Towards Next Generation Teaching, Learning, and Context-Aware Applications for Higher Education: A Review on Blockchain, IoT, Fog and Edge Computing Enabled Smart Campuses and Universities

[Abstract] Smart campuses and smart universities make use of IT infrastructure that is similar to the one required by smart cities, which take advantage of Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud computing solutions to monitor and actuate on the multiple systems of a university. As a consequence, smart campuses and universities need to provide connectivity to IoT nodes and gateways, and deploy architectures that allow for offering not only a good communications range through the latest wireless and wired technologies, but also reduced energy consumption to maximize IoT node battery life. In addition, such architectures have to consider the use of technologies like blockchain, which are able to deliver accountability, transparency, cyber-security and redundancy to the processes and data managed by a university. This article reviews the state of the start on the application of the latest key technologies for the development of smart campuses and universities. After defining the essential characteristics of a smart campus/university, the latest communications architectures and technologies are detailed and the most relevant smart campus deployments are analyzed. Moreover, the use of blockchain in higher education applications is studied. Therefore, this article provides useful guidelines to the university planners, IoT vendors and developers that will be responsible for creating the next generation of smart campuses and universities.Xunta de Galicia; ED431C 2016-045Xunta de Galicia; ED431G/01Agencia Estatal de Investigación de España; TEC2016-75067-C4-1-

Design and experimental validation of a LoRaWAN fog computing based architecture for IoT enabled smart campus applications

A smart campus is an intelligent infrastructure where smart sensors and actuators collaborate to collect information and interact with the machines, tools, and users of a university campus. As in a smart city, a smart campus represents a challenging scenario for Internet of Things (IoT) networks, especially in terms of cost, coverage, availability, latency, power consumption, and scalability. The technologies employed so far to cope with such a scenario are not yet able to manage simultaneously all the previously mentioned demanding requirements. Nevertheless, recent paradigms such as fog computing, which extends cloud computing to the edge of a network, make possible low-latency and location-aware IoT applications. Moreover, technologies such as Low-Power Wide-Area Networks (LPWANs) have emerged as a promising solution to provide low-cost and low-power consumption connectivity to nodes spread throughout a wide area. Specifically, the Long-Range Wide-Area Network (LoRaWAN) standard is one of the most recent developments, receiving attention both from industry and academia. In this article, the use of a LoRaWAN fog computing-based architecture is proposed for providing connectivity to IoT nodes deployed in a campus of the University of A Coruña (UDC), Spain. To validate the proposed system, the smart campus has been recreated realistically through an in-house developed 3D Ray-Launching radio-planning simulator that is able to take into consideration even small details, such as traffic lights, vehicles, people, buildings, urban furniture, or vegetation. The developed tool can provide accurate radio propagation estimations within the smart campus scenario in terms of coverage, capacity, and energy efficiency of the network. The results obtained with the planning simulator can then be compared with empirical measurements to assess the operating conditions and the system accuracy. Specifically, this article presents experiments that show the accurate results obtained by the planning simulator in the largest scenario ever built for it (a campus that covers an area of 26,000 m2), which are corroborated with empirical measurements. Then, how the tool can be used to design the deployment of LoRaWAN infrastructure for three smart campus outdoor applications is explained: a mobility pattern detection system, a smart irrigation solution, and a smart traffic-monitoring deployment. Consequently, the presented results provide guidelines to smart campus designers and developers, and for easing LoRaWAN network deployment and research in other smart campuses and large environments such as smart cities.This work has been funded by the Xunta de Galicia (ED431C 2016-045, ED431G/01), the Agencia Estatal de Investigación of Spain (TEC2016-75067-C4-1-R) and ERDF funds of the EU (AEI/FEDER, UE)

A Systematic Mapping Study of Cloud Resources Management and Scalability in Brokering, Scheduling, Capacity Planning and Elasticity

Cloud computing allows for resource management through various means. Some of these include brokering, scheduling, elasticity and capacity planning and these processes helps in facilitating service utilization. Determining a particular research area especially in terms of resources management and scalability in the cloud is usually a cumbersome process for a researcher, hence the need for reviews and paper surveys in identifying potential research gaps. The objective of this work was to carry out a systematic mapping study of resources management and scalability in the cloud. A systematic mapping study offers a summarized overview of studies that have been carried out in a particular area of interest. It then presents the results of such overviews graphically using a map. Although, the systematic mapping process requires less effort, the results are more coarse-grained. In this study, analysis of publications were done based on their topics, research type and contribution facets. These publications were on research works which focused on resource management, scheduling, capacity planning, scalability and elasticity. This study classified publications into research facets viz., evaluation, validation, solution, philosophical, option and experience and contribution facets based on metrics, tools, processes, models and methods used. Obtained results showed that 31.3% of the considered publications focused on evaluation based research, 19.85% on validation and 32% on processes. About 2.4% focused on metric for capacity planning, 5.6% focused on tools relating to resource management, while 5.6 and 8% of the publications were on model for capacity planning and scheduling method, respectively. Research works focusing on validating capacity planning and elasticity were the least at 2.29 and 0.76%, respectively. This study clearly identified gaps in the field of resources management and scalability in the cloud which should stimulate interest for further studies by both researchers and industry practitioners

A Nonlinear Technical Indicator Selection Approach for Stock Markets. Application to the Chinese Stock Market

