hop system. This work is a first exercise step in assessing reliability and life time trade-off with real-world platforms for body area sensor networks. Follow-up studies will address wireless ECG emulators with higher number of sensors (e.g. up to 10 for a typical 12-leads ECG system) employing ultra-low power chipsets in different specific health monitoring environments.

We present a novel respiratory sounds monitoring concept based on compressive sensing (CS). Respiratory sounds are streamed from a body-worn sensor node to a smartphone where processing is conducted. CS is used to simultaneously lower sampling frequency on the sensor node and over-the-air data rate. In this study we emphasize compressed sensing reconstruction via orthogonal matching pursuit (OMP) on Android smartphone. Accuracy of the reconstruction and execution speed are investigated using synthetic signals. We demonstrate applicability of the technique in real-time reconstruction of at least 10 components of compressible DCT spectrum of respiratory sounds containing asthmatic wheezing, acquired at 4x lower sampling rate.

In this article, we present two studies that pave the way towards a mobile implementation of the WAAVES certified medical image compression encoder. On the algorithmic side, we compared three techniques to increase the compression rate. The obtained results show a significant bit-rate reduction, around 40% with respect to the WAAVES encoder, while keeping the same visual quality. On the architectural side, we describe the HW/SW co-design of an architecture implemented in a FPGA platform. By using code profiling, critical portions of the code were identified, then two methods for hardware acceleration were used to implement the critical part of the coder. The tests were done on a StratixIVGX230 FPGA and the results showed that HW/SW co-design could achieve up to 20x performance gain in the critical portion. The combination of these results demonstrates the feasibility of a mobile implementation of the WAAVES certified medical image coder suitable for e-health applications.

Physical inactivity is nowadays defined as the fourth leading risk factor for global mortality. These levels are rising worldwide with major aftereffects on the prevention of several diseases and the general health of the population. Energy expenditure (EE) is a very important parameter usually used as a dimension in physical activity assessment studies. However, the most accurate methods for the measurement of the EE are usually costly, obtrusive and most are limited by laboratory conditions. Recent technological advancements in the sensor technology along with the great progress made in algorithms have made accelerometers a powerful technique often used to assess everyday physical activity. This paper discusses the use of support vector regression (SVR) to predict EE by using a single measurement unit, equipped with a triaxial accelerometer and a barometer, attached to the subject´s hip.

This paper describes the research made on current mobile health monitoring systems targeting the elderly and the development of an elderly-oriented solution, serving as a proof-of-concept of the research done. It provides a scientific contribution by specifying a system with characteristics never combined before, when applied to the health monitoring of older adults. Also, a prototype for that system was developed and evaluated with its end users – the elderly.

This paper deals with providing adapted media content and services for elderly and dependent persons living alone. In our approach, providing solutions and technologies for elderly requires to consider the simplification of architectures and the acceptance of the user. We propose to provide content and services using familiar TV sets and to consider medical advices and recommendations in using media and TV programs. As the user control is a key criterion in adopting context-aware systems, we consider the user actions and preferences. The proposed media selection scheme considers the evolution of the user preferences based on the recent user behavior patterns.

Influent voices from different areas like government and insurance companies already realized the savings that could be done with remote health monitoring and assistance systems. The TV is still the technology that older adults feel more comfortable with, and therefore we present , a new prototype that perfectly integrates with TV viewing experience and uses this almost ubiquitous mean to provide some features that they really feel the need in their daily lives: health agenda, medication intake and vital sign measurement scheduling and alerts, vital sign monitoring, videoconference with doctors and other features that may be also useful for doctors like support for medical questionnaires and health videos.

The proliferation of private, corporate and community Wi-Fi hotspots in city centers and residential areas opens up new opportunities for the collection of biomedical data produced by sensors carried by mobile non-hospitalized subjects.

New wireless wearable monitoring systems worn by patients and caregivers require a high degree of reliability and autonomy. We show that active textile antenna systems may serve as robust platforms to deploy such wireless links, in the meanwhile being comfortable and invisible to the wearer, thanks to recent developments in the design process combined with dedicated signal processing techniques. The key idea is to exploit the large amount of real estate available in patients’ and caregivers’ garments to deploy multiple textile antennas each with a size large enough to make them efficient radiators when deployed on the body. The antenna area is then reused by positioning active electronics directly underneath and energy harvesters directly on top of the antenna patch, ensuring the autonomy of the module. Combining different antenna signals by means of low-power multi-antenna processing techniques then ensures good signal quality at low transmit power in all situations.

We present a device-free localization method oriented to Ambient Assisted Living applications. The system exploits the received signal strength (RSS) measured by fixed wireless communications devices, whose position is known a priori, in order to localize a person in the transmission coverage area. The proposed localization system is passive, by not requiring the user to wear anything, and is able to trade complexity for accuracy by simply changing the number of deployed devices. The presentation is validated by an indoor experimental study.

Designing HCI in a medical context is not trivial. It needs to provide patients and medical experts with essential information for the tasks to be performed while ensuring the safety of operations. In this paper, we tackle this issue focused on the HCI requirements and expectations revealed by the use of mobile devices (Smartphone for patients/Tablet for specialists) on the assistance of cochlear or cardiac implanted patients. To illustrate the feasibility of our research work, we report several experiments and evaluations attempting to guarantee the safety of operations on adjusting cochlear implants and supporting the monitoring of patients with cardiac implants. This work is carried out as part of an academic and industrial research project.

Intrabody communication (IBC) uses the human body as a transmission medium for electrical signals, providing an efficient channel to interconnect devices in Body Sensor Networks. For IBC galvanic coupling, the signal path is accomplished through two pairs of electrodes deployed on the skin, which suggest the dependence of the attenuation signal on the subject’s electrophysiological skin properties. With the purpose of gaining an insight into the attenuation differences observed for diverse subjects, a simple transmission line-based model has been used for the identification of those personalized parameters that best emulate the attenuation behavior. Experimental results for two different subjects have been carried out using a harmonized measurement set-up. Model simulations have shown to match measurement data more accurately when individualized instead standard skin parameters were used, thus highlighting the need to deal with personalized models in IBC research.

The paper presents an analogue front-end and ADC integrated circuit for processing signals of sensors implanted into joint prosthesis. The circuit is designed to be operated with Wheatstone bridge sensors, such as strain gauges, pressure, Hall Effect, magneto-resistive sensors, etc. It performs sensor supply multiplexing, sensor signal amplification with chopper modulation, offset compensation and 14-bit analog to digital conversion in a single chip. It can operate simultaneously up to eight sensors at an overall bandwidth of 8 kHz, and can be directly interfaced to a remotely powered RFID system in order to constitute a complete multi-sensor, low-power, small size and externally powered micro-system. Integrated into a 180 nm CMOS process, it measures 5 mm, is supplied with 1.8 Volt and consumes 1.8 mW.

