Design and evaluation of wireless dense networks : application to in-flight entertainment systems

Le réseau sans fil est l'un des domaines de réseautage les plus prometteurs avec des caractéristiques uniques qui peuvent fournir la connectivité dans les situations où il est difficile d'utiliser un réseau filaire, ou lorsque la mobilité des nœuds est nécessaire. Cependant, le milieu de travail impose généralement diverses contraintes, où les appareils sans fil font face à différents défis lors du partage des moyens de communication. De plus, le problème s'aggrave avec l'augmentation du nombre de nœuds. Différentes solutions ont été introduites pour faire face aux réseaux très denses. D'autre part, un nœud avec une densité très faible peut créer un problème de connectivité et peut conduire à l'optension de nœuds isolés et non connectes au réseau. La densité d'un réseau est définit en fonction du nombre de nœuds voisins directs au sein de la portée de transmission du nœud. Cependant, nous croyons que ces métriques ne sont pas suffisants et nous proposons une nouvelle mesure qui considère le nombre de voisins directs et la performance du réseau. Ainsi, la réponse du réseau, respectant l'augmentation du nombre de nœuds, est considérée lors du choix du niveau de la densité. Nous avons défini deux termes: l'auto-organisation et l'auto-configuration, qui sont généralement utilisés de façon interchangeable dans la littérature en mettant en relief la différence entre eux. Nous estimons qu'une définition claire de la terminologie peut éliminer beaucoup d'ambiguïté et aider à présenter les concepts de recherche plus clairement. Certaines applications, telles que Ies systèmes "In-Flight Entertainment (IFE)" qui se trouvent à l'intérieur des cabines d'avions, peuveut être considérées comme des systèmes sans fil de haute densité, même si peu de nœuds sont relativement présents. Pour résoudre ce problème, nous proposons une architecture hétérogène de différentes technologies à fin de surmonter les contraintes spécifiques de l'intérieur de la cabine. Chaque technologie vise à résoudre une partie du problème. Nous avons réalisé diverses expérimentations et simulations pour montrer la faisabilité de l'architecture proposée. Nous avons introduit un nouveau protocole d'auto-organisation qui utilise des antennes intelligentes pour aider certains composants du système IFE; à savoir les unités d'affichage et leurs systèmes de commande, à s'identifier les uns les autres sans aucune configuration préliminaire. Le protocole a été conçu et vérifié en utilisant le langage UML, puis, un module de NS2 a été créé pour tester les différents scénarios.Wireless networking is one of the most challenging networking domains with unique features that can provide connectivity in situations where it is difficult to use wired networking, or when ! node mobility is required. However, the working environment us! ually im poses various constrains, where wireless devices face various challenges when sharing the communication media. Furthermore, the problem becomes worse when the number of nodes increase. Different solutions were introduced to cope with highly dense networks. On the other hand, a very low density can create a poor connectivity problem and may lead to have isolated nodes with no connection to the network. It is common to define network density according to the number of direct neighboring nodes within the node transmission range. However, we believe that such metric is not enough. Thus, we propose a new metric that encompasses the number of direct neighbors and the network performance. In this way, the network response, due to the increasing number of nodes, is considered when deciding the density level. Moreover, we defined two terms, self-organization and self-configuration, which are usually used interchangeably in the literature through highlighting the difference ! between them. We believe that having a clear definition for terminology can eliminate a lot of ambiguity and help to present the research concepts more clearly. Some applications, such as In-Flight Entertainment (IFE) systems inside the aircraft cabin, can be considered as wirelessly high dense even if relatively few nodes are present. To solve this problem, we propose a heterogeneous architecture of different technologies to overcome the inherited constrains inside the cabin. Each technology aims at solving a part of the problem. We held various experimentation and simulations to show the feasibility of the proposed architecture

