Non-Cooperative Association Of Mobiles To Access Points Revisited

Game TheoryInternational audienceWe consider in this paper games related to the association problem of mobiles to an access point. It consists of deciding to which access point to connect. We consider the choice between two access points or more, where the access decisions may depend on the number of mobiles connected to each one of the access points. We obtain new results using elementary tools in congestion and crowding games

Collaborative trails in e-learning environments

This deliverable focuses on collaboration within groups of learners, and hence collaborative trails. We begin by reviewing the theoretical background to collaborative learning and looking at the kinds of support that computers can give to groups of learners working collaboratively, and then look more deeply at some of the issues in designing environments to support collaborative learning trails and at tools and techniques, including collaborative filtering, that can be used for analysing collaborative trails. We then review the state-of-the-art in supporting collaborative learning in three different areas – experimental academic systems, systems using mobile technology (which are also generally academic), and commercially available systems. The final part of the deliverable presents three scenarios that show where technology that supports groups working collaboratively and producing collaborative trails may be heading in the near future

Radio Communications

In the last decades the restless evolution of information and communication technologies (ICT) brought to a deep transformation of our habits. The growth of the Internet and the advances in hardware and software implementations modified our way to communicate and to share information. In this book, an overview of the major issues faced today by researchers in the field of radio communications is given through 35 high quality chapters written by specialists working in universities and research centers all over the world. Various aspects will be deeply discussed: channel modeling, beamforming, multiple antennas, cooperative networks, opportunistic scheduling, advanced admission control, handover management, systems performance assessment, routing issues in mobility conditions, localization, web security. Advanced techniques for the radio resource management will be discussed both in single and multiple radio technologies; either in infrastructure, mesh or ad hoc networks

A survey on pseudonym changing strategies for Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks

The initial phase of the deployment of Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks (VANETs) has begun and many research challenges still need to be addressed. Location privacy continues to be in the top of these challenges. Indeed, both of academia and industry agreed to apply the pseudonym changing approach as a solution to protect the location privacy of VANETs'users. However, due to the pseudonyms linking attack, a simple changing of pseudonym shown to be inefficient to provide the required protection. For this reason, many pseudonym changing strategies have been suggested to provide an effective pseudonym changing. Unfortunately, the development of an effective pseudonym changing strategy for VANETs is still an open issue. In this paper, we present a comprehensive survey and classification of pseudonym changing strategies. We then discuss and compare them with respect to some relevant criteria. Finally, we highlight some current researches, and open issues and give some future directions

Augmenting the field experience: a student-led comparison of techniques and technologies

In this study we report on our experiences of creating and running a student fieldtrip exercise which allowed students to compare a range of approaches to the design of technologies for augmenting landscape scenes. The main study site is around Keswick in the English Lake District, Cumbria, UK, an attractive upland environment popular with tourists and walkers. The aim of the exercise for the students was to assess the effectiveness of various forms of geographic information in augmenting real landscape scenes, as mediated through a range of techniques and technologies. These techniques were: computer-generated acetate overlays showing annotated wireframe views from certain key points; a custom-designed application running on a PDA; a mediascape running on the mScape software on a GPS-enabled mobile phone; Google Earth on a tablet PC; and a head-mounted in-field Virtual Reality system. Each group of students had all five techniques available to them, and were tasked with comparing them in the context of creating a visitor guide to the area centred on the field centre. Here we summarise their findings and reflect upon some of the broader research questions emerging from the project

Introduction to location-based mobile learning

[About the book] The report follows on from a 2-day workshop funded by the STELLAR Network of Excellence as part of their 2009 Alpine Rendez-Vous workshop series and is edited by Elizabeth Brown with a foreword from Mike Sharples. Contributors have provided examples of innovative and exciting research projects and practical applications for mobile learning in a location-sensitive setting, including the sharing of good practice and the key findings that have resulted from this work. There is also a debate about whether location-based and contextual learning results in shallower learning strategies and a section detailing the future challenges for location-based learning

The effects of utilizing smartphone in enhancing students' English writing skills in Pakistan

Though mobile learning offers myriad language learning opportunities to digitally smart learners, yet Pakistani lecturers are still utilizing conventional pedagogical methods to teach English writing skills. The objective of this 8-week study was to investigate the effects of smartphone in enhancing students’ English writing skills in Pakistan. To conduct this mixed method study, purposive sampling was employed to choose 45 intermediate students as participants. The pre-test/post-test, questionnaire on motivation and semi-structured interviews were used for data collection. In addition, the study investigated the views of the one lecturer and four students regarding the effects of utilizing smartphone as a teaching and learning tool. The quantitative data was analyzed by applying Paired-samples t-test employing SPSS (Windows version 24.0). However, the qualitative data was analyzed and interpreted holistically based on the emerging themes. The key findings from the Paired-samples t-test indicated that the students significantly scored higher (after intervention utilizing smartphones) on their overall mean scores not only for the descriptive essay and its eight components but also for motivation. Similarly, the qualitative findings revealed that smartphone played an effective role that motivated the students to enhance their writing skills by engaging them in a fun learning and student-centered environment. Based on the findings, it is recommended that future studies should use smartphones to address other genres of writing with female samples from other provinces of Pakistan. Moreover, the findings support the theories such as multimedia, mobile learning, cooperative learning, process approach and theory of motivation. Besides, the curriculum designers should promote the utilization of smartphones to address issues in writing skills

An automated model for the assessment of QoE of adaptive video streaming over wireless networks

[EN] Nowadays, heterogeneous devices are widely utilizing Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) to transfer the data. Furthermore, HTTP adaptive video streaming (HAS) technology transmits the video data over wired and wireless networks. In adaptive technology services, a client's application receives a streaming video through the adaptation of its quality to the network condition. However, such a technology has increased the demand for Quality of Experience (QoE) in terms of prediction and assessment. It can also cause a challenging behavior regarding subjective and objective QoE evaluations of HTTP adaptive video over time since each Quality of Service (QoS) parameter affects the QoE of end-users separately. This paper introduces a methodology design for the evaluation of subjective QoE in adaptive video streaming over wireless networks. Besides, some parameters are considered such as video characteristics, segment length, initial delay, switch strategy, stalls, as well as QoS parameters. The experiment's evaluation demonstrated that objective metrics can be mapped to the most significant subjective parameters for user's experience. The automated model could function to demonstrate the importance of correlation for network behaviors' parameters. Consequently, it directly influences the satisfaction of the end-user's perceptual quality. In comparison with other recent related works, the model provided a positive Pearson Correlation value. Simulated results give a better performance between objective Structural Similarity (SSIM) and subjective Mean Opinion Score (MOS) evaluation metrics for all video test samples.This work has been partially supported by the "Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad" in the "Programa Estatal de Fomento de la Investigacion Cientifica y Tecnica de Excelencia, Subprograma Estatal de Generacion de Conocimiento" within the Project under Grant TIN2017-84802-C2-1-P. This study has been partially done in the computer science departments at the (University of Sulaimani and Halabja).Taha, M.; Ali, A.; Lloret, J.; Gondim, PRL.; Canovas, A. (2021). An automated model for the assessment of QoE of adaptive video streaming over wireless networks. Multimedia Tools and Applications. 80(17):26833-26854. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-021-10934-92683326854801