Exploring the Role of 6G Technology in Enhancing Quality of Experience for m-Health Multimedia Applications: A Comprehensive Survey

Mobile-health (m-health) is described as the application of medical sensors and mobile computing to the healthcare provision. While 5G networks can support a variety of m-health services, applications such as telesurgery, holographic communications, and augmented/virtual reality are already emphasizing their limitations. These limitations apply to both the Quality of Service (QoS) and the Quality of Experience (QoE). However, 6G mobile networks are predicted to proliferate over the next decade in order to solve these limitations, enabling high QoS and QoE. Currently, academia and industry are concentrating their efforts on the 6G network, which is expected to be the next major game-changer in the telecom industry and will significantly impact all other related verticals. The exponential growth of m-health multimedia traffic (e.g., audio, video, and images) creates additional challenges for service providers in delivering a suitable QoE to their customers. As QoS is insufficient to represent the expectations of m-health end-users, the QoE of the services is critical. In recent years, QoE has attracted considerable attention and has established itself as a critical component of network service and operation evaluation. This article aims to provide the first thorough survey on a promising research subject that exists at the intersection of two well-established domains, i.e., QoE and m-health, and is driven by the continuing efforts to define 6G. This survey, in particular, creates a link between these two seemingly distinct domains by identifying and discussing the role of 6G in m-health applications from a QoE viewpoint. We start by exploring the vital role of QoE in m-health multimedia transmission. Moreover, we examine how m-health and QoE have evolved over the cellular network’s generations and then shed light on several critical 6G technologies that are projected to enable future m-health services and improve QoE, including reconfigurable intelligent surfaces, extended radio communications, terahertz communications, enormous ultra-reliable and low-latency communications, and blockchain. In contrast to earlier survey papers on the subject, we present an in-depth assessment of the functions of 6G in a variety of anticipated m-health applications via QoE. Multiple 6G-enabled m-health multimedia applications are reviewed, and various use cases are illustrated to demonstrate how 6G-enabled m-health applications are transforming human life. Finally, we discuss some of the intriguing research challenges associated with burgeoning multimedia m-health applications

Predicting inmate suicidal behavior with an interpretable ensemble machine learning approach in smart prisons

The convergence of smart technologies and predictive modelling in prisons presents an exciting opportunity to revolutionize the monitoring of inmate behaviour, allowing for the early detection of signs of distress and the effective mitigation of suicide risks. While machine learning algorithms have been extensively employed in predicting suicidal behaviour, a critical aspect that has often been overlooked is the interoperability of these models. Most of the work done on model interpretations for suicide predictions often limits itself to feature reduction and highlighting important contributing features only. To address this research gap, we used Anchor explanations for creating human-readable statements based on simple rules, which, to our knowledge, have never been used before for suicide prediction models. We also overcome the limitation of anchor explanations, which create weak rules on high-dimensionality datasets, by first reducing data features with the help of SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP). We further reduce data features through anchor interpretations for the final ensemble model of XGBoost and random forest. Our results indicate significant improvement when compared with state-of-the-art models, having an accuracy and precision of 98.6% and 98.9%, respectively. The F1-score for the best suicide ideation model appeared to be 96.7%

The Role of 6G Networks in Enabling Future Smart Health Services and Applications

While 5G networks can support variety of smart health services, but applications like telesurgery, holographic communication, and augmented/virtual reality are already emphasizing its limitations. 6G mobile networks are predicted to proliferate over the next decade in order to solve these limitations. Currently, academia and industry are concentrating their efforts on the 6G network, which is expected to be the next major game-changer in the telecommunication industry and will significantly impact all other related verticals. This article aims to identify and discuss the role of 6G in smart health applications. We shed light on several critical 6G technologies that are projected to enable future smart health services. Moreover, multiple 6G-enabled smart health applications and associated challenges are reviewed

Efficient Fire Detection with E-EFNet: A Lightweight Deep Learning-Based Approach for Edge Devices

