A new model to support the personalised management of a quality e-commerce service

The paper presents an aiding model to support the management of a high quality e-commerce service. The approach focuses on the service quality aspects related to customer relationship management (CRM). Knowing the individual characteristics of a customer, it is possible to supply a personalised and high quality service. A segmentation model, based on the "relationship evolution" between users and Web site, is developed. The method permits the provision of a specific service management for each user segment. Finally, some preliminary experimental results for a sport-clothing industry application are described

Social issues of power harvesting as key enables of WSN in pervasive computing

Pervasive systems have gained popularity and open the door to new applications that will improve the quality of life of the users. Additionally, the implementation of such systems over an infrastructure of Wireless Sensor Networks has been proven to be very powerful. To deal with the WSN problems related to the battery of the elements or nodes that constitute the WSN, Power Harvesting techniques arise as good candidates. With PH each node can extract the energy from the surrounding environment. However, this energy source could not be constant, affecting the continuity and quality of the services provided. This behavior can have a negative impact on the user's perception about the system, which could be perceived as unreliable or faulty. In the current paper, some related works regarding pervasive systems within the home environment are referenced to extrapolate the conclusions and problems to the paradigm of Power Harvesting Pervasive Systems from the user perspective. Besides, the paper speculates about the approach and methods to overcome these potential problems and presents the design trends that could be followed.<br/

A model to assess customer alignment through customer experience concepts

Business and Information Technology Alignment (BITA) has been one of the main concerns of IT and Business executives and directors due to its importance to overall company performance, especially today in the age of digital transformation. For BITA has been developed several models which in general has focused in the implementation of alignment strategies for the internal operation of the organizations and in the measurement of this internal alignment, but, there is still a big gap in measurement models of the alignment with the external environment of the organizations. In this paper is presented the design and application of a maturity measurement model for BITA with the customers, where the customers are actors of the external environment of the companies. The proposed model involves evaluation criteria and business practices which the companies ideally do for improve the relationship with their customers.Comment: 12 pages, Preprint version, BIS 2019 International Workshops, Seville, Spain, June 26 to 28, 2019, Revised Paper

A Review of Wireless Body Area Networks for Medical Applications

Recent advances in Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) technology, integrated circuits, and wireless communication have allowed the realization of Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs). WBANs promise unobtrusive ambulatory health monitoring for a long period of time and provide real-time updates of the patient's status to the physician. They are widely used for ubiquitous healthcare, entertainment, and military applications. This paper reviews the key aspects of WBANs for numerous applications. We present a WBAN infrastructure that provides solutions to on-demand, emergency, and normal traffic. We further discuss in-body antenna design and low-power MAC protocol for WBAN. In addition, we briefly outline some of the WBAN applications with examples. Our discussion realizes a need for new power-efficient solutions towards in-body and on-body sensor networks.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figures, and 3 tables. In V3, the manuscript is converted to LaTe

A mixed-signal integrated circuit for FM-DCSK modulation

This paper presents a mixed-signal application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) for a frequency-modulated differential chaos shift keying (FM-DCSK) communication system. The chip is conceived to serve as an experimental platform for the evaluation of the FM-DCSK modulation scheme, and includes several programming features toward this goal. The operation of the ASIC is herein illustrated for a data rate of 500 kb/s and a transmission bandwidth in the range of 17 MHz. Using signals acquired from the test platform, bit error rate (BER) estimations of the overall FM-DCSK communication link have been obtained assuming wireless transmission at the 2.4-GHz ISM band. Under all tested propagation conditions, including multipath effects, the system obtains a BER = 10-3 for Eb/No lower than 28 dB.Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología TIC2003-0235

Improving Design of Micro-business Systems via VSM and Constituent Orientation Analysis

This paper describes recent design research into prototypical ‘classes’ of designs for operational business systems for micro-businesses of 1-10 employees typical of traditional craft and contemporary information economies. Business process design is an increasingly important and relatively new sub-field of design and design research. Its increasing importance is driven by three factors made more potent by information technology: increasing ability for very small business units to contribute to local and national economies; potential for increased efficiency of micro-businesses via reduction in Coasian transaction costs; increasingly competitive business environments leading to pressure on micro-businesses to deeply cut costs; and increased potential for improved design of micro-business processes to create significant benefits for the micro-businesses themselves and to local and national economies. The analyses used in this paper combine Tellefsen's perspective on constituent orientation with Beerian Viable System analysis and Cashflow Quadrant analysis (Beer, 1972, 1988, 1989, 1995; Kiyosaki & Lechter, 2007; Tellefsen, 1995, 1999, 2001; Tellefsen & Love, 2003). These analyses are used to identify promising foci of design effort particularly with the intention of automating and systematizing business activities. The paper first describes the importance of developing improved guidelines for design of organisational structures and business processes in the micro-business arena. It then outlines the structural, humanistic, financial, business management and computerized automation considerations that need to be addressed. Design issues are illustrated via mini case studies of three characteristic micro-businesses in the areas of publishing, plumbing, and rental investment. The paper shows how improvements to the design of business processes can be viewed through how four constituent orientations: • Self employed • Business managers • Business owners • Investors The paper concludes by integrating the outcomes of the above analyses into a preliminary checklist for the design of effective and efficient automated and systematized business processes for micro-businesses and small business enterprises. Keywords: Business Process Design, Micro-Business, Viable Systems, Constituent Orientation, Cashflow Quadrant Analysis.</p

Man-machine interface issues in space telerobotics: A JPL research and development program

Technology issues related to the use of robots as man-extension or telerobot systems in space are discussed and exemplified. General considerations are presentd on control and information problems in space teleoperation and on the characteristics of Earth orbital teleoperation. The JPL R and D work in the area of man-machine interface devices and techniques for sensing and computer-based control is briefly summarized. The thrust of this R and D effort is to render space teleoperation efficient and safe through the use of devices and techniques which will permit integrated and task-level (intelligent) two-way control communication between human operator and telerobot machine in Earth orbit. Specific control and information display devices and techniques are discussed and exemplified with development results obtained at JPL in recent years