PreLectO: An App for Cognitive Stimulation through Games in Early Childhood

Presented at the 4th XoveTIC Conference, A Coruña, Spain, 7–8 October 2021.[Abstract] The goal of this work was to develop a mobile application for Android devices, with the objective of stimulating the cognitive skills of children from 0 to 6 years old who are suffering from learning disabilities, while focusing on the most common learning impediments such as reading and writing disorders. This application is based on games specifically designed to meet the needs of this group. For this purpose, we collaborated with professionals from an organization in the area of A Coruña who established the functional requirements of the application and carried out the validation tests. The application monitored the progress of its users, thus allowing the therapists to track them and adapt the training program to each of their individual needs.This work was funded by the Xunta de Galicia (through grant ED431C 2020/15, and grant ED431G 2019/01 to support the Centro de Investigación de Galicia “CITIC”), the Agencia Estatal de Investigación of Spain (through grants RED2018-102668-T and PID2019-104958RB-C42), and ERDF funds of the European Union (FEDER Galicia 2014–2020 and AEI/FEDER Programs, EU).Xunta de Galicia; ED431C 2020/15Xunta de Galicia; ED431G 2019/0

Design of limited feedback for robust MMSE precoding in multiuser MISO systems

[Resumen] En este trabajo consideramos un sistema multiusuario con múltiples antenas en transmisión y una única antena en cada uno de los usuarios receptores y que se denota por brevedad como MU-MISO, del inglés Multi–User Multiple–Input/Single–Output. Este modelo MU–MISO se ajusta perfectamente al enlace descendente de un sistema de comunicaciones móviles, donde múltiples antenas situadas en la estación base envían información a varios usuarios dentro de su zona de cobertura y cuyos terminales móviles disponen generalmente de una única antena. Este canal descendente se denomina también canal de difusión (BC, del inglés Broadcast Channel). Cuando se considera un canal de difusión, el transmisor centralizado tiene claramente más grados de libertad que cada uno de los receptores descentralizados, por lo que es más apropiado separar las señales aplicando precodificación en transmisión. Para poder realizar el diseño de los parámetros del precodificador, el transmisor necesita conocer la información de canal (CSI, en inglés Channel State Information) correspondiente a los distintos usuarios receptores. En el caso de sistemas FDD (del inglés, Frequency Division Duplex), esta información puede obtenerse (al menos parcialmente) mediante realimentación, siempre tras haber aplicado un proceso de cuantificación de la información enviada con el objetivo de adaptarse a las condiciones de ancho de banda limitado del canal de retorno

PICTOTEMPO: An App for Personal Organization in Autism Spectrum Disorders

Presented at the 4th XoveTIC Conference, A Coruña, Spain, 7–8 October 2021.[Abstract] In this work, we develop a mobile application which allows to create digital schedules for children with autism spectrum disorder. These schedules comprise a sorted sequence of tasks or activities which facilitates children to understand and anticipate the upcoming events, thus reducing their stress and frustration. For that, the activities are identified and described with the help of visual supports (pictograms) which can be visualized on the screen of any mobile device. The developed application also allows to gather valuable information about the performance and interests of the children from their interactions with it, helping to refine and define more appropriate routines or support therapies for the children. In this way, the aim of this work is to contribute to improve the lives of people with functional and cognitive diversity, especially children with these disorders, and also their families.This work has been funded by the Xunta de Galicia (by grant ED431C 2020/15, and grant ED431G 2019/01 to support the Centro de Investigación de Galicia “CITIC”), the Agencia Estatal de Investigación of Spain (by grants RED2018-102668-T and PID2019-104958RB-C42) and ERDF funds of the EU (FEDER Galicia 2014-2020 & AEI/FEDER Programs, UE)Xunta de Galicia; ED431C 2020/15Xunta de Galicia; ED431G 2019/0

Service-Learning Projects in University Degrees Based on Sustainable Development Goals: Proposals and Results

[Abstract] We present several Service-Learning projects developed considering Sustainable Development Goals to provide the students skills for the support of a sustainable society. This project begins with collecting initial impressions from surveys and reflections to know both the students’ expectations and their degree of involvement in the development of a sustainable society. Next, the students design academic projects taking into account the needs of the specific collective to which the Service-Learning activity is oriented. When this design has finished, such projects are developed with the users and the activity is evaluated. During 2019–2020, these projects were done with four entities oriented to people either with Asperger’s syndrome, Down syndrome, Alzheimer’s disease or mental health illnesses. A total of 35 and 10 students, respectively, from the Bachelor’s Degree of Engineering in Industrial Design and Product Development and from the Master’s Degree in Professorship of High School have participated in this experience. We analyze the results from the perspective of the different agents involved, considering both qualitative and quantitative metrics. The results show that both users and staff are satisfied with this collaboration between the university and their entities. Moreover, this experience clearly has contributed to a better personal and professional student’s development.Xunta de Galicia; ED431C 2020/15Xunta de Galicia; ED431G2019/01Agencia Estatal de Investigación de España; TEC2016-75067-C4-1-RAgencia Estatal de Investigación de España; RED2018-102668-TAgencia Estatal de Investigación de España; PID2019-104958RB-C4

