10 research outputs found

    Design of a Controlled Language for Critical Infrastructures Protection

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    We describe a project for the construction of controlled language for critical infrastructures protection (CIP). This project originates from the need to coordinate and categorize the communications on CIP at the European level. These communications can be physically represented by official documents, reports on incidents, informal communications and plain e-mail. We explore the application of traditional library science tools for the construction of controlled languages in order to achieve our goal. Our starting point is an analogous work done during the sixties in the field of nuclear science known as the Euratom Thesaurus.JRC.G.6-Security technology assessmen

    A methodology for maintaining trust in virtual environments

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    The increasing interest in carrying out business in virtual environments has resulted in much research and discussion of trust establishment between the entities involved. Researchers over the years have acknowledged that the success of any transaction or interaction via the virtual medium is determined by the trust level between trusting agent and trusted agent. Numerous publications have attempted to address the various challenges of assigning a trust level and building trust in an interacting party. However, the building and allocating a value of trust is neither easy nor quick. It involves high cost and effort. Hence, the ensuing research challenge is how to maintain the trust that has been established and assigned. Due to the dynamic nature of trust, the trust evolution, and the fragility of trust in virtual environments, one of the most pressing challenges facing the research community is how trust can be maintained over time. This thesis is an effort in that direction. Specifically, the objective of this thesis is to propose a methodology for trust maintenance in virtual environments which we term “Trust Maintenance Methodology” (TMM). The methodology comprises five frameworks that can be used to achieve the objective of trust maintenance.In order to achieve the aforesaid objective, this thesis proposes a: (a) Framework for third party agent selection, (b) Framework for Formalization and Negotiation of service requirements, (c) Framework for Proactive Continuous Performance Monitoring, (d) Framework for Incentive Mechanism, and (e) Framework for Trust Re-calibration.The framework for third party agent selection is used for choosing and selecting a neutral agent who will supervise the interaction between two parties. This is the first step of our methodology. The neutral agent is involved throughout the course of the interaction between two parties and takes a proactive-corrective role in continuous performance monitoring. Once both parties have chosen a neutral agent, they carry out a formalization and negotiation process of their service requirements using our proposed framework. This is in order to create an SLA which will guide the interaction between two parties. The framework for proactive continuous performance monitoring then can be used to evaluate the performance of both parties in delivering their service based on the SLA. If a performance gap occurs during the course of transaction, the third party agent will take action to help both parties close the performance gap in a timely manner. A key salient feature of our continuous performance monitoring is that it is proactive-corrective. Additionally, we design a framework for providing an incentive during the course of interaction to motivate both parties to perform as closely as possible to the terms of the mutual agreement or SLA. By the end of the interaction time space, both parties will be able to re-assess or re-calibrate their trust level using our proposed framework for trust re-calibration.Finally, in order to validate our proposed methodology, we engineered a multi-agent system to simulate the validity of the TMM. Numerous case studies are presented to elucidate the workings of our proposed methodology. Moreover, we run several experiments under various testing conditions including boundary conditions. The results of experiments show that our methodology is effective in assisting the parties to maintain their trust level in virtual environments

    Contribution to the optimization of 4G mobile communications by means of advanced carrier aggregation strategies

