Satellite-enabled educational services specification and requirements analysis based on user feedback

Advanced tele-education services provision in remote geographically dispersed user communities (such as agriculture and maritime), based on the specific needs and requirements of such communities, implies significant infrastructural and broadband connectivity requirements for rich media, timely and quality-assured content delivery and interactivity. The solution to broadband access anywhere is provided by satellite-enabled communication infrastructures. This paper aims to present such satellite-based infrastructures that are capable of addressing the core requirements of rich media educational services in remote areas. The paper proceeds to examine a set of services that will realise such satellite-based distance learning systems and to assess the targeted users’ interest in such services. The presented work is undertaken within the framework of the EU-funded Broadband Access Satellite Enabled Education (BASE2) project. Furthermore, requirements analysis, based on the Volere template (Robertson) and on user feedback, is undertaken

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 technological growth in eHealth services

The infusion of information communication technology (ICT) into health services is emerging as an active area of research. It has several advantages but perhaps the most important one is providing medical benefits to one and all irrespective of geographic boundaries in a cost effective manner, providing global expertise and holistic services, in a time bound manner. This paper provides a systematic review of technological growth in eHealth services. The present study reviews and analyzes the role of four important technologies, namely, satellite, internet, mobile, and cloud for providing health services.Web of Scienceart. no. 89417

Opportunities And Challenges of E-Health and Telemedicine Via Satelite

The introduction of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in the health scenario is instrumental for the development of sustainable services of direct benefit for the European citizen. The setting up of satellite based applications will enhance rapidly the decentralisation and the enrichment of the European territory driving it towards a homogenous environment for healthcare

Electronic devices and systems for monitoring of diabetes and cardiovascular diseases

Diabetes is a serious chronic disease which causes a high rate of morbidity and mortality all over the world. In 2007, more than 246 million people suffered from diabetes worldwide and unfortunately the incidence of diabetes is increasing at alarming rates. The number of people with diabetes is expected to double within the next 25 years due to a combination of population ageing, unhealthy diets, obesity and sedentary lifestyles. It can lead to blindness, heart disease, stroke, kidney failure, amputations and nerve damage. In women, diabetes can cause problems during pregnancy and make it more likely for the baby to be born with birth defects. Moreover, statistical analysis shows that 75% of diabetic patients die prematurely of cardiovascular disease (CVD). The absolute risk of cardiovascular disease in patients with type 1 (insulin-dependent) diabetes is lower than that in patients with type 2 (non-insulin-dependent) diabetes, in part because of their younger age and the lower prevalence of CVD risk factors, and in part because of the different pathophysiology of the two diseases. Unfortunately, about 9 out of 10 people with diabetes have type 2 diabetes. For these reasons, cardiopathes and diabetic patients need to be frequently monitored and in some cases they could easily perform at home the requested physiological measurements (i.e. glycemia, heart rate, blood pressure, body weight, and so on) sending the measured data to the care staff in the hospital. Several researches have been presented over the last years to address these issues by means of digital communication systems. The largest part of such works uses a PC or complex hardware/software systems for this purpose. Beyond the cost of such systems, it should be noted that they can be quite accessible by relatively young people but the same does not hold for elderly patients more accustomed to traditional equipments for personal entertainment such as TV sets. Wearable devices can permit continuous cardiovascular monitoring both in clinical settings and at home. Benefits may be realized in the diagnosis and treatment of a number of major 15 diseases. In conjunction with appropriate alarm algorithms, they can increase surveillance capabilities for CVD catastrophe for high-risk subjects. Moreover, they could play an important role in the wireless surveillance of people during hazardous operations (military, fire-fighting, etc.) or during sport activities. For patients with chronic cardiovascular disease, such as heart failure, home monitoring employing wearable device and tele-home care systems may detect exacerbations in very early stages or at dangerous levels that necessitate an emergency room visit and an immediate hospital admission. Taking into account mains principles for the design of good wearable devices and friendly tele-home care systems, such as safety, compactness, motion and other disturbance rejection, data storage and transmission, low power consumption, no direct doctor supervision, it is imperative that these systems are easy to use and comfortable to wear for long periods of time. The aim of this work is to develop an easy to use tele-home care system for diabetes and cardiovascular monitoring, well exploitable even by elderly people, which are the main target of a telemedicine system, and wearable devices for long term measuring of some parameters related to sleep apnoea, heart attack, atrial fibrillation and deep vein thrombosis. Since set-top boxes for Digital Video Broadcast Terrestrial (DVB-T) are in simple computers with their Operating System, a Java Virtual Machine, a modem for the uplink connection and a set of standard ports for the interfacing with external devices, elderly, diabetics and cardiopathes could easily send their self-made exam to the care staff placed elsewhere. The wearable devices developed are based on the well known photopletysmographic method which uses a led source/detector pair applied on the skin in order to obtain a biomedical signal related to the volume and percentage of oxygen in blood. Such devices investigate the possibility to obtain more information to those usually obtained by this technique (heart rate and percentage of oxygen saturation) in order to discover new algorithms for the continuous and remote or in ambulatory monitoring and screening of sleep apnoea, heart attack, atrial fibrillation and deep vein thrombosis

