bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Business Process Digitalization and New Product Development
Authors: Li Jun , Merenda Michael
Published: May 2010

Previous research has largely ignored how business process digitalization across the value chain enhances firm innovation. This chapter examines the relationship between the extensiveness of business process digitalization (BPD) and new product development (NPD) in a sample of 85 small U.S. manufacturers. Scores of extensiveness were derived from the number of adopted e-business practices regarding inter and intra-firm activities such as: customer and supplier services (computer-aided design and manufacturing), employee services (education/training), and industry scanning (technology sourcing). The authors found that (1) NPD is positively related to the extensive use of BPD, and (2) the relationship between NPD and the extensiveness of BPD is stronger in more mature firms than that in younger firms. The authors conclude that small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) production innovation strategies are positively associated with the strategic use of BPD and span spatial, temporal, organizational, and industry boundaries thus aiding SME global competitiveness.
Information Technology Interventions for Growth and Competitiveness in Micro-Enterprises
Authors: Qureshi Sajda , Kamal Mehruz , Wolcott Peter
Published: May 2010

The use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) by Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) have the potential to enable these businesses to grow through access to new markets and administrative efficiencies. However, the growth of the smallest of these SMEs which are micro-enterprises is hindered by their inability to adopt ICTs effectively to achieve competitive advantage. This chapter investigates how micro-enterprises can adopt ICTs to grow and achieve competitiveness. This investigation of a set of seven micro-enterprises took place through an interpretive field study in which action research was used to diagnose and treat the micro-enterprises with interventions through a process of “Information Technology (IT) Therapy.” This process involved providing individualized IT solutions to pressing problems and opportunities and the development of a longer-term IT project plan, customized for each of the businesses. The increase in competitiveness of these micro-enterprises was assessed using the Focus Dominance Model and their growth through a modified model of micro-enterprise growth based on the resource based view of the firm. This research also contributes with a unique set of skills and experiences that ITD innovators can bring in helping micro-enterprises achieve sustained growth and competitive advantage.
Are the Pre-Diffusion Phases Shortening?
Authors: Ortt J. R.
Published: May 2010

This chapter focuses on the pre-diffusion phases for high-tech products. These phases last from the first time a technology is mastered and demonstrated up to the start of the large-scale production and diffusion of products based on that technology. The purpose of this chapter is to underline the managerial relevance of the pre-diffusion phases. Two questions will be answered in particular: (1) How long do these pre-diffusion phases last for high-tech products? (2) Have these phases shortened or not over the last 150 years? Fifty-three cases of high-tech products, invented between 1837 and 1998, are investigated. The pre-diffusion phases are shown to last 16 years on average, but their length varies considerably per case. No proof for the shortening of these phases over time is found. The resources devoted to research and development in different fields of expertise may have increased but the length of the pre-diffusion phases has not shortened accordingly.
Usage of ICT Tools in New Product Development
Authors: Jespersen Kristina Risom , Buck Nuka
Published: May 2010

Involvement of users in new product development is needed more than ever due to the technological and the social progression in recent years. Usage of ICT tools is one approach forwarded in literature discussing user-involvement. This chapter explores the antecedents of ICT usage in NPD. We utilize five groups of factors: innovative climate, strategic emphasis on ICT tools, ICT champions, competencies and performance expectations. To this end three case studies were conducted. The case findings demonstrate that the most significant antecedents for sustained user-involvement in NPD with ICT tools are strategic emphasis, competencies and the type of ICT champion.
Entrepreneurship Competencies and Management Capabilities for Innovation and Sustainable Growth
Authors: Omar Maktoba , Lewrick Michael
Published: May 2010

The aim of this chapter is to challenge the context of entrepreneurship competences and management capabilities needed for innovation. We build our arguments in step with actual practice analyzing data from over 200 innovative companies which have been created under the formal requirements of a regional business plan competition during the last 10 years. This study explores the crucial capabilities to start an innovative business and discuss the capabilities have to be developed to sustain innovation and business growth. Therefore, it can be hypothesised that entrepreneurship and innovation education provided by Universities, Centres for Entrepreneurship and through coaching by Business Plan Competitions should focus on building awareness for the necessity of innovations and prepare inventors, entrepreneurs and students for not simply starting an enterprise but the change process in growing companies. The questions are not of whether or not to educate people about entrepreneurship and innovation but rather what are the context and the capabilities needed to sustain business and become an innovative and successful entrepreneur?
Study of SME Innovation in Two Queensland Industries
Authors: Thorpe David , Goh Steven
Published: May 2010