Biosignal controlled recommendation in entertainment systems

With the explosive growth of the entertainment contents and the ubiquitous access of them via fixed or mobile computing devices, recommendation systems become essential tools to help the user to find the right entertainment at the right time and location. I envision that by integrating the bio signal input into the recommendation process, it will help the users not only to find interesting contents, but also to increase one’s comfort level by taking into account the biosginal feedback from the users. The goal of this project was to develop a biosignal controlled entertainment recommendation system that increases the user’s comfort level by reducing the level of stress. As the starting point, this project aims to contribute to the field of recommendation systems with two points. The first is the mechanism of embedding the biosignal non-intrusively into the recommendation process. The second is the strategy of the biosignal controlled recommendation to reduce stress. Heart rate controlled in-flight music recommendation is chosen as its application domain. The hypothesis of this application is that, the passenger's heart rate deviates from the normal due to unusual long haul flight cabin environment. By properly designing a music recommendation system to recommend heart rate controlled personalized music playlists to the passenger, the passengers' heart rate can be uplifted, down-lifted back to normal or kept within normal, thus their stress can be reduced. Four research questions have been formulated based on this hypothesis. After the literature study, the project went mainly through three phases: framework design, system implementation and user evaluation to answer these research questions. During the framework design phase, the heart rate was firstly modeled as the states of bradycardia, normal and tachycardia. The objective of the framework is that, if the user's heart rate is higher or lower than the normal heart rate, the system recommends a personalized music playlist accordingly to transfer the user’s heart rate back to normal, otherwise to keep it at normal. The adaptive framework integrates the concepts of context adaptive systems, user profiling, and the methods of using music to adjust the heart rate in a feedback control system. In the feedback loop, the playlists were composed using a Markov decision process. Yet, the framework allows the user to reject the recommendations and to manually select the favorite music items. During this process, the system logs the interactions between the user and the system for later learning the user’s latest music preferences. The designed framework was then implemented with platform independent software architecture. The architecture has five abstraction levels. The lowest resource level contains the music source, the heart rate sensors and the user profile information. The second layer is for resource management. In this layer are the manager components to manage the resources from the first layer and to modulate the access from upper layers to these resources. The third layer is the database, acting as a data repository. The fourth layer is for the adaptive control, which includes the user feedback log, the inference engine and the preference learning component. The top layer is the user interface. In this architecture, the layers and the components in the layers are loosely coupled, which ensures the flexibility. The implemented system was used in the user experiments to validate the hypothesis. The experiments simulated the long haul flights from Amsterdam to Shanghai with the same time schedule as the KLM flights. Twelve subjects were invited to participate in the experiments. Six were allocated to the controlled group and others were allocated to the treatment group. In addition to a normal entertainment system for the control group, the treatment group was also provided with the heart rate controlled music recommendation system. The experiments results validated the hypothesis and answered the research questions. The passenger's heart rate deviates from normal. In our user experiments, the passenger's heart rate was in the bradycardia state 24.6% of time and was in the tachycardia state 7.3% of time. The recommended uplifting music reduces the average bradycardia state duration from 14.78 seconds in the control group to 6.86 seconds in the treatment group. The recommended keeping music increases the average normal state duration from 24.66 seconds in the control group to 29.79 seconds in the treatment group. The recommended down-lifting music reduces the average tachycardia state duration from 13.89 seconds in the control group to 6.53 seconds in the treatment group. Compared to the control group, the stress of the treatment group has been reduced significantly

Electromagnetic Interference to Flight Navigation and Communication Systems: New Strategies in the Age of Wireless

Electromagnetic interference (EMI) promises to be an ever-evolving concern for flight electronic systems. This paper introduces EMI and identifies its impact upon civil aviation radio systems. New wireless services, like mobile phones, text messaging, email, web browsing, radio frequency identification (RFID), and mobile audio/video services are now being introduced into passenger airplanes. FCC and FAA rules governing the use of mobile phones and other portable electronic devices (PEDs) on board airplanes are presented along with a perspective of how these rules are now being rewritten to better facilitate in-flight wireless services. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of NASA cooperative research with the FAA, RTCA, airlines and universities to obtain laboratory radiated emission data for numerous PED types, aircraft radio frequency (RF) coupling measurements, estimated aircraft radio interference thresholds, and direct-effects EMI testing. These elements are combined together to provide high-confidence answers regarding the EMI potential of new wireless products being used on passenger airplanes. This paper presents a vision for harmonizing new wireless services with aeronautical radio services by detecting, assessing, controlling and mitigating the effects of EMI

Estudo de viabilidade de desenvolvimento de um demonstrador de Realidade Virtual para as operações de servicing sobre a aeronave A-29B Super Tucano