Advanced signal processing techniques for WiFi-based Passive Radar for short-range surveillance

In this work, advanced signal processing techniques for a Passive Radar (PR) based on WiFi transmissions are considered. The possibility to exploit such a ubiquitous and accessible source is shown to be an appropriate choice for the detection, localization and imaging of vehicles, people and aircrafts within short ranges in both outdoor and indoor environments

Impacto das comunicações M2M em redes celulares de telecomunicações

Mestrado em Engenharia Electrónica e de TelecomunicaçõesAs comunicações Máquina-Máquina (M2M) apresentam um crescimento muito significativo e algumas projeções apontam para que esta tendência se acentue drasticamente ao longo dos próximos anos. O tráfego gerado por este tipo de comunicações tem caraterísticas muito diferentes do tráfego de dados, ou voz, que atualmente circula nas redes celulares de telecomunicações. Assim, é fundamental estudar as caraterísticas dos tipos de tráfego associados com comunicações M2M, por forma a compreender os efeitos que tais caraterísticas podem provocar nas redes celulares de telecomunicações. Esta dissertação procura identificar e estudar algumas das caraterísticas do tráfego M2M, com especial enfoque na sinalização gerada por serviços M2M. Como resultado principal deste trabalho surge o desenvolvimento de modelos que permitem a construção de uma ferramenta analítica de orquestração de serviços e análise de rede. Esta ferramenta permite orquestrar serviços e modelar padrões de tráfego numa rede UMTS, possibilitando uma análise simultânea aos efeitos produzidos no segmento core da mesma rede. Ao longo deste trabalho procura-se que a abordagem aos problemas apresentados permita que os resultados obtidos sejam válidos, ou adaptáveis, num âmbito mais abrangente do que apenas as comunicações M2M.Machine to Machine (M2M) communications present significant growth and some projections indicate that this trend is going to increase dramatically over the coming years. The traffic generated by this type of communication has very different characteristics when compared to data or voice traffic currently going through cellular telecommunications networks. Thus, it is essential to study the characteristics of traffic associated with M2M communications in order to understand the effects that its features can imply to cellular telecommunications networks. This dissertation tries to identify and study some of the characteristics of M2M traffic, with particular focus on signaling generated by M2M services. A number of models, that enable the development of an analytic tool for service orchestration and network analysis, are presented. This tool enables service orchestration and traffic modeling on a UMTS network, with simultaneous visualization of the impacts on the core of such network. The work presented in this document seeks to approach the problems at study in ways ensuring that its outcomes are valid for a wider scope than just M2M communications

RF Sensing Technologies for Assisted Daily Living in Healthcare: A Comprehensive Review

The aim of radio-frequency (RF) sensing for assisted living is to deliver automatic support and monitoring for older people in their homes, impaired patients living independently, individuals in need of continuous support, and people suffering from chronic diseases that require them to stay in care-homes or at hospitals. RF sensing technologies have the potential to improve the quality of living of elderly people or disabled individuals in need of timely assistance. This paper provides a comprehensive review on three of the most innovative RF sensing technologies for activities of daily living in healthcare sector (namely active radar, passive radar, and wireless channel information and RFID sensing) and presents some of the open challenges that need to be addressed