This chapter describes research in innovation in smaller SME firms in Southern Queensland, Australia. The industries selected for this study were micro manufacturing in the Darling Downs Region and domestic building constructions in South East Queensland. Results of this research and its implications for innovation in the SME industry sector are discussed. While the firms studied, and the research methodology used, were quite different in each case, it was found that there were common factors that aided and inhibited innovation in each industry. These factors have implications for SME firms in other industries. Suggestions are made in the chapter with respect to the ongoing facilitation of innovation in such firms.
Evolution of Models and MDA-Based Refactoring
Authors: Favre Liliana María
Published: May 2010

In MDA is crucial to define, manage, and maintain traces and relationships between different models, and automatically transform them and produce implementations. Refactoring is a powerful technique when is repeatedly applied to a model to obtain another one with the same behavior but enhancing some non functionality quality factor such as simplicity, flexibility, understandability and performance (Fowler, 1999) (Mens, Van Eetvelde, Demeyer & Janssens, 2005). Refactorings are horizontal transformations for supporting perfective model evolution. In MDA, a crucial part of the evolution from abstract models to executable components or applications (forward engineering) or, from code to abstract models (reverse engineering) is accomplished by means of refactoring. Although the most effective forms of refactorings are at the design levels (for example, PIMs or PSMs), MDA-based CASE tools provide limited facilities for refactoring only on source code through an explicit selection made by the designer (CASE, 2009). MDA-based refactorings can be specified in OCL as contracts between meta-patterns (MOF metamodel), consisting of pre- and post-conditions that hold for the model before/after refactoring. Besides, we propose an alternative formalization based on the NEREUS language. We propose a uniform treatment of refactoring at platform independent, platform specific and implementation specific abstraction levels.
"We don't have the Key to the Executive Washroom"
Authors: Guth Jessica , Wright Fran
Published: May 2010

This chapter reports on a pilot study looking at the progression of academic women at one UK University. The chapter focuses on the promotions process and criteria as one important issue emerging from that research. Earlier research has shown that women are less likely to break into institutional networks which allow them to access information not only on formal and objective promotion criteria but also on hidden criteria and the way the ‘academic game’ is played. One result of this is that some academic women may have an inaccurate view of promotion criteria and processes. At the university studied by the authors, the Human Resources department has sought to make the promotion process more transparent and, officially at least, it no longer depends purely upon research achievements. However, these changes will not necessarily result in easier progression for women academics. The authors’ study confirms that there is still a mismatch between what women think the criteria for promotion are, what the formal criteria are and how those criteria actually operate. Reliance on incomplete or inaccurate information about promotion criteria, coupled other factors, such as women’s reluctance to promote themselves actively and traditional barriers to promotion such as caring responsibilities, puts women at a disadvantage when they attempt to progress into more senior positions within universities. Reform of promotions procedures needs to look beyond re-writing the substantive criteria for promotion and look to improving understanding of what is involved.
Factors Contributing to the Success of Women Working in Science, Engineering and Technology (SET) Careers
Authors: Maree David J.F. , Maree Marinda
Published: May 2010

Women’s under-representation in Science, Engineering and Technology (SET) careers is a problem in South Africa. This chapter discusses structural and individual barriers responsible for the under- representation of women in SET. Self-efficacy as a requirement for success in SET is discussed. The results are illustrated with a report on a study done with a sample of 29 women in successful SET careers. These women experienced some form of gender discrimination at some stages of their development from school to career. They also struggle with family and work balance and similar issues. However, the sample ascribed their success or the fact that they stay in a SET career mostly to personal characteristics and strong self-efficacy beliefs. Aspects such as a drive for achievement, strong goal orientation, passion for their work, determination and perseverance were identified. Strong self-efficacy beliefs which can be associated with resilience and cognitive hardiness came to the fore. These women believe that they can achieve their goals and they do to a large extent.
Women Access to Computers and Internet
Authors: Masrom Maslin , Ismail Zuraini
Published: May 2010

Malaysia is a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-cultural society characterized by distinct values and norms about many issues including the role of women in society. Since Malaysia gained independence in 1957, Malaysian women have participated and contributed towards the social and economic development of the country. This was made possible by the policy standpoint of the Malaysian government which considers women are an important pool of resource that can be mobilized towards achieving the national development agenda. After fifty-two years of independence, Malaysia is one of the most developed countries in Southeast Asia. She has seriously geared its effort toward information and communication technology (ICT) by establishing the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) in 1996 with the widespread use of computer in Malaysia women have been found to have benefited from the modern technologies. They enjoy greater access to computers and Internet. Therefore, this chapter emphasizes accessibility, delivering access to the computers and internet info-structure to women in Malaysia. A framework for analyzing Malaysian women accessing computers and the internet is presented and discussed.
Applications in Dynamical Systems
Authors: Konstantinos E. Parsopoulos , Michael N. Vrahatis
Published: May 2010