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    Mobile broadband subscriptions and data traffic have increasingly grown in the past years with the deployment of the 3G and 4G technologies and the massive use of mobile devices. In this sense, LTE-A has been presented as the next step in wireless communications where higher data rates are targeted and fully packet switched services are held. The ultimate goal of 4G and the forthcoming 5G technology is to increase the Quality of Experience (QoE) of users. In this context, several challenges open up to face the increased bandwidth demands in both uplink (UL) and downlink (DL). To this end, LTE-A has proposed the use of Carrier Aggregation (CA) which allows the simultaneous data transmission in separate fragments of spectrum. The improvements brought by CA in the DL can be almost straightforward appreciable, since the evolved Node B (eNB) is in charge of transmissions, and power availability is not typically an issue. Conversely, the UL presents many open challenges to introduce aggregated transmissions, since it relies on the user terminal for transmission procedures. Lower transmission power and increased interference variability turn the UL more complex than the DL. For this reason, this Ph.D. thesis provides a contribution to the field of CA for UL mobile systems. The novelties here presented address the main limitations the UL encounters when introducing CA; new methods and strategies are proposed with the final aim of enhancing the UL communications with the use of increased bandwidth transmissions, and reducing the unbalanced data rate between the UL and DL. Throughout an exhaustive literature review, the main research opportunities to successfully implement CA in the UL were identified. In particular, three main blocks can be recognized. First, the need for introducing intelligent Radio Resource Management procedures that provide the user with increased QoE, specially in the cell edge, where users are more likely to be power limited, and CA is typically discarded. Consequently, the first part of this dissertation places emphasis on topics related to scheduling and the power limitations to face the increased bandwidth. In this sense, mechanisms that tackle the throughput improvement are proposed and scheduling schemes that specifically assess the gain or deterioration of CA are designed. Indeed, these strategies strongly rely on an accurate Channel State Information (CSI); it is of utmost importance to possess precise CSI to effectively support these assessments. In this line, the second part deals with the imperfect CSI where the efficient use of reference signals provides a high value. Channel prediction techniques have been proposed with the use of the splines method. However, the increased variability of interferences and the high delay in measurements still impairs the CSI accuracy. In this manner, interference management methods are introduced to support the CSI acquisition process. Finally, since CA constitutes the most transverse topic of the new features added to the 4G standard, the last block of research focuses on the opportunities that emerge with the use of CA in the context of heterogeneous networks, and new system designs are addressed. It is proposed to use dual connectivity in the form of decoupled uplink and downlink connections in a CA context, where aggregated carriers may have different coverage footprints. An analysis of two different cell association cases that arise has been driven. Stochastic geometry is used to study the system analytically, propagation conditions in the different tiers and frequencies are considered and the different association cases are compared to a classical downlink received power association rule. Conclusions show that decoupling the uplink provides the system with outstanding gains, however, being connected to the cell that receives the highest received power may not always be profitable, since issues like interferences or load conditions shall be also considered.El número de usuarios móviles y el tráfico de datos generado han aumentado en los últimos años con el despliegue de redes 3G y 4G y el uso masivo de dispositivos móviles. De este modo, LTE-A surge como el siguiente escalón de las comunicaciones móviles, dónde se apunta a mayores velocidades de transmisión y los servicios se basan en la conmutación de paquetes. El objetivo principal de las redes 4G y de la inminente red 5G es mejorar la experiencia del usuario. En este contexto, se presentan nuevos retos para hacer frente a las demandas de incrementar el ancho de banda en ambos enlaces: ascendente (UL) y descendente (DL). Por ello, LTE-A propone el uso de portadoras agregadas (Carrier Aggregation (CA)), tecnología que permite la transmisión simultánea en dos fragmentos del espectro. Las mejoras que aporta CA en el DL son casi inmediatas dado que las transmisiones corren a cargo de la base, la cual no sufre la falta de potencia. Al contrario, el UL presenta más retos para introducir CA, ya que es el terminal quién se encarga de la transmisión. La baja disponibilidad de potencia y la alta variabilidad de la interferencia lo convierten en un entorno mucho más complejo. Por ello, esta disertación presenta una contribución al campo de CA en el UL de comunicaciones móviles. Las novedades presentadas tratan las principales limitaciones para incorporar CA; se proponen nuevos métodos y estrategias con el objetivo de mejorar las comunicaciones en el UL mediante el uso de CA; todo ello, para reducir el desajuste que existe entre la velocidad de transmisión del UL y DL. Mediante una extensa revisión de la literatura, se han detectado las principales líneas de investigación y potenciales mejoras para incorporar CA exitosamente. Se han identificado tres grandes bloques de investigación. Primero, la necesidad de introducir estrategias de gestión de recursos inteligentes, que proporcionen al usuario una mejora de la experiencia, especialmente en el límite de la celda. Es allí donde los usuarios tienen una mayor probabilidad de estar limitados en potencia, razón por la que se les aparta de CA. Consecuentemente, la primera parte de esta tesis pone énfasis en la asignación de recursos y las limitaciones en potencia por parte del usuario para hacer frente a un incremento del ancho de banda. Se proponen mecanismos que mejoran la velocidad de transmisión evaluando las ganancias o pérdidas de incorporar CA a la transmisión. Para apoyar el funcionamiento de estas estrategias de asignación, y asegurar su máximo rendimiento, es necesario un método que proporcione un conocimiento preciso y fidedigno del estado del canal (Channel State Information (CSI)). De este modo, la segunda parte de la investigación lidia con el CSI, donde el uso eficiente de las señales de referencia es de gran importancia. Se proponen técnicas de predicción de señal mediante el uso de Splines; sin embargo, la alta variabilidad de las interferencias y el gran retardo entre dos muestras de CSI perjudican la precisión. Por ello, se introducen métodos de gestión de interferencias que apoyan el proceso de adquisición del CSI. Finalmente, dado que CA es una de las funciones más transversales de las introducidas por el estándar 4G, la última parte de investigación se centra en las oportunidades que surgen con su uso en las redes heterogéneas. Se propone el uso de la conectividad dual, desacoplando el UL del DL junto con CA, donde el área de cobertura de las portadoras puede ser diferente. Se analizan dos escenarios de asociación posibles. Con el uso de geometría estocástica se estudia analíticamente el sistema, considerando diferentes condiciones de propagación en los distintos tipos de celda y frecuencias; los escenarios de asociación se comparan a uno tradicional, en el cual los usuarios se asocian en función de la potencia recibida de las bases. Las conclusiones destacan que el desacoplo aporta mejoras en el UL. Sin embargo, temas como interferencias o carga deben también considera