Power efficient communication in a Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) is critical for successful system deployment. Stringent constraints of size and weight of sensors significantly limit available sensor power, particularly in the case of implantable sensors. This paper discusses and analyses methods that could be used to improve power efficiency of implantable WBAN systems, with focus on the Wake Up Radio (WUR), which allows power efficient listening of wireless channel. The paper presents analysis of existing hardware and design trade offs in WUR implementation.

In this paper we present two case studies of electronic embedded systems for biomedical applications: ENDOCOM and CYCLOPE. In the former, we designed and realized the prototype of an implantable pressure sensor for the follow-up of the abdominal aortic aneurysm treated by a stent. Numerical modeling, in vitro experiments and in vivo tests on large animal model demonstrated the successful real-time follow-up of the pressure in the aneurysm sac. In the latter, we designed an embedded active multispectral vision system for the real time detection of polyps based both on the classification of the 3D reconstruction of the polyps by SVM and the classification of the texture by boosting methods. An FPGA-based demonstrator of the system was realized. Experiments in laboratory, in vitro and in vivo on a pig were performed to obtain its performances. This system could be integrated into a wireless capsule for colorectal endoscopy.

Acoustic analysis is a proper method in vocal fold pathology diagnosis so that it can complement and in some cases replace the other invasive, based on direct vocal fold observation, methods. There are different approaches for vocal fold pathology diagnosis. These algorithms usually have two stages which are Feature Extraction and Classification. While the second stage implies a choice of a variety of machine learning methods, the first stage plays a critical role in performance of the classification system. In this paper, three types of features which are Energy and Entropy resulting from the Wavelet Packet Tree and Mel-Frequency-Cepstral-Coefficients (MFCCs), and also their combination are investigated. Finally a new type of feature vector, based on Energy and Mel-Frequency-Cepstral-Coefficients, is proposed. Support vector machine is used as a classifier for evaluating the performance of our proposed method. The results show the priority of the proposed method in comparison with other methods.

Future health informatics for personalized e-Health services rely on innovative technologies and systems for transparent and continuous collection of evidence-based medical information at any time, from anywhere, and despite the coverage and availability of communication means. We explore Disruption and Delay Tolerant Networking (DTN) as a novel approach for next-generation e-Health information exchange where end-to-end homogeneous networking connectivity is not available. This setting can occur in both rural and urban environments and in both disaster events and normal day-to-day life. The ability of DTN to provide in-transit persistent information storage allows the uninterruptible provision of crucial e-Health services overcoming network instabilities, incompatibilities, or even absence for a long duration. We further describe the integration efforts for a DTN proxy on an e-Health application and discuss experiences and lessons learned.

The EU funded project inCASA has brought new insights in the field of socio-medical technology using the context-aware LinkSmart middleware. One of the main concerns that were experienced was whether separate medical devices could aggregate contextual information given by multiple environmental sensors within social care. Energy profiles were hypothesised to be able to substitute many of these in exchange for context information about a patient’s behaviour. A small study was conducted to review the energy profiles given by medical devices at dispose. Unluckily, the results showed that the medical devices do not expose relevant information in order to construct such profiles.

The optimization of procurement processes for medical and pharmaceutical products helps hospitals reducing costs and increasing their cost transparency, treatment quality and patient safety. However, due to the great amount of actors and interfaces taking part in procurement processes a structured methodology is required for holistic documentation and analysis. Therefore, this paper elaborates and describes the main optimization goals for procurement processes and develops methods for process analysis and the ability of a goal-targeted optimization using specialized ICT systems.

Type 2 diabetes is increasing worldwide. When compared with other chronic diseases, deaths due directly to type 2 diabetes are less. The problem though, is the mortality rates caused by the consequences of type 2 diabetes; complications that represent a major health burden which may destabilise health economies. Recognised complications are: cardiovascular disease, peripheral vascular disease, renal failure, retinal eye disease, and neuropathy leading to high levels of morbidity and mortality from heart attack, foot ulceration and leg amputation, stroke, renal failure, and blindness. Better care of type 2 diabetes and early recognition and treatment of its complications reduce levels of morbidity and mortality. There is a need to support the diabetic patient in achieving effective glucose control and life-style changes leading to improved nutrition and healthy levels of physical activity, and to early recognize and treat complications. To make this possible and efficient, a patient portal has been developed, as part of the REACTION platform, which supports interactions between the diabetic patient and both their professional and non-professional carers. Introducing the patient portal and the REACTION platform to real-life healthcare systems will empower patients more by increasing their ability to self-manage, improve the quality of their life and the overall management of their diabetes, reduce the risk of developing complications and lessen their use of health services.

Wireless medical technologies (WMT) offer an enormous potential to improve healthcare, e.g. by a continuous monitoring of patients’ vital health parameters. As user acceptance is a key factor for WMT success, a model of acceptance for WMT-users and non-users was developed and empirically tested by applying structural equation modelling techniques (PLS). Based on a sample of N=305 participants the impact of different system architecture elements (device vs. wireless infrastructure) as well as user factors (knowledge, risk perception, and perceived control) on WMT acceptance was analysed. Perceived benefits and barriers as determining elements of WMT acceptance were quantified and guidelines for WMT system development, training and marketing were derived.

Smartphones are a promising channel for health promotion interventions. Mobile applications can track behaviour and provide real-time guidance and support. Research on mobile interventions has mainly focused on physical health and disease management, whereas promotion of mental well-being has received less attention. This paper presents results of a multidisciplinary expert review of twelve currently available mobile applications for mental well-being. The aim of the study was to identify what kinds of engaging and persuasive features are used in the applications and to assess how well the features were implemented. The expert reviews were carried out from user acceptance, mobile intervention design, and persuasive design points of view. Current applications were assessed moderately good from all three perspectives but improvement needs were identified in more versatile utilisation of mobile technology, leveraging social support, and providing a wider range of personalized intervention features.

Millions of people use mobile medical devices—more every day. But our understanding of device security and privacy for such devices is incomplete. Man-in-the-middle attacks can be performed on typical Bluetooth-enabled mobile medical devices, compromising the privacy and safety of patients. In response, we developed the , a portable device to improve security for mobile medical systems. This device requires no changes to either the medical device or its monitoring software, and offers protection for millions of existing devices. We evaluate our defense mechanism to show that it adds insignificant overhead and analyze its robustness against various attacks.

