Can open-source projects (re-) shape the SDN/NFV-driven telecommunication market?

Telecom network operators face rapidly changing business needs. Due to their dependence on long product cycles they lack the ability to quickly respond to changing user demands. To spur innovation and stay competitive, network operators are investigating technological solutions with a proven track record in other application domains such as open source software projects. Open source software enables parties to learn, use, or contribute to technology from which they were previously excluded. OSS has reshaped many application areas including the landscape of operating systems and consumer software. The paradigmshift in telecommunication systems towards Software-Defined Networking introduces possibilities to benefit from open source projects. Implementing the control part of networks in software enables speedier adaption and innovation, and less dependencies on legacy protocols or algorithms hard-coded in the control part of network devices. The recently proposed concept of Network Function Virtualization pushes the softwarization of telecommunication functionalities even further down to the data plane. Within the NFV paradigm, functionality which was previously reserved for dedicated hardware implementations can now be implemented in software and deployed on generic Commercial Off-The Shelf (COTS) hardware. This paper provides an overview of existing open source initiatives for SDN/NFV-based network architectures, involving infrastructure to orchestration-related functionality. It situates them in a business process context and identifies the pros and cons for the market in general, as well as for individual actors

Welcome to OR&S! Where students, academics and professionals come together

In this manuscript, an overview is given of the activities done at the Operations Research and Scheduling (OR&S) research group of the faculty of Economics and Business Administration of Ghent University. Unlike the book published by [1] that gives a summary of all academic and professional activities done in the field of Project Management in collaboration with the OR&S group, the focus of the current manuscript lies on academic publications and the integration of these published results in teaching activities. An overview is given of the publications from the very beginning till today, and some of the topics that have led to publications are discussed in somewhat more detail. Moreover, it is shown how the research results have been used in the classroom to actively involve students in our research activities

Renewed e-learning oriented IHO Cat. B Hydrography Program (2020-) in Belgium

A study onhydrographic education in Belgium carried out a few years ago,pointed out a shortage in hydrographic training. Before the introduction of the new "Postgraduate in Hydrography", most hydrographic surveyors in Belgium work in one of the main Europeandredging companies where they received additional specific hydrographic surveying training.Therefore, in 2013, a 1-year English spoken curriculum degree of "Postgraduate in Hydrography" in Belgium was accredited by the IHO (International Hydrographic Organization). Then, in 2019, a renewed curriculum, including extensive e-learning facilities, was established.The program (Cat-B) is a cooperation between the Geography Department of Ghent University and the Institute for Hydrography of the Antwerp Maritime Academy, which is the hosting institute.The aim is to combine the compulsory theoretical courses with on-the-job training provided by partners in the industry to ensure maximum competences. All courses are lectured in English, and can be taken up over several years to facilitate part-time work. These procedures allow for a qualitative and professional, yet accessible program.The theoretical courses are taught on two different campuses, the campus of the Antwerp Maritime Academy (HZS) and a campus of Ghent University (UGent) based on the available expertise and infrastructure, thus ensuring the quality. As travel time between both cities is relatively fast (ca. 45 min. travel time by public or private transport) together with the boundary condition that both locations are never used on the same day, this presents no problems to the students. The navigation related topics are taught at the Maritime Academy while the geodesy/data management/geology and ICT related topics are provided by the Geography, Geology and Informatics Departments at Ghent University

FLIAT, an object-relational GIS tool for flood impact assessment in Flanders, Belgium

Floods can cause damage to transportation and energy infrastructure, disrupt the delivery of services, and take a toll on public health, sometimes even causing significant loss of life. Although scientists widely stress the compelling need for resilience against extreme events under a changing climate, tools for dealing with expected hazards lag behind. Not only does the socio-economic, ecologic and cultural impact of floods need to be considered, but the potential disruption of a society with regard to priority adaptation guidelines, measures, and policy recommendations need to be considered as well. The main downfall of current impact assessment tools is the raster approach that cannot effectively handle multiple metadata of vital infrastructures, crucial buildings, and vulnerable land use (among other challenges). We have developed a powerful cross-platform flood impact assessment tool (FLIAT) that uses a vector approach linked to a relational database using open source program languages, which can perform parallel computation. As a result, FLIAT can manage multiple detailed datasets, whereby there is no loss of geometrical information. This paper describes the development of FLIAT and the performance of this tool

Wearable flexible lightweight modular RFID tag with integrated energy harvester

A novel wearable radio frequency identification (RFID) tag with sensing, processing, and decision-taking capability is presented for operation in the 2.45-GHz RFID superhigh frequency (SHF) band. The tag is powered by an integrated light harvester, with a flexible battery serving as an energy buffer. The proposed active tag features excellent wearability, very high read range, enhanced functionality, flexible interfacing with diverse low-power sensors, and extended system autonomy through an innovative holistic microwave system design paradigm that takes antenna design into consideration from the very early stages. Specifically, a dedicated textile shorted circular patch antenna with monopolar radiation pattern is designed and optimized for highly efficient and stable operation within the frequency band of operation. In this process, the textile antenna's functionality is augmented by reusing its surface as an integration platform for light-energy-harvesting, sensing, processing, and transceiver hardware, without sacrificing antenna performance or the wearer's comfort. The RFID tag is validated by measuring its stand-alone and on-body characteristics in free-space conditions. Moreover, measurements in a real-world scenario demonstrate an indoor read range up to 23 m in nonline-of-sight indoor propagation conditions, enabling interrogation by a reader situated in another room. In addition, the RFID platform only consumes 168.3 mu W, when sensing and processing are performed every 60 s

Beyond geographic path dependencies: towards a post-structuralist approach of the port-city interface

Technological breakthroughs in the maritime transport industry gave rise to multimodality and global supply chains (Olivier & Slack, 2006). The high competitive character of this maritime transport industry induced transnational corporations (TNCs) to integrate their logistic processes horizontally and vertically. In order to keep attracting these TNCs, ports evolved downstream away from the city, followed by an economic, spatial and most recently by an institutional separation; resulting in less innovation due to the decreasing related variety between maritime and urban economics (Hall & Jacobs, 2012). Other emerging varying conditions are related to the sea level rise which reduces available space were port could further expand, leading to governance dilemmas between economy and ecology. Finally, as the burdens, such as congestion or a decreasing employment rate, are for the region, and the economic benefits are for a small group of TCNs, the ‘license to operate’ has become increasingly complex. The numerous different concepts and models trying to understand these changes are usually based on a historic-morphological approach that can be traced back to the so-called ‘anyport model’ and its modifications (Hoyle, 1989). The theoretical approach of these models is imbedded in structuralism and tries to generalize the observed evolution of the port city complex. An increasing number of researchers critiques the mainstream theories and their ambition for building universal understanding. Researchers emphasize the importance of the port city interface and its related variety. Therefore they point out the risk of facilitating the multidimensional separation by using a wrong assumption and a lack of understanding local processes with a global outlook. To tackle this risk, we have to move beyond this lock-in (Boelens & de Roo, 2014). There is a need to move towards a post-structural perspective of the port city interface, resulting in a more complex, actor-relational and co-evolving approach. This paper is the first step of a four year PhD-research on the theme of the port city interface. In the first part a literature framework is proposed of the previous research about the subject, questioning if existing studies have to be more attuned to regional and local characteristics. The second section focuses on the post-structuralist approach and explores its potential application for the study of the port city complexes. It will illustrate recent ideas of co-evolution and actor networks (Boelens & de Roo, 2014) applied on case studies in Belgium