On the Pulse of ICT Revolution, Productivity, and Growth: Macedonia versus European Union

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have become more accessible, more powerful and more widespread. Yet, the use of ICTs is not an end in itself. The impact that such technologies have on the economy and society is what ultimately matters. Understanding the economics of ICTs requires a deep and thorough knowledge of how the new technology generates the economic impacts. The ICT revolution holds the transformative potentials, offering many promises and benefits, even while posing severe risks and challenges. Therefore, it is of great importance and still a challenge to measure the capacity of countries to leverage ICTs for increased competitiveness and wellbeing. Aimed at reaching such a complex task, this paper employs the extensive data compendium of the Networked Readiness Index (NRI) 2015 and a set of supplemental data analysis tools (descriptive statistics, five-number summary statistics and a Box & Whisker plot, Euclidean and statistical distances, hierarchical cluster analysis and a corresponding dendrogram) to estimate both the performance of Macedonia in the NRI and the country’s relative position visà-vis the EU member states. Looking at the trends since 2012 reveals that Macedonia is one of the ten most improved countries in their overall NRI performance. Nevertheless, the findings suggest that the country is lagging behind the European average in most indicators. The EU member states with the shortest statistical distance from Macedonia are Croatia, Cyprus, Romania, Hungary and Slovenia. Quite the reverse, the Nordics (Finland, Sweden and Denmark) and Western Europe (Luxemburg, Netherlands and UK) are the most ‘distant’ countries from Macedonia. These latter findings confirm the results obtained by the five-number summary statistics and the hierarchical cluster analysis

Intelligent Supervisory Control of Discrete Event Systems - A Holon based Approach

Supervisory Control of Discrete Event Systems (DEVS) requires potential capabilities for constant adaptation and fast responses to the frequent un-expected disturbances occur in process and changes in production orders. Both hierarchical and heterarchical architecture control systems being developed so far have had limited success in achieving such potential capabilities. Hierarchical architecture systems due to their rigid structures inhibit inadequate responses to the process disturbances. Heterarchical architecture systems are quite good in dealing with the disturbances and are highly adaptable, but such structures cannot guarantee high performance due to unpredictable behavior. The shortcomings of the said systems develops the need for designing Holon based structure in which entities are able to communicate, cooperate, and have certain level of intelligence that enable them to be highly autonomous. In this paper we present a methodology that encapsulates individual needs of the physical layer, in general discrete event objects, in order to promote a goal orientated infrastructure with negotiation and cooperation capabilities at the computational layer of Discrete Event Systems. This methodology propagates chains of cooperation between holons seeking satisfactory goal realization. Architecture for a Holonic-based intelligent Supervisory Control of DEVS has been proposed along with a guide-line for its product ionisation. The newly proposed taxonomy of individual holons occurring in a discrete event system as a supervisory controller will allow to understand interaction mechanisms in a complex Holon’s society, and to obtain design methodology for a Holonic based control of DEVS

Local Cloud Solution’s and Distance Learning System’s Reliability

One of the distance learning system’s functions is to train attendants for easier learning and new knowledge acquisition in education. Such a system introduction in education requires preparations regarding maintenance, system termination prevention and possible accompanying costs. Present paper shall elaborate the advantages of such a system within a local cloud solution compared to the traditional approach in more detail

Example of IoT platform usage for wireless video surveillance with support of NoSQL and cloud systems

Today there is an increasing need for implementation of area security systems, especially in sense of monitoring areas of interest. Many of the solutions related to wireless security cameras that are available on the market are mainly limited with their predefined functionalities. Furthermore, these sets of functionalities largely affect price levels. Thanks to an increasing development and availability of open-source hardware and DIY (Do It Youself) electronics applicable in the field of Internet of Things (IoT), as well as new methods in data storage, such as NoSQL, new opportunities for creation of custom systems for video monitoring and storing video data are opened. Through this work it is presented the solution for wireless security cameras, based on the IoT enabled open-source hardware and MongoDB database as the storage system. Also, in order to achieve replication of created content, possibilities of storing this content on the cloud storage system are explored. Established solution can be used on a\ud daily basis, both in the private and business environments. Also, in this paper are presented technologies used for system development. The solution can be used as a starting point for further development of the systems for areal monitoring and content of interest creation using the emerging technologies

