A Classification and Performance Comparison of Mobility Models for Ad Hoc Networks

Abstract. In mobile ad hoc network research, simulation plays an important role in determining the network characteristics and measuring performance. On the other hand, unrealistic simulation conditions may be misleading, instead of being explanatory. For this reason, constructing simulation models closer to the real circumstances is very significant. Movement behavior of mobile entities is one of the most important concepts for the realistic simulation scenarios in mo-bile ad hoc networks. In this study, we first provide a survey and a new hybrid classification of existing mobility models in the literature. We implemented the random direction and boundless simulation area models on Scalable Wireless Ad Hoc Network Simulator (SWANS) and conducted simulations of Ad Hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (AODV) protocol for these as well as the random walk and random waypoint models. Our comparative results for the mobility models are discussed on a variety of simulation settings and parameters.

Optimal transport on wireless networks

We present a study of the application of a variant of a recently introduced heuristic algorithm for the optimization of transport routes on complex networks to the problem of finding the optimal routes of communication between nodes on wireless networks. Our algorithm iteratively balances network traffic by minimizing the maximum node betweenness on the network. The variant we consider specifically accounts for the broadcast restrictions imposed by wireless communication by using a different betweenness measure. We compare the performance of our algorithm to two other known algorithms and find that our algorithm achieves the highest transport capacity both for minimum node degree geometric networks, which are directed geometric networks that model wireless communication networks, and for configuration model networks that are uncorrelated scale-free networks.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Industrial Robot Programming and UPnP Services Orchestration for the Automation of Factories

