Sensor-based information appliances

Using the existing home infrastructure based on open industry standards, we will be able to integrate the home network with external networks to easily manage home devices, both locally and remotely. The advent of pervasive computing marks an urgent need for a new generation of intelligent sensing agents and information appliances. It will also demand environments for resource management of broad applications involving loosely coupled, event-driven, diverse information appliances. It is suggested that the development of intelligent sensing agents and sensor-based information appliances will spread pervasive technology to a multitude of human activities such as mining and manufacturing, security, transportation, sports, and health care. The topics discussed also include management of heterogeneous functions and networking technologies.     

User experience in the pervasive computing age

The pervasive computing age will provide easier and more satisfying ways for people to interact with their world. As a result, the ways we interact with people, information, organizations, processes, devices, appliances, places, and everyday things will change. We describe four aspects of living in the pervasive computing age from a user experience perspective: life networks will make it easy to capture, store, access, and process everything as information that flows to where authorized users need it; in attentive environments, inanimate things will seemingly become attentive and gain virtual affordances, providing users with responsive digital servants that respect privacy; with WorldBoard-like services, information will appear to exist in real places, providing users with enhanced information perception services; and intermediaries will enhance the flow of information, allowing users to get information the way they want it and securely provide personal information only when appropriate. These changes will affect the nature of information itself and provide us with many new ways to access it. We set the stage by providing an overview of some technology drivers such as improved communication, storage, processing, identification tags, sensors, displays, interaction technologies, and software technologies     

Protocol architecture for universal personal computing

This paper presents a new paradigm for network computing over the Internet called universal personal computing, where mobile users can access computing resources, network services, and personalized computing environments anywhere using any available terminals. The user and system requirements are defined, and an agent-based protocol architecture required to manage different mobile objects, i.e., users and terminals, in this computing environment is presented. Modifications of connection setup procedures between user application programs to enable addressing based on a global user identity are considered. The use of personal agents to facilitate interworking and management functions is proposed     

Universal broadband mobility target for post-TINA infrastructure:toward the fourth generation

Future universal broadband mobile services present a challenge for telecommunications architectures, control, and management. The focus of the future mobile (fourth) generation vision is turned from capacity to services, from radio to network-wide issues. New types of applications will evolve that should be supported by an adequate programmable intelligent telecommunications infrastructure. A convergence between telecom and datacom networks will happen based on the communications middleware concept, which will provide universal secure connectivity between mobile users and their applications. Actual specifications of TINA-C do not address all such necessary issues. There is a need for technology evolution, enhancement, and integration to meet these new requirements at different levels. The author the concept of the universal broadband mobile telecommunications systems (UBMTS, or simply UBM) described as fourth-generation mobile systems. The UBMTS objective is both to extend mobile user access to the range of broadband services that will exist for broadband integrated services digital network (B-ISDN) users, and to extend the customization of new services related to personal communications systems (PCS) users     

Organisation of e-learning in a pervasive campus — a case study

Pervasive learning as key technology for tomorrow’s learning will enhance and modernise education — not just in academic teaching. Pervasive learning can be regarded as the latest evolutionof e-learning made possible through recent highly mobile techniques. Through the use of pervasive computing and the use of omnipresent technologies, the presence of these technologies is becoming less conspicuous. Such development leads towards a new organisation of the whole learning environment, called a pervasive campus. This further advances mobile learning for an effectively organised blended learning. In this paper, we propose an architecture with related components and services that facilitates the implementation of pervasive campus applications in dynamic and complex environments, such as those encountered in pervasive communities. We describe scalable, efficient (just-in-time) techniques for the synergistic integration of services into a pervasive campus.     

A privacy-preserving authentication scheme using biometrics for pervasive computing environments

In pervasive computing environments, users can get services anytime and anywhere, but the ubiquity and mobility of the environments bring new security challenges. The user and the service provider do not know each other in advance, they should mutually authenticate each other. The service provider pre-fers to authenticate the user based on his identity while the user tends to stay anonymous. Privacy and secu-rity are two important but seemingly contradictory objectives. As a result, a user prefers not to expose any sensitive information to the service provider such as his physical location, ID and so on when being authen-ticated. In this paper, a highly flexible mutual authentication and key establishment protocol scheme based on biometric encryption and Diffie-Hellman key exchange to secure interactions between a user and a service provider is proposed. Not only can a user’s anonymous authentication be achieved, but also the public key cryptography operations can be reduced by adopting this scheme. Different access control policies for differ-ent services are enabled by using biometric encryption technique. The correctness of the proposed authenti-cation and key establishment protocol is formally verified based on SVO logic.     