This chapter is devoted to the application of PSO in dynamical systems. The core subject of the chapter is the problem of detecting periodic orbits of nonlinear mappings. This problem is very interesting and significant, as the study of periodic orbits can reveal several crucial properties of a dynamical system. Traditional root-finding algorithms, such as the Newton-family methods, are widely applied on such problems. However, obstacles arise as soon as non-differentiable or discontinuous mappings come under investigation. In such cases, PSO has been shown to be a very useful and efficient alternative. The chapter aims at presenting fundamental ideas and specific application issues. We thoroughly discuss the transformation of the original problem to a corresponding global optimization task. The application of the deflection technique, presented in Chapter Five, for computing several periodic orbits is analyzed and the algorithm is illustrated on well known benchmark problems. Finally, we present and discuss a very significant application, i.e., the detection of periodic orbits in 3-dimensional galactic potentials.
Applications in Operations Research
Authors: Konstantinos E. Parsopoulos , Michael N. Vrahatis
Published: May 2010

This chapter is devoted to three representative applications of PSO in operations research. Similarly to the previous chapters, our attention is focused on the presentation of essential aspects rather than reviewing the existing literature. Thus, we present methodologies for formulation of the optimization problem, which is not always trivial, as well as for the efficient treatment of special problem requirements that cannot be handled directly by PSO. Under this prism, we report applications from the fields of scheduling, inventory optimization and game theory. Recent results are also reported per case to provide an idea of the efficiency of PSO.
Patient Tracking in Critical Scenarios
Authors: Cornetta Gianluca , Santos David J.
Published: May 2010

This work describes the work-in-progress aimed at the design of a telemedicine system that is intended to give support to the physicians in critical scenarios and keep a record of the patient status within all the evacuation chain. The authors call this system a Patient Tracking System (PTS). The hardware/software platform described will integrate the services and functionalities available from the existing e-health infrastructure and provide the physicians with a decision support system in remote and hard-to-reach areas. The main goal is building a simple network hierarchy relying on two kinds of mobile devices: 1) a low-power Medical Information Carrier (MIC), and 2) an MDA (Medical Digital Assistant). A MIC is a device intended to hold personal medical information that may be accessed by a physician through a specialized terminal (the MDA) and, when suitably programmed, may emit a beacon signal to allow patient tracking along the evacuation chain. It is anticipated that our design will contribute to improve the efficiency in the use of communication resources in telemedicine. In a more general way, this project should enhance our understanding of the limitations that hardware and software impose on the operation in critical scenarios.
Designing a Microcontroller-Based Portable MMC/SD Card Recorder
Authors: Akbas Ahmet , Kalkan Yavuz Selim
Published: May 2010

In this chapter the authors described a microcontroller-based MMC/SD card recorder design. It can be used as a reference model to build portable data logging systems. In this case the authors used this design to get the 500 Hz rated samples of Electroardiography (ECG) signal, and evaluate them for R-wave peak detections by using an on-line procedure. The system measures the interbeat times between the consequtive peaks, and records them into a file in the recording media. Heart Rate Variability (HRV) of the two recordings, each has 12-hours length from a healthy and a cardiac disordered man, have been analysed in MATLAB environment. Further analysis has been completed by using the time series of Instantaneous Heart Rates (IHRs) obtained from 48-sets of ECG recordings in the Physionet database. The results support the fact that some of the time and frequency domain parameters reflecting the variability of heart rate can be used as early predictors for some of the heart disorders.
Information System for Management of Organisation and Its Activity
Authors: McDonnell Lorenzo Ros , Salazar Salvador Guillen
Published: May 2010

Health care organization management needs modeling techniques that allows to explain and manage it as the real world it self. This similarity between real world and model represents the key of success. A model characteristic represents the guide lines to manage it, and if this model is represented with a data model and an Information system it makes possible to be implemented in a computer based system. This chapter offers a hierarchical representation model and with different model views of the health care organizations, allowing being applied the business integration architecture, it is a way to transfer the organization approaches from the Industrial world to the Health Care world. To reach it is necessary to represent all the activities performed by a health care organization with the process map, linking the map with the structures of the organization that connects the different map points (resource-operation), developing the organization model. It is necessary that the decision making rules are implemented in the organization model to include in it the “intelligence”. The decision making rules to reach the organization rules are the Planning and Operation control system, and though it can be integrated the goals, activity and resources.
Governing Medication Information
Authors: Raitoharju Reetta , Aarnio Eeva , Suomi Reima
Published: May 2010

