SILS: a Smart Indoors Localization Scheme based on on-the-go cooperative Smartphones networks using onboard Bluetooth, WiFi and GNSS

Seamless outdoors-indoors localization based on Smartphones sensors is essential to realize the full potential of Location Based Services. This paper proposes a Smart Indoors Localization Scheme (SILS) whereby participating Smartphones (SPs) in the same outdoors and indoors vicinity, form a Bluetooth network to locate the indoors SPs. To achieve this, SILS will perform 3 functions: (1) synchronize & locate all reachable WiFi Access Points (WAPs) with live GNSS time available on the outdoors SPs; 2) exchange a database of all SPs location and time-offsets; 3) calculate approximate location of indoor-SPs based on hybridization of GNSS, Bluetooth and WiFi measurements. These measurements includes a) Bluetooth to Bluetooth relative pseudo ranges of all participating SPs based on hop-synchronization and Master-Slave role switching to minimize the pseudo-ranges error, b) GNSS measured location of outdoors-SPs with good geometric reference points, and c) WAPs-SPs Trilateration estimates for deep indoors localization. Results, obtained from OPNET simulation and live trials of SILS built for various SPs network size and indoors/outdoors combinations scenarios, show that we can locate under 1 meter in near-indoors while accuracy of around 2-meters can be achieved when locating SPs at deep indoors situations. Better accuracy can be achieved when large numbers of SPs (up to 7) are available in the network/vicinity at any one time and when at least 4 of them have a good sky view outdoors

A Study on Variation Technique in Courses on Scientific Computing

The background of this study is a project aiming at assessing the quality of teaching and learning in scientific computing in different cultural settings. This, we hope will lead us to constructing standards, which can provide outcomes of comparable quality in scientific computing in different countries and societies. Specifically we want to gain insight which quality benchmarks are suitable for the project. The tool we use in teaching is a set of variation techniques. The presented pilot study aims at the examination of the role variation theory for the quality of elementary courses in scientific computing. Earlier studies by others confirmed that variation theory offers a comprehensive set of variables characterizing teaching, well described and easy to follow and measure and which can result in improving teaching. The main data for this investigation was collected via interviewing students

Hybridisation of GNSS with other wireless/sensors technologies onboard smartphones to offer seamless outdoors-indoors positioning for LBS applications

Location-based services (LBS) are becoming an important feature on today’s smartphones (SPs) and tablets. Likewise, SPs include many wireless/sensors technologies such as: global navigation satellite system (GNSS), cellular, wireless fidelity (WiFi), Bluetooth (BT) and inertial-sensors that increased the breadth and complexity of such services. One of the main demand of LBS users is always/seamless positioning service. However, no single onboard SPs technology can seamlessly provide location information from outdoors into indoors. In addition, the required location accuracy can be varied to support multiple LBS applications. This is mainly due to each of these onboard wireless/sensors technologies has its own capabilities and limitations. For example, when outdoors GNSS receivers on SPs can locate the user to within few meters and supply accurate time to within few nanoseconds (e.g. ± 6 nanoseconds). However, when SPs enter into indoors this capability would be lost. In another vain, the other onboard wireless/sensors technologies can show better SP positioning accuracy, but based on some pre-defined knowledge and pre-installed infrastructure. Therefore, to overcome such limitations, hybrid measurements of these wireless/sensors technologies into a positioning system can be a possible solution to offer seamless localisation service and to improve location accuracy. This thesis aims to investigate/design/implement solutions that shall offer seamless/accurate SPs positioning and at lower cost than the current solutions. This thesis proposes three novel SPs localisation schemes including WAPs synchronisation/localisation scheme, SILS and UNILS. The schemes are based on hybridising GNSS with WiFi, BT and inertial-sensors measurements using combined localisation techniques including time-of-arrival (TOA) and dead-reckoning (DR). The first scheme is to synchronise and to define location of WAPs via outdoors-SPs’ fixed location/time information to help indoors localisation. SILS is to help locate any SP seamlessly as it goes from outdoors to indoors using measurements of GNSS, synched/located WAPs and BT-connectivity signals between groups of cooperated SPs in the vicinity. UNILS is to integrate onboard inertial-sensors’ readings into the SILS to provide seamless SPs positioning even in deep indoors, i.e. when the signals of WAPs or BT-anchors are considered not able to be used. Results, obtained from the OPNET simulations for various SPs network size and indoors/outdoors combinations scenarios, show that the schemes can provide seamless and locate indoors-SPs under 1 meter in near-indoors, 2-meters can be achieved when locating SPs at indoors (using SILS), while accuracy of around 3-meters can be achieved when locating SPs at various deep indoors situations without any constraint (using UNILS). The end of this thesis identifies possible future work to implement the proposed schemes on SPs and to achieve more accurate indoors SPs’ location

The moderating impact of government policy on the relationship between leadership styles and crisis management in the Kurdistan region of Iraq public sector

