Enabling distributed Corba access to smart card applications

2001-2002 > Academic research: refereed > Publication in refereed journalVersion of RecordPublishe

Cooperating broadcast and cellular conditional access system for digital television

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.The lack of interoperability between Pay‐TV service providers and a horizontally integrated business transaction model have compromised the competition in the Pay‐TV market. In addition, the lack of interactivity with customers has resulted in high churn rate and improper security measures have contributed into considerable business loss. These issues are the main cause of high operational costs and subscription fees in the Pay‐TV systems. This paper presents a novel end‐to‐end system architecture for Pay‐TV systems cooperating mobile and broadcasting technologies. It provides a cost‐effective, scalable, dynamic and secure access control mechanism supporting converged services and new business opportunities in Pay‐TV systems. It enhances interactivity, security and potentially reduces customer attrition and operational cost. In this platform, service providers can effectively interact with their customers, personalise their services and adopt appropriate security measures. It breaks up the rigid relationship between a viewer and set‐top box as imposed by traditional conditional access systems, thus, a viewer can fully enjoy his entitlements via an arbitrary set‐top box. Having thoroughly considered state‐of‐the‐art technologies currently being used across the world, the thesis highlights novel use cases and presents the full design and implementation aspects of the system. The design section is enriched by providing possible security structures supported thereby. A business collaboration structure is proposed, followed by a reference model for implementing the system. Finally, the security architectures are analysed to propose the best architecture on the basis of security, complexity and set‐top box production cost criteria

The simplicity project: easing the burden of using complex and heterogeneous ICT devices and services

As of today, to exploit the variety of different "services", users need to configure each of their devices by using different procedures and need to explicitly select among heterogeneous access technologies and protocols. In addition to that, users are authenticated and charged by different means. The lack of implicit human computer interaction, context-awareness and standardisation places an enormous burden of complexity on the shoulders of the final users. The IST-Simplicity project aims at leveraging such problems by: i) automatically creating and customizing a user communication space; ii) adapting services to user terminal characteristics and to users preferences; iii) orchestrating network capabilities. The aim of this paper is to present the technical framework of the IST-Simplicity project. This paper is a thorough analysis and qualitative evaluation of the different technologies, standards and works presented in the literature related to the Simplicity system to be developed

An RFID-enabled framework to support Ambient Home Care Services

The growing number of elderly in modern societies is encouraging advances in remote assistive solutions to enable sustainable and safe ‘ageing in place’. Among the many technologies which may serve to support Ambient Home Care Systems, RFID is offering a set of differential features which make it suitable to build new interaction schemes while supporting horizontal system’s features such as localization. This paper details the design of a passive RFID-based AHCS, composed by an infrastructure of mobile and static tags and readers controlled by a SOA (service oriented architecture) middleware. The technology possibilities, its drawbacks and integration problems in this application domain are described from a practical approach

Component based development: A methodology proposal

Enterprise architecture is undergoing considerable change with recent developments in client server technologies and middleware. Each in turn has a significant impact on the way systems are designed, and a more component-based approach to development is beginning to emerge. While we now have the Unified Modelling Language as universal notation for design modelling, there is currently no consistent standard for the definition of components. A pragmatic architecture for application development is needed that delivers business benefit without the need for significant investment in tools and training. It should minimise risk and maximise return on investment by leveraging investment in legacy systems, and provide the means to more closely relate business requirements to each phase of the development process. This paper suggests that a better way of controlling technology is by adopting a service based approach to design and development, concentrating on pragmatic techniques and models that add value through reuse within a sound architectural framework. Given a set of business requirements, the focus is on business oriented component modelling techniques (e.g. process models, use cases, service allocation), and the delivery of a complete component design specification (e.g service definitions, service package architecture). Unusually, this does not involve the definition of a domain class model, but rather a definition of implementation independent, and therefore reusable, services (or contracts) that component packages will deliver. The component package is regarded as a ‘black box’ from which components will be designed and built by specialists in the technology of the component domain. This approach also provides the means for legacy and packaged applications to be reused in the same way. The methodology was evaluated by a peer group of six senior IT professionals from the insurance and IT services sectors, who together represent over 110 years of industry experience. The methodology was presented in the form of a case study and questionnaire, and from the feedback it was concluded that there was merit in the approach. Reservations over how it would scale to larger systems have been addressed by the agreed need for a suitable repository for the documentation of data and business rules, and the need to separate the definition of technical non-functional requirements