The integration of equipment and other devices built into industrial robot cells with modern Ethernet interface technologies and low‐cost mass produced devices (such as vision systems, laser scanners, force torque‐sensors, PLCs and PDAs etc.) enables integrators to offer more powerful and smarter solutions. Nevertheless, the programming of all these devices efficiently requires very specific knowledge about them, such as their hardware architectures and specific programming languages as well as details about the system¿s low level communication protocols. To address these issues, this paper describes and analyses the Plug‐and‐Play architecture. This is one of the most interesting service‐oriented architectures (SOAs) available, which exhibits characteristics that are well adapted to industrial robotics cells. To validate their programming features and applicability, a test bed was specially designed. This provides a new graphical service orchestration which was implemented using Workflow Foundation 4 of .NET. The obtained results allowed us to verify that the use of integration schemes based on SOAs reduces the system integration time and is better adapted to industrial robotic cell system integrators.The authors wish to express their gratitude to the Plan Nacional de I+D (FEDER-CICYT, Spanish Government) and to the Universitat Politecnica de Valencia (Spain) for the financing of this work, which was made under the research projects DPI2010-20814-C02-02, DPI2011-28507-C02-01 and PAID/2011/039. In addition, they also want to acknowledge the assistance of Elena Ruiz Gomez for her help in the translation of the article.Valera Fernández, Á.; Gómez Moreno, J.; Sánchez Salmerón, AJ.; Ricolfe Viala, C.; Zotovic Stanisic, R.; Vallés Miquel, M. (2012). Industrial Robot Programming and UPnP Services Orchestration for the Automation of Factories. International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems. 9:1-11. doi:10.5772/51373S1119Ahn, S., Lee, J., Lim, K., Ko, H., Kwon, Y., & Kim, H. (2006). UPnP SDK for Robot Development. 2006 SICE-ICASE International Joint Conference. doi:10.1109/sice.2006.315791Ahn, S., Lee, J., Lim, K., Ko, H., Kwon, Y., & Kim, H. (2006). Requirements to UPnP for Robot Middleware. 2006 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems. doi:10.1109/iros.2006.282262Kelleher, C., & Pausch, R. (2005). Lowering the barriers to programming. ACM Computing Surveys, 37(2), 83-137. doi:10.1145/1089733.1089734Candido, G., Colombo, A. W., Barata, J., & Jammes, F. (2011). Service-Oriented Infrastructure to Support the Deployment of Evolvable Production Systems. IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, 7(4), 759-767. doi:10.1109/tii.2011.2166779Crnkovic, I., Stafford, J., & Szyperski, C. (2011). Software Components beyond Programming: From Routines to Services. IEEE Software, 28(3), 22-26. doi:10.1109/ms.2011.62Cucinotta, T., Mancina, A., Anastasi, G. F., Lipari, G., Mangeruca, L., Checcozzo, R., & Rusina, F. (2009). A Real-Time Service-Oriented Architecture for Industrial Automation. IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, 5(3), 267-277. doi:10.1109/tii.2009.2027013Delamer, I. M., & Lastra, J. L. M. (2006). Service-Oriented Architecture for Distributed Publish/Subscribe Middleware in Electronics Production. IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, 2(4), 281-294. doi:10.1109/tii.2006.885188Estevez-Ayres, I., Basanta-Val, P., Garcia-Valls, M., Fisteus, J. A., & Almeida, L. (2009). QoS-Aware Real-Time Composition Algorithms for Service-Based Applications. IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, 5(3), 278-288. doi:10.1109/tii.2009.2026422Foster, H., Uchitel, S., Magee, J., & Kramer, J. (2010). An Integrated Workbench for Model-Based Engineering of Service Compositions. IEEE Transactions on Services Computing, 3(2), 131-144. doi:10.1109/tsc.2010.19Chen, H.-M., Kazman, R., & Perry, O. (2010). From Software Architecture Analysis to Service Engineering: An Empirical Study of Methodology Development for Enterprise SOA Implementation. IEEE Transactions on Services Computing, 3(2), 145-160. doi:10.1109/tsc.2010.21Jaejoon Lee, & Kotonya, G. (2010). Combining Service-Orientation with Product Line Engineering. IEEE Software, 27(3), 35-41. doi:10.1109/ms.2010.30Jammes, F., & Smit, H. (2005). Service-Oriented Paradigms in Industrial Automation. IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, 1(1), 62-70. doi:10.1109/tii.2005.844419Juric, M. B., Kezmah, B., Hericko, M., Rozman, I., & Vezocnik, I. (2004). Java RMI, RMI tunneling and Web services comparison and performance analysis. ACM SIGPLAN Notices, 39(5), 58. doi:10.1145/997140.997146Lewis, G., Morris, E., Simanta, S., & Smith, D. (2011). Service Orientation and Systems of Systems. IEEE Software, 28(1), 58-63. doi:10.1109/ms.2011.15Martin M., Grounds N.G., Antonio J.K., Crawford K. and Madden J. (2010). “Banker's Deadlock Avoidance Algorithm for Distributed Service-Oriented Architectures”, PDPTACSREA Press, pp. 43–50.Menasce, D., Gomaa, H., Malek, S., & Sousa, J. (2011). SASSY: A Framework for Self-Architecting Service-Oriented Systems. IEEE Software, 28(6), 78-85. doi:10.1109/ms.2011.22Remy, S. L., & Blake, M. B. (2011). Distributed Service-Oriented Robotics. IEEE Internet Computing, 15(2), 70-74. doi:10.1109/mic.2011.38Sasa, A., Juric, M. B., & Krisper, M. (2008). Service-Oriented Framework for Human Task Support and Automation. IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, 4(4), 292-302. doi:10.1109/tii.2008.2008641Unver, H. O. (2011). System Architectures Enabling Reconfigurable Laboratory-Automation Systems. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part C (Applications and Reviews), 41(6), 909-922. doi:10.1109/tsmcc.2011.2107552Veiga, G., Pires, J. N., & Nilsson, K. (2009). Experiments with service-oriented architectures for industrial robotic cells programming. Robotics and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing, 25(4-5), 746-755. doi:10.1016/j.rcim.2008.09.001Veiga, G., Pires, J. N., & Nilsson, K. (2007). ON THE USE OF SERVICE ORIENTED SOFTWARE PLATFORMS FOR INDUSTRIAL ROBOTIC CELLS. IFAC Proceedings Volumes, 40(3), 109-115. doi:10.3182/20070523-3-es-4908.00019WHITLEY, K. N. (1997). Visual Programming Languages and the Empirical Evidence For and Against. Journal of Visual Languages & Computing, 8(1), 109-142. doi:10.1006/jvlc.1996.0030Xu, L. D. (2011). Enterprise Systems: State-of-the-Art and Future Trends. IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, 7(4), 630-640. doi:10.1109/tii.2011.216715