Health care applications are technically complex and the software and hardware markets for medical technologies are less mature than for many other fields. Although there should be an interplay between design and the usage of systems, this is often not the case in the health care sector. Currently, information is often bound to a location or institution due to fragmented information systems. Using the notion of asset specificity as a theoretical background, the authors conducted interviews in the Finnish primary health care system. The interviews were analyzed and examples of real life situations are provided to guide designers of information systems for the health care sector.
Exploring Personal Healthcare with the Help of Two Large European Framework Programs for Healthcare
Authors: Reiter Harald , Habetha Joerg
Published: May 2010

Personal healthcare enables prevention and early diagnosis in daily life and is centered on the patient. There is a need for a new personal healthcare paradigm in the treatment of chronic diseases. This will be achieved by new technologies that are currently explored (e.g., in European Research projects such as MyHeart and HeartCycle). These projects develop technologies and application concepts for the (self-)management of chronic diseases in patients’ homes with special emphasis on usability and ease-of-use (e.g., wearable sensors and processing units that can even be integrated into the patient’s clothes). These technologies allow empowering patients, fostering self-management and therefore reducing cost, and improving patients’ quality of life.
Adoption of Wearable Systems in Modern Patient Telemonitoring Systems
Authors: Eleni Antoniadou , Maglogiannis Ilias
Published: May 2010

The adoption of wearable systems in modern patient telemonitoring systems has been considered as a medical challenge towards the established medical practices, aiming at the highest level of quality of life. The current state-of-the-art technologies in wearable computing, wireless telemedical platforms and wireless sensors allow easy and unobtrusive electronic measurement of several vital signals and health conditions regardless the time and the place the patients need a condition monitoring. Certain major milestones to consider in the process of adopting wearable systems, besides the enabling technologies, are the affordability that depends on financial criteria, the adaptability of the overall healthcare sector to the innovative technologies and the conformance of the medical staff to the lifelong learning for vocational training. These aspects are discussed in this chapter, along with the description of the wearable systems capabilities and reference to their latest popular applications and future trends.
Individual and Group Cognitive-Based Therapy Support
Authors: Carriço Luís , de Sá Marco
Published: May 2010

Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is a widespread method used to deal with an assorted variety of psychological disorders. Associated procedures and techniques are strongly dependent and limited by the use of traditional paper-based artefacts (e.g., questionnaires, thought registries) which pose issues and difficulties for both patients and therapists. As technology is introduced within this process, a large set of opportunities emerges to enhance therapy for all the actors. This chapter presents a comprehensive framework that targets these issues and takes these opportunities by defining new paths that support individual (on the two active therapy roles) and cooperative endeavours spanning through the course of the various activities that therapy requires. The authors detail the tools that compose the framework, illustrating their functionalities and features with a variety of scenarios that validate its significant contribution to the overall therapeutic process.
Capturing Distributed Contributions to an Informal Work Process
Authors: Sapateiro Cláudio Miguel , Grosso Sérgio
Published: May 2010

Beside formalized work processes, organizations also present work processes that aren’t a priori formalized and often rely heavily on tacit knowledge and experience distributed among involved actors. To develop information systems (IS) to assist such work processes is a challenging task. The traditional approaches for modeling often reveal short in emergent and informal work processes which are hardly elicited in requirements phase. In this work we’ve focus in the collaborative dimension of an informal work process to develop a IS aiming to improve the outcome of such process. Teams shared awareness was used as coordination and control mechanism for a loosely coupled collaboration model. The implementation of the proposed conceptual approach in a hospital facility is reported.
Long Term Evolution (LTE)
Authors: Mendahawi Nayef , Adibi Sasan
Published: May 2010

The main characteristic of 4th Generation (4G) Networks is being based on all IP architecture, operating mainly on IPv6. This includes services such as voice, video, and messaging. LTE is considered to be a 3rd Generation (3G) network and one of 4th Generation (4G) roadmap mobile access technologies. LTE-Advanced (LTE-A), on the other hand, is a 4G technology concept with evolving features. Therefore LTE is the key feature in the understanding of LTE-A evolution. The main focus of LTE is the enhancement of the packet-switched (PS) mechanisms on top of the UMTS enhancements, based on All IP Network (AIPN). IPv6 networking provides maximum service delivery flexibility, user decoupling, and scalability improvements, while leveraging the existing IETF standards. This requires major focus on network simplification, end-to-end delay reductions, optimal traffic routing, seamless mobility, and IP-based transport provisioning. This chapter aims to present a survey and highlight specific IPv6-based features presented mostly in the 3GPP standard literature, and to provide a high-level discussion on the LTE-IPv6 requirements.
HWN* Framework Towards 4G Mobile Communication Networks
Authors: Shen Chong , Pesch Dirk , Atkinson Robert , Du Wencai
Published: May 2010

