8,561 research outputs found
Aspect oriented service composition for telecommunication applications
This PhD dissertation investigates how to overcome the negative effects of cross cutting concerns in the development of composite service applications. It proposes a combination of dynamic aspect oriented programming with a rules driven service composition mechanism. This combination allows very flexible utilization of aspects based on run-time data. The thesis contributes a join-point model and it integrates techniques for weaving and advice definition into the underlying composition language and execution engine. A particular focus of the thesis is telecommunication applications with their unique model for utilizing heterogeneous constituent services and their severe real-time requirements. Next to its primary use for modular implementation and flexible deployment of concerns in telecommunication applications, the dissertation discusses AOP as a feature for automated management and customization of service applications. The verification of the proposed solution contributes a detailed assessment of run-time performance, including a theoretical model of the AOP implementation. It allows predicting the performance of various alternative solutions. The proposed solution for combined AOP and service composition provides properties, which directly address challenges in pervasive computing and the Internet of things. Thus, this dissertation advances beyond the telecommunication domain with results applicable to various highly relevant technical developments
Towards the alternative measurement: Discovering the relationships between technology adoption and quality of life in Indonesia
The vast majority of the studies investigating telecommunication development (diffusion of mobile phone, Internet, the broadband, etc.) that have been carried out in the literatures aim at assessing the impact on economic indicators, mainly the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), whereas little attention has actually been paid to investigate the other measurement which reflects a more direct linkage to the individual welfare, for instance the quality of life (QOL) indicators. Following the current counterargument for using the GDP as the goal of economic development, this paper investigates a survey data in Indonesia, observing the relationships between the experience to technology (the length of mobile phone ownership) and technology adoption (internet access) in affecting quality of life (QOL) at individual level. The QOL index is proxied by two indicators which are equally weighted; the objective measurement represented by income level and subjective perceived QOL following the study by Costanza et al., (2007). To operationalize these aims, the model is investigated in two sequential ways; first by determining binomial probit on the Internet access demand equation and then putting the predicted probability of the first equation into second equation of the ordered probit model. The model is further analyzed through the return to education-type equation (Card, 2001) to see the impact of experience to technology and internet access on the QOL index. The results indicate that whereas the access to the Internet is not statistically significant affecting QOL, experience to technology plays an important role. Additionally, the experience of technology (measured at its mean value of 3.5 years) affects the likelihood to have a lower QOL index around 49% and to achieve a higher QOL index in Indonesia around 12%. A year additional of ownership reduces the likelihood on a lower QOL by 3.6% and increases the likelihood to obtain a higher QOL by 2%. --technology,quality of life,ordered-probit,Internet
Knowledge management practices and the enhancement of customer capital: the importance of time
Actualmente, los responsables de las pequeñas y medianas empresas (PYMES) debido al hecho de tener
que vigilar continuamente sus empresas a la búsqueda de mejoras en las relaciones con sus clientes y
trabajadores, están otorgando un papel cada vez más estratégico a las prácticas de gestión del
conocimiento. No obstante, hay situaciones donde las organizaciones y sus miembros se enfrentan a
entornos cada vez más inciertos, por lo que es necesario reconsiderar las prácticas de gestión del
conocimiento que se han venido desarrollando en la empresa desde sus inicios. Estas prácticas, en forma
de procesos y rutinas, pueden basarse tanto en conocimiento tácito como explícito y también necesitan ser
continuamente reconsideradas de cara a la captación de nuevo conocimiento. En tales circunstancias, sería
necesario modificar e incluso eliminar parte del conocimiento existente al objeto de asegurarnos de que
los empleados tienen acceso a conocimientos lo suficientemente actualizados como para que mantengan o
garanticen las relaciones que las PYMEs tienen con sus clientes. Nuestro trabajo examina el impacto que
un contexto de “mentalidad abierta” (openminded) en la organización existente en un momento dado (T)
tiene sobre las actuaciones que intentan reconsiderar los conocimientos organizativos en un momento
posterior (T+1). Analizamos además la relaciones entre los procesos de aprendizaje/conocimiento
explorativo y aplicado sobre el capital relacional. Se utiliza para ello evidencias empíricas procedentes de
107 PYMES del sector de las telecomunicaciones en España, utilizando la técnica PLS.Actualmente, los responsables de las pequeñas y medianas empresas (PYMES) debido al hecho de tener
que vigilar continuamente sus empresas a la búsqueda de mejoras en las relaciones con sus clientes y
trabajadores, están otorgando un papel cada vez más estratégico a las prácticas de gestión del
conocimiento. No obstante, hay situaciones donde las organizaciones y sus miembros se enfrentan a
entornos cada vez más inciertos, por lo que es necesario reconsiderar las prácticas de gestión del
conocimiento que se han venido desarrollando en la empresa desde sus inicios. Estas prácticas, en forma
de procesos y rutinas, pueden basarse tanto en conocimiento tácito como explícito y también necesitan ser
continuamente reconsideradas de cara a la captación de nuevo conocimiento. En tales circunstancias, sería
necesario modificar e incluso eliminar parte del conocimiento existente al objeto de asegurarnos de que
los empleados tienen acceso a conocimientos lo suficientemente actualizados como para que mantengan o
garanticen las relaciones que las PYMEs tienen con sus clientes. Nuestro trabajo examina el impacto que
un contexto de “mentalidad abierta” (openminded) en la organización existente en un momento dado (T)
tiene sobre las actuaciones que intentan reconsiderar los conocimientos organizativos en un momento
posterior (T+1). Analizamos además la relaciones entre los procesos de aprendizaje/conocimiento
explorativo y aplicado sobre el capital relacional. Se utiliza para ello evidencias empíricas procedentes de
107 PYMES del sector de las telecomunicaciones en España, utilizando la técnica PLS
Service-Oriented Process Models in Telecommunication Business
The thesis concentrates on to evaluate challenges in the business process management and the need for Service-oriented process models in telecommunication business to alleviate the integration work efforts and to reduce total costs of ownership. The business aspect concentrates on operations and business support systems which are tailored for communication service providers. Business processes should be designed in conformance with TeleManagement Forum's integrated business architecture framework. The thesis rationalizes the need to transform organizations and their way of working from vertical silos to horizontal layers and to understand transformational efforts which are needed to adopt a new strategy.