Modeling a teacher in a tutorial-like system using Learning Automata

The goal of this paper is to present a novel approach to model the behavior of a Teacher in a Tutorial- like system. In this model, the Teacher is capable of presenting teaching material from a Socratic-type Domain model via multiple-choice questions. Since this knowledge is stored in the Domain model in chapters with different levels of complexity, the Teacher is able to present learning material of varying degrees of difficulty to the Students. In our model, we propose that the Teacher will be able to assist the Students to learn the more difficult material. In order to achieve this, he provides them with hints that are relative to the difficulty of the learning material presented. This enables the Students to cope with the process of handling more complex knowledge, and to be able to learn it appropriately. To our knowledge, the findings of this study are novel to the field of intelligent adaptation using Learning Automata (LA). The novelty lies in the fact that the learning system has a strategy by which it can deal with increasingly more complex/difficult Environments (or domains from which the learning as to be achieved). In our approach, the convergence of the Student models (represented by LA) is driven not only by the response of the Environment (Teacher), but also by the hints that are provided by the latter. Our proposed Teacher model has been tested against different benchmark Environments, and the results of these simulations have demonstrated the salient aspects of our model. The main conclusion is that Normal and Below-Normal learners benefited significantly from the hints provided by the Teacher, while the benefits to (brilliant) Fast learners were marginal. This seems to be in-line with our subjective understanding of the behavior of real-life Students

Detection of mismatch repair gene germline mutation carrier among Chinese population with colorectal cancer

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Hereditary nonpolyposis colorectal cancer (HNPCC) is an autosomal dominant syndrome. The National Cancer Institute (NCI) has recommended the Revised Bethesda guidelines for screening HNPCC. There has been a great deal of research on the value of these tests in other countries. However, literature about the Chinese population is scarce. Our objective is to detect and study microsatellite instability (MSI) and mismatch repair (MMR) gene germline mutation carriers among a Chinese population with colorectal cancer.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>In 146 prospectively recruited consecutive patients with clinically proven colorectal cancer, MSI carriers were identified by analysis of tumor tissue using multiplex fluorescence polymerase chain reaction (PCR) using the NCI recommended panel and classified into microsatellite instability-low (MSI-L), microsatellite instability-high (MSI-H) and microsatellite stable (MSS) groups. Immunohistochemical staining for MSH2, MSH6 and MLH1 on tissue microarrays (TMAs) was performed, and methylation of the MLH1 promoter was analyzed by quantitative methylation specific PCR (MSP). Germline mutation analysis of blood samples was performed for MSH2, MSH6 and MLH1 genes.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Thirty-four out of the 146 colorectal cancers (CRCs, 23.2%) were MSI, including 19 MSI-H CRCs and 15 MSI-L CRCS. Negative staining for MSH2 was found in 8 CRCs, negative staining for MSH6 was found in 6 CRCs. One MSI-H CRC was negative for both MSH6 and MSH2. Seventeen CRCs stained negatively for MLH1. MLH1 promoter methylation was determined in 34 MSI CRCs. Hypermethylation of the MLH1 promoter occurred in 14 (73.7%) out of 19 MSI-H CRCs and 5 (33.3%) out of 15 MSI-L CRCs. Among the 34 MSI carriers and one MSS CRC with MLH1 negative staining, 8 had a MMR gene germline mutation, which accounted for 23.5% of all MSI colorectal cancers and 5.5% of all the colorectal cancers. Five patients harbored MSH2 germline mutations, and three patients harbored MSH6 germline mutations. None of the patients had an MLH1 mutation. Mutations were commonly located in exon 7 and 12 of MSH2 and exon 5 of MSH6. Right colonic lesions and mucinous carcinoma were not common in MSI carriers.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our data may imply that the characteristics of HNPCC in the Chinese population are probably different from those of Western countries. Application of NCI recommended criteria may not be effective enough to identify Chinese HNPCC families. Further studies are necessary to echo or refute our results so as to make the NCI recommendation more universally applicable.</p