Mobile computing and ubiquitous networking: concepts, technologies and challenges

With the rapidly increasing penetration of laptop computers, which are primarily used by mobile users to access Internet services, support of Internet services in a mobile environment become an increasing need. The opportunities emerging from these technologies give rise to new paradigms such as mobile computing and ubiquitous networking. However, there are numerous challenges such as reliability and quality of service, infrastructure costs, energy efficiency of mobile devices, among others. This paper analyzes concepts, technologies and challenges related to these paradigms. The major challenges include mobility, disconnection and scale, new information medium and new resource limitations. As a fundamental characteristics of mobile environments, the user can see the same computing environment regardless of his or her current location. The most exciting promises of mobile computing and ubiquitous networking stay an entire new class of applications and potential new massive markets combining personal computing and consumer electronics.     

Resource management implications and strategies for SDR clouds

This paper analyzes the computing resource management implications of SDR base stations implemented as SDR clouds. SDR clouds describe distributed antennas that connect to a data center for digital signal processing. The data center employs cloud computing technology, providing a virtualized computing resource pool. The service area of a single SDR cloud may be a metropolitan area with a high user density. Hence, the data center will execute thousands of SDR applications in parallel, providing wireless communications services to several radio cells. Whenever a user initiates or terminates a wireless communications session, computing resources need to be allocated or deallocated in real time. We therefore propose a hierarchical resource management. This paper justifies such an approach and analyzes different resource management strategies. The results indicate the need for strategies that can dynamically adapt to the given user traffic distribution.     

Accord: a programming framework for autonomic applications

The emergence of pervasive wide-area distributed computing environments, such as pervasive information systems and computational grids, has enabled new generations of applications that are based on seamless access, aggregation, and interaction. However, the inherent complexity, heterogeneity, and dynamism of these systems require a change in how the applications are developed and managed. In this paper, we present a programming framework that extends existing programming models/frameworks to support the development of autonomic self-managing applications. The framework enables the development of autonomic elements and the formulation of autonomic applications as the dynamic composition of autonomic elements. The operation of the proposed framework is illustrated using a forest fire management application.     

Maintaining Privacy in Pervasive Computing — Enabling Acceptance of Sensor-Based Services

In the near future, everyday objects like cars and home appliances will connect the living environment to information networks. Pervasive computing devices will allow applications to gather and share a large amount of information. This may then open up a market for a large range of new services and applications. With a world densely populated by smart dust sensor devices, no single part of our life will be able to escape from digitisation. Soon, sensor networks will be able to track everything from our feelings to our behaviour. Besides the enormous potential value, we can foresee many undesirable uses. In a worst-case scenario, privacy implications, particularly the bad publicity around invasions of privacy, could block the incredible potential of pervasive computing. In this paper, we introduce the privacy issues found in the field of pervasive computing in two parts. The first part provides a brief look at the understanding of privacy, factors that can be used to control privacy, and the development of fair information practices and how they relate to the world of pervasive computing. The second part introduces technology that can provide a tool-set to support these fair information practices, and maintain the role of the data subject in the management of their private information.     

