Keberkesanan program simulasi penapis sambutan dedenyut terhingga (FIR) terhadap kefahaman pelajar kejuruteraan elektrik

Kefahaman merupakan aset bagi setiap pelajar. Ini kerana melalui kefahaman pelajar dapat mengaplikasikan konsep yang dipelajari di dalam dan di luar kelas. Kajian ini dijalankan bertujuan menilai keberkesanan program simulasi penapis sambutan dedenyut terhingga (FIR) terhadap kefahaman pelajar kejuruteraan elektrik FKEE, UTHM dalam mata pelajaran Pemprosesan Isyarat Digital (DSP) bagi topik penapis FIR. Metodologi kajian ini berbentuk kaedah reka bentuk kuasi�eksperimental ujian pra-pasca bagi kumpulan-kumpulan tidak seimbang. Seramai 40 responden kajian telah dipilih dan dibahagi secara rawak kepada dua kllmpulan iaitu kumpulan rawatan yang menggunakan program simulasi penapis FIR dan kumpulan kawalan yang menggunakan kaedah pembelajaran berorientasikan modul pembelajaran DSP UTHM. Setiap responden menduduki dua ujian pencapaian iaitu ujian pra dan ujian pasca yang berbentuk kuiz. Analisis data berbentuk deskriptif dan inferens dilakllkan dengan menggunakan Peri sian Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) versi 11.0. Dapatan kajian menunjukkan kedua-dua kumpulan pelajar telah mengalami peningkatan dari segi kefahaman iaitu daripada tahap tidak memuaskan kepada tahap kepujian selepas menggunakan kaedah pembelajaran yang telah ditetapkan bagi kumpulan masing-masing. Walaubagaimanapun, pelajar kumpulan rawatan menunjukkan peningkatan yang lebih tinggi sedikit berbanding pelajar kumpulan kawalan. Namun begitu, dapatan kajian secara ujian statistik menunjukkan tidak terdapat perbezaan yang signifikan dari segi pencapaian markah ujian pasca di antara pelajar kumpulan rawatan dengan pelajar kumpulan kawalan. Sungguhpun begitu, penggunaan program simulasi penapis FIR telah membantu dalam peningkatan kefahaman pelajar mengenai topik penapis FIR

Federated Sensor Network architectural design for the Internet of Things (IoT)

An information technology that can combine the physical world and virtual world is desired. The Internet of Things (IoT) is a concept system that uses Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), WSN and barcode scanners to sense and to detect physical objects and events. This information is shared with people on the Internet. With the announcement of the Smarter Planet concept by IBM, the problem of how to share this data was raised. However, the original design of WSN aims to provide environment monitoring and control within a small scale local network. It cannot meet the demands of the IoT because there is a lack of multi-connection functionality with other WSNs and upper level applications. As various standards of WSNs provide information for different purposes, a hybrid system that gives a complete answer by combining all of them could be promising for future IoT applications. This thesis is on the subject of `Federated Sensor Network' design and architectural development for the Internet of Things. A Federated Sensor Network (FSN) is a system that integrates WSNs and the Internet. Currently, methods of integrating WSNs and the Internet can follow one of three main directions: a Front-End Proxy solution, a Gateway solution or a TCP/IP Overlay solution. Architectures based on the ideas from all three directions are presented in this thesis; this forms a comprehensive body of research on possible Federated Sensor Network architecture designs. In addition, a fully compatible technology for the sensor network application, namely the Sensor Model Language (SensorML), has been reviewed and embedded into our FSN systems. The IoT as a new concept is also comprehensively described and the major technical issues discussed. Finally, a case study of the IoT in logistic management for emergency response is given. Proposed FSN architectures based on the Gateway solution are demonstrated through hardware implementation and lab tests. A demonstration of the 6LoWPAN enabled federated sensor network based on the TCP/IP Overlay solution presents a good result for the iNET localization and tracking project. All the tests of the designs have verified feasibility and achieve the target of the IoT concept