The objective of the Hybrid Wireless Network with dedicated Relay Nodes (HWN*) proposal is to interface the Base Station (BS) Oriented Mobile Network (BSON) and the 802.11X assisted Mobile Ad hoc Wireless Network (MANET) so that one system can be utilised as an alternative radio access network for data transmissions, while the incorporation of the Relay Node (RN) is to extend the communication coverage, optimise medium resource sharing, increase spatial reuse opportunity, stabilise MANET link and create more micro-cells. The HWN* keeps the existing cellular infrastructure and a end-user Mobile Terminal (MT) can borrow radio resources from other cells through secured multi-hop RN relaying, where RNs are placed at pre-engineered locations. The main contribution of this work is the development of a HWN* system framework and related medium access and routing protocols/algorithms. The framework dedicatedly addresses the transparent multiple interface traffic handover management, cross layer routing, RN positioning and network topology issues to increase communication system capacity, improve Quality of Service (QoS), optimise transmission delay and reduce packet delivery delay.
Knowledge Sharing to Improve Routing and Future 4G Networks
Authors: Sadok Djamel F.H. , Albuquerque de França Joseilson , Oliveira Luciana Pereira , de Abreu Remato Ricardo
Published: May 2010

Current networking trends show a rapid convergence of several nestled networks as GSM/UMTS, WLAN, Bluetooth, wired networks among others. Nonetheless, such a complex environment raises new challenges including information routing, high dynamicity and possible disconnections. For such reasons, nontraditional routing paradigms have been put forward while adopting innovative ideas based on models from areas as diverse as biological, epidemic and social behavior. The reader will learn about new forms of routing being considered for integrating these future networks, based on the use of different metrics, such as shared network knowledge and willingness in taking and forwarding it. In this chapter an overview of traditional routing and the requirements for 4G systems are first made. New directions for routing based on policy and the identification of stimulus to control and improve the message forwarding in addition to their efficiency in the new context of 4G networks are presented.
Radio-over-Fibre Networks for 4G
Authors: Llorente Roberto , Morant Maria , Martí Javier
Published: May 2010

Radio-over-Fibre (RoF) is an optical communication technique based on the transmission of standard wireless radio signals though optical fibre in their native format. This technique is an enabling step in the deployment of dense fourth generation (4G) cellular and pico-cellular wireless networks. The optical fibre provides a huge bandwidth that can support a variety of wireless systems, regardless of their frequency bands, being protocol-transparent which is reflected in an great network flexibility. Radio-over-fibre techniques enables a high user capacity by frequency reuse, simplifies the network operation as the signals are distribute in their native format, and permits to transfer signal part of the processing power from the base station units to the central control station, thus reducing the overall deployment cost and complexity. The principles of radio-over-fibre are presented in this chapter, including the key transmission impairments and the expected performance. The main application scenarios are discussed. These include the backhaul of 4G or base-stations, addressing 4G and 3G compatibility issues, and distributed-antenna system (DAS). Finally, emerging applications like radio-over-fibre in beyond-3G scenarios and transmission of 60 GHz wireless are also described in this chapter.
Survey of Cross-Layer Optimization Techniques for Wireless Networks
Authors: Chao Han-Chieh , Chang Chi-Yuan , Chen Chi-Yuan , Chang Kai-Di
Published: May 2010

The explosive development of Internet and wireless communication has made personal communication more convenient. People can use a handy wireless device to transfer different kinds of data such as voice data, text data, and multimedia data. Multimedia streaming, video conferencing, and on-line interactive 3D games are expected to attract an increasing number of users in the future. The bandwidth requirement would be high and the heterogeneous terminals would generally provide limited resource, such as low processing power, low battery life and limited data rate capabilities. These applications would be the major challenge for wireless networks. Although the traditional layered protocol stacks have been used for many years, they are not suitable for the next generation wireless networks and the mobile systems. Due to the time varying transmission of the wireless channel and the dynamic resource requirements of different application, the traditional layered approach to the mobile multimedia communication is full of challenges to meet the user requirement on performance and efficiency. Cross-layer design is an interesting research topic that actively exploits the dependence between different protocol layers to obtain performance gains. The authors performed a survey and introduced the cross-layer design principles and issues for different research topics, including QoS, mobility, security, application, and the next generation wireless communication.
A New Approach to BSOFDM
Authors: Raad Ibrahim , Huang Xiaojing
Published: May 2010