Effective leadership styles have had a significant impact on crisis management as an important process to prevent crises, disasters and unexpected risks. Many studies have been conducted on the impact of leadership styles on crisis management in both private and public sectors. Nonetheless, very little research has been conducted to observe the moderation effect of government policy in the relationship between leadership styles and crisis management in general, and especially in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq‘s public institutions. Therefore, employing Crisis Management Theory and Path-Goal Theory, this thesis has evaluated the impact of the KRG policy on the relationship between the leadership styles (namely: transactional, transformational and servant) and crisis management in the KRI public sector. To obtain the research objectives and test the hypothesis, a quantitative research design, cross-sectional survey method was adopted. For this study, a total of 700 questionnaires were distributed to the public institutions of the KRI where a total of 297 completed and valid questionnaires were returned. The collected data was analyzed by SmartPLS 3.3.3 software program. The results of this study supported the hypothesized impact of Transformational and Servant leadership styles on crisis management as well as partial support for moderating the impact of government policy on the relationship between leadership styles, namely transactional and transformational, and crisis management. Nevertheless, a direct relationship between transactional leadership and crisis management as well as the moderating effect was not evident for the association between servant leadership and crisis management. Finally, this research has ended with conclusions explaining theoretical and practical contributions to academicians and practitioners. Thus, the current study recommends that government policy can positively help managers of public organizations to enhance their behaviors and attitudes. Accordingly, the government policies should be more clear and more observed so that managers can confidently deal with crises. It also suggests that leadership styles can play a notable role in controlling, reducing, and dealing with crisis management in the public sector. The results of this study propose for the managers to keep transformational factors as this leadership style is more effective than other leadership styles to influence staff in the crisis time

UNILS: Unconstrained indoors localization scheme based on Cooperative Smartphones networking with onboard inertial, Bluetooth and GNSS devices

Location-based services (LBS) are becoming an important feature on today’s smartphones (SPs), tablets and wearable devices. Seamless outdoors-indoors navigation, and especially for accurate indoors localization, is the main demand of LBS users. Onboard WiFi, Bluetooth (BT) or inertial-sensors technologies have been proven to somewhat provide alternative solutions in GNSS-signal-denied areas (i.e. indoors) to define SPs location. However, limited coverage of WiFi access-points (WAPs), pre-installed BT-anchors, constrained of WAPs/BT-anchors physical positions within a building, and limitations of existing localisation techniques (in a standalone mode) on SPs are some of the main challenges to designing a spontaneous autonomous positioning solution with reliable accuracy at reasonable cost. This paper proposes an unconstrained indoors localization scheme (UNILS) based on cooperative SPs networking to tackle these challenges. The aim of this new scheme is to fuse multi-technologies measurements on SPs. The scheme uses relative-pseudoranging (based on time-of-arrival TOA technique) approach between the connected SPs that are GNSS enabled, especially when the majority of the SPs are outdoors, and combining this with uncertainty calculations from onboard dead-reckoning (DR) measurements using Kalman Filter, that can provide seamless and improve location accuracy significantly, especially when deep indoors. This means that, in deep indoors, UNILS can utilize only available devices/sensors on SPs, when communication with WAPs or BT-anchors is deemed unreliable or unavailable, to offer reasonable cost & good localization performance. Results obtained from actual trials & simulations (using OPNET) of this scheme (based on Android-SPs network implementations for various indoors scenarios) show that around 3-meters accuracy can be achieved when locating SPs at various deep indoors situations

Human gait identification using Kinect sensor

This study investigates a novel three-dimension gait recognition approach based on skeleton representation of motion by the cheap consumer level camera Kinect sensor. In this work, a new exemplification of human gait signature is proposed using the spatio-temporal variations in relative angles among various skeletal joints and changing of measured distance between limbs and land. These measurements are computed during one gait cycle. Further, we have created our own dataset based on Kinect sensor and extract two sets of dynamic features. Nearest Neighbors and Linear Discriminant Classifier (LDC) are used for classification. The results of the experiments show the proposed approach as an effective and human gait recognizer in comparison with current Kinect-based gait recognition methods

Modified WiFi-RSS Fingerprint Technique to locate Indoors-Smartphones: FENG building at Koya University as a case study

Positioning system used for different purposes and different services, many researches are going on to find a more accurate position with low error within high performance. There are many localization solutions with different architectures, configurations, accuracies and reliabilities for both outdoors and indoors. For example, Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) technology has been used for outdoors.  Global Positioning System (GPS) is one of the most common outdoors tracking solutions in the world, for outdoors, however, when indoors; it could not be accurately tracked users by using a GPS system. This is because, when users enters into indoors the GPS signals will no longer available due to blocked by the roof of buildings and it is no longer considered as a viable option.  WiFi Positioning System (WPS) can be used as an alternative solution to define users’ position, especially when GPS signal is not available. Further, WPS is a low cost solution, because there is no need to deploying WiFi Access Points (WAPs) in the vicinity, as they are installed to access the Internet. In this paper, specifically, WiFi-RSS Fingerprinting technique is used to locate smartphones using WAPs signals with a modified calculation. The new modified calculation is to dynamic weighting of the WAPs RSS values based on the real-live indoors structure. The achieved positioning accuracy, based on several trial experiments, is up to 6 meters via the implemented algorithm in the MALTAB

A Novel Poisoned Water Detection Method Using Smartphone Embedded Wi-Fi Technology and Machine Learning Algorithms

Water is a necessary fluid to the human body and automatic checking of its quality and cleanness is an ongoing area of research. One such approach is to present the liquid to various types of signals and make the amount of signal attenuation an indication of the liquid category. In this article, we have utilized the Wi-Fi signal to distinguish clean water from poisoned water via training different machine learning algorithms. The Wi-Fi access points (WAPs) signal is acquired via equivalent smartphone-embedded Wi-Fi chipsets, and then Channel-State-Information CSI measures are extracted and converted into feature vectors to be used as input for machine learning classification algorithms. The measured amplitude and phase of the CSI data are selected as input features into four classifiers k-NN, SVM, LSTM, and Ensemble. The experimental results show that the model is adequate to differentiate poison water from clean water with a classification accuracy of 89% when LSTM is applied, while 92% classification accuracy is achieved when the AdaBoost-Ensemble classifier is applied