In this paper we present a combinatorial nonlinear technical indicator approach for the identification of appropriate combinations of stock technical indicators as inputs in non-linear models. This approach is illustrated with the example of Chinese stock indexes and 35 different stock technical indicators using neural networks as the chosen non-linear method. Stock market technical indicators can generate contradictory signals regarding the future performance of the stock analyzed. Furthermore, some non-linear methods, such as neural networks, can have poor generalization power when dealing with problems of high dimensionality due to the issue of local minima. Therefore, non-linear approaches that can identify appropriate combinations of input variables are of clear importance. It will be shown that the proposed approach, when using neural networks as classifiers, generates error rates lower than those using directly neural networks without dimensionality reduction. It will also be shown that merely increasing the number of neurons does not increase the accuracy. The approach proposed in this article is illustrated with an application to the stock market using neural networks but it could be applied to other fields and it can also be used with other non-linear techniques such as for instance support vector machines.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación PID2019-106212RB-C41

Advancements in Deep Learning Theory and Applications: Perspective in 2020 and beyond

The aim of this chapter is to introduce newcomers to deep learning, deep learning platforms, algorithms, applications, and open-source datasets. This chapter will give you a broad overview of the term deep learning, in context to deep learning machine learning, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) is also introduced. In Introduction, there is a brief overview of the research achievements of deep learning. After Introduction, a brief history of deep learning has been also discussed. The history started from a famous scientist called Allen Turing (1951) to 2020. In the start of a chapter after Introduction, there are some commonly used terminologies, which are used in deep learning. The main focus is on the most recent applications, the most commonly used algorithms, modern platforms, and relevant open-source databases or datasets available online. While discussing the most recent applications and platforms of deep learning, their scope in future is also discussed. Future research directions are discussed in applications and platforms. The natural language processing and auto-pilot vehicles were considered the state-of-the-art application, and these applications still need a good portion of further research. Any reader from undergraduate and postgraduate students, data scientist, and researchers would be benefitted from this

Big data in construction: current applications and future opportunities

Big data have become an integral part of various research fields due to the rapid advancements in the digital technologies available for dealing with data. The construction industry is no exception and has seen a spike in the data being generated due to the introduction of various digital disruptive technologies. However, despite the availability of data and the introduction of such technologies, the construction industry is lagging in harnessing big data. This paper critically explores literature published since 2010 to identify the data trends and how the construction industry can benefit from big data. The presence of tools such as computer-aided drawing (CAD) and building information modelling (BIM) provide a great opportunity for researchers in the construction industry to further improve how infrastructure can be developed, monitored, or improved in the future. The gaps in the existing research data have been explored and a detailed analysis was carried out to identify the different ways in which big data analysis and storage work in relevance to the construction industry. Big data engineering (BDE) and statistics are among the most crucial steps for integrating big data technology in construction. The results of this study suggest that while the existing research studies have set the stage for improving big data research, the integration of the associated digital technologies into the construction industry is not very clear. Among the future opportunities, big data research into construction safety, site management, heritage conservation, and project waste minimization and quality improvements are key areas

Assessment and Estimation of Face Detection Performance Based on Deep Learning for Forensic Applications

Face recognition is a valuable forensic tool for criminal investigators since it certainly helps in identifying individuals in scenarios of criminal activity like fugitives or child sexual abuse. It is, however, a very challenging task as it must be able to handle low-quality images of real world settings and fulfill real time requirements. Deep learning approaches for face detection have proven to be very successful but they require large computation power and processing time. In this work, we evaluate the speed-accuracy tradeoff of three popular deep-learning-based face detectors on the WIDER Face and UFDD data sets in several CPUs and GPUs. We also develop a regression model capable to estimate the performance, both in terms of processing time and accuracy. We expect this to become a very useful tool for the end user in forensic laboratories in order to estimate the performance for different face detection options. Experimental results showed that the best speed-accuracy tradeoff is achieved with images resized to50%of the original size in GPUs and images resized to25%of the original size in CPUs. Moreover, performance can be estimated using multiple linear regression models with a Mean Absolute Error (MAE) of 0.113, which is very promising for the forensic field

CNN2Gate: an implementation of convolutional neural networks inference on FPGAs with automated design space exploration

ABSTRACT: Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) have a major impact on our society, because of the numerous services they provide. These services include, but are not limited to image classification, video analysis, and speech recognition. Recently, the number of researches that utilize FPGAs to implement CNNs are increasing rapidly. This is due to the lower power consumption and easy reconfigurability that are offered by these platforms. Because of the research efforts put into topics, such as architecture, synthesis, and optimization, some new challenges are arising for integrating suitable hardware solutions to high-level machine learning software libraries. This paper introduces an integrated framework (CNN2Gate), which supports compilation of a CNN model for an FPGA target. CNN2Gate is capable of parsing CNN models from several popular high-level machine learning libraries, such as Keras, Pytorch, Caffe2, etc. CNN2Gate extracts computation flow of layers, in addition to weights and biases, and applies a “given” fixed-point quantization. Furthermore, it writes this information in the proper format for the FPGA vendor’s OpenCL synthesis tools that are then used to build and run the project on FPGA. CNN2Gate performs design-space exploration and fits the design on different FPGAs with limited logic resources automatically. This paper reports results of automatic synthesis and design-space exploration of AlexNet and VGG-16 on various Intel FPGA platforms