Cross-layer design of multi-hop wireless networks

MULTI -hop wireless networks are usually defined as a collection of nodes equipped with radio transmitters, which not only have the capability to communicate each other in a multi-hop fashion, but also to route each others’ data packets. The distributed nature of such networks makes them suitable for a variety of applications where there are no assumed reliable central entities, or controllers, and may significantly improve the scalability issues of conventional single-hop wireless networks. This Ph.D. dissertation mainly investigates two aspects of the research issues related to the efficient multi-hop wireless networks design, namely: (a) network protocols and (b) network management, both in cross-layer design paradigms to ensure the notion of service quality, such as quality of service (QoS) in wireless mesh networks (WMNs) for backhaul applications and quality of information (QoI) in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) for sensing tasks. Throughout the presentation of this Ph.D. dissertation, different network settings are used as illustrative examples, however the proposed algorithms, methodologies, protocols, and models are not restricted in the considered networks, but rather have wide applicability. First, this dissertation proposes a cross-layer design framework integrating a distributed proportional-fair scheduler and a QoS routing algorithm, while using WMNs as an illustrative example. The proposed approach has significant performance gain compared with other network protocols. Second, this dissertation proposes a generic admission control methodology for any packet network, wired and wireless, by modeling the network as a black box, and using a generic mathematical 0. Abstract 3 function and Taylor expansion to capture the admission impact. Third, this dissertation further enhances the previous designs by proposing a negotiation process, to bridge the applications’ service quality demands and the resource management, while using WSNs as an illustrative example. This approach allows the negotiation among different service classes and WSN resource allocations to reach the optimal operational status. Finally, the guarantees of the service quality are extended to the environment of multiple, disconnected, mobile subnetworks, where the question of how to maintain communications using dynamically controlled, unmanned data ferries is investigated

From MANET to people-centric networking: Milestones and open research challenges

In this paper, we discuss the state of the art of (mobile) multi-hop ad hoc networking with the aim to present the current status of the research activities and identify the consolidated research areas, with limited research opportunities, and the hot and emerging research areas for which further research is required. We start by briefly discussing the MANET paradigm, and why the research on MANET protocols is now a cold research topic. Then we analyze the active research areas. Specifically, after discussing the wireless-network technologies, we analyze four successful ad hoc networking paradigms, mesh networks, opportunistic networks, vehicular networks, and sensor networks that emerged from the MANET world. We also present an emerging research direction in the multi-hop ad hoc networking field: people centric networking, triggered by the increasing penetration of the smartphones in everyday life, which is generating a people-centric revolution in computing and communications

A study into prolonging Wireless Sensor Network lifetime during disaster scenarios

A Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) has wide potential for many applications. It can be employed for normal monitoring applications, for example, the monitoring of environmental conditions such as temperature, humidity, light intensity and pressure. A WSN is deployed in an area to sense these environmental conditions and send information about them to a sink. In certain locations, disasters such as forest fires, floods, volcanic eruptions and earth-quakes can happen in the monitoring area. During the disaster, the events being monitored have the potential to destroy the sensing devices; for example, they can be sunk in a flood, burnt in a fire, damaged in harmful chemicals, and burnt in volcano lava etc. There is an opportunity to exploit the energy of these nodes before they are totally destroyed to save the energy of the other nodes in the safe area. This can prolong WSN lifetime during the critical phase. In order to investigate this idea, this research proposes a new routing protocol called Maximise Unsafe Path (MUP) routing using Ipv6 over Low power Wireless Personal Area Networks (6LoWPAN). The routing protocol aims to exploit the energy of the nodes that are going to be destroyed soon due to the environment, by concentrating packets through these nodes. MUP adapts with the environmental conditions. This is achieved by classifying four different levels of threat based on the sensor reading information and neighbour node condition, and represents this as the node health status, which is included as one parameter in the routing decision. High priority is given to a node in an unsafe condition compared to another node in a safer condition. MUP does not allow packet routing through a node that is almost failed in order to avoid packet loss when the node fails. To avoid the energy wastage caused by selecting a route that requires a higher energy cost to deliver a packet to the sink, MUP always forwards packets through a node that has the minimum total path cost. MUP is designed as an extension of RPL, an Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standard routing protocol in a WSN, and is implemented in the Contiki Operating System (OS). The performance of MUP is evaluated using simulations and test-bed experiments. The results demonstrate that MUP provides a longer network lifetime during a critical phase of typically about 20\% when compared to RPL, but with a trade-off lower packet delivery ratio and end-to-end delay performances. This network lifetime improvement is crucial for the WSN to operate for as long as possible to detect and monitor the environment during a critical phase in order to save human life, minimise loss of property and save wildlife