In this paper, we compare the performance of implantable antennas for integration into implantable medical devices and telemetry in the MICS (402.0–405.0 MHz) and ISM (433.1–434.8, 868.0–868.6 and 902.8–928.0 MHz) bands. A parametric model of a miniature (volume of 32.7 mm) patch antenna is proposed for skin–implantation, and further refined for each frequency set–up. Implantation inside canonical models of the human head, arm and trunk is considered, and the antenna resonance, radiation and safety performance is compared. Results indicate enhanced bandwidth and improved radiation and safety performance at higher frequencies because of the increased copper surface area. Implantation of a specific antenna inside different parts of the human body is shown to insignificantly affect its performance.

Considering the medical nature of the information carried in Body Area Networks (BAN), interference from coexisting wireless networks or even other nearby BANs could create serious problems on their operational reliability. As practical implementation of power control mechanisms could be very challenging, link adaptation schemes can be an efficient alternative to preserve link quality while allowing more number of nodes to operate simultaneously. This paper provides theoretical analysis and Markov chain modeling of interference mitigation schemes such as adaptive modulation and adaptive data rate for body area networks. These schemes are relatively simple and well-suited for low power nodes in body area networks that might be operating in environments with high level of interference.

Monitoring and event handling are important aspects in the EU funded REACTION project and its remote patient monitoring services. The REACTION platform is designed to let any application to be able to react ubiquitously to change in a patient’s health state and environment and perform pre-defined activities such as alarm handling according to pre-programmed rules. This paper presents and discusses the platform’s alarm and alert handling system out of technical perspectives.

Depression affects all walks of life and is a common form of mental health illness. Some of the common methods to diagnose depression are usually through a session with certified psychiatrist or with the aid of depression rating scales. This paper seeks to provide both clinicians and patients with an Android based mobile application that may store and calculate results based on depression rating scales i.e. DASS and MINI. A novel approach of combining both questionnaire statistics is proposed in one solution. As such, a tablet friendly application that uses a scoring algorithm and a series of psychiatric questionnaires as an indicator to a person’s mental state or depression level is developed by means of an android platform.

This paper analyzes the methodology and preliminary results of the usability evaluation of large scale technology services for the prevention and management of chronic conditions of elderly people. REMOTE, a three years European project in the Ambient Assisted Living domain, aims to define and establish a multidisciplinary and integrated approach to research and development of advanced technology services for addressing real needs of elderly people. The target population included citizens at risk due to geographic and social isolation in combination with specific chronic conditions and the coexistence of lifestyle risk factors, such as obesity, blood pressure, poor eating/drinking habits, stress and others. Technology services provided by the project include wearables and sensors for detecting body temperature, heart rate, human posture, as well as sensors and actuators to be installed in premises for providing context information, such as air temperature, human location and motion. The article presents the usability evaluation plan that was developed for the purposes of the project, as well as some preliminary results from the usability evaluation.

Social media and the Web2.0 technologies are ubiquitous and due to the advances in mobile communication protocols, operating systems, and internet standards they are now supported even in cell phones and tablets. We are not yet at the point where a cell phone can be used as a medical device but such small and omnipresent instruments can be used in a way that promotes research in the clinical and biomedical domain. In this paper we describe a collaborative platform for designing composite simulations for the Virtual Physiological Human (VPH) community needs. We investigate the use of pervasive mobile technologies so that scientists and researchers can easily design, share, and execute simulations. The proposed platform supports real time notification and sharing of the results, and share the results and related artifacts with their work group and colleagues.

For an arbitrary event, a lack of the prevailing context compromises understanding. In health monitoring services, this may have serious repercussions. Yet many biomedical devices tend to exhibit a lack of openness and interoperability that reduces their potential as active nodes in broader healthcare information systems. One approach to addressing this deficiency rests in the realization of a middleware solution that is heterogeneous in a multiplicity of dimensions, whilst supporting dynamic reprogramming as the needs of patients change. This paper demonstrates how such functionality may be interwoven into a middleware solution, both from a design and implementation perspective.

Social networking services (SNS) offer new ways of tackling challenges related to maintaining elders’ autonomy in their later life, ageing in place, loneliness and cost pressures of welfare system in ageing communities. In this paper we present a communal activity-monitoring concept that utilizes SNS and sensor technology. We propose that acceptability of the activity-monitoring system can be increased with context aware data delivery and by using social media as a platform for the monitoring system.

Mobile health (mHealth) has been receiving more and more attention recently as an emerging paradigm that brings together the evolution of advanced mobile and wireless communication technologies with the vision of “connected health” aiming to deliver the right care in the right place at the right time. However, there are several cardinal problems hampering the successful and widespread deployment of mHealth services from the mobile networking perspective. On one hand, issues of continuous wireless connectivity and mobility management must be solved in future heterogeneous mobile Internet architectures with ever growing traffic demands. On the other hand, Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of Experience (QoE) must be guaranteed in a reliable, robust and diagnostically acceptable way. In this paper we propose a context- and content-aware, jointly optimized, distributed dynamic mobility management architecture to cope with the future traffic explosion and meet the medical QoS/QoE requirements in varying environments.

Recently, Fuzzy Logic has been proposed as the most suitable approach for profitably tackling uncertainty and vagueness in clinical guidelines, and providing a new mobile generation of Decision Support Systems. This paper presents an intuitive XML-based language, named Fuzzy Decision Support Language, for both configuring a fuzzy inference system and encoding fuzzy medical knowledge to be embedded into a mobile DSS. Such a language enables the encoding of: i) fuzzy medical knowledge, in terms of groups of positive evidence rules and fuzzy ELSE rules assembling all the negative evidence for a specific situation; ii) input and output data, respectively elaborated or produced by the fuzzy DSS, in order to provide meaningful and semantically well-defined advices. As a proof of concept, the proposed language has been applied to encode, into a mobile DSS, the medical knowledge required to remotely detect suspicious situations of sleep apnea or heart failure in patients affected by cardiovascular diseases.

The rapid development in the Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) filed has allowed this technology to be used in many applications. In some of these applications, wireless sensor devices must be secured, especially when the captured information is valuable, sensitive, or for military usage. However, the implementation of security mechanisms on WSNs is a non-trivial task. Limitations in processing speed, battery power, bandwidth and memory constrain the applicability of existing cryptography algorithms for WSNs. The security of WSNs poses challenges because of the criticality of the data sensed by a node and in turn the node meets severe constraints like minimal energy, computational and communicational capabilities. Taking all the above said challenges energy efficiency or battery life time plays a major role in network lifetime. Providing security consumes some energy used by a node, so there is a need to minimize the energy consumption of any security algorithm that will be implemented in WSNs. As a solution, we apply an additive homomorphic encryption scheme, namely the elliptic curve ElGamal (EC-ElGamal) cryptosystem, and present the performance results of our implementation for the prominent sensor platform MicaZ mote.

