Assessing cloud computing value in firms through socio-technical determinants

While cloud computing is touted as a promising information technology advancement, predictions of its value are inconclusive. This research investigates the impact of cloud computing within-firm and across-firm. Drawing on the resource-based view and sociotechnical theory, technical attributes and social attributes of cloud computing are identified to impact firm performance via primary and support use. Results from data collected from 513 firms show varying effects of technical and social attributes in primary use and support use, which help create value and better performance. Such effects also are found to differ between firms in service and manufacturing sectors.     

Analysis of Radio over Fiber system for mitigating four-wave mixing effect

In this paper, an efficient 8-channel 32Gbps RoF (Radio over Fiber) system incorporating Bessel Filter (8/32 RoF-BF) has been demonstrated to reduce the impact of non-linear transmission effects, specifically Four-Wave Mixing (FWM). The simulation results indicate that the proposed 8/32 RoF-BF system provides an optimum result w.r.t. channel spacing (75 GHz), input source power (0 dBm) and number of input channels (8). In comparison with the existing RoF system, the proposed 8/32 RoF-BF system has been validated analytically and it is found that the performance of the proposed system is in close proximity particularly in FWM sideband power reduction of the order of 4 dBm for the 8-channel 32Gbps RoF system.     

基于Kohonen神经网络算法的医学图像分割

长期以来,在医学图像处理方面,图像分割一直是该项工作中的重点,同时也是其中的难点。所谓的图像分割实质上就是遵照相关的原则对图像进行分割,使其被分为几个部分的过程。它是以图像测量、配准、融合和三维重建作为基础,所以在临床医学研究中起着举足轻重的作用。文中研究的Kohonen聚类神经网络算法是以VC++为基础,并在此基础上进行了一定的优化,为图像分割的具体应用提供基础条件,提高效果,这对医生临床诊断具有十分重要的意义。     

基于RFID标签阵列的睡眠期间呼吸量连续监测系统

睡眠期间连续且准确的呼吸量监测有助于推断用户的睡眠阶段以及提供一些慢性疾病的线索。现有工作主要针对呼吸频率进行感知和监测,缺乏对呼吸量进行连续监测的手段。针对上述问题提出了一种基于商用无线射频识别(RFID)标签的无线感知用户睡眠期间呼吸量的系统——RF-SLEEP。RF-SLEEP通过阅读器连续收集附着在胸部表面的标签阵列返回的相位值及时间戳数据,计算出呼吸引起的胸部不同点的位移量,基于广义回归神经网络(GRNN)构建胸部不同点的位移量与呼吸量之间的关系模型,从而实现对用户睡眠期间呼吸量的评估。RF-SLEEP通过在用户肩膀处附着双参考标签,消除用户睡眠期间翻转身体对胸部位移计算造成的误差。实验结果表明,RFSLEEP对不同用户睡眠期间的呼吸量连续监测的平均精确度为92.49%。     

基于改进正弦余弦算法的无线传感器节点部署优化

为了提高无线传感器网络（WSN）的性能，提出了一种基于改进正弦余弦算法（ESCA）的节点部署优化方法。首先，引入双曲正弦调节因子和动态余弦波权重系数，以平衡算法的全局探索与局部开发能力；然后，提出了一种基于拉普拉斯和高斯分布的变异策略，避免算法陷入局部最优。对于基准函数的优化实验结果表明，ESCA相比引力搜索算法、鲸鱼优化算法、基本正弦余弦算法（SCA）及其改进算法具有更高的收敛精度和收敛速度。最后，将ESCA应用于WSN节点部署优化，结果表明其优化覆盖率相比改进粒子群优化算法、外推人工蜂群算法、改进灰狼优化算法和自适应混沌量子粒子群算法分别提高了1.55个百分点、7.72个百分点、2.99个百分点和7.63个百分点，用更少节点便可达到相同目标精度。     