This chapter discusses a new concept for Block Spread OFDM called Parallel Concatenated Spreading matrices OFDM (PCSM-OFDM) which was first presented in (Raad, I. and Huang, X. 2007). While BSOFDM improved the overall BER performance on OFDM in frequency selective channels, this new approach further improves the BER of BSOFDM by over 3dB gain. This uses coding gain to achieve this and is similar in concept to the well known error correction codes Turbo Codes. This is done by copying the data at the transmitter n times in parallel and multiplexing.
Determinants of Manufacturing Firms' Use of Web-Based IOISs to Share Inventory Information with Key Partners
Authors: Hadaya Pierre , Pellerin Robert
Published: May 2010

Based on the literature on the diffusion of innovations and on information systems, and building on emerging concepts in electronic collaboration (e-collaboration), this chapter analyses the influence of various determinants on manufacturing firms’ intent to use Web-based interorganizational information systems (IOISs) to share inventory information with their key suppliers. This theoretical model is tested on data collected from 498 senior managers of Canadian manufacturing firms. Findings indicate that a manufacturing firm’s organizational readiness, its past experience with e-commerce and its business relationships all affect its future use of Web-based IOISs to share inventory information with its key suppliers. The results of Tobit regressions also provide supporting evidence that firm size moderates the impact of the present use of e-commerce with suppliers on manufacturing firms’ intent to use Web-based IOISs to share inventory information with key suppliers. Finally, subsequent analyses also demonstrate that the determinants of manufacturing firms’ intent to use Web-based IOISs to exchange inventory information with key partners are the same whether the intended e-collaboration is to support relationships with key suppliers or key customers.
Electronic Deception
Authors: Boyle Randall J. , Kacmar Charles J. , George Joey F.
Published: May 2010

This research examines the impact of computer-mediated communication, distributed communication, and knowledge of prior baseline behavior on an individual’s propensity to make veracity judgments. Subjects were motivated to detect deception by participating in a Prisoner’s Dilemma game with monetary rewards. Methodologies of other deception detection studies are compared and existing theoretical models are extended. This study found that more detection confidence can come from knowledge of a person’s prior baseline behavior, being proximally located, the type of communication media used, and perceived relational closeness. These factors indirectly lead to less deception detection through more detection confidence and reliance on the truth bias, a fundamental belief in the truthfulness of others, even in a computer mediated environment.
Quality of Service in UMTS Mobile Systems
Authors: Chimeh Jahangir Dadkhah
Published: May 2010

Mobile systems and particularly UMTS are growing fast. These systems convey data based services in addition to customary voice services. Quality of service is a function of data rate, delay and signal to noise plus interference ratio in these systems. In this Chapter first the author pays attention to UMTS and its QoS architecture, then to service categorization due to QoS. Afterwards he reviews some QoS parameters. Then he studies Layer 2 QoS parameters and general concepts about Transport channels. Then he review TCP effects on the throughput in the air interface. he introduces HSDPA in the next section. Finally he pays attention to data traffic models and their effects on the system capacity and Erlang capacity and delay in the system.
Advancements on Packet Scheduling in Hybrid Satellite-Terrestrial Networks
Authors: Du Hongfei , Liu Jiangchuan , Liang Jie
Published: May 2010

The past years have seen an explosion in the number of broadcasting network standards and a variety of multimedia services available to the mobile mass-market. Satellite communications has been gaining phenomenal growth and increasing interest over the last decade in its complementary but essential role for offering seamless broadband service coverage to potential users at every inch of the earth’s surface. However, mobile satellite network often feature unidirectional and long-latency, a great deal of research effort has been attempted for this bottleneck. Given the absence of feasible power control mechanism and reliable feedback information, the role of packet scheduling in such a network with large delay-bandwidth product is extremely challenging. In fact, an optimized media access control (MAC) layer protocol is essential for cost-efficient satellite networks to compete with other terrestrial modalities. In particular, the integration and convergence between satellite network and conventional terrestrial backbone infrastructure offers promising solutions for next generation service provisioning. In this chapter, the authors give a survey on the state-of-the-art on packet scheduling in hybrid satellite-terrestrial networks (HSTN). A whole range of issues, from standardization, system to representative scheduling methodologies as well as their performance trade-offs have been envisioned. Moreover, the authors investigate viable solutions for effectively utilizing the limited/delayed feedbacks in resource management functions. They examine the flexibility and scalability for the alternative schemes proposed in this context, and analyze the performance gain achievable on essential QoS metrics, channel utilization, as well as fairness.
Correlating Quality of Experience and Quality of Service for Network Applications
Authors: Ivanovici Mihai , Beuran Razvan
Published: May 2010