Epilepsy is the commonest serious brain disorder, affecting 1-2% of the general population. Epileptic seizures are usually expressed with a wide range of paroxysmal recurring motor, cognitive, autonomic symptoms and EEG changes. Therefore reliable diagnosis requires state of the art monitoring and communication technologies providing real-time, accurate and continuous brain and body multi-parametric data measurements. The purpose of this paper is to present an adequate mobile system comprising all required sensor types for the everyday life monitoring of patients with epilepsy.

This paper proposes a processing architecture and a programming framework for the remote and seamless update of the algorithms used in the context of biomedical smart sensors. The generic processing architecture provides, among others, the following facilities to a Body Sensor Network in a seamless way to the user beyond functional modularity: 1) direct and immediate update with new and improved versions of the algorithms, 2) personalization of algorithms, 3) adaptability to the user context, 4) remote test of algorithms, 5) hardware reusability and sustainability, 6) parallel execution of several monitoring applications in one device, 7) structural modularity. Due to its simplicity, the proposed technique takes advantage over other solutions employed in applications that impose severe limitations on hardware/software resources of the devices, which may result in lower cost and size of them. The results obtained on two heart monitoring applications shows the viability of the proposed scheme.

For supporting rescue operations in disasters, vital data collections in wireless sensor networks have been proposed so far. In such systems, we can expect to predict each patient’s probability of survival based on real-time vital data. In this paper, we focus on prehospital care and propose a method to determine treatment plans and schedules of patients. The proposed method maximizes the number of expected saved patients under limited medical resources. This optimization problem is called Treatment Planning and Scheduling, which is NP-hard. Therefore, we propose a heuristic algorithm based on depth-limited search. We have compared the proposed method with greedy methods. The results show the proposed method can derive solutions in practical time and the average number of saved patients is 10% larger compared to the greedy methods.

The Functional Movement Screen(FMS) is a useful tool to assess functional abilities in a pre-participation screening. Its seven dynamic movement tests reveal shortcomings in stability and mobility and screen the whole body. However, the current test protocol delivers results that are subjective, qualitative and have to be manually processed. This article presents a semi-automatic system to overcome these limitations for the Deep Squat test. The system consists of four wireless inertial sensors and a central Android-based processing node for data analysis and result storage. We developed our system based on data from ten subjects and evaluated the results with the FMS scoring guidelines. The sensor-based scoring system completely agreed with the manual scoring in eight out of ten subjects. In addition, quantitative information in case of compensation movements was logged. Thus, our system is capable of simplifying the FMS test and enhances the score with objective, quantitive and automatic results.

For a new optical body area network (BAN) technique, a fundamental study was conducted of optical data transmission through a human body using diffusely scattered light. The frequency bandwidth for data transmission was restricted by the effect of strong scattering inside body tissues. In experiments using human bodies, the possibility of the transmission up to 100 MHz was confirmed. Using the linear equalization process, we can transmit an 800 MHz square wave signal. Data transmission of around 200 mm distance in a human hand was possible. To overcome problems of noise, multipath transmission, and the instantaneous interruption of data transmission, the space diversity (SD) technique was applied to stabilize data communications. The SD technique effectiveness was confirmed through analysis using real optical impulse responses. The feasibility of BAN using diffusely scattered light in the body was verified through these analyses.

Regular monitoring of vital signs guarantees a preventive treatment of common diseases ensuring better health for people. Most of the proposed solutions in e-health context are based on a set of heterogeneous wireless sensors, fitting the patient and his environment. Often, these sensors are connected to a local smart node acting as a gateway to the outside (contacts, servers). When the patient is mobile, one of the issues we may face is the guarantee of a permanent connectivity between local smart node and the outside. To overcome this problem, we need to define a robust communications architecture able to benefit from different technologies and standards. This provides equipments with the ability to dispose of free-bands to perform their transmission any-time and anywhere. Cognitive radio, although appropriate technology, requires taking into account the interdependence between the patient’s mobility and frequency band changes. Our proposal, is an anticipation model, a decision-making function that predicts the state of frequency bands occupancy. The model combines the machine learning techniques to the Grey Model system to provide low cost algorithm for spectral prediction which facilitates or guarantees permanent connectivity.

The need for high-quality on-the-spot emergency care necessitates access to reliable broadband connectivity for emergency telemedicine services used by paramedics in the field. In a significant proportion of recorded cases, these medical emergencies would tend to occur in indoor locations. However,broadband wireless connectivity may be of low quality due to poor indoor coverage of macro-cellular public mobile networks, or may be unreliable and/or inaccessible in the case of private Wi-Fi networks. To that end, relaying is emerging as one of promising radio access network techniques that provide coverage gain with improved quality of service. This paper analyzes the use of nomadic relays that could be temporarily deployed close to a building as part of the medical emergency response. The objective is to provide improved indoor coverage for paramedics located within the building for enhanced downlink performance (throughput gain, lower outage probability). For that scenario, we propose a resource sharing algorithm based on static relay link with exclusive assigned subframes at the macro base station (MBS) coupled with access link prioritization for paramedic’s terminals to achieve max-min fairness. Via comprehensive system-level simulations, incorporating standard urban propagation models, the results indicate that paramedics are always able to obtain improved performance when connected via the relay enhanced cell (REC) networks rather than the MBS only.

This paper describes the user centered development of a mobile assistance and supervision system for cardiac disease patients. Smartphones are used to collect data from wireless sensors like ECG, blood pressure or oxygen saturation sensors while a patient is exercising outdoors. All data from the wireless sensors as well as GPS information is sent to a supervision center where doctors and sport therapists analyze the data in a collaborative and interactive setting. We here present the User Centered Design process, the technical realization as well as the interaction modalities of our system.

In industrialized countries the share of elderly subjects is increasing. Hence, diseases or symptoms associated with aging are more common than they were in the past. As a consequence, more effort is invested into research analyzing the effects of aging on the motion and cognition. However, economical and flexible methods to measure motion and its cross-effects with cognition are still missing. Therefore, we developed a new approach which neither requires a specific location, large infrastructural requirements, nor does it require large investments. We base our setting on match-box sized inertial measurement units (IMUs) attached to the participants’ legs. 47 elderly subjects participated in our study where we analyzed the interplay between cognitive load and gait features. We show that it is feasible to automatically detect episodes of interest, e.g. straight path, during walking periods of a subject only using IMU data. Our approach detects the steps autonomously and calculates gait features without supervision. The results demonstrate that cognitive load induces a significant increase ( = 0.007) in step-duration variability from 16 (baseline) to 21 (load). Our findings demonstrate that IMUs are a proved alternative to static setups that usually require a non-trivial infrastructure, e.g. optical movement tracking.

