Emerging technologies for learning (volume 1)

Collection of 5 articles on emerging technologies and trend

Smart PIN: performance and cost-oriented context-aware personal information network

The next generation of networks will involve interconnection of heterogeneous individual networks such as WPAN, WLAN, WMAN and Cellular network, adopting the IP as common infrastructural protocol and providing virtually always-connected network. Furthermore, there are many devices which enable easy acquisition and storage of information as pictures, movies, emails, etc. Therefore, the information overload and divergent content’s characteristics make it difficult for users to handle their data in manual way. Consequently, there is a need for personalised automatic services which would enable data exchange across heterogeneous network and devices. To support these personalised services, user centric approaches for data delivery across the heterogeneous network are also required. In this context, this thesis proposes Smart PIN - a novel performance and cost-oriented context-aware Personal Information Network. Smart PIN's architecture is detailed including its network, service and management components. Within the service component, two novel schemes for efficient delivery of context and content data are proposed: Multimedia Data Replication Scheme (MDRS) and Quality-oriented Algorithm for Multiple-source Multimedia Delivery (QAMMD). MDRS supports efficient data accessibility among distributed devices using data replication which is based on a utility function and a minimum data set. QAMMD employs a buffer underflow avoidance scheme for streaming, which achieves high multimedia quality without content adaptation to network conditions. Simulation models for MDRS and QAMMD were built which are based on various heterogeneous network scenarios. Additionally a multiple-source streaming based on QAMMS was implemented as a prototype and tested in an emulated network environment. Comparative tests show that MDRS and QAMMD perform significantly better than other approaches

The Communicating Home - Definition, Evaluation and Business Opportunities for TeliaSonera in a 3-5 years perspective

The communicating home concept has been defined by identifying the dominating communication technologies to/from and in the homes, the most important customer behavior and user needs, the dominating products and the dominating actors of the industry. The evaluation of the communicating home industry has been performed with a five forces framework analysis and theories regarding value migration and value structures of industries. It has been concluded that actors of communication technologies, goods and access services will compete fiercely. The barriers of entry will however be high. When it comes to content services the situation is completely different. These actors will, to the largest extent, meet lower competition and low barriers of entry. As a consequence a value migration from communication technologies, goods and access services to content services will occur. TeliaSonera is suggested to develop a content service portal. It should, in its first version, contain IPTV, music on demand, video on demand, data security, online storing and online gaming in the first place. The TeliaSonera group has the right prerequisites to implement and capitalize on a content service portal. In addition to the content service portal some other business opportunities have also been addressed in the business model

Technology enhancement in hotel guestroom

This is an exploratory research paper looking on various types of technology, facilities enhancement and devices adopted by hoteliers for their guestrooms to meet the ever increasing demand and expectations from their guests. This paper also explores the technologies and devices that owners use to leverage on business sustainability for their operations. As part of the corporate social responsibility, hotel owners are exploring the opportunities to increase these activities through the use of modern technology and devices to reduce damage to the environment such as using energy saving devices in their properties. Business and leisure travelers who are environmentally conscious will be interested in this paper as they will have a better understanding on the technologies adopted by hoteliers that have a positive impact on the environment and at the same time without compromising the service level they deliver and at the same time be able to have a memorable experience during their stay in the hotel