There is a significant difference between what a network application experiences as quality at network level, and what the user perceives as quality at application level. From the network point of view, applications require certain delay, bandwidth and packet loss bounds to be met – ideally zero delay and zero loss. However, users should not be directly concerned with network conditions, and furthermore they are usually neither able to measure nor predict them. Users only expect good application performance, i.e., a fast and reliable file transfer, high quality for voice or video transmission, and so on, depending on the application being used. This is true both in wired as well as wireless networks. In order to understand network application behavior, as well as the interaction between the application and the network, one must perform a delicate task – the one of correlating the Quality of Service (QoS), i.e., the degradation induced at network level (as a measure of what the application experiences), with the Quality of Experience (QoE), i.e., the degradation perceived by the user at application level (as a measure of the user-perceived quality) (Ivanovici, 2006). This is done by simultaneously measuring the QoS degradation and the application QoE on an end-to-end basis. These measures must be then correlated by taking into account their temporal relationship. Assessing the correlation between QoE and QoS makes it possible to predict application performance given a known QoS degradation level, and to determine the QoS bounds that are required in order to attain a desired QoE level.
Scalable Wireless Mesh Network Architectures with QoS Provisioning
Authors: Huang Jane-Hwa , Wang Li-Chun , Chang Chung-Ju
Published: May 2010

The wireless mesh network (WMN) is an economical solution to enable ubiquitous broadband services due to the advantages of robustness, low infrastructure costs, and enhancing coverage by low power. The wireless mesh network also has a great potential for realizing green communications since it can save energy and resources during network operation and deployment. With short-range communications, the transmission power in the wireless mesh networks is lower than that in the single-hop networks. Nevertheless, wireless mesh network should face scalability issue since throughput enhancement, coverage extension, and QoS guarantee are usually contradictory goals. Specifically, the multi-hop communications can indeed extend the coverage area to lower the infrastructure cost. However, with too many hops to extend coverage, the repeatedly relayed traffic will exhaust the radio resource and degrade the quality of service (QoS). Furthermore, as the number of users increases, throughput and QoS (delay) degrade sharply due to the increasing contention collisions. In this chapter, from a network architecture perspective we investigate how to overcome the scalability issue in WMNs, so that the tradeoff between coverage and throughput can be improved and the goal of QoS provisioning can be achieved. We discuss main QoS-related research directions in WMNs. Then, we introduce two available scalable mesh network architectures that can relieve the scalability issue and support QoS in WMNs for the wide-coverage and dense-urban coverage. We also investigate the optimal tradeoff among throughput, coverage, and delay for the proposed WMNs by an optimization approach to design the optimal system parameters.
Quality of Service (QoS) Provisioning in Cognitive Wireless Ad Hoc Networks
Authors: Yau Kok-Lim Alvin , Komisarczuk Peter , Teal Paul D.
Published: May 2010

Cognitive Radio (CR) is a next-generation wireless communication technology that improves the utilization of the overall radio spectrum through dynamic adaptation to local spectrum availability. In CR networks, unlicensed or Secondary Users (SUs) may operate in underutilized spectrum owned by licensed or Primary Users (PUs) conditional upon the PU encountering acceptably low interference levels. A Cognitive Wireless Ad Hoc Network (CWAN) is a multihop self-organized and dynamic network that applies CR technology for ad-hoc mode wireless networks that allow devices within range of each other to discover and communicate in a peer-to-peer fashion without necessarily involving infrastructure such as base stations or access points. Research into Quality of Service (QoS) in CWAN is still in its infancy. To date, there is only a perfunctory attempt to improve the data-link and network layers of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) reference model for CR hosts, and so this is the focus of this chapter. We present a discussion on the architecture, open issues and design approaches related to QoS provisioning in CWAN. Our discussion aims to establish a foundation for further research in several unexplored, yet promising areas in CWAN.
Mobile Trusted Computing Based on MTM
Authors: Ekberg Jan-Erik
Published: May 2010

Trusted computing (TC) denotes a set of security-related hardware and software mechanisms that make a computing device work in a consistent manner, even in the presence of external attacks. For personal computers, TC typically is interpreted to be a software architecture designed around the trusted platform module (TPM), a hardware chip residing on the motherboard and implemented according to the specifications of the Trusted Computing Group (Trusted Computing Group, 2008A). In embedded devices, the state-of-the art in terms of hardware security and operating systems is significantly different from what is present on personal computers. So to stimulate the take-up of TCG technology on handsets as well, the recently approved mobile trusted module (MTM) specification (Trusted Computing Group, 2008B) defines new interfaces and adaptation options that match the requirements of the handset business ecosystem, as well as the hardware in use in the embedded domain. This chapter provides an overview of a few hardware security architectures (in handsets) to introduce the reader to the problem domain. The main focus of the text is in introducing the MTM specification – by first presenting its main functional concepts, and then by adapting it to one of the hardware architectures first described, essentially presenting a plausible practical deployment. The author also presents a brief security analysis of the MTM component, and a few novel ideas regarding how the (mobile) trusted module can be extended, and be made more versatile.
SOA Reference Architecture
Authors: Zhang Liang-Jie , Zhang Jia
Published: May 2010