The Advantages of Using Raspberry Pi 3 Compared to Raspberry Pi 2 SoC Computers for Sensor System Support

This paper shows the comparison between two generations of\ud Raspberry Pi SoC computers, which can be marked as the first stage of nano revolution of ubiquitous computing and the Internet of Things

CUDA DSP Filter for ECG Signals

Real time processing is very important and critical for analysis of ECG signals. Prior to each processing, the signal needs to be filtered to enable feature extraction and further analysis. In case of building a data processing center that analyzes thousands of connected ECG sensors, one expects that the signal processing needs to be done very fast. In this paper, we focus on parallelizing the sequential DSP filter for processing of heart signals on GPU cores. We set a hypothesis that a GPU version is much faster than the CPU version. In this paper we have provided several experiments to test the validity of this hypothesis and to compare the performance of the parallelized GPU code with the sequential code. Assuming that the hypothesis is valid, we would also like to find what is the optimal size of the threads per block to obtain the maximum speedup. Our analysis shows that parallelized GPU code achieves linear speedups and is much more efficient than the classical single processor sequential processing

Modeling and Implementation of Bus Rapid Transit corridor based on Traffic Prioritization and Automatic Location

In many cities facts defining conditions for very high concentration of functions and population make transport difficult. The proposed solution is an Automated Vehicle Location (AVL) and prioritization system for mass urban transport buses, and priority vehicles, through a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) corridor. The solution consists of a detection sub-system, with a bus component, using transmitter, and a receiver placed on the traffic lights, the traffic lights, and a control center. We aim in minimizing the waiting time on traffic lights, and thus the waste of time on traveling. Such system is a useful instrument for any mass urban transport system

Simulation Based Comparative Performance Analysis of OSPF and EIGRP Routing Protocols

In the computer networks, the data traffic transmission is based on the routing protocol which select the best routes between two nodes. Variety of routing protocols are applied to specific network environments. Routing protocol\ud is taking a crucial role in the modern communication networks and its functionality is to determine how the routers communicate with each other and forward the packets through the optimal path from source to destination node. In\ud this paper, two typical types of routing protocol are chosen as the simulation samples: EIGRP and OSPF. Each of them has different architecture, route delays and convergence characteristics. The aim is to present a simulation based comparative analysis between EIGRP and OSPF for real time applications considering realistic backbone communication links and existing subnets. The\ud evaluation of the proposed routing protocols is performed based on the widely accepted quantitative metrics such as: convergence time, end-to-end delay, jitter, packet loss and throughput of the simulated network models. Tractable\ud conclusions and discussions are presented for each protocols and multi-protocol network implementations

Gesture Control of a Mobile Robot using Kinect Sensor

This paper describes a methodology for gesture control of a custom developed mobile robot, using body gestures and Microsoft Kinect sensor. The Microsoft Kinect sensor’s ability is to track joint positions has been used in order to develop software application gestures recognition and their mapping into control commands. The proposed methodology has been experimentally evaluated. The results of the experimental evaluation, presented in the paper, showed that the proposed methodology is accurate and reliable and it could be used for mobile robot control in practical applications

Evaluation of Business-Oriented Performance Metrics in eCommerce using Web-based Simulation

The Web 2.0 paradigm has radically changed the way businesses are run all around the world. Moreover, e-Commerce has overcome in daily shopping activities. For management teams, the assessment, evaluation, and forecasting of online incomes and other business-oriented performance measures have become ‘a holy grail’, the ultimate question imposing their current and future e-Commerce projects. Within the paper, we describe the development of a Web-based simulation model, suitable for their estimation, taking into account multiple operation profiles and scenarios. Specifically, we put focus on introducing specific classes of e-Customers, as well as the workload characterization of an arbitrary e-Commerce website. On the other hand, we employ and embed the principles of the system thinking approach and the system dynamics into the proposed solution. As a result, a complete simulation model has been developed, available online. The model, which includes numerous adjustable input variables, can be successfully utilized in making ‘what-if’- like insights into a plethora of business-oriented performance metrics for an arbitrary e-Commerce website. This project is, also, a great example of the power delivered by InsightMaker, free-of-charge Web-based software, suitable for a collaborative online development of models following the systems thinking paradigm