Managing large amounts of data generated by a Smart City internet of things deployment

The Smart City concept is being developed from a lot of different axes encompassing multiple areas of social and technical sciences. However, something that is common to all these approaches is the central role that the capacity of sharing information has. Hence, Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are seen as key enablers for the transformation of urban regions into Smart Cities. Two of these technologies, namely Internet of Things and Big Data, have a predominant position among them. The capacity to "sense the city" and access all this information and provide added-value services based on knowledge derived from it are critical to achieving the Smart City vision. This paper reports on the specification and implementation of a software platform enabling the management and exposure of the large amount of information that is continuously generated by the IoT deployment in the city of Santander.This work has been partially funded by the research project SmartSantander, under FP7- ICT-2009-5 of the 7th Framework Programme of the European Community. The authors would also like to express their gratitude to the Spanish government for the funding in the following project: "Connectivity as a Service: Access for the Internet of the Future", COSAIF (TEC2012-38574-C02-01)

Smart Tagging System for Diving Equipment

The use of Near Field Communication (NFC) has revolutionized many industries through digitalization. This process of digital immersion has been further accelerated through the mainstream availability of NFC-enabled devices and the substantial decline in the cost of NFC smart tags. The purpose of this thesis was to design and implement an end-to-end, smart tagging solution for diving equipment. The project involved an Android application, an AngularJS web application and the backend was developed using Amazon Web Services (AWS). A server-less architecture using AWS micro services was employed in the project. The Android application is used to register NFC tags by writing and reading data from NFC tags and communicating with the backend through a RESTful API. The AngularJS application provides access to the corresponding data. In addition, user authentication is achieved by using Google as an Identity Provider (IdP). This document provides an overview of the steps necessary to implement and integrate applications running on different platforms with AWS services, in a cost-effective and scalable manner. Even though this document addresses topics relevant to a specific project, most of the implementation and design instructions can be used to serve other use-cases, particularly by startups. Since the project involves applications developed on different platforms, only the most important aspects of the process are presented throughout this document.Lyhyen kantaman tiedonsiirron (NFC:n) käyttö on mullistanut monia teollisuuden aloja digitalisoinnin kautta. Näiden digitaalisen upotuksien prosessi on kiihtynyt entisestään, NFC yhteensopivien laitteiden ja saatavuuden noustessa. Prosessi myös supistaa toimintotunnisteiden kustannuksia merkittävästi. Tämän opinnäytetyön tarkoituksena on suunnitella ja toteuttaa päästä päähän toimintotunnisteratkaisu ajovarusteisiin. Projektiin sisältyy Android sovellus, An-gularJS web sovellus ja back end on kehitetty käyttäen Amazon Web Serviceä (AWS). AWS micro palveluja käytetään projektissa palvelimettoman arkkiteh-tuurin avulla. Android sovellusta käytetään NFC-tunnisteien rekisteröimiseen dataa kirjoitta-malla ja lukemalla niitä NFC-tunnisteesta sekä kommunikoimalla back endiin RESTfulAPI:n kautta. AngularJS sovellus tarjoaa pääsyn vastaavaan tietoon. Lisäksi käyttäjän todennus saavutetaan käyttämällä Googlen Identity Provideria (idP). Tässä dokumentissa on yleiskatsaus tarvittavista toimenpiteistä, joilla toteutus ja integrointi pystytään tekemään, eri alustoilla käynnissä olevilla prosesseilla AWS palveluissa.kustannustehokkaasti ja mitattavissa olevilla tasoilla. Vaikka tässä asi-akirjassa käsitellään tiettyyn projektiin liittyviä aiheita, useimpia toteutus- ja suun-nitteluohjeita voidaan myös soveltaa muihin käyttötarkoituksiin, erityisesti startup ideoille. Koska projekti sisältää sovelluksia, jotka on kehitetty eri alustoille, ainoastaan tärkeimmät prosessin näkökohdat on esitetty dokumentissa