Time-Scale Domain Characterization of Time-Varying Ultrawideband Infostation Channel

The time-scale domain geometrical-based method for the characterization of the time varying ultrawideband (UWB) channel typical of an infostation channel is presented. Compared to methods that use Doppler shift as a measure of time-variation in the channel this model provides a more reliable measure of frequency dispersion caused by terminal mobility in the UWB infostation channel. Particularly, it offers carrier frequency independent method of computing wideband channel responses and parameters which are important for ultrawideband systems. Results show that the frequency dispersion of the channel depends on the frequency and not on the choice of bandwidth. And time dispersion depends on bandwidth and not on the frequency. It is also shown that for time-varying UWB, frame length defined over the coherence time obtained with reference to the carrier frequency results in an error margin which can be reduced by using the coherence time defined with respect to the maximum frequency in a given frequency band. And the estimation of the frequency offset using the time-scale domain (wideband) model presented here (especially in the case of multiband UWB frequency synchronization) is more accurate than using frequency offset estimate obtained from narrowband models

A Framework for User-Focused Electronic Health Record System Leveraging Hyperledger Fabric

This research study aims to examine the possibilities of Hyperledger Fabric (HLF) in the healthcare sector. The study addresses the gap in the knowledge base through developing customization techniques to enable the simplicity and efficacy of Electronic Medical Records (EMR) adoption for healthcare industry applications. The focus of this research explores methods of using blockchain technology that prioritise users. The investigation of several concepts used in developing web applications has been determined. The study identified that an open-source project, known as Hyperledger Fabric, can be utilised to construct a novel method of storing EMRs. The framework provides a test network that can be customised to satisfy the need of several projects, including storing medical records. This research additionally outlines the difficulties encountered and problems that need to be resolved before Hyperledger Fabric can be successfully implemented in healthcare systems. Considering all types of blockchains available, the needs are met by Hyperledger Fabric, which offers a distributed and secure environment for healthcare systems. Blockchain has the potential to transform healthcare by putting the patient at the centre of the system and enhancing health data protection and interoperability. Also, by using grant and revoke access mechanisms, patients have complete control over their medical information as well as authorized doctors who are allowed to view records. This functionality is made possible by the chaincode defined in the blockchain platform. The research study has both practitioner and research implications for the development of secure blockchain-based EMRs

Face recognition via edge-based Gabor feature representation for plastic surgery-altered images

Plastic surgery procedures on the face introduce skin texture variations between images of the same person (intra-subject), thereby making the task of face recognition more difficult than in normal scenario. Usually, in contemporary face recognition systems, the original gray-level face image is used as input to the Gabor descriptor, which translates to encoding some texture properties of the face image. The texture-encoding process significantly degrades the performance of such systems in the case of plastic surgery due to the presence of surgically induced intra-subject variations. Based on the proposition that the shape of significant facial components such as eyes, nose, eyebrow, and mouth remains unchanged after plastic surgery, this paper employs an edge-based Gabor feature representation approach for the recognition of surgically altered face images. We use the edge information, which is dependent on the shapes of the significant facial components, to address the plastic surgery-induced texture variation problems. To ensure that the significant facial components represent useful edge information with little or no false edges, a simple illumination normalization technique is proposed for preprocessing. Gabor wavelet is applied to the edge image to accentuate on the uniqueness of the significant facial components for discriminating among different subjects. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated on the Georgia Tech (GT) and the Labeled Faces in the Wild (LFW) databases with illumination and expression problems, and the plastic surgery database with texture changes. Results show that the proposed edge-based Gabor feature representation approach is robust against plastic surgery-induced face variations amidst expression and illumination problems and outperforms the existing plastic surgery face recognition methods reported in the literature

Biologically inspired bio-cyber interface architecture and model for internet of Bio-NanoThings applications

With the advent of nanotechnology, concepts related to the Internet of Things, such as the Internet of NanoThings and Internet of Bio-NanoThings (IoBNT) have also emerged in the classical literature. The main concern of this paper is the IoBNT, which projects the prospective application domain where the activities of very tiny, biocompatible, and non-intrusive devices operating in an in-body nanonetwork can be monitored and controlled through the Internet. In this paper, we present an illustrative scenario and system model of an IoBNT for application in an advanced healthcare delivery system. To address one of the major challenges of the IoBNT, we present an exemplary architecture and model of a bio-cyber interface for connecting the conventional electromagnetic-based Internet to the biochemical signaling-based bionanonetwork. The biocyber interface is designed and modeled by employing biological concepts, such as the responsiveness of certain biomolecules to thermal and light stimuli, and the bioluminescence phenomenon of some biochemical reactions. The analysis in this paper focuses on the system that comprises the bio-cyber interface and the information propagation network of the blood vessel that leads to the in-body nanonetwork location. The effects of the system and design parameters associated with the IoBNT models presented are numerically evaluated.The Sentech Chair in Broadband Wireless Multimedia Communications at the University of Pretoria and the Department of Trade and Industry THRIP Program.http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/RecentIssue.jsp?punumber=26hb2016Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineerin

Enabling emergent configurations in the industrial internet of things for oil and gas explorations : a survey