SOA Reference Architecture (SOA-RA) aims to provide a normative guidance for software engineers to design and develop enterprise-level Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)-based solutions. Its basis is SOA Solution Stack (S3) that defines a conceptual view of a service-oriented architecture in the context of solution design and delivery. S3 is then extended by introducing conceptual architectural building blocks (ABBs) that serve as design templates to make S3-based solutions more configurable, reusable, and goal-aligned. On top of an extendable metamodel, SOA-RA decomposes an SOA solution view into an enterprise view, an IT system view, and a services view. These view models allows software designers to establish a comprehensive overview of an expected SOA solution. This chapter first analyzes the architectural style and metamodel of S3, then describes the various view models, and then describes an end-to-end SOA solution design and modeling framework and methodology.
WSMoD
Authors: Comerio M. , De Paoli F. , Grega S. , Maurino A. , Batini Carlo
Published: May 2010

Web services are increasingly used as an effective means to create and streamline processes and collaborations among governments, businesses, and citizens. As the number of available web services is steadily increasing, there is a growing interest in providing methodologies that address the design of web services according to specific qualities of service (QoS) rather than functional descriptions only. This chapter presents WSMoD (Web Services MOdeling Design), a methodology that explicitly addresses this issue. Furthermore, it exploits general knowledge available on services, expressed by ontologies describing services, their qualities, and the context of use, to help the designer in expressing service requirements in terms of design artifacts. Ontologies are used to acquire and specialize common knowledge among the entities involved in service design, and to check the consistency of the web service model with constraints defined by provider and customer requirements. To improve the effectiveness of the process, the authors propose a Platform Independent Model that includes the description of specific context of service provision, without considering implementation details. The discussion of a QoS-based web service design within a real case study bears evidence of the potentials of WSMoD.
Service-Oriented Architectures for Pervasive Computing
Authors: Manolakos Elias S. , Galatopoullos Demetris G.
Published: May 2010

The vision of pervasive computing is to create and manage computational spaces where large numbers of heterogeneous devices collaborate transparently to serve the user tasks all the time, anywhere. The original utility of a computer is now changing from a stand-alone tool that runs software applications to an environment-aware, context-aware tool that can enhance the user experience by executing services and carrying out his/her tasks in an efficient manner. However, the heterogeneity of devices and the user’s mobility are among the many issues that make developing pervasive computing applications a very challenging task. A solution to the programmability of pervasive spaces is adopting the service-oriented architecture (SOA) paradigm. In the SOA model, device capabilities are exposed as software services thus providing the programmer with a convenient abstraction level that can help to deal with the dynamicity of pervasive spaces. In this chapter the authors review the state of the art in SOA-based pervasive computing, identify existing open problems, and contribute ideas for future research.
P2P Network Management
Authors: Ni Chunsheng , Wang Jilong
Published: May 2010

Peer-to-Peer (P2P) technology has been widely applied in Internet application systems, especially in sharing large video files among multiple user communities. Although P2P technology has lots of advantages, it brings troubles to network operation sometimes. P2P applications may consume much network bandwidth. Furthermore, P2P application is always apt to use the network bandwidth as much as possible. Long-time congestion brings the network management great difficulty. On the other hand, lack of proper management of P2P network also causes problems related to copyright, privacy, and security. Due to the reasons mentioned above, both the ISPs and ICPs urgently desire to find an effective way to monitor and manage the P2P network. In this chapter, the authors will discuss the issues of P2P network management. The “Introduction” focuses on the current state of P2P network, describing the problem of lack of management. The next section analyzes the P2P network features in network management. The difference between P2P network and Internet in management will be also discussed. The section “P2P Traffic Identification” is the P2P management technology of traffic identification, based on which many traffic shaping solutions presented in the section, “Traffic Shaping.” The next section introduces another kind of widely used approach - P2P caching. The current ISP and PSP collaboration solutions will be discussed in the section “ISP PSP Collaboration,” including the well-known framework of P4P (Haiyong Xie, 2007), biased neighbor selection of BitTorrent (Ruchir Bindal, 2006), Oracle (V. Aggarwal, 2007), and Ono (David R. Choffnes, 2008). The second to last section presents a proposal named Federation Based Solution to P2P Network Management (Jilong Wang, 2007), including the models of structure, communication, function and system. The final section will be the conclusion.