The disparity between healthcare systems in developed countries and underdeveloped countries is huge, particularly due to the fact that the healthcare infrastructure of former is based on a sophisticated technological infrastructure. Efforts are being made worldwide to bridge this disparity and make healthcare services affordable even to the most remote areas of undeveloped countries. Recent growth of mobile networks in underdeveloped countries argues for building mHealth systems and applications on their basis. However, peculiarities of the area introduce difficulties into potential use cases of mobile devices, thus making the copying of mHealth services from developed countries inapplicable. In this paper, we present the functional requirements for a patient medical record system running partially on mobile devices and architectural choices for this system. Requirements are based on the circumstances of the Republic of Cameroon. In addition we discuss the country-level benefits that may appear after deployment of such a system.

Nowadays, the personalization in ubiquitous healthcare is of utmost importance for enabling the provision of services tailored to the patient’s needs and interests. The personalization of the ubiquitous healthcare services is based on the profiles of the entities participating in these services. Such an application is the dynamic creation of the group of the entities that is formed to deliver the healthcare service to the patient. In this paper, we propose an approach for achieving creation of group profiles in a ubiquitous healthcare environment applying the Analytic Hierarchy Process.

Application of mobile devices in healthcare is a pervasive way how to asses patient health status. Adding just another data source to overwhelmed physician requires technologies for their effective processing. Despite the fact that the problem of extracting clinical information from free-text health reports for computerized applications or for decision support systems is a lot discussed issue, it is still complicated and unresolved question. In general Natural language processing (NLP) systems are implemented to solve the task. However NLP system works only for relatively narrow clinical domains because the format of the language used in the reports is not standardized and the reports vary depending on the domain. We describe methodology suggested for extracting structured data from EHR focusing especially on EHR in Slovak language. Further, we discuss problems concerning a task of extracting required data from free-text health reports. In the conclusion we present test results and possible implementations.

The adoption of personalized context aware services in healthcare domain has imposed new demands on IT providers and motivates integration and interoperability between heterogeneous healthcare systems. In this paper, we propose an Integrated Broker Platform – IBP that incorporates the benefits of the advanced technologies of Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) and Service Broker (SB) allowing the efficient provision of secure, interoperable, reliable and cost-efficient message and service delivery by dynamical and intelligent selection of services. IBP provides mediation functionalities that TSB supports but is enhanced with business logic from the SB. An architecture pattern for both TSB and SB is proposed, analyzed and prototyped.

This paper presents a Master/Slave redundancy mechanism for the airborne Integrated Modular Radio to improve the reliability of the joint radio resource management (JRRM) system. The proposed mechanism adopts keep-alive heart beat messages and real time information synchronization to ensure a smooth switchover in the event of a platform failure. To enhance the scalability and decoupling of the system, the proposed hot swap solution makes the JRRM switchover transparent to both the higher layers and the lower layers. The experiment results and the performance obtained from the test-bed has proved the validity of the solution.

Seeking to meet the resilience, efficiency, and quality of experience challenges of personal and converged satellite services, we present a new approach that leverages the benefits of network coding. The salient features of this strategy are (i) source nodes manage and control the transmission of linear combinations of data packets through heterogeneous communication routes, and (ii) intermediate nodes at each route can generate new coded packets with opportunistic storage. Hence, the amount of data and redundancy sent through each route can meet the required performance of the different sessions. In particular it can help surmount varying channel conditions and correct erasures but also adapt to the different delays and bandwidth that are features of the converged PSAT networks of the future. The main technical challenge is to choose adequate, coding-aware policies to leverage heterogeneous networks based on content and user requirements. We present preliminary analysis that illustrates that exploiting the routes jointly can be performed seamlessly using network coding even with limited feedback capabilities.

This paper improves a previously proposed scheduling algorithm that is responsible to share the allocated capacity to the uplink traffic of an integrated satellite and WiMAX network. The target of this improvement is to schedule traffic of real time connections based on Quality of Experience (QoE) metrics. After a bibliographic search on QoE metrics, the FC-MDI (Frame Classification-Media Delivery Index) metric is chosen to be used in the proposed algorithm for the scheduling of real time connections. Two versions of the algorithm are proposed and evaluated. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm considerably improves the QoE and the mean delay of the real time connections.

In this paper we present tests results of the first platform implementing a high performance Random Access protocol dubbed Enhanced Spread Spectrum Aloha (E-SSA), conceived for satellite applications. The aim of the study is to highlight key features of the system, introducing experimentally-found threshold values and translating them into operating conditions. A system overview is provided together with a summary of the most relevant parameters and the framework of the tests. The preamble detection and the packet demodulation processes are analysed, showing the importance of exploiting Successive Interference Cancellation techniques (SIC). It is shown that the code collision, due to a robust rate in the turbo-code and to the iterative cancellations, does not affect the system performances. Finally, Packet Loss Ratio (PLR) in presence of received carrier power and frequency unbalance is detailed with the aim of simulating more realistic scenarios.

This paper is focused on the design of an adaptive Connection Admission Control (CAC) algorithm for a Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS) based satellite system with variable link capacity. The main feature of the proposed algorithm is to maximize the resource utilization by adapting to the link conditions and the antenna gain of the users. The link quality of the user may vary depending on the weather condition, user mobility and any other propagation factors. The algorithm is compared against a non-adaptive admission control algorithm under different test cases. The proposed CAC algorithm is simulated using MATLAB and the performance results are obtained for a mix of multimedia traffic classes such as video streaming, web browsing, netted voice and email. The simulation results indicate a higher system performance in terms of the blocking ratio and the number of admitted connections.

The web has undergone a radical change over time. Changes not only in the volume of data transferred, but also the way content is delivered to the user. Current web server architectures are often highly distributed and adapted for user interaction, with transactions characterised by multiple connections to multiple servers. This paper discusses the implication of this new web on next generation two-way satellite systems. It seeks to answer the question of whether classical resource provisioning remains suitable for this traffic. It first presents a more representative simulation model that captures the key features of modern web traffic. It then uses simulation to evaluate the performance over the second generation of DVB-RCS, assessing the impact on performance for a range of bandwidth on demand methods. This paper may be used to formulate recommendations for how to support web traffic in DVB-RCS2.

Technological advances are enabling the reception of satellite broadcast even on mobile devices. However, mobile device usage is highly individual and exhibits an on-demand characteristic which rather suggests unicast. In order to avoid a wastage of the strengths of satellite broadcasts, additional effort is needed. This paper presents an approach to integrate satellites into heterogeneous collaborative networks for provision of IP services and broadband Internet access. Thus it supports both real time multimedia streaming and multimedia on demand.

In general, emulation of satellite networks has been focused on representing the features of the access network, characterised by large complexity. Physical layer impact has usually been neglected or reduced to static and limited models. The aim of this work is to reformulate a new model of physical layer oriented to network emulation, adapted to multiple satellite systems and configurations. The main achievement of this work is the design of a simple method of analysis of end-to-end communication links, that can rely on separated uplink and downlink attenuation channels generated offline or in runtime. The model has been integrated in the open source platform PLATINE, showing an easy integration to distributed machine emulation and reproducing local propagation conditions for each ground terminal.

