Two-stage motion artefact reduction algorithm for electrocardiogram using weighted adaptive noise cancelling and recursive Hampel filter

The presence of motion artefacts in ECG signals can cause misleading interpretation of cardiovascular status. Recently, reducing the motion artefact from ECG signal has gained the interest of many researchers. Due to the overlapping nature of the motion artefact with the ECG signal, it is difficult to reduce motion artefact without distorting the original ECG signal. However, the application of an adaptive noise canceler has shown that it is effective in reducing motion artefacts if the appropriate noise reference that is correlated with the noise in the ECG signal is available. Unfortunately, the noise reference is not always correlated with motion artefact. Consequently, filtering with such a noise reference may lead to contaminating the ECG signal. In this paper, a two-stage filtering motion artefact reduction algorithm is proposed. In the algorithm, two methods are proposed, each of which works in one stage. The weighted adaptive noise filtering method (WAF) is proposed for the first stage. The acceleration derivative is used as motion artefact reference and the Pearson correlation coefficient between acceleration and ECG signal is used as a weighting factor. In the second stage, a recursive Hampel filter-based estimation method (RHFBE) is proposed for estimating the ECG signal segments, based on the spatial correlation of the ECG segment component that is obtained from successive ECG signals. Real-World dataset is used to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed methods compared to the conventional adaptive filter. The results show a promising enhancement in terms of reducing motion artefacts from the ECG signals recorded by a cost-effective single lead ECG sensor during several activities of different subjects

Fairness-Oriented Semichaotic Genetic Algorithm-Based Channel Assignment Technique for Node Starvation Problem in Wireless Mesh Networks

Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) have emerged as a scalable, reliable, and agile wireless network that supports many types of innovative technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN), and Internet of Vehicles (IoV). Due to the limited number of orthogonal channels, interference between channels adversely affects the fair distribution of bandwidth among mesh clients, causing node starvation in terms of insufficient bandwidth distribution, which impedes the adoption of WMN as an efficient access technology. Therefore, a fair channel assignment is crucial for the mesh clients to utilize the available resources. However, the node starvation problem due to unfair channel distribution has been vastly overlooked during channel assignment by the extant research. Instead, existing channel assignment algorithms equally distribute the interference reduction on the links to achieve fairness which neither guarantees a fair distribution of the network bandwidth nor eliminates node starvation. In addition, the metaheuristic-based solutions such as genetic algorithm, which is commonly used for WMN, use randomness in creating initial population and selecting the new generation which usually leads the search to local minima. To this end, this study proposes a Fairness-Oriented Semi-Chaotic Genetic Algorithm-Based Channel Assignment Technique (FA-SCGA-CAA) to solve Nodes Starvation Problem in Wireless Mesh Networks. FA-SCGA-CAA maximizes link fairness while minimizing link interference using a Genetic Algorithm (GA) with a novel nonlinear fairness-oriented fitness function. The primary chromosome with powerful genes is created based on multi-criterion links ranking channel assignment algorithm. Such a chromosome was used with a proposed semi-chaotic technique to create a strong population that directs the search towards the global minima effectively and efficiently. The proposed semi-chaotic was also used during the mutation and parent selection of the new genes. Extensive experiments were conducted to evaluate the proposed algorithm. Comparison with related work shows that the proposed FA_SCGA_CAA reduced the potential node starvation by 22% and improved network capacity utilization by 23%. It can be concluded that the proposed FA_SCGA_CAA is reliable to maintain high node-level fairness while maximizing the utilization of the network resources, which is the ultimate goal of many wireless networks

Emergency handling system

The current emergency handling services are cumbersome; a caller needs to dial 999 in order to report an emergency. In most occasions civilians are urged to call an emergency centers, which normally not remembered by many. The distance between the occurrence of the incident and the center remains as the major aspect for instant assistance. An assistance may not able to reach at soonest time if caller fail to describe his/her exact location. Worst of all the current system hinders handicapped from reporting an emergency. The advancement in wireless technology and infrastructure has amplified the usage of cell phone in our lives, therefore a location-based ah hoc emergency handling system is a value-add to the 999 service. This research studies the issues in providing an emergency handling system (EHS), which deploys location based technology that will detect the location of a caller and connect to database server that store required data. The system enable user to forward distress message either to police station, rescue team, hospital and etc. The professional application checks an emergency message, view location of an incident and respond to an emergency request. The system employs CGI+TA technique in determining the locations of caller and the nearest professional within the incident vicinity. In addition, every message that is transmitted through the network in encrypted and authenticated to ensure integrity and authenticity of an emergency call. This research shows that EHS has several advantages over current emergency services, and beneficial to handicapped

