Supporting Learning and Working in Disastrous Pandemics by Smart Technologies: A Qualitative Analysis

During the breakout of coronavirus disease (COVID-19), smart technologies were perceived to provide convenience and assistance for people, enterprises, and government units. Although there is literature maintaining that smart technology can facilitate pandemic strategy and response in ways that are difficult to achieve manually, some other literature indicated that smart technologies were not desirable alternatives to people during this pandemic. MIS education is a career preparation for IT professionals who use smart technology in organizations. IT professionals with MIS education backgrounds may have important roles when facing COVID-19. Moreover, many MIS students will become IT professionals and join the workforce for combatting the pandemic using smart technologies with their background of MIS education. This study intends to analyze smart technology utilization in the confrontation of the COVID-19 pandemic with a qualitative approach. The results could provide reflective insights for MIS education providers, human resource units, IT firms, and organizations confronting COVID-19 outbreaks

SDN - Architectural Enabler for Reliable Communication over Millimeter-Wave 5G Networks

Millimeter-wave (mmWave) frequency bands offer a new frontier for next-generation wireless networks, popularly known as 5G, to enable multi-gigabit communication; however, the availability and reliability of mmWave signals are significantly limited due to its unfavorable propagation characteristics. Thus, mmWave networks rely on directional narrow-beam transmissions to overcome severe path-loss. To mitigate the impact of transmission-reception directionality and provide uninterrupted network services, ensuring the availability of mmWave transmission links is important. In this paper, we proposed a new flexible network architecture to provide efficient resource coordination among serving basestations during user mobility. The key idea of this holistic architecture is to exploit the software-defined networking (SDN) technology with mmWave communication to provide a flexible and resilient network architecture. Besides, this paper presents an efficient and seamless uncoordinated network operation to support reliable communication in highly-dynamic environments characterized by high density and mobility of wireless devices. To warrant high-reliability and guard against the potential radio link failure, we introduce a new transmission framework to ensure that there is at least one basestation is connected to the UE at all times. We validate the proposed transmission scheme through simulations.Comment: This article has been accepted for publication at the IEEE GLOBECOM 2018 Workshops, Abu Dhabi, UAE, 9-13 December 201