Multimedia synchronization, Software Over the Air, Personal Information Management on Cloud networks require new reliable protocols, which reduce the traffic load in the core and edge network. This work shows via simulations the performance of an efficient multicast file delivery, which advantage of the distributed file storage in Cloud computing. The performance evaluation focuses on the case of a personal satellite equipment with error prone channels.

Satellite systems complement terrestrial networks where the network could not be deployed for technical or economical reasons. Moreover, the natural broadcasting capacity of satellite networks makes it a good companion to terrestrial networks. In this context, future services will be deployed over networks that combine terrestrial and satellite systems. The infrastructure heterogeneity could be problematic, especially because of the delays variation. This article presents the problem from the point of view of the transport layer, the layer directly connected to the application, and compares several solutions to help future service developers using such network configuration.

Performance Enhancing Proxies (PEPs) are used in satellite networks for better performance of the TCP/IP applications. Multi-layer IPSec (ML-IPSec) resolves the conflict between end-to-end security in standard IPSec and operation of PEPs. Previous Ml-IPSec solution has issues of limited application scope and increased complexity to implement and process the ML-IPSec protected data. This paper presents a new dynamic ML-IPSec protocol which addresses these issues. The paper also analyzes the protocol with reference to previous ML-IPSec protocol and presents the experiment performed to analyze the network performance while running IPSec and ML-IPSec.

Initially envisaged to support handover between different wireless 802.x network technologies, the IEEE 802.21 standard also appears as the good candidate for handover management in future integrated satellite / terrestrial systems. This paper presents an analysis of how this standard could be implemented in the frame of a realistic scenario and taking into account the current trends in wireless networks and mobility architectures. Our solution is then evaluated by means of emulation over a DVB-RCS representative testbed, and based on an experimental MIH implementation. We finally show that seamless handover can nearly be achieved with very short service outages.

This paper summarises the issues created when deploying a virtual private network in broadband satellite systems. These issues are related to protocol enhancing, overhead, fragmentation, mobility, quality of service and network address translation. Solutions for these issues are proposed from the point of view of the satellite operator, since most depend on what degree of control it has over the network. More specifically, this paper explains which solutions can be applied when the satellite links an airplane with the ground.

In the telecommunication networks the introduction of Next Generation Wireless Networks (NGWN) has been described as the most significant change in wireless communication. The convergence of different access networks in NGWN allows generalized mobility, consistency and ubiquitous provision of services to mobile users. The general target of NGWN is to transport different types of information like voice, data, and other media like video in packets form like IP. The NGWNs offer significant savings in costs to the operators along with new and interesting services to the consumers. Major challenges in NGWN are efficient resource utilization, maintaining service quality, reliability and the security. This paper proposes a solution for seamless load aware Radio Access Technology (RAT) selection based on interworking of different RATs in NGWN. In this paper novel load balancing algorithms have been proposed which have been simulated on the target network architecture for TCP data services. The IEEE 802.21 Media Independent Handover (MIH) is utilized in load balancing specifically for mobility management, which enable low handover latency by reducing the target network detection time. The proposed method considers the network type, signal strength, data rate and network load as primary decision parameters for RAT selection process and consists of two different algorithms, one located in the mobile terminal and the other at the network side. The network architecture, the proposed load balancing framework and RAT selection algorithms were simulated using NS2. Different attributes like load distribution in the wireless networks and average throughput to evaluate the effects of load balancing in considered scenarios.

The network of the future consists of a combination of different access networks, each providing a level of network availability and mobility suited for a wide range of applications. Mobile network developments culminated in work on the E-UTRAN and Evolved Packet Core (EPC) network and can provide mobile broadband access to many citizens. However; the reach of these or other networks leaves remote and rural areas without network coverage, even in Europe. Satellite communication networks traditionally have a strong position in serving remote and rural areas and can potentially fill the gap. On the other hand, satellite communications can benefit from technology reuse by aligning with mobile standardization initiatives. The work presented in this paper describes how DVB-RCS2 satellite networks can be connected to the network-agnostic EPC to achieve network-based mobility with terrestrial mobile networks. We identify challenges and propose optimizations to improve the integration.

Having available adequate and sufficient spectrum resources is a crucial factor to enable the fast growth of broadband mobile communications. Efficient use of scarce radio spectrum becomes more and more important. Especially in the lower frequency bands, with favorable conditions for mobile communications, spectrum will have to be shared between different services and applications. In this context effective sharing between mobile service and satellite services becomes increasingly important. It is no longer affordable to base the interference calculations on worst case assumptions. Therefore a novel and comprehensive approach of coexistence analysis is presented. The method discusses the extent to which propagation paths of various interference sources are correlated or not, and what the expected effect will be. Having a more realistic insight in the interference conditions could provide better viability of sharing arrangements, possibly with some realistic mitigation measures.

Two novel reduced-size, printed spiral antennas are proposed for use in personal communications mobile terminals exploiting the “big low earth orbit” (Big-LEO) satellite system (uplink 1.61–1.63 GHz; downlink 2.48–2.5 GHz). The two proposed antenna give 3.12―6.25% bandwidth at lower resonant mode of 1600MHz, while at the higher resonant mode of 2450MHz a bandwidth of around 6% is obtained. The experimental and simulated return losses of the proposed antennas show good agreement. The computed and measured gains, and axial ratios are presented, showing that the performance of the proposed two antennas meets typical specifications for the intended applications.

In the study of OFDM systems, discrete wavelet transforms have been reported to perform better than Fast Fourier Transform in multicarrier systems (MCS) - in terms of spectral efficiency because they can operate without a cyclic prefix, have reduced side-lobes and improved BER. However all of the wavelet families do not perform alike. This study has investigated various wavelet families such as Daubechies, Symlet, Haar (or db1), biorthogonal, reverse-biorthogonal and Coiflets for OFDM system design over an AWGN and multipath channels. Results show that Daubechies, Symlet, Haar and Coiflet wavelet families perform considerably better than other families considered, thus these families could be better in OFDM.

Integrated satellite-terrestrial networks can improve both the service coverage and spectral efficiency in spot-beam-based mobile satellite service system (MSS). In an integrated satellite-terrestrial network, MSS frequency is reused in both satellite spot beams and complementary ground component (CGC). Due to reuse of frequency, co-channel interference is present in both intra-component (between CGCs) and inter-component (between satellite spot beam and CGC). Without spot beams drift, these interferences have tolerable levels for acceptable performance in voice and/or data communication. However, in practice, especially the inter component interference will start to grow if the spot beams drift from their nominal positions due to pointing error of spot beams. In this paper, we study the interference from the satellite component to the ground component when the drifted spot beams start to interfere with CGCs reusing the same frequency. The interference levels depend on the drift magnitude, drift angle, and also the protection ring size utilized by the ground component. Simulation results are provided for different values of these parameters and giving new insight into the effects of spot beam drifting in an integrated satellite-terrestrial network.