Electronic Voting System: Preliminary Study

Election is a democratic process that allows a citizen to vote for a ruling government. This paper first reviews the evolution of a voting system and how an election process is carried out. It then focuses on the discussion of the security requirements for a reliable electronic voting system and how these requirements are implemented in several electronic voting system. This paper also compares the implementation of electronic voting system with a traditional voting syste

Ubiquitous database in mobile healthcare

Ubiquitous Database in Mobile Healthcare (UDMHC) in Emergency Handling System is utilizing the combined benefit of smart card to support mobility coupled with the ubiquitous access of distributed database via web technology, in order to promote a truly mobile and interactive medical information technology. UDMHC provides benefits of storing comprehensive, accurate and up to date medical information while offering the ease of mobility in pocket. In the time of accident or emergency, UDMHC provides medical-related professional the best solution in immediately retrieving accurate, concise and vital victims medical record, allergies, and other information necessary for medical treatment decisions. Applet provides flexibility in retrieving the users information, users medical information and emergency contact list from ubiquitous database in the smart card. It also provides interaction with other distributed hospital database via HTTP protocol in order to retrieve the victims detail information. This provides a convenient way to gather, adapt, and share data from different hospital. Result indicated that network environment is able to be spanned across hospital, clinic and country boundaries, hence provides better ubiquitous medical record management. The Internet technology offers the opportunity for distributed health services to exchange medical knowledge and allow dynamic monitoring of patients health. With the deployment of Java and open card technology, UDMHC can be seamlessly and ubiquitously applied in any platform

Ubiquitous database in mobile healthcare

Ubiquitous Database in Mobile Healthcare (UDMHC) in Emergency Handling System is utilizing the combined benefit of smart card to support mobility coupled with the ubiquitous access of distributed database via web technology, in order to promote a truly mobile and interactive medical information technology. UDMHC provides benefits of storing comprehensive, accurate and up to date medical information while offering the ease of mobility in pocket. In the time of accident or emergency, UDMHC provides medical-related professional the best solution in immediately retrieving accurate, concise and vital victim’s medical record, allergies, and other information necessary for medical treatment decisions. Applet provides flexibility in retrieving the user’s information, user’s medical information and emergency contact list from ubiquitous database in the smart card. It also provides interaction with other distributed hospital database via HTTP protocol in order to retrieve the victims detail information. This provides a convenient way to gather, adapt, and share data from different hospital. Result indicated that network environment is able to be spanned across hospital, clinic and country boundaries, hence provides better ubiquitous medical record management. The Internet technology offers the opportunity for distributed health services to exchange medical knowledge and allow dynamic monitoring of patients health. With the deployment of Java and open card technology, UDMHC can be seamlessly and ubiquitously applied in any platform

Secure E-Voting With Blind Signature

With a rapid growth in computer networks, many people can access the network through the Internet and therefore an electronic voting can be a viable alternative for conducting an election. Electronic voting system must attempt to achieve at least the same level of security as ordinary elections. We have developed an electronic voting system, E-Voting for a general election. E-Voting system employs cryptographic techniques to overcome the security issues in the election process. In this system, voter’s privacy is guaranteed by using a blind signature for confidentiality and voter’s digital signature for voter’s authentication. E-Voting is implemented by employing Java socket technology and BouncyCastle cryptography provider. The provider, which is an open source library, is used to provide the secure communication channel. The voter’s private key for digital signature is protected by using password-based encryption with SHA and Twofish-CBC algorithm so that only valid voter can use it

Sink node mobility in covering monitoring area for data collection in WSNs

Communication in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) plays an important role in relaying data collected by sensor nodes to reach an intended destination (a sink or an in-situ user). However, communication is the dominant energy consumer that must be minimi~ed in order to sustain network lifetime. Several mechanisms that exploited mobile sink have been devised to reduce sensor's communication, however, they do not consider coverage area problem. We proposed a design ofa simple mobility pat/ern ofa sink node in covering a monitoring area of interest in collecting data for a specific mission by traversing the entire area from an ent,y point and finish at an exit point on the square grid. By employing simultaneous equation technique, the square roots oflinear and non-linear equations are calculated which will be used to change the traversal direction ofthe mobile sink. In addition, two types of traversals are compared - the horizontal and vertical traversals