Novel route maintenance protocols for the Bluetooth ad hoc network with mobility

Bluetooth technology is specially designed for the wireless personal area networks to replace cable. Several challenges exist in Bluetooth scatternet formation and routing, since nodes can arrive and depart at arbitrary times. In this paper, novel route maintenance algorithms are proposed for the Bluetooth ad hoc networks, where nodes can enter or exit from the piconets time to time. Our protocols guarantee the connectivity among nodes and reconstruct the routes dynamically by considering location information of the nodes. Besides, it is proposed how to reduce the number of hops and to form the shortest route between the source and the destination due to addition of new nodes to a piconet. Performance analysis of our protocols show that they outperform in terms of end to end transmission delay, bandwidth consumption and average hop counts as compared to similar Bluetooth routing protocols that we have considered.     

Privacy Ontology Support for E-Commerce

Privacy is becoming increasingly important due to the advent of e-commerce. E-commerce applications frequently require customers to divulge many personal details about themselves that must be protected carefully in accordance with privacy principles and regulations. Here, the authors define a privacy ontology to support the provision of privacy and help derive the level of privacy associated with e-commerce transactions and applications. The privacy ontology provides a framework against which e-commerce sites can benchmark their privacy policies and implementations.     

Innovations in Individual Feature History Management—The Significance of Feature-based Temporal Model

A feature relies on three dimensions (space, theme, and time) for its representation. Even though spatiotemporal models have been proposed, they have principally focused on the spatial changes of a feature. In this paper, a feature-based temporal model is proposed to represent the changes of both space and theme independently. The proposed model modifies the ISO’s temporal schema and adds new explicit temporal relationship structure that stores temporal topological relationship with the ISO’s temporal primitives of a feature in order to keep track feature history. The explicit temporal relationship can enhance query performance on feature history by removing topological comparison during query process. Further, a prototype system has been developed to test a proposed feature-based temporal model by querying land parcel history in Athens, Georgia. The result of temporal query on individual feature history shows the efficiency of the explicit temporal relationship structure.

3D registration of human face using evolutionary computation and Kriging interpolation

This paper proposes a fast and robust 3D human face geometric data registration strategy dedicated for image-guided medical applications. The registration scheme is composed of a coarse transformation stage and a fine-tuning stage. In the first stage, fuzzy c-mean is used to reduce the data amount of template 3D image, and evolutionary computation is implemented to find optimal initial pose for the Iterative Closest Point plus k-dimensional (KD) tree scheme. In the second stage, the huge reference image data are replaced by a Kriging model. The time-consuming search for corresponding points in evaluating the degree of misalignment is substituted by projecting the points in the template image onto the model. To illustrate the validity and applicability of the proposed approach, a problem composed of 174 635 points reference image and an 11 280 points template image is demonstrated. Computational results show that our approach accelerates the registration process from 1361.28 seconds to 432.85 seconds when compared with the conventional ICP plus K-D tree scheme, while the average misalignment reduces from 11.35 mm to 2.33 mm. This work was presented in part at the 13th International Symposium on Artificial Life and Robotics, Oita, Japan, January 31–February 2, 2008     

Responding to Security Issues in WiMAX Networks

WiMAX technology, the commercialization of the evolving IEEE 802.16 standard, aims to solve the last-mile problem with broadband wireless access at the scale of metropolitan area networks. WiMAX has attracted significant attention and interest because of its wide transmission range, high transmission rate, and mobility support. However, to make WiMAX networks usable and reliable, several security issues must be addressed in the standard and its protocols. In this article, the authors give an introduction to the security protocols used in WiMAX networks and then discuss why these protocols are deficient in terms of anti-replay, efficiency, scalability, and forward and backward secrecy, as well as how they can be enhanced to address these issues for real applications.     

A corner differentiation algorithm by a single sonar sensor for mobile robots

Ultrasonic sensors have been widely applied in mobile robots to obtain environmental information and avoid obstacles. In general, a typical domestic environment consists of planes, edges and corners. It is usually difficult to distinguish a plane from a corner directly with a single ultrasonic sensor. To overcome this difficulty, a corner differentiation algorithm for a single ultrasonic sensor is proposed in this paper. The algorithm is based on the features of all of the actual reflection points from the environment obtained by a reflection search algorithm from which the corners are realized by a corner differentiation algorithm. The experimental results show that the developed algorithm can successfully detect all planes and corners. Furthermore, an environmental map can be built based on the information obtained on planes and corners. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley and Sons Asia Pte Ltd and Chinese Automatic Control Society     

从修辞学的角度对设计符号学中象征功能的再认识

我试图通过解读修辞学的发展历程,探究符号学发展的必然性,由本不存在修辞,到需要修辞,再到修辞的消亡的逻辑关系,联想到设计符号学的发展历程竟与其如此惊人的相似,由仅追求原始功能,到添加装饰满足非本质的需求,继而又摒弃装饰成分,聚焦其本质所在的现代设计,就像我在文章开头说的乙杂邢薜姆绞奖硐治尴蘧褪敲烙是象征的精髓一样,以最简洁的形式传达了最准确的信息,是设计符号学的核心所在。     

设计不安于“弃”——永续性环保设计

工业设计主要研究的是人、产品、环境三者之间的关系。所以好的工业设计产品要同时满足环境和人的心理的需要。本文以此为出发点,基于现在环境的恶化和人们之间的冷漠提出"永续性环保设计(Sustainable design)"的理念。通过介绍现今社会环境,提出此设计理念并提出了其设计方法。