This article presents a theoretical analysis for packet delay and simulation results for a realistic implementation of the Multi-User MIMO LTE Release 8 downlink standard in mobile satellite systems. Two Satellites, one Ground Station and two 2x2 MIMO Channels have been used as a basic configuration in the simulation scenarios and various key characteristics of the MIMO channel and the LTE radio interface, including physical layer and radio resource management functions ware simulated and their impact on system performance is evaluated for moving terminals in wide area scenarios. Simulation results suggest that in practice multi-user LTE, when applied to the transmission over satellite links, is able to support multi stream transmission with very high data rates, even for hand held moving terminals. Moreover, the improvements of Multi-User MIMO transmissions for different system configurations are clearly shown for different number of users. Finally a theoretical approach, considering OFDMA scheduler functionality, is presented leading into an optimization procedure for MAC transport channel packet length.

DTN environment is characterized by intermittent connectivity, high/variable delay, heterogeneity, high error rate and asymmetric data rate amongst others. These characteristics accounts for the poor behavior of Internet protocols in this environment. To address these problems, DTN was conceived and designed together with specialized protocols to carry out its services. Its emergence called for a new concept in security that was considered at the design stage. The main aim of this paper is to propose a traditional cryptography based authentication scheme that does not depend on network administrator’s availability during post network authentication communication and facilitates bundle processing by the recipient in the absence of connectivity. In this paper, we present and discuss the system model, the proposed credential and the propose authentication scheme. A simulation framework is developed for the implementation of the proposed and referenced schemes. From the simulation results, the proposed scheme was observed to be independent of network administrator’s availability during post network authentication communication and facilitates bundle processing in the absence of connectivity.

The evolution of DVB networks towards IP systems has led to the introduction of a Generic Stream format in second-generation systems. A Generic Stream Encapsulation (GSE) protocol was designed as an efficient and extensible IP encapsulation protocol for the DVB-S2 system, and there is growing interest to adopt GSE for other second-generation DVB carriers. The DVB-SH mobile standard includes provisions for GSE, but a number of adaptations are required for full support. This paper focuses on the seamless transport of GSE packets over the DVB-SH distribution network towards modulators. To this end architectural aspects are discussed and a specific protocol is proposed.

This paper proposes a novel call admission control (CAC) algorithm and develops a two-dimensional markov chain processes (MCP) analytical model to evaluate its performance for heterogeneous wireless network. Within the context of this paper, a hybrid UMTS-WLAN network is investigated. The designed threshold-based CAC algorithm is launched basing on the user’s classification and channel allocation policy. In this approach, channels are assigned dynamically in accordance with user class differentiation. The two-dimensional MCP mathematical analytic method reflects the system performance by appraising the dropping likelihood of handover traffics. The results show that the new CAC algorithm increases the admission probability of handover traffics, while guarantees the system quality of service (QoS) requirement.

In US and Europe many approaches and efforts exist with different viewpoints and focuses on what is understood as smart grids. One agreement of almost all approaches is the need for standardization to operate smart grids. Thus, several roadmaps and studies, mainly dealing with smart grid standardization, were developed. However, these documents are also focusing different parts of smart grid realizations and were mainly devised independently from each other. In this contribution, an overview on the most important approaches is given and furthermore, a set of identified core standards is introduced. Though, to make reliable statements about the approaches it is necessary to have a methodology enabling comparability and measurability. Hence, the Smart Grid Maturity Model (SGMM) is presented as a starting point for the assessment of projects and roadmaps. Since it does not meet all requirements for such assessments, because it was developed to assess utilities and follows a one-size-fits-all approach, a configuration approach based on several parameters, representing significant characteristics, is suggested.

Physical analogies emphasizing cooperative behavior in systems are explored and integrated into so called 'serious energy games', to contribute in a better understanding, monitoring and good governance of some of the complex security issues confronting the evolvement of contemporary energy systems. It is believed that such exercises might be supportive in the necessary attempt, by the many stakeholders and actors / agents involved, to bring balance to prevailing policies of which seems to be “Go change yourself - in a resilient fashion!” An extrapolation of several findings to other than energy systems tempted to implement drastic changes based on substantial substitutions - hardware, software and mindware - under relatively short time horizons cannot be ruled out.

Serious games are games where the entertainment aspect is not the most relevant motivation or objective. TimeMesh is an online, multi-language, multiplayer, collaborative and social game platform for sharing and acquiring knowledge of the history of European regions. As such it is a serious game with educational characteristics. This article evaluates the use of TimeMesh with students of 13 and 14 years-old. It shows that this game is already a significant learning tool about European citizenship.

The development of software products in general and educational games in particular is a very demanding process involving costly resources for long periods of time. Evaluating its quality throughout the development lifecycle contributes to the early identification of imperfections and to improved efficiency. In this paper we discuss a set of quality criteria and a method to assess the quality of educational games. These quality criteria are based on the functional requirements of the system and structured into two groups: general and specific. General criteria refer to the set of criteria that are common to all educational games in a given study area. Specific criteria refer to those criteria particularly addressing a specific educational purpose. We also present a quality model that is based on the software engineering paradigms. This model, called Quantitative Evaluation Framework, provides a quantitative measure for the quality of an educational game.

Analytical thinking is a transversal skill that helps learners synthesize knowledge across subject areas; from mathematics, science, and technology to critical reading, critical examination, and evaluation of lessons. While most would not doubt the importance of analytical capacity in academic settings and its growing demand for the skill in professional environments, school curricula do not comprehensively address its development. As a result, the responsibility for structuring related learning activities falls to teachers. This work examines learning paradigms that can be integrated into mathematics and science school education for developing logical thinking through game-based exercises based on programming. The proposed learning design promotes structured algorithmic mindsets, is based on inclusive universal logic present in all cultures, and promotes constructivism educational approaches encouraging learners to drive knowledge building by composing past and emerging experiences.

It has long been a tradition in interaction design to involve users in order to better capture user needs and preferences. The involvement of children as informants and design partners is well documented for interaction design but its use in serious games design is much less reported. Where children are contributing to the design of learning materials their knowledge may be incomplete. This paper reports on the organisation of, and the deliverables from, a participatory design activity with children in which they were charged with designing a game for children in another continent. The study found that children predominantly focussed on the learning aspects of the serious game during their design activities but they were also able to consider some of the game aspects. They demonstrated understanding of instruction but were less aware of some of the other aspects of learning including feedback on understanding. Involving children in the design of the serious game lead to some nice insights that were included in the game that was subsequently built and shipped. Taking Müller’s third place in HCI as inspiration, the paper concludes with some reflection for how to involve children in serious game design.