Cloud asset for urban flood control

The performance of physical assets has become a major determinant success factor for urban flood control. However, managing these assets is always challenging as there are a huge number of diverse assets involved, which are distributed throughout the city, and owned by different agencies. Aiming at improving the management efficiency of these assets, and ensuring their performance, this paper proposes the concept of cloud asset based on cloud computing, mobile agent, and various smart devices. Through hardware integration and software encapsulation, cloud asset could sense its real-time status, adapt to varied working scenarios, be controlled remotely, and shared among agencies. It enables accurate real-time control of every asset, and thus improves the management efficiency and effectiveness. This paper first presents the concept of cloud asset with its technical architecture, and then analyses the software agent model for cloud asset, which is the key enabler to realize UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) management of assets, and provides mobility and intelligence for them. After that, the framework of cloud asset-enabled workflow management is built, in which cloud asset could be easily found and dynamically invoked by different workflows. Finally, a demonstrative case is provided to verify the effectiveness of cloud asset.     

JPEG encryption for image rescaling in the encrypted domain

This work proposes a novel protocol of encrypting the JPEG image suitable for image rescaling in the encrypted domain. To protect the privacy of original content, the image owner perturbs the texture and randomizes the structure of the JPEG image by enciphering the quantized Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) coefficients. After receiving the encrypted JPEG image, the service provider generates a rescaled JPEG image by down-sampling the encrypted DCT coefficients. On the recipient side, the encrypted JPEG image rescaled by the service provider can be decrypted to a plaintext image with a lower resolution with the aid of encryption keys. Experimental results show that the proposed method has a good capability of rescaling the privacy-protected JPEG file.     

Resource allocation for multi-class services in multipath networks

In multipath networks, multiple paths are available for each pair of source and destination and can be used to carry data packets parallelly. It has been recognized that using multipath could promote the transmission reliability and fault tolerance, and improve the performance of increasingly bandwidth-hungry multi-media applications. In this paper we propose the resource allocation model for multi-class services in multipath networks with the objective of utility maximization, which is an intrinsically difficult problem of nonconvex optimization. We firstly analyze the model for only elastic services and obtain the optimal rate allocation for them. Then we also discuss the model for inelastic services with nonconcave (sigmoidal or discontinuous) utilities which share common links with elastic ones, and obtain some sufficient conditions under which the global optimum for both elastic and inelastic services can be obtained. For the nonconvex optimization problem, we present a heuristic algorithm using Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), which can lead to improved solutions over existing approaches. Finally, some numerical examples are given to verify the results obtained.     

More than bin packing: Dynamic resource allocation strategies in cloud data centers

Resource allocation strategies in virtualized data centers have received considerable attention recently as they can have substantial impact on the energy efficiency of a data center. This led to new decision and control strategies with significant managerial impact for IT service providers. We focus on dynamic environments where virtual machines need to be allocated and deallocated to servers over time. Simple bin packing heuristics have been analyzed and used to place virtual machines upon arrival. However, these placement heuristics can lead to suboptimal server utilization, because they cannot consider virtual machines, which arrive in the future. We ran extensive lab experiments and simulations with different controllers and different workloads to understand which control strategies achieve high levels of energy efficiency in different workload environments. We found that combinations of placement controllers and periodic reallocations achieve the highest energy efficiency subject to predefined service levels. While the type of placement heuristic had little impact on the average server demand, the type of virtual machine resource demand estimator used for the placement decisions had a significant impact on the overall energy efficiency.     

Dynamic steering of HPC scientific workflows: A survey

The field of scientific workflow management systems has grown significantly as applications start using them successfully. In 2007, several active researchers in scientific workflow developments presented the challenges for the state of the art in workflow technologies at that time. Many issues have been addressed, but one of them named ‘dynamic workflows and user steering’ remains with many open problems despite the contributions presented in the recent years. This article surveys the early and current efforts in this topic and proposes a taxonomy to identify the main concepts related to addressing issues in dynamic steering of high performance computing (HPC) in scientific workflows. The main concepts are related to putting the human-in-the-loop of the workflow lifecycle, involving user support in real-time monitoring, notification, analysis and interference by adapting the workflow execution at runtime.