Moving to e-Service Learning in Higher Education

[Abstract] Service Learning is a methodology in which students achieve academic and transversal competences related to the curriculum of a subject while performing a service for the benefit of the community. With the COVID-19 pandemic, it was necessary to reorganize the Service Learning activities developed in recent years so that they do not lose their pedagogical value and community service. This scenario has been an opportunity to kick-start an e-Service Learning experience. For that purpose, this work shows how different Information and Communication Technology tools are integrated into an online platform to develop both activities and assessment following an e-Service Learning methodology. Since the experience was performed with two collaborating entities serving people with autism and in two schools of the University of A Coruña, the tools are available not only to professors and students, but also to entities. Our experience includes the assessment of both competences and service satisfaction using different resources for virtual collaborative work. The main contribution of our work is that we have greatly simplified our previous project on-site and also the monitoring of the student’s progress, the work of both professors and students, and the analysis of results, providing a virtual service that responds to user needs.This work has been funded by the Xunta de Galicia (by grants ED431C 2019/17 and ED431C 2020/15, and grant ED431G 2019/01 to support the Centro de Investigación de Galicia “CITIC”), the Agencia Estatal de Investigación of Spain (by grants PID2020-11697RG-I00, PID2020-118857RA-I00 and PID2019-104958RB-C42), and ERDF funds of the EU (FEDER Galicia 2014–2020 and AEI/FEDER Programs, UE)Xunta de Galicia; ED431C 2019/17Xunta de Galicia; ED431C 2020/15Xunta de Galicia; ED431G 2019/0

Robust Precoding with Limited Feedback Design based on Precoding MSE for MU-MISO Systems

The final publication is available http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TSP.2012.2186446[Abstract] For the separation of the signals in the vector broadcast channel (BC), some information about the channel state is necessary at the transmitter. In many cases, this channel state information (CSI) must be fed back from the receivers to the transmitter. We jointly design the channel estimators and the quantizers at the receivers together with the precoder at the transmitter based on a precoder-centric criterion, i.e., the minimization of a mean square error (MSE) metric appropriate for the precoder design. This is in contrast to our previous works, where the quantizer design was based on a CSI MSE metric, i.e., based on the minimization of the MSE between the true channel and the channel recovered by the transmitter using a feedback channel. Interestingly, the estimators resulting from this joint formulation are independent of the used codebook. The codebook entries are the employed precoders. Therefore, each receiver feeds back the index of a set of precoders and the intersection of the sets gives the appropriate precoder. Since the quantizers of the different receivers have to work separately, the metric for the computation of the partition cells cannot be expressed as a simple squared error depending on the quantizer output. The proposed system based on a joint optimization clearly outperforms previous designs with separate optimization of feedback and precoding.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación; TEC2010-19545-C04-01Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación; CSD2008-00010Galicia. Consellería de Economía e Industria; 09TIC008105P

Hybrid Supervised-Unsupervised Channel Estimation Scheme with Dynamic Transmission of Pilots

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11063-010-9161-x[Abstract] Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) digital communications standards typically include pilot symbols in the definition of the transmit signals with the purpose of acquiring the Channel State Information (CSI) using supervised algorithms at the receiver side. Such pilot symbols convey no information and, therefore, system throughput, spectral efficiency and transmit energy consumption are all penalized. In this article, we propose to acquire the CSI combining supervised and unsupervised algorithms. Our strategy avoids the periodical transmission of unnecessary pilots by using a simple decision criterion to determine the time instants when the performance obtained with an unsupervised algorithm degrades or, equivalently, the time instants when pilots are required. We show the performance of this scheme for MIMO systems with Decision-feedback equalizers at the receiver.Galicia. Consellería de Economía e Industria; 09TIC008105PRMinisterio de Ciencia e Innovación; TEC2007-68020-C04-01Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación; TIN2009-0573Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación; CSD2008-0001

Robust Precoding with Bayesian Error Modeling for Limited Feedback MU-MISO Systems

The final publication is available http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TSP.2010.2052046[Abstract] We consider the robust precoder design for multiuser multiple-input single-output (MU-MISO) systems where the channel state information (CSI) is fed back from the single antenna receivers to the centralized transmitter equipped with multiple antennas. We propose to compress the feedback data by projecting the channel estimates onto a vector basis, known at the receivers and the transmitter, and quantizing the resulting coefficients. The channel estimator and the basis for the rank reduction are jointly optimized by minimizing the mean-square error (MSE) between the true and the rank-reduced CSI. Expressions for the conditional mean and the conditional covariance of the channel are derived which are necessary for the robust precoder design. These expressions take into account the following sources of error: channel estimation, truncation for rank reduction, quantization, and feedback channel delay. As an example for the robust problem formulation, vector precoding (VP) is designed based on the expectation of the MSE conditioned on the fed-back CSI. Our results show that robust precoding based on fed-back CSI clearly outperforms conventional precoding designs which do not take into account the errors in the CSI.Galicia, Consellería de Innovación, Industria e Comercio; PGIDT06TIC10501PRMinisterio de Educacion y Ciencia; TEC2007-68020-C04-01Ministerio de Educacion y Ciencia; CSD2008-00010.Ministerio de Educacion y Ciencia; HA2006-0112Alemania. Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst; D/06/1280

Unha experiencia de aprendizaxe e servizo: Tecnoloxía e sociedade

Banco de experiencias de Aprendizaxe Servizo. Convocatoria 2019/202

Tecnología y sociedad: 2021/2022

Banco de experiencias de Aprendizaxe Servizo. Convocatoria 2021/202