Furthermore, the thesis introduces service characterizations and goes deeper into technical requirements that a service compliant middleware system needs to support. At the end of the thesis Nokia Siemens Networks proprietary approach – Process Automation Enabling Suite is introduced, and finally the thesis performs two case studies. The first one is Nokia Siemens Networks proprietary survey which highlights the importance of customer experience management and the second one is an overall research study whose results have been derived from other public surveys covering application integration efforts
Nematic Liquid Crystal Carbon Nanotube Composite Materials for Designing RF Switching Devices
Radio frequency microelectromechanical systems (RF MEMS) devices are microdevices used to switch or modify signals from the RF to millimeter wave (mmWave) frequency range. Liquid crystals (LCs) are widely used as electro-optic modulators for display devices. An electric field-induced electrical conductivity modulation of pure LC media is quite low which makes it difficult to use for RF MEMS switching applications. Currently, RF MEMS devices are characterized as an excellent option between solid-state and electromechanical RF switches to provide high isolation, low insertion loss, low power usage, excellent return loss, and large frequency band. However, commercial usage is low due to their lower switching speed, reliability, and repeatability. This research presents an electrical conductivity enhancement through the use of carbon nanotube (CNT) doping of LCs to realize a high-performance RF LC-CNT switching device. This thesis presents simulations of an RF switch using a coplanar waveguide (CPW) with a LC-CNT composite called 4-Cyano-4’-pentylbiphenyl multi-walled nanotube (5CB-MWNT) that is suitable for RF applications. The electrical conductivity modulation and RF switch performance of the 5CB-MWNT composite is determined using Finite Element Analysis (FEA). The simulations will present data on the coplanar waveguide’s s-parameters at the input and output ports S11 and S21 to measure return and insertion loss respectively, two key parameters for determining any RF switch’s performance. Furthermore, this thesis presents applications for improving tunable phased antenna arrays using the LC-CNT composite to allow for beam steering with high-gain and directivity to provide a broad 3D scannable coverage of an area. Tunable antennas are an important characteristic for 5G applications to achieve an optimal telecommunication system to prevent overcrowding of antennas and reduce overall system costs. This research investigates various device geometries with 5CB-MWNT to realize the best performing RF device for RF applications and 5G telecommunication systems. This research presents return and insertion loss data for three waveguide device configurations: CPW, coplanar waveguide grounded (CPWG), and finite ground coplanar waveguide grounded (FG-CPWG). The best results are shown using the CPW configuration. The return loss for the LC-CNT device showed a 5 dB improvement from -7.5 dB to -12.5 dB when using the LC-CNT signal line device. The insertion loss for this configuration showed a much more consistent 0 to -0.3 dB insertion loss value with much less noise when using the LC-CNT device compared to the -0.3 to -1 dB insertion loss value with heavy noise when using the Au signal line device. For the other two configurations the return loss and insertion loss value stayed the same indicating there is no loss in performance when using the LC-CNT switching mechanism. This is ideal due to the benefits that the LC-CNT switching mechanism provides like device reliability and increased switching speeds
Context-driven progressive enhancement of mobile web applications: a multicriteria decision-making approach
Personal computing has become all about mobile and embedded devices. As a result, the adoption rate of smartphones is rapidly increasing and this trend has set a need for mobile applications to be available at anytime, anywhere and on any device. Despite the obvious advantages of such immersive mobile applications, software developers are increasingly facing the challenges related to device fragmentation. Current application development solutions are insufficiently prepared for handling the enormous variety of software platforms and hardware characteristics covering the mobile eco-system. As a result, maintaining a viable balance between development costs and market coverage has turned out to be a challenging issue when developing mobile applications. This article proposes a context-aware software platform for the development and delivery of self-adaptive mobile applications over the Web. An adaptive application composition approach is introduced, capable of autonomously bypassing context-related fragmentation issues. This goal is achieved by incorporating and validating the concept of fine-grained progressive application enhancements based on a multicriteria decision-making strategy
ACHIEVING AUTONOMIC SERVICE ORIENTED ARCHITECTURE USING CASE BASED REASONING
Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) enables composition of large and complex
computational units out of the available atomic services. However, implementation of
SOA, for its dynamic nature, could bring about challenges in terms of service
discovery, service interaction, service composition, robustness, etc. In the near future,
SOA will often need to dynamically re-configuring and re-organizing its topologies of
interactions between the web services because of some unpredictable events, such as
crashes or network problems, which will cause service unavailability. Complexity and
dynamism of the current and future global network system require service architecture
that is capable of autonomously changing its structure and functionality to meet
dynamic changes in the requirements and environment with little human intervention.