Multi-Hop Selective Constructive Interference Flooding Protocol For Wireless Sensor Networks

Connectivity is a critical issue in WSNs, as the data collected needs to be sent to the base station or the processing centers. Low connectivity due to the limited radio range of sensor nodes and random distribution leads the network to be partitioned into disconnected groups, which can interrupt or completely prevent communication between nodes. For effective communication, each node must be located close enough to each other. Improper positioning of the nodes can cause a failure in sending or receiving radio signals, resulting in a segmented or incomplete network. A Multi-Hop Selective Constructive Interference Flooding (MSCIF) protocol is proposed to address the problem of low connectivity in WSNs with a sparse distribution and improve the network’s lifetime. MSCIF integrates three main algorithms: clustering algorithm, selection algorithm, and a synchronized flooding. The first step of the proposed protocol involves the development of an energy efficient clustering algorithm which is appropriate for WSN with a sparse density topology. Clustering is necessary in the proposed protocol as it helps to exclude nodes that are far away from other nodes, which consume a lot of energy. The stages of clustering are: initialization, scheduling, and clustering. The second step in MSCIF protocol involves designing a selection algorithm to select the minimum connected dominating nodes. This is to improve the network reliability and control the energy consumption by reducing the number of cooperating nodes. The third step is applying a fast-synchronized flooding to achieve a constructive interference at the receiver to improve the received signal strength and improve connectivity

Multifaceted Optimization of Energy Efficiency for Stationary WSN Applications

Stationary Wireless Sensor Networks (S-WSNs) consist of battery-powered and resource-constrained sensor nodes distributed at fixed locations to cooperatively monitor the environment or an object and provide persistent data acquisition. These systems are being practiced in many applications, ranging from disaster warning systems for instant event detection to structural health monitoring for effective maintenance. Despite the diversity of S-WSN applications, one common requirement is to achieve a long lifespan for a higher value-to-cost ratio. However, the variety of WSN deployment environments and use cases imply that there is no silver bullet to solve the energy issue completely. This thesis is a summary of six publications. Our  contributions include four energy optimization techniques on three layers for S-WSN applications. From the bottom up, we designed an ultra-low power smart trigger to integrate environment perceptibility into the hardware. On the network layer, we propose a reliable clustering protocol and a cluster-based data aggregation scheme. This scheme offers topology optimization together with in-network data processing. On the application layer, we extend an industrial standard protocol XMPP to incorporate WSN characteristics for unified information dissemination. Our protocol extensions facilitate WSN application development by adopting IMPS on the Internet. In addition, we conducted a performance analysis of one lightweight security protocol for WSNs called HIP Diet Exchange, which is being standardized by IETF. We suggested a few improvements and potential applications for HIP DEX. In the process of improving energy efficiency, we explore modular and generic design for better system integration and scalability. Our hardware invention can extend features by adding new transducers onboard. The clustering protocol and data aggregation scheme provides a general self-adaptive method to increase information throughput per energy cost while tolerating network dynamics. The unified XMPP extensions aim to support seamless information flow for the Web of Things. The results presented in this thesis demonstrate the importance of multifaceted optimization strategy in WSN development. An optimal WSN system should comprehend multiple factors to boost energy efficiency in a holistic approach