Students who are learning to program often have difficulties understanding cognitively complex concepts. Teaching programming is mainly focused on the syntax and features of programs, rather than to a deeper understanding of programming constructs and abstract concepts. Computer game stimulates active learning and presentation of learning content in a variety of contexts that are funny and engaging for students. This has a positive impact on the motivation to learn. This paper deals mainly with defining the programming knowledge and common problems with teaching programming, comparing the properties of novice and experts programmers and introducing the semantic method of teaching programming where one would teach only the semantics of programming constructs unbound to specific programming language in an interactive motivating setting of educational computer game. In this paper we discuss the main characteristics of computer games and specific features which makes them useful in the educational setting. As an example of presented method we introduce a game on the presentation of variables in programming. The game is based on visualizations of different types of variables and on the interpretation of the assignment sentence. The game actively encourages interactivity and deeper learning.

When teachers try to implement game-based learning, they always have questions like: What kind of games should we use? How high is the educational value of the game? How much do the students like the game? One safe way to answer these questions is to let the students develop the educational games instead of playing the games - the focus can then be on the process of developing the game. This article describes a case-study in which 11 - 12 year old students designed educational games for learning English as a foreign language.

Help4Mood is a system that supports the treatment of people with depression in the community. It collects rich cognitive, psychomotor, and motor data through a Personal Monitoring System and a Virtual Agent, which is then analysed by a Decision Support System; analysis results are fed back to patients and their treating clinicians. In this paper, we describe how the complex data is managed and discuss ethical issues. Data is stored in functional units that correspond to treatment relevant entities. Custom XML DTDs are defined for each unit, which are used to exchange information between system components. As far as possible, observations and findings are coded using SNOMED CT to ensure interoperability with other applications such as Electronic Health Records.

The evidence base for computerised cognitive behavioural therapy (CCBT) for common mental health problems has expanded rapidly in recent years. Reviews and meta-analyses have produced promising findings with regard to CCBT’s effectiveness and acceptability, but developing and supporting effective and sustainable models of CCBT service implementation remains a challenge. This paper considers CCBT usage and explores the uptake of, and engagement with, CCBT. Recent literature on the topic of engagement with CCBT is summarised. Factors relating to discontinuation of use or ‘drop-out’ are also explored. Drawing on this evidence base we propose a simple ‘4 Ps’ model of engagement factors: the programme, the problem, the person and the provider. We highlight some actions that researchers, service developers and providers can take that might increase uptake and engagement within the CCBT services that they provide. Managing expectations and promoting hope in both service users and providers are emphasised.

New technologies to enable augmentative and alternative communication in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) have been recently used in several studies. However, a comprehensive battery for cognitive assessment has not been implemented yet. Brain computer interfaces are innovative systems able to generate a control signal from brain responses conveying messages directly to a computer. Another available technology for communication purposes is the Eye-tracker system, that conveys messages from eye-movement to a computer. In this study we explored the use of these two technologies for the cognitive assessment of executive functions in a healthy population and in a ALS patient, also verifying usability, pleasantness, fatigue, and emotional aspects related to the setting. Our preliminary results may have interesting implications for both clinical practice (the availability of an effective tool for neuropsychological evaluation of ALS patients) and ethical issues.

The incredible advancement in the ICT sector has challenged technology developers, designers, and psychologists to reflect on how to develop technologies to promote mental health. Computerized experience-sampling method appears to be a promising assessment approach to investigate the real-time fluctuation of experience in daily life in order to detect stressful events. At this purpose, we developed PsychLog (http://psychlog.com) a free open-source mobile experience sampling platform that allows psychophysiological data to be collected, aggregated, visualized and collated into reports. Results showed a good classification of relaxing and stressful events, defining the two groups with psychological analysis and verifying the discrimination with physiological measures. Within the paradigm of Positive Technology, our innovative approach offers for researchers and clinicians new effective opportunities for the assessment and treatment of the psychological stress in daily situations.

Recently, a class of “Blind Interference Alignment (BIA)” techniques has been proposed by Jafar, which allows interference alignment to be achieved without knowledge of channel coefficients at the transmitter. The key to realizing the BIA for multi-user (MU) MISO broadcast channel (BC) is the use of a receive antenna capable of switching among multiple pre-determined antenna patterns. The Electronically Steerable Parasitic Array Radiator (ESPAR) antenna, which uses only a single radio frequency (RF) front-end, has been shown to allow multiple-output-multiple-input (MIMO) communication by transmitting and/ or receiving data over diverse beampatterns. As the ESPAR antenna is capable of switching antenna pattern among a set of orthogonal basis patterns, in this context, we design a MU-MISO BC where receivers are equipped with ESPAR antennas to create short-term beampattern fluctuations. We show that there are multiple potential channel values available for each user through antenna switching of an ESPAR antenna. Then, the designed system model is exploited for implementation of the BIA coding. The performance of the proposed BIA scheme is evaluated via simulation.

Based on the minimizing mean square error (MSE) criterion, a reference signal based distributed beamforming scheme with associated adaptive algorithms is proposed. A key advantage with this scheme is that each relay node can work effectively based on only its own channel state information (CSI) and achieve a globally optimum solution without any approximation. An unconstrained adaptive algorithm is first derived and then the case with signal transmission power constraint for each individual relay node is considered. The effectiveness of the proposed scheme is verified by extensive computer simulations.

This paper proposes a novel joint network- channel coding (JNCC) system based on improved distributed turbo coded (DTC) scheme for multiple-access relay channel, using decode-and-forward protocol. The diversity of improved DTC scheme is that the two parity streams of the two RSC encoders of UE are converted into one stream by puncturing. In addition, we adopt the punctured parity streams of Convolutional Turbo Code (CTC) at the relay and BS, which takes advantage of the feature of two inputs for the decoded information bits from two mobile stations. Here, CTC acts as a network coding as well as channel coding between relay and BS. The performance of this communication system depends on the twice decoding at the BS according to the side information and CTC punctured parity information. The simulation results show that performance of proposed scheme overperforms the reference network–coding scheme which separates channel decoding from network coding, and has 0.8dB improvement at a bit error rate (BER) of 10-3 in AWGN channel than the reference scheme.

TV White Space (TVWS) is a large portion of vacant spectrum in UHF/VHF bands that are created during the Digital Switchover (DSO) for the higher spectrum efficiency of Digital TV. The newly available TVWS will enable new communication services. This paper presents the reviews on the state-of-the-art on cognitive access to TV White Space, including the regulatory development and standardization progress in organizations, analysis of different cognitive access mechanisms for TV White Space, and potential use cases of the TVWS spectrum.