Since the birth of aviation, the industry has experienced changes on how an airline operator must perform maintenance operations and how new technicians are trained to perform them to ensure the airworthiness of the aircraft, where the reduction of human errors resulting from non-compliance to the stipulated regulations are one of the main concerns. With the surge of new Virtual Reality technologies, EASA Part-147 approved organizations are enabled to incorporate and direct this new knowledge to the training of new EASA Part-66 approved technicians. However, Virtual Reality technologies must only be used and thought of as a complementary training tool, as it does not provide competencies to perform manual actions as welding, drilling, screwing, among others. Virtual Reality allows the trainee to test his theoretical knowledge at any given time without being limited by the availability of real equipment/components necessary to continue his training, without creating the risk of causing any material damage. All the training performed while resorting to the use of Virtual Reality technologies aims to improve knowledge retention, resulting in better approval rates. In this dissertation, a feasibility study and development of a Virtual Reality demonstrator directed to maintenance training for fuel servicing operations over an A-29B Super Tucano aeroplane must be performed, with the reduction of incidents/accidents reports resulting from wrongly performed procedures set as the main goal. The Virtual Reality application was built on a game engine called Unity, where the user can choose from VR hardware currently available or a mouse and keyboard to perform a fueling procedure. For each procedure, there are three modes available, guided, unguided and VR versions. The guided procedure will provide the user with an oriented experience, where no deviation from the maintenance manual for the fuel servicing action chosen can be performed. Each task will be highlighted in the correct order, providing a visual indication of the task to be executed. An exact copy of the Embraer maintenance manual for the designated procedure will also be provided to be used as a checklist. The unguided procedure allows deviation from the maintenance manual and wrong actions are allowed to be performed. However, a score will be given at the end of the procedure to evaluate how accurately the manual was followed. Embraer maintenance manual will be also provided, but with no checklist. Lastly, the VR version will follow the same fundamentals as the guided version. However, the input and output devices used on the previous 2 versions are replaced by an HMD and two handheld controllers.Desde o seu nascimento, a indústria aeronáutica tem vindo a vivenciar mudanças relativamente a como um operador aéreo realiza as suas atividades de manutenção e como treina os seus técnicos de modo a manter a aeronavegabilidade da sua frota, sendo que a ocorrência de incidentes/acidentes que resultem do incumprimento das regulações/procedimentos impostos pela operadora aérea sejam um foco de melhoria. Com a evolução e surgimento de tecnologias de Realidade Virtual, foi possível a entidades formadoras aprovadas segundo a regulação EASA Part-147, incorporar e direcionar este conhecimento para o treino de técnicos de manutenção. No entanto as mesmas apenas devem ser usadas como uma ferramenta complementar ao treino prático, pois não permitem que se adquira aptidões práticas para realizar tarefas manuais como soldadura, furação, aparafusamento, entre outros. Estas tecnologias permitem que o instruendo tenha a possibilidade de testar os seus conhecimentos teóricos a qualquer momento sem estar limitado pela disponibilidade de componentes reais para dar continuidade à sua formação. Todo este processo de treino com auxílio a aplicações de Realidade Virtual pretende melhorar a retenção de conhecimento, que necessariamente levará a um aumento nas taxas de aprovação dos instruendos. Neste trabalho pretende-se realizar o estudo de viabilidade e desenvolvimento de um demonstrador de Realidade Virtual direcionado ao treino de manutenção, para operações de fuel servicing para a aeronave A29B Super Tucano, com o objetivo de reduzir o número de relatos de incidentes/acidentes resultantes de um procedimento mal-executado. A aplicação de Realidade Virtual desenvolvida no decorrer de este trabalho de investigação, teve por base o motor de jogo Unity, em que o utilizador pode recorrer ao hardware VR atualmente disponível, ou a rato e teclado para realizar o procedimento de fuel servicing. A utilização em simultâneo das opções anteriormente referidas não é possível. Para cada procedimento, três modos de realização da tarefa são possíveis, a versão guiada, não-guiada e RV. A versão guiada fornece ao utilizador uma experiência orientada, onde qualquer desvio do manual de manutenção para o procedimento de reabastecimento escolhido não é permitido. Cada tarefa, segundo a ordem tal como surgem no manual estará destacada, de modo a fornecer uma indicação visual da tarefa a ser executada. Uma cópia exata do manual da Embraer para o procedimento escolhido é também fornecida para ser usado como um checklist. A versão não-guiada permite desvios aos procedimentos do manual de manutenção, assim como a realização de ações erradas do procedimento. No entanto, no final do treino são fornecidos elementos para quantificar os eventuais desvios do manual que tenham ocorrido durante o procedimento. Neste caso, o manual é igualmente fornecido, mas sem checklist. Por fim, na versão de Realidade Virtual, tal como acontece na versão guiada, os fundamentos são iguais, no entanto, a diferença que merece maior destaque é o facto de os aparelhos de input e output deixem de ser o rato, teclado e monitor e passamos a usar um HMD e handheld controllers

Development of the Frontend of an Entertainment Systems for Aircrafts

The in-flight entertainment system "Immfly" is a gate-to-gate entertainment system that provides flights passengers a new way of entertainment during their flight until they arrive to their destination. It is a solution that generates a wi-fi network inside the aircraft to which the users can conne

