An ANT+ Protocol Based Health Care System

In remote health care Body Area Networks (BAN) are very popular but demand low energy consumption due to very constrained resources. For it several protocols, such as ZigBee, BlueTooth, WiFi etc, have been proposed but non has delivered the optimum results. These systems also demand vast interoperability among devices. Recently a propriety protocol ANT+ provides such features and strengthens the goals for Internet of Things (IOT). The authors describe a software architecture which flexibly integrates ANT+ protocol enabled sensors to deliver health care services. The approach is validated on a health care application that integrates heart rate, cadence, distance, foot steps and environmental temperature sensors. Described architecture is modular, flexible, scalable and possess several features

Human Activity Recognition using a Semantic Ontology-Based Framework

In the last years, the extensive use of smart objects embedded in the physical world, in order to monitor and record physical or environmental conditions, has increased rapidly. In this scenario, heterogeneous devices are connected together into a network. Data generated from such system are usually stored in a database, which often shows a lack of semantic information and relationship among devices. Moreover, this set can be incomplete, unreliable, incorrect and noisy. So, it turns out to be important both the integration of information and the interoperability of applications. For this reason, ontologies are becoming widely used to describe the domain and achieve efficient interoperability of information system. An example of the described situation could be represented by Ambient Assisted Living context, which intends to enable older or disabled people to remain living independently longer in their own house. In this contest, human activity recognition plays a main role because it could be considered as starting point to facilitate assistance and care for elderly. Due to the nature of human behavior, it is necessary to manage the time and spatial restrictions. So, we propose a framework that implements a novel methodology based on the integration of an ontology for representing contextual knowledge and a Complex Event Processing engine for supporting timed reasoning. Moreover, it is an infrastructure where knowledge, organized in conceptual spaces (based on its meaning) can be semantically queried, discovered, and shared across applications. In our framework, benefits deriving from the implementation of a domain ontology are exploited into different levels of abstrac- tion. Thereafter, reasoning techniques represent a preprocessing method to prepare data for the final temporal analysis. The results, presented in this paper, have been obtained applying the methodology into AALISABETH, an Ambient Assisted Living project aimed to monitor the lifestyle of old people, not suffering from major chronic diseases or severe disabilities

A Flexible and Scalable Architecture for Real-Time ANT+ Sensor Data Acquisition and NoSQL Storage

Wireless Personal or Body Area Networks (WPANs or WBANs) are the main mechanisms to develop healthcare systems for an ageing society. Such systems offer monitoring, security, and caring services by measuring physiological body parameters using wearable devices. Wireless sensor networks allow inexpensive, continuous, and real-time updates of the sensor data, to the data repositories via an Internet. A great deal of research is going on with a focus on technical, managerial, economic, and social health issues. The technical obstacles, which we encounter, in general, are better methodologies, architectures, and context data storage. Sensor communication, data processing and interpretation, data interchange format, data transferal, and context data storage are sensitive phases during the whole process of body parameter acquisition until the storage. ANT+ is a proprietary (but open access) low energy protocol, which supports device interoperability by mutually agreeing upon device profile standards. We have