Fingerprinting Smart Devices Through Embedded Acoustic Components

The widespread use of smart devices gives rise to both security and privacy concerns. Fingerprinting smart devices can assist in authenticating physical devices, but it can also jeopardize privacy by allowing remote identification without user awareness. We propose a novel fingerprinting approach that uses the microphones and speakers of smart phones to uniquely identify an individual device. During fabrication, subtle imperfections arise in device microphones and speakers which induce anomalies in produced and received sounds. We exploit this observation to fingerprint smart devices through playback and recording of audio samples. We use audio-metric tools to analyze and explore different acoustic features and analyze their ability to successfully fingerprint smart devices. Our experiments show that it is even possible to fingerprint devices that have the same vendor and model; we were able to accurately distinguish over 93% of all recorded audio clips from 15 different units of the same model. Our study identifies the prominent acoustic features capable of fingerprinting devices with high success rate and examines the effect of background noise and other variables on fingerprinting accuracy

Public safety and cognitive radio

This book gives comprehensive and balanced coverage of the principles of cognitive radio communications, cognitive networks, and details of their implementation, including the latest developments in the standards and spectrum policy. Case studies, end-of-chapter questions, and descriptions of various platforms and test beds, together with sample code, give hands-on knowledge of how cognitive radio systems can be implemented in practice. Extensive treatment is given to several standards, including IEEE 802.22 for TV White Spaces and IEEE SCC41

Minimising Impact: How legislation and sustainable design can reduce the environmental cost of a mobile phone

This paper looks at the factors involved in the environmental cost of a mobile phone handset. It initially looks at the development of mobile handsets and the trends in weight, energy consumption, use life and mobile ownership. The environmental impacts of these trends are discussed, as is the issue of refurbishing mobile handsets for resale abroad. The paper then examines the likely effects of forthcoming EU legislation, in particular the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive, the various options available at End of Life for handsets (i.e. recycling, refurbishment for resale and disposal to landfill) and the effects of various sustainable design modifications on the overall environmental cost of the handset. Each factor is evaluated using Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) to compare their effects on the overall impacts of both an older mobile phone design from 1999 and a modern phone (2004). LCA is used to compare the impacts of the older phone with the newer phone, investigate the effects of material substitution for environmental gain, the effects of the forthcoming WEEE directive and the effects of the power consumption targets for chargers outlined in the voluntary Code of Conduct on the Efficiency of External Power Supplies (2000). The environmental impacts of refurbishing mobile phones for resale abroad are also examined. The paper concludes from the LCA results that the greatest impact of EEE over its life cycle is from the energy consumed during the use phase, and that this is the main difference between the environmental impact of newer and older handsets. It also notes that while material substitution for environmental gain is beneficial, increasing energy efficiency has a far greater effect on the overall impact of the handset. Similarly it notes that the gains to be made by the implementation of the WEEE directive (which requires manufacturers to be responsible for the collection and recycling of their products at End of Life (EoL) and to meet recycling for material recovery targets of 65%) are small compared with those made voluntarily by mobile manufacturers in the Code of Conduct on the Efficiency of External Power Supplies (2000). It is also shown that design for recycling can greatly improve the economic incentives for recycling of handsets at EoL. Finally, the paper recommends legislation to enforce the targets voluntarily laid out by the voluntary Code of Conduct on the Efficiency of External Power Supplies (2000) and calls for environmental legislation to take into greater account the effects of mobile handsets over their entire life cycle. On the issue of refurbishing mobile handsets for resale abroad the paper concludes that this has no environmental benefit as the reduced power consumption of newer mobile handsets outweighs the benefits of extending the use life of mobile handsets. It is recommended that refurbished handsets be fitted with modern, energy efficient chargers before they offer any real environmental benefit to the developing world over newer handsets