Mobile Business as Strategic Tools in the US Airline Industry

This thesis analyzes opportunities and threats of mobile business in the context of the US airline industry as s strategic tool to create a sustainable competitive advantage through the implementation of an effective mobile business model. The analysis is based on the assumption that mobile airline strategies have to create a strategic fit with the business environment seen from an airline perspective. Forces inherent in the global environment as well as in the micro-environment are analyzed using environmental scanning as systematic technique. Exploratory data obtained from a focus group interview is added to the analysis in order to assess opportunities and threats and to extract the key success factors for airline m-business, which is found to have tremendous impact on the way an airline creates value to its customers. Key success factors discussed in this thesis are user experience, the value contribution of mobile technology, and customer requirements. Crucial elements found for matching these factors are to expedite and facilitate processes, the ability to integrate systems into a mobile infrastructure, and using devices that yield quick and inexpensive results

Information and communication technologies for public use and interactive-multimedia city kiosks

Thesis (Master)--Izmir Institute of Technology, Industrial Design, Izmir, 2004Includes bibliographical references (leaves: 103)Text in English; Abstract: Turkish and Englishix, 106 leavesThis thesis provides framework for consideration of the potential of information andcommunication technologies for public events and performances for the developing usage of new products, particularly information public kiosks. In the theoretical framework, the concepts and terms of information and communication technology are generally introduced along with the identification of number of major factors such as elements, diversity, necessity and evolution. Moreover, the importance of ICT technologies in urban settings and human behavior in response to this type of technology are investigated through the history of ICT. The concept of the usage of information and communication technology by actual people is particularly emphasized. Not only the utilization of information and communication technology in public space is described but also effective usage of ICT in the public space and information access provided by public products are identified.Figures of ICT systems and related products, their roots in design differences and new tools and products that are common examples of ICT, particularly the use of the information city kiosk, are presented and discussed. Design principles of the public information kiosk, which play a prominent role in the public use of ICT, are established. The analysis of design factors and human-product relations based on user profile, material choices, form, function and location are discussed. Finally, the thesis includes a conclusion that argues that the information city kiosks and their increased public use will designate the new images of the cities

Scalable high-capacity high-fan-out optical networks for constrained environments

The investigations carried out as part of the dissertation address the architecture and application of optical access networks pertaining to high-capacity and high fan-out applications such as in-flight entertainment (IFE) and video-gaming environment. High-capacity and high-fan-out optical networks have a multitude of applications such as expo-centers, train area networks (TAN), video gaming competitions and other applications that require large number of connected users. For the purpose of keeping the scope of the dissertation within limit however, we have concentrated this work on IFE systems. IFE systems present unique challenges at physical and application layers alike. In-flight entertainment (IFE) systems have been a part of passengers' experience for a while now. Currently available systems can be considered a bare-bone at best due to lack of adequate performance and support infrastructure. According to electronic arts (EA), one of the largest developers of video games in the world, an increase in demand for electronically distributed video games will exceed boxed games in just a matter of few years. This also shows a shifting trend towards the electronic distribution of video game content as opposed to physical distribution. Against the same backdrop, the dissertation project involved defining a novel system architecture and capacity based on the requirements for development of novel physical layer architecture utilizing optical networks for high-speed and high-fan-out distribution of content. At the physical layer of the stacked communication model a novel high-fan-out optical network was proposed and simulated for high data-rates. Having defined the physical layer, protocol stack was identified through rigorous observations and data traffic analysis from a large set of traffic traces obtained from various sources in order to understand the distribution and behavior of video game related traffic compared with regular internet traffic. Data requirements were laid down based on analysis keeping in mind that bandwidth requirements are increasing at a tremendous pace and that the network should be able to support future high-definition and 3D gaming as well. Based on the data analysis, analytical models and latency analysis models were also developed for bandwidth allocation in the high-fan-out network architectures. Analytical modeling gives an insight into the performance of the technique as a function of incoming traffic whereas latency analysis exposes the delay factors involved in running the technique over time. "State-full bandwidth allocation" (SBA) was proposed as part of the network layer design for upstream transmission. The novel technique involves keeping state information from previous states for future allocation. The results show that the proposed high-fan-out high-capacity physical layer architecture can be used to distribute video-gaming related content. Also, latency analysis and design and development of a novel SBA algorithm were carried out. Results were quiet promising, in that; a large number of users can be supported on the same single channel network. SBA criteria can be applied to multi-channel networks such as the physical architecture proposed / simulated and investigated in this project. In summary, the project involved design of a novel physical layer; network layer and protocol stack of the communication model and verification by simulations and mathematical modeling while adhering to application layer requirements

Internet of Things Strategic Research Roadmap

Internet of Things (IoT) is an integrated part of Future Internet including existing and evolving Internet and network developments and could be conceptually defined as a dynamic global network infrastructure with self configuring capabilities based on standard and interoperable communication protocols where physical and virtual “things” have identities, physical attributes, and virtual personalities, use intelligent interfaces, and are seamlessly integrated into the information network