Location determination using WiFi fingerprinting versus WiFi trilateration

Many applications in the area of location-based services and personal navigation require nowadays the location determination of a user not only in an outdoor environment but also an indoor. Typical applications of location-based services (LBS) mainly in outdoor environments are fleet management, travel aids, location identification, emergency services and vehicle navigation. LBS applications can be further extended if reliable and reasonably accurate three-dimensional positional information of a mobile device can be determined seamlessly in both indoor and outdoor environments. Current geolocation methods for LBS may be classified as GNSS-based, cellular network-based or their combinations. GNSS-based methods rely very much on the satellite visibility and the receiver-satellite geometry. This can be very problematic in dense high-rise urban environments and when transferring to an indoor environment. Especially, in cities with many high-rise buildings, the urban canyon will greatly affect the reception of the GNSS signals. Moreover, positioning in the indoor/outdoor transition areas would experience signal quality and signal reception problems, if GNSS systems alone are employed. The authors have proposed the integration of GNSS with wireless positioning techniques such as WiFi and UWB. In the case of WiFi positioning, the so-called fingerprinting method based on WiFi signal strength observations is usually employed. In this article, the underlying technology is briefly reviewed, followed by an investigation of two WiFi-positioning systems. Testing of the system is performed in two localisation test beds, one at the Vienna University of Technology and another one at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. The first test showed that the trajectory of a moving user could be obtained with a standard deviation of about ±3–5 m. The main disadvantage of WiFi fingerprinting, however, is the required time consuming and costly signal strength system calibration in the beginning. Therefore, the authors have investigated if the measured signal strength values can be converted to the corresponding range to the access point. A new approach for this conversion is presented and analysed in typical test scenarios.     

Protecting privacy and anonymity in pervasive computing: trends and perspectives

Pervasive computing is expected to enter our everyday life in the foreseeable future. The capabilities of the devices, which operate in such an environment, as well as the range of services offered to the end-users are expected to be significantly increased. However, this new era is expected to have a serious effect on privacy. In this paper, we first refer to the privacy threats identified in a pervasive environment; then, we present a set of principles for ensuring privacy in this context. In the sequel, we examine a number of privacy protection mechanisms for pervasive systems, with a focus on the level of anonymity offered to the end-users. We identify flaws, these mechanisms suffer by, in terms of the limited anonymity level they offer. We conclude by presenting a set of essential actions one should take into account, in order to ensure user’s anonymity in a pervasive computing environment.     

Intelligent and Pervasive Multimedia Systems

Recent advances in pervasive computing and the proliferation of multimedia-capable devices have stimulated the development of intelligent and pervasive multimedia applications. This special issue provides excellent coverage of this area, including interactive multimedia education, quality control and personalization of multimedia services, peer-to-peer multimedia streaming, mobile TV, and VoIP systems.     

A User-Centric Approach for Personalized Service Provisioning in Pervasive Environments

The vision of pervasive environments is being realized more than ever with the proliferation of services and computing resources located in our surrounding environments. Identifying those services that deserve the attention of the user is becoming an increasingly-challenging task. In this paper, we present an adaptive multi-criteria decision making mechanism for recommending relevant services to the mobile user. In this context, “Relevance” is determined based on a user-centric approach that combines both the reputation of the service, the user’s current context, the user’s profile, as well as a record of the history of recommendations. Our decision making mechanism is adaptive in the sense that it is able to cope with users’ contexts that are changing and drifts in the users’ interests, while it simultaneously can track the reputations of services, and suppress repetitive notifications based on the history of the recommendations. The paper also includes some brief but comprehensive results concerning the task of tracking service reputations by analyzing and comprehending Word-of-Mouth communications, as well as by suppressing repetitive notifications. We believe that our architecture presents a significant contribution towards realizing intelligent and personalized service provisioning in pervasive environments.     

Practical deniable authentication for pervasive computing environments

Pervasive computing environments allow users to get services anytime and anywhere. Security has become a great challenge in pervasive computing environments because of its heterogeneity, openness, mobility and dynamicity. In this paper, we propose two heterogeneous deniable authentication protocols for pervasive computing environments using bilinear pairings. The first protocol allows a sender in a public key infrastructure (PKI) environment to send a message to a receiver in an identity-based cryptography (IBC) environment. The second protocol allows a sender in the IBC environment to send a message to a receiver in the PKI environment. Our protocols admits formal security proof in the random oracle model under the bilinear Diffie–Hellman assumption. In addition, our protocols support batch verification that can speed up the verification of authenticators. The characteristic makes our protocols useful in pervasive computing environments.     