Trends in hardware architecture for mobile devices

In the last ten years, two main factors have fueled the steady growth in sales of mobile computing and communication devices: a) the reduction of the footprint of the devices themselves, such as cellular handsets and small computers; and b) the success in developing low-power hardware which allows the devices to operate autonomously for hours or even days. In this review, I show that the first generation of mobile devices was DSP centric – that is, its architecture was based in fast processing of digitized signals using low- power, yet numerically powerful DSPs. However, the next generation of mobile devices will be built around DSPs and low power microprocessor cores for general processing applications. Mobile devices will become data-centric. The main challenge for designers of such hybrid architectures is to increase the computational performance of the computing unit, while keeping power constant, or even reducing it. This report shows that low-power mobile hardware architectures design goes hand in hand with advances in compiling techniques. We look at the synergy between hardware and software, and show that a good balance between both can lead to innovative lowpower processor architectures

Watts2Share: Energy-Aware Traffic Consolidation

Energy consumption is becoming the Achilles' heel of the mobile user quality of experience partly due to undisciplined use of the cellular (3G) transmissions by applications. The operator infrastructure is typically configured for peak performance, whereas during periods of underutilisation the handsets pay the price by staying in high energy states even if each application only uses a fraction of the maximum available bandwidth. In this paper we promote a bi-radio scenario where instead of independently using own cellular connections, several users share a single cellular link offered by one member of a coalition (a rotating aggregator). We present Watts2Share, an architecture for energy-aware traffic consolidation whereby group members' data flows transmitted through a second radio (e.g., WiFi) are aggregated by the aggregator and retransmitted through the cellular link. Through careful and repeatable studies we demonstrate that this scheme saves up to 68% of the total transmission energy in handsets compared to a pure 3G scenario. The studies are based on a wide range of real traffic traces and real cellular operator settings, and further illustrate that this scheme reduces the overall energy by reducing the signalling overhead, as well as extending the lifetime of all handsets

Reuse or recycle? Recovery options for end-of-use mobile phones in Spain

The main objective of this paper is to analyze the most important recovery options for end-of-use mobile phones in Spain. We start with a description of the reverse logistics system for mobile phones in Spain. The two main alternatives for this end-of-use e-waste are: reuse and recycling. The study includes the characterization of the different actors involved in the reverse logistics system (collectors, third-party take-back enterprises, sorting facilities, recyclers...) and a description of the most common logistics practices in the sector. We will also analyze the implications of different recovery options for end-of-use mobile phones. Currently the percentage of mobile phones reused is rather larger than those recycled. Special attention has to be paid to the resale channel on secondary markets. We conclude that we need to regulate this second-hand mobile phone market. Finally, we propose an alternative logistic model for improving this closed-loop supply chain: an integrated model for recovering mobile phones (which includes both options) that allows achieving economies of scale

M-health review: joining up healthcare in a wireless world

In recent years, there has been a huge increase in the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) to deliver health and social care. This trend is bound to continue as providers (whether public or private) strive to deliver better care to more people under conditions of severe budgetary constraint

The Revolution of Mobile Phone-Enabled Services for Agricultural Development (m-Agri Services) in Africa: The Challenges for Sustainability

The provision of information through mobile phone-enabled agricultural information services (m-Agri services) has the potential to revolutionise agriculture and significantly improve smallholder farmers’ livelihoods in Africa. Globally, the benefits of m-Agri services include facilitating farmers’ access to financial services and sourcing agricultural information about input use, practices, and market prices. There are very few published literature sources that focus on the potential benefits of m-Agri services in Africa and none of which explore their sustainability. This study, therefore, explores the evolution, provision, and sustainability of these m-Agri services in Africa. An overview of the current landscape of m-Agri services in Africa is provided and this illustrates how varied these services are in design, content, and quality. Key findings from the exploratory literature review reveal that services are highly likely to fail to achieve their intended purpose or be abandoned when implementers ignore the literacy, skills, culture, and demands of the target users. This study recommends that, to enhance the sustainability of m-Agri services, the implementers need to design the services with the users involved, carefully analyse, and understand the target environment, and design for scale and a long-term purpose. While privacy and security of users need to be ensured, the reuse or improvement of existing initiatives should be explored, and projects need to be data-driven and maintained as open source. Thus, the study concludes that policymakers can support the long-term benefit of m-Agri services by ensuring favourable policies for both users and implementers