Towards Process Support for Migrating Applications to Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is an active area of research for industry and academia. There are a large number of organizations providing cloud computing infrastructure and services. In order to utilize these infrastructure resources and services, existing applications need to be migrated to clouds. However, a successful migration effort needs well-defined process support. It does not only help to identify and address challenges associated with migration but also provides a strategy to evaluate different platforms in relation to application and domain specific requirements. This paper present a process framework for supporting migration to cloud computing based on our experiences from migrating an Open Source System (OSS), Hackystat, to two different cloud computing platforms. We explained the process by performing a comparative analysis of our efforts to migrate Hackystate to Amazon Web Services and Google App Engine. We also report the potential challenges, suitable solutions, and lesson learned to support the presented process framework. We expect that the reported experiences can serve guidelines for those who intend to migrate software applications to cloud computing.Muhammad Aufeef Chauhan, Muhammad Ali Baba

Miniaturized Microwave Devices and Antennas for Wearable, Implantable and Wireless Applications

This thesis presents a number of microwave devices and antennas that maintain high operational efficiency and are compact in size at the same time. One goal of this thesis is to address several miniaturization challenges of antennas and microwave components by using the theoretical principles of metamaterials, Metasurface coupling resonators and stacked radiators, in combination with the elementary antenna and transmission line theory. While innovating novel solutions, standards and specifications of next generation wireless and bio-medical applications were considered to ensure advancement in the respective scientific fields. Compact reconfigurable phase-shifter and a microwave cross-over based on negative-refractive-index transmission-line (NRI-TL) materialist unit cells is presented. A Metasurface based wearable sensor architecture is proposed, containing an electromagnetic band-gap (EBG) structure backed monopole antenna for off-body communication and a fork shaped antenna for efficient radiation towards the human body. A fully parametrized solution for an implantable antenna is proposed using metallic coated stacked substrate layers. Challenges and possible solutions for off-body, on-body, through-body and across-body communication have been investigated with an aid of computationally extensive simulations and experimental verification. Next, miniaturization and implementation of a UWB antenna along with an analytical model to predict the resonance is presented. Lastly, several miniaturized rectifiers designed specifically for efficient wireless power transfer are proposed, experimentally verified, and discussed. The study answered several research questions of applied electromagnetic in the field of bio-medicine and wireless communication.Comment: A thesis submitted for the degree of Ph

An Empirical Evaluation of an Activity-Based Infrastructure for Supporting Cooperation in Software Engineering

[Background] Software Engineering (SE) is predominantly a team effort that needs close cooperation among several people who may be geographically distributed. It has been recognized that appropriate tool support is a prerequisite to improve cooperation within SE teams. In an effort to contribute to this line of research, we have designed and developed an infrastructure, called ABC4GSD, based on the models of Activity Theory (AT) and the principles of the Activity-Based Computing (ABC) paradigm. [Aim] In this paper, we present a study that empirically evaluates the ability of ABC4GSD in supporting teams cooperation. [Method] We designed and executed a study based on a scenario that simulated the Follow-The-Sun (FTS) strategy of Global SE (GSE). Our research design allowed us to ensure cooperation to be both computer-mediated as well as contained within observable short time-windows-the hand-off activities of the FTS strategy. [Results] Overall, the results show that the cooperation support provided by the ABC4GSD system has been positively perceived by the participants. Nonetheless, open issues stimulating further investigations have been raised especially due to a few mixed results. [Conclusions] Aware of the limitations of the simulated scenario, we conclude that the approach followed by the ABC4GSD system based on activities is desirable to improve the cooperation support in SE. Finally, our research approach based on simulating a scenario with geographical and temporal distribution can providePaolo Tell, Muhammad Ali Baba