    An evaluation of the challenges of Multilingualism in Data Warehouse development

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    In this paper we discuss Business Intelligence and define what is meant by support for Multilingualism in a Business Intelligence reporting context. We identify support for Multilingualism as a challenging issue which has implications for data warehouse design and reporting performance. Data warehouses are a core component of most Business Intelligence systems and the star schema is the approach most widely used to develop data warehouses and dimensional Data Marts. We discuss the way in which Multilingualism can be supported in the Star Schema and identify that current approaches have serious limitations which include data redundancy and data manipulation, performance and maintenance issues. We propose a new approach to enable the optimal application of multilingualism in Business Intelligence. The proposed approach was found to produce satisfactory results when used in a proof-of-concept environment. Future work will include testing the approach in an enterprise environmen

    Abstracts on Radio Direction Finding (1899 - 1995)

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    The files on this record represent the various databases that originally composed the CD-ROM issue of "Abstracts on Radio Direction Finding" database, which is now part of the Dudley Knox Library's Abstracts and Selected Full Text Documents on Radio Direction Finding (1899 - 1995) Collection. (See Calhoun record https://calhoun.nps.edu/handle/10945/57364 for further information on this collection and the bibliography). Due to issues of technological obsolescence preventing current and future audiences from accessing the bibliography, DKL exported and converted into the three files on this record the various databases contained in the CD-ROM. The contents of these files are: 1) RDFA_CompleteBibliography_xls.zip [RDFA_CompleteBibliography.xls: Metadata for the complete bibliography, in Excel 97-2003 Workbook format; RDFA_Glossary.xls: Glossary of terms, in Excel 97-2003 Workbookformat; RDFA_Biographies.xls: Biographies of leading figures, in Excel 97-2003 Workbook format]; 2) RDFA_CompleteBibliography_csv.zip [RDFA_CompleteBibliography.TXT: Metadata for the complete bibliography, in CSV format; RDFA_Glossary.TXT: Glossary of terms, in CSV format; RDFA_Biographies.TXT: Biographies of leading figures, in CSV format]; 3) RDFA_CompleteBibliography.pdf: A human readable display of the bibliographic data, as a means of double-checking any possible deviations due to conversion

    WICC 2016 : XVIII Workshop de Investigadores en Ciencias de la Computación

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    Actas del XVIII Workshop de Investigadores en Ciencias de la Computación (WICC 2016), realizado en la Universidad Nacional de Entre Ríos, el 14 y 15 de abril de 2016.Red de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI
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