This then needs to motivate the research described throughout this thesis.
In this thesis, the idea of introducing autonomy and adapting case-based reasoning
into SOA in order to extend the intelligence and capability of SOA is contributed and
elaborated. It is conducted by proposing architecture of an autonomic SOA
framework based on case-based reasoning and the architectural considerations of
autonomic computing paradigm. It is then followed by developing and analyzing
formal models of the proposed architecture using Petri Net. The framework is also
tested and analyzed through case studies, simulation, and prototype development. The
case studies show feasibility to employing case-based reasoning and autonomic
computing into SOA domain and the simulation results show believability that it
would increase the intelligence, capability, usability and robustness of SOA. It was
shown that SOA can be improved to cope with dynamic environment and services
unavailability by incorporating case-based reasoning and autonomic computing
paradigm to monitor and analyze events and service requests, then to plan and execute
the appropriate actions using the knowledge stored in knowledge database
Spectrum management and compatibility studies with Python
We developed the pycraf Python package, which provides functions and
procedures for various tasks related to spectrum-management compatibility
studies. This includes an implementation of ITU-R Rec. P.452, which allows to
calculate the path attenuation arising from the distance and terrain properties
between an interferer and the victim service. A typical example would be the
calculation of interference levels at a radio telescope produced from a radio
broadcasting tower. Furthermore, pycraf provides functionality to calculate
atmospheric attenuation as proposed in ITU-R Rec. P.676.
Using the rich ecosystem of scientific Python libraries and our pycraf
package, we performed a large number of compatibility studies. Here, we will
highlight a recent case study, where we analysed the potential harm that the
next-generation cell-phone standard 5G could bring to observations at a radio
observatory. For this we implemented a Monte-Carlo simulation to deal with the
quasi-statistical spatial distribution of base stations and user devices around
the radio astronomy station.Comment: 17 pages, 21 figures, to appear in Advances in Radio Science, in
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Factors shaping the evolution of electronic documentation systems
The main goal is to prepare the space station technical and managerial structure for likely changes in the creation, capture, transfer, and utilization of knowledge. By anticipating advances, the design of Space Station Project (SSP) information systems can be tailored to facilitate a progression of increasingly sophisticated strategies as the space station evolves. Future generations of advanced information systems will use increases in power to deliver environmentally meaningful, contextually targeted, interconnected data (knowledge). The concept of a Knowledge Base Management System is emerging when the problem is focused on how information systems can perform such a conversion of raw data. Such a system would include traditional management functions for large space databases. Added artificial intelligence features might encompass co-existing knowledge representation schemes; effective control structures for deductive, plausible, and inductive reasoning; means for knowledge acquisition, refinement, and validation; explanation facilities; and dynamic human intervention. The major areas covered include: alternative knowledge representation approaches; advanced user interface capabilities; computer-supported cooperative work; the evolution of information system hardware; standardization, compatibility, and connectivity; and organizational impacts of information intensive environments
From Concept to Policy: Building Regional Innovation Systems in Follower Regions
In the spirit of “The Lisbon strategy”, public policies are redirecting support from investment-driven policies to knowledge building as the main driver for competitiveness and innovation. This re-orientation poses different challenges to regions and RIS concept may be the central element, simultaneously goal and toolbox, for devising innovation promotion policies. The RIS framework stresses the need to combine a systemic and inclusive view of innovation along with territorially embedded specificities. In this paper we explore how to operationalize the concept of RIS in terms of innovation policy, arguing against a “one size fits all” approach. Concentrating our analysis on follower regions, we bridge the concept of RIS with the structural deficiencies and challenges posing to this kind of regions, for which innovation policy should seek an adequate combination between science push and demand pull perspectives. We also address the importance of taking advantage of the catching-up status, building upon R&D cost-advantages and clustering around external initiatives as well as the correction of important constraints to the construction of a RIS.Innovation, Regional Innovation Systems, Innovation Policy, Follower Regions
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