Fire detection employing vision sensors has drawn significant attention within the computer vision community, primarily due to its practicality and utility. Previous research predominantly relied on basic color features, a methodology that has since been surpassed by adopting deep learning models for enhanced accuracy. Nevertheless, the persistence of false alarms and increased computational demands remains challenging. Furthermore, contemporary feed-forward neural networks face difficulties stemming from their initialization and weight allocation processes, often resulting in vanishing-gradient issues that hinder convergence. This investigation recognizes the considerable challenges and introduces the cost-effective Encoded EfficientNet (E-EFNet) model. This model demonstrates exceptional proficiency in fire recognition while concurrently mitigating the incidence of false alarms. E-EFNet leverages the lightweight EfficientNetB0 as a foundational feature extractor, augmented by a series of stacked autoencoders for refined feature extraction before the final classification phase. In contrast to conventional linear connections, E-EFNet adopts dense connections, significantly enhancing its effectiveness in identifying fire-related scenes. We employ a randomized weight initialization strategy to mitigate the vexing problem of vanishing gradients and expedite convergence. Comprehensive evaluation against contemporary state-of-the-art benchmarks reaffirms E-EFNet’s superior recognition capabilities. The proposed model outperformed state-of-the-art approaches in accuracy over the Foggia and Yar datasets by achieving a higher accuracy of 0.31 and 0.40, respectively, and its adaptability for efficient inferencing on edge devices. Our study thoroughly assesses various deep models before ultimately selecting E-EFNet as the optimal solution for these pressing challenges in fire detection

An efficient adaptive modulation technique over realistic wireless communication channels based on distance and SINR

A growing trend has been observed in recent research in wireless communication systems. However, several limitations still exist, such as packet loss, limited bandwidth and inefficient use of available bandwidth that needs further investigation and research. In light of the above limitations, this paper uses adaptive modulation under various parameters, such as signal to interference plus noise ratio (SINR), and communication channel 19s distances. The primary goal is to minimize bit error rate (BER), improve throughput and utilize the available bandwidth efficiently. Additionally, the impact of Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN), Rayleigh and Rician fading channels on the performance of various modulation schemes are also studied. The simulation results demonstrate that our proposed technique optimally improves the BER and spectral efficiency in the long-range communication as compared to the fixed modulation schemes under the co-channel interference of surrounding base stations. The results indicate that the performance of fixed modulation schemes is suitable only either at high SINR and low distance or at low SINR and high distance values. Moreover, on the other hand, its performance was suboptimal in the entire wireless communication channel due to high distortion and attenuation. Lastly, we also noted that BER performance in the AWGN channel is better than Rayleigh and Rician channels with Rayleigh channel exhibiting poor performance than the Rician channel.This work has been supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China and Key Research and Development Program of Hainan Province (China). This research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under grant 62031014 and Key Research and Development Program of Hainan Province (China) under grant ZDYF2019195.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Edge ML Technique for Smart Traffic Management in Intelligent Transportation Systems

In urban traffic, a Dynamic Traffic Light System (DTLS) is an important aspect of automatic driving. DTLS estimates the time of the light signal from images of dynamically changing road traffic. In conventional traffic light systems, light signals are enabled at predefined or fixed time intervals without having information on the current traffic density on the road. This static behavior of the traffic light system increases unnecessary waiting time on the road, eventually creating traffic jams, environmental pollution, and other health emergencies. The smart traffic light system addresses these issues with self-learning algorithms and dynamically allows traffic to pass by learning current traffic density. In this paper, a vision-based DTLS is proposed using the YOLO (You Only Look Once) object detection algorithm that detects and counts the total number of vehicles on the roads of a traffic signal junction. The traffic signals are tuned based on the computed traffic to minimize the overall delay at that junction. Moreover, the traffic junctions are facilitated to communicate with the adjacent junctions to transmit the cumulative traffic delay observed. This delay is used to prioritize traffic passing through salient blocks like schools, offices, hospitals, etc. The paper aims to minimize the overhead incurred in both computations of traffic (using approximate computing) and in communication networks (using low-power technologies of IEEE 802.15.4 standard, specifically DSME MAC and/or LoRaWAN). The proposed system accomplishes its objective of smart city infrastructure by optimizing the traffic flow. Further, the paper provides a mechanism for green traffic corridors for emergency vehicles