Abstract: Several heterogeneous, intelligent, and distributed devices can be connected to interact with one another over the Internet in what is termed internet of things (IoT). Also, the concept of IoT can be exploited in the industrial environment for enhancing the production of goods and services and for mitigating the risk of disaster occurrences. This application of IoT for enhancing industrial production is known as industrial IoT (IIoT). Emergent configuration (EC) is a technology that can be adopted to enhance the operation and collaboration of IoT connected devices in order to improve the efficiency of the connected IoT systems for maximum user satisfaction. To meet user goals, the connected devices are required to cooperate with one another in an adaptive, interoperable, and homogeneous manner. In this paper, a survey of the concept of IoT is presented in addition to a review of IIoT systems. The application of ubiquitous computing-aided software define networking (SDN)-based EC architecture is propounded for enhancing the throughput of oil and gas production in the maritime ecosystems by managing the exploration process especially in emergency situations that involve anthropogenic oil and gas spillages

Diffusion-controlled interface kinetics-inclusive system-theoretic propagation models for molecular communication systems

Inspired by biological systems, molecular communication has been proposed as a new communication paradigm that uses biochemical signals to transfer information from one nano device to another over a short distance. The biochemical nature of the information transfer process implies that for molecular communication purposes, the development of molecular channel models should take into consideration diffusion phenomenon as well as the physical/biochemical kinetic possibilities of the process. The physical and biochemical kinetics arise at the interfaces between the diffusion channel and the transmitter/receiver units. These interfaces are herein termed molecular antennas. In this paper, we present the deterministic propagation model of the molecular communication between an immobilized nanotransmitter and nanoreceiver, where the emission and reception kinetics are taken into consideration. Specifically, we derived closed-form system-theoretic models and expressions for configurations that represent different communication systems based on the type of molecular antennas used. The antennas considered are the nanopores at the transmitter and the surface receptor proteins/enzymes at the receiver. The developed models are simulated to show the influence of parameters such as the receiver radius, surface receptor protein/enzyme concentration, and various reaction rate constants. Results show that the effective receiver surface area and the rate constants are important to the system’s output performance. Assuming high rate of catalysis, the analysis of the frequency behavior of the developed propagation channels in the form of transfer functions shows significant difference introduce by the inclusion of the molecular antennas into the diffusion-only model. It is also shown that for t > > 0 and with the information molecules’ concentration greater than the Michaelis-Menten kinetic constant of the systems, the inclusion of surface receptors proteins and enzymes in the models makes the system act like a band-stop filter over an infinite frequency range.The Sentech Chair in Broadband Wireless Multimedia Communications (BWMC) at the University of Pretoria and the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) THRIP Program.http://www.hindawi.com/journals/asp/am201

Information-theoretic model and analysis of molecular signaling in targeted drug delivery

Targeted drug delivery (TDD) modality promises a smart localization of appropriate dose of therapeutic drugs to the targeted part of the body at reduced system toxicity. To achieve the desired goals of TDD, accurate analysis of the system is important. Recent advances in molecular communication (MC) present prospects to analyzing the TDD process using engineering concepts and tools. Specifically, the MC platform supports the abstraction of TDD process as a communication engineering problem in which the injection and transportation of drug particles in the human body and the delivery to a specific tissue or organ can be analyzed using communication engineering tools. In this paper we stand on the MC platform to present the information-theoretic model and analysis of the TDD systems. We present a modular structure of the TDD system and the probabilistic models of the MC-abstracted modules in an intuitive manner. Simulated results of information-theoretic measures such as the mutual information are employed to analyze the performance of the TDD system. Results indicate that uncertainties in drug injection/release systems, nanoparticles propagation channel and nanoreceiver systems influence the mutual information of the system, which is relative to the system's bioequivalence measure.http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/RecentIssue.jsp?punumber=7728eo2020Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineerin

Design and implementation of a wireless OBD II fleet management system

This paper describes the work that has been done in the design and development of a wireless on-board diagnostic system (OBD II) fleet management system. The system aims to measure speed, distance, and fuel consumption of vehicles for tracking and analysis purposes. An OBD II reader is designed to measure speed and mass air flow, from which the distance and fuel consumption are also computed. This data is then transmitted via WiFi to a remote server. The system also implements global positioning system tracking to determine the location of the vehicle. A database management system is implemented at the remote server for the storage and management of transmitted data and a graphical user interface is developed for analysing the transmitted data. Various qualification tests are conducted to verify the functionality of the system. The results demonstrate that the system is capable of reading the various parameters, and can successfully process, transmit, and display the readings.http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/RecentIssue.jsp?punumber=7361hb2017Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineerin

Characterization and parameterization of dynamic wireless channels over long duration using evolutionary channel parameters

The characterization and parameterization of processes that arise in many fields of science and technology are very crucial. Of particular importance are dynamic processes whose statistics are time-varying and are often modeled as stochastic processes. A typical example of such process is the wireless communication channel. Existing methods that are used to characterize and parameterize the dynamic stochastic wireless channel often consider short-term duration over which the channel statistics are invariant. Conversely, this paper presents the characterization of the dynamic wireless communication channel over a long-term duration where time/frequency channel realizations are obtained at sample intervals. To structure such channel realizations over a long duration, the idea of concatenating the 'instantaneous' channel realizations is presented. The resultant concatenated multivariable process is characterized using the concepts of process non-summability and piecewise separability. Based on these concepts, the second-order statistical parameterization of the concatenated stochastic process in both time and frequency domain is presented. The parameterization approach is based on fitting appropriate set of unit step functions that approximate the raw concatenated data using sets of evolutionary stationarity parameters. To illustrate the concepts developed in this paper, measurement-based experiments and analysis are presented and adaptively applied to improve wideband multicarrier system performance