Scenario-based techno-economic analysis of digital homes

Kotitalouksien laitemäärät kasvavat ja kodit muuttuvat vähitellen digitaalisiksi. Uusissa laitteissa on yhä useammin mahdollisuus verkkokäyttöön yhdessä muiden laitteiden kanssa. Laitteiden lukumäärän kasvaessa niiden hallinta ja yhteensovitus kuitenkin monimutkaistuu ja vain harvat suoriutuvat näistä vaativista tehtävistä. Monet joutuvat turvautumaan ulkopuoliseen apuun. Tässä diplomityössä pyritään arvioimaan keskivertokodin kautta Suomen digitaalisten kotien markkinoita sekä tietoliikenneoperaattoreiden roolia näillä markkinoilla. Kirjallisuustutkimuksen ja asiantuntijahaastattelujen perusteella laadittiin arviot laitteiden hankinta- ja ylläpitokustannuksista digitaalisten kotien kasvun arvioimiseksi. Tutkimuksessa käytettiin neljää erilaista jo aiemmin määriteltyä skenaariota kuvaamaan markkinoiden mahdollisia kehityssuuntia; paikallisesti keskittynyt, globaalisti keskittynyt, globaalit spesialistit ja paikalliset huoltomiehet sekä tee-se-itse-skenaario. Tutkimuksen tulokset viittaavat siihen, että mullistavaa yhtäkkistä muutosta kulutustavoissa ja sitä kautta digitaalisten kotien markkinoiden kasvussa ei ole odotettavissa seuraavan viiden vuoden aikana. Digitaalisiin laitteisiin ja palveluihin käytettävä raha puolestaan kuitenkin kasvaa, kun perinteiset hyödykkeet digitalisoituvat. Digitaalisten kotien markkinat jatkavat kasvuaan ja ne tulevat todennäköisesti olemaan kombinaatio kahdesta tai useammasta tässä työssä käytetystä skenaariosta. Tutkimuksen aikana löytyi myös puutteita käytetyistä skenaarioista, jotka piti ottaa huomioon tässä työssä.Households are slowly turning into digital homes as consumers are filling up their homes with a vast number of digital devices. As the number of devices grows, management of the devices and their interoperability is becoming increasingly complex so that only tech enthusiasts are able to handle the task. For many, the installation and maintenance of the devices is often too difficult to take care of by themselves and outside help is required. By assessing an average Finnish household, this thesis aims to evaluate the digital home market of Finland and the possible roles of telecom operators in the market. The costs of purchasing and maintaining the devices were estimated to predict the possible growth of the market based on literature analysis and expert interviews. Four predefined scenarios were used for the analysis to depict the potential development paths of digital homes: the locally centralized, the globally centralized, the global specialists and local janitors, and the do-it-yourself-scenario. The results of the study indicate that a sudden change in consumption habits and thus the overall growth of the digital home market is unlikely during the next five years. However, as the amount of money spent on digital homes is expected to increase due to the digitalization of more traditional services, the number of devices in an average household most likely keeps steadily growing and the entire market along with it. The digital home market will most likely be a combination of two or more of the scenarios and their attributes. During the analysis also some deficiencies were found in the scenarios used and had to be taken into consideration in this thesis

Ultra wideband gigabit powerline communication

PhDPowerline Communication (PLC) has long been established for low data rate applications by the electric supply companies. Since 1991, the European CENELEC standard EN 50065 has ruled the use of 3 - 148.5KHz frequency range for narrow band PLC applications. Sim- ilar standard has been established by the IEEE in the US, where a frequency range of 50 - 450KHz is available. The fast growth of Internet since the 1990s accelerated the demands for digital communication services. Furthermore, with the develop- ment of in-home networking, there is a need to establish high speed data links between multiple household devices. This makes PLC sys- tems march rapidly into the high frequency range above 1MHz. Exist- ing broadband PLC system in the 1.6 - 30MHz frequency range only provides data rates smaller than 200Mbps. With the growing demand of multimedia services such as High De nition (HD) video streaming, much faster transmission speed up to Gigabits per second is required and this can be achieved by increasing the operating frequencies. Ultra Wideband (UWB) transmission in free space provides extremely broad bandwidth for short-range, high data rate applications. If UWB signals could be transmitted over the powerline channels in the high frequency range above 30MHz, data rates up to gigabits per second could be achieved. In this thesis, the possibility of implementing ultra wideband trans- mission over the low voltage indoor powerline is investigated. The starting point is to understand the signal propagation characteristics over powerline cables, in the UWB frequency range. Experimental re- sults indicate that the signal degrades at an acceptable rate over the mains cable in a scaled down UWB frequency band (50MHz - 1GHz), which provides a potential operation band for UWB over PLC ap- plications. Key component for the PLC system, a broadband Radio Frequency (RF) coupler is designed and developed, to introduce UWB signals to the transmission channel. With the channel properties and coupling unit, extensive experimental investigations are carried out to analyse the powerline network environment, including channel loss, noise and radiated emission. Furthermore, theoretical channel capac- ity and link budget are derived from measured parameters. It is shown that the indoor powerline is a suitable media for data transmission in the high frequency range from 50 to 550MHz in the home environment. Finally, system level performance is analysed by modelling the Phys- ical Layer (PHY) data transmission. The Multiband-OFDM UWB proposal for IEEE 802.15.3a standard is used to predict the transmis- sion performance under di erent propagation paths and data rates. The research work conducted in this project has proven that UWB over PLC is highly feasible for future in-home applications. With the global promotion of smart grid applications, UWB over PLC will play an important role in providing high speed data transmission over the power networks