Emotions Matter: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of the Detection and Classification of Students’ Emotions in STEM during Online Learning

In recent years, the rapid growth of online learning has highlighted the need for effective methods to monitor and improve student experiences. Emotions play a crucial role in shaping students’ engagement, motivation, and satisfaction in online learning environments, particularly in complex STEM subjects. In this context, sentiment analysis has emerged as a promising tool to detect and classify emotions expressed in textual and visual forms. This study offers an extensive literature review using the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (PRISMA) technique on the role of sentiment analysis in student satisfaction and online learning in STEM subjects. The review analyses the applicability, challenges, and limitations of text- and facial-based sentiment analysis techniques in educational settings by reviewing 57 peer-reviewed research articles out of 236 articles, published between 2015 and 2023, initially identified through a comprehensive search strategy. Through an extensive search and scrutiny process, these articles were selected based on their relevance and contribution to the topic. The review’s findings indicate that sentiment analysis holds significant potential for improving student experiences, encouraging personalised learning, and promoting satisfaction in the online learning environment. Educators and administrators can gain valuable insights into students’ emotions and perceptions by employing computational techniques to analyse and interpret emotions expressed in text and facial expressions. However, the review also identifies several challenges and limitations associated with sentiment analysis in educational settings. These challenges include the need for accurate emotion detection and interpretation, addressing cultural and linguistic variations, ensuring data privacy and ethics, and a reliance on high-quality data sources. Despite these challenges, the review highlights the immense potential of sentiment analysis in transforming online learning experiences in STEM subjects and recommends further research and development in this area

WLAN RSS-Based Fingerprinting for Indoor Localization: A Machine Learning Inspired Bag-of-Features Approach

Location-based services have permeated Smart academic institutions, enhancing the quality of higher education. Position information of people and objects can predict different potential requirements and provide relevant services to meet those needs. Indoor positioning system (IPS) research has attained robust location-based services in complex indoor structures. Unforeseeable propagation loss in complex indoor environments results in poor localization accuracy of the system. Various IPSs have been developed based on fingerprinting to precisely locate an object even in the presence of indoor artifacts such as multipath and unpredictable radio propagation losses. However, such methods are deleteriously affected by the vulnerability of fingerprint matching frameworks. In this paper, we propose a novel machine learning framework consisting of Bag-of-Features and followed by a k-nearest neighbor classifier to categorize the final features into their respective geographical coordinate data. BoF calculates the vocabulary set using k-mean clustering, where the frequency of the vocabulary in the raw fingerprint data represents the robust final features that improve localization accuracy. Experimental results from simulation-based indoor scenarios and real-time experiments demonstrate that the proposed framework outperforms previously developed models

The Development of Intelligent Agents: A Case-Based Reasoning Approach to Achieve Human-Like Peculiarities via Playback of Human Traces

Recent advances in the digital gaming industry have provided impressive demonstrations of highly skilful artificial intelligence agents capable of performing complex intelligent behaviours. Additionally, there is a significant increase in demand for intelligent agents that can imitate video game characters and human players to increase the perceived value of engagement, entertainment, and satisfaction. The believability of an artificial agent’s behaviour is usually measured only by its ability in a specific task. Recent research has shown that ability alone is not enough to identify human-like behaviour. In this work, we propose a case-based reasoning (CBR) approach to develop human-like agents using human gameplay traces to reduce model-based programming effort. The proposed framework builds on the demonstrated case storage, retrieval and solution methods by emphasizing the impact of seven different similarity measures. The goal of this framework is to allow agents to learn from a small number of demonstrations of a given task and immediately generalize to new scenarios of the same task without task-specific development. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated using instrumental measures of accuracy and similarity with multiple loss functions, e.g. by comparing traces left by agents and players. The study also developed an automated process to generate a corpus for a simulation case study of the Pac-Man game to validate our proposed model. We provide empirical evidence that CBR systems recognize human player behaviour more accurately than trained models, with an average accuracy of 75%, and are easy to deploy. The believability of play styles between human players and AI agents was measured using two automated methods to validate the results. We show that the high p-values produced by these two methods confirm the believability of our trained agents