Protection Management for Guaranteed User‐Driven Virtual Circuit Services in Dynamic Multi‐domain Environments: Design Issues and Challenges

Fault management of virtualized network environments using user‐driven network provisioning systems (NPSs) is crucial for guaranteeing seamless virtual network services irrespective of physical infrastructure impairment. The network service interface (NSI) of the Open Grid Forum reflects the need for a common standard management API for the reservation and provisioning of user‐driven virtual circuits (VCs) across global networks. NSI‐based NPSs (that is, network service agents) can be used to compose user‐driven VCs for mission‐critical applications in a dynamic multi‐domain. In this article, we first attempt to outline the design issues and challenges faced when attempting to provide mission‐critical applications using dynamic VCs with a protection that is both user‐driven and trustworthy in a dynamic multi‐domain environment, to motivate work in this area of research. We also survey representative works that address inter‐domain VC protection and qualitatively evaluate them and current NSI against the issues and challenges.     

Inhabited Intelligent Environments

There is an increasing amount of research into the area of pervasive computing, smart homes and intelligent spaces, one example being that of the DTI-funded Pervasive Home Environment Networking (PHEN) project. Much of the current research focuses on environments populated by numerous computing devices, sensors, actuators, various wired and wireless networking systems and poses the question of how such computing environments might become ‘intelligent’? Often, the proposed solution is to explicitly preprogram in the intelligence. In this paper we discuss a solution based on embedded-agents which enables emergent intelligent behaviour by predominantly implicit processes. We describe an experimental test-bed for pervasive computing, the iDorm, and report on experiments that scope the agent-learning characteristics in such environments. We also introduce a more human-directed approach to programming in pervasive environments which we refer to as task-oriented programming (TOP).     

5G边缘计算和网络切片技术

由于能够以低成本提供5G无线网络中多样化的业务场景,网络切片和边缘计算一直以来深受学术界和工业界的提倡.网络切片通过将网络实体划分成多个逻辑独立网络,为不同业务场景提供所需服务,而边缘计算利用网络中用户和边缘网络设备的计算和存储功能,承载部分核心节点中的控制、管理、业务功能,能够提升传统移动宽带业务能力和应对新兴的机器类业务.将网络切片和边缘计算融合,提出了基于边缘计算的接入网络切片,能够满足5G中广泛的用例和商业模型,使得运营商能够根据第三方需求和网络状况以低成本为用户灵活提供个性化的网络服务.     

An Attention-Based Approach to Content-Based Image Retrieval

Mark Weiser's vision that ubiquitous computing will overcome the problem of information overload by embedding computation in the environment is on the verge of becoming a reality. Nevertheless today's technology is now capable of handling many different forms of multimedia that pervade our lives and as a result is creating a healthy demand for new content management and retrieval services. This demand is everywhere; it is coming from the mobile videophone owners, the digital camera owners, the entertainment industry, medicine, surveillance, the military, and virtually every library and museum in the world where multimedia assets are lying unknown, unseen and unused.The volume of visual data in the world is increasing exponentially through the use of digital camcorders and cameras in the mass market. These are the modern day consumer equivalents of ubiquitous computers, and, although storage space is in plentiful supply, access and retrieval remain a severe bottle-neck both for the home user and for industry. This paper describes an approach, which makes use of a visual attention model together with a similarity measure, to automatically identify salient visual material and generate searchable metadata that associates related items in a database. Such a system for content classification and access will be of great use in current and future pervasive environments where static and mobile content retrieval of visual imagery is required.     

A Novel Trust-Based Privacy Preservation Framework for Service Handling via Ontology Service Ranking

Pervasive computing has been a buzzing phrase these days as many areas accelerate their pace in developing pervasive computing systems. A pervasive computing aims at incorporating the computing technologies in a graceful and transparent manner, and make computing solutions available anywhere and at any time. Different aspects of pervasive computing, like smart homes, smart offices, social networks, micromarketing applications, PDAs, etc. are becoming a part of everyday life. However, ensuring privacy in pervasive computing has been a significant challenge that needs to be addressed for efficient adaptation of pervasive computing. In education domain, providing authentication for users poses difficulties in determining trustworthiness. In order to overcome the aforementioned challenges, a novel trust-based privacy preservation framework via ontology service ranking (TBPF-OSR) for user authentication is proposed in this work. At first, registration process is performed where a designated role manager assigns specific roles for all users based on their accessibility. Also, a new user generation methodology is allotted via generating user registration form. Further, authentication process is performed where the user request are validated based on the assigned roles. Finally, service handling is performed to effectively handle the requests generated in order to ensure service robustness and access control. Additionally, ontology based service ranking is performed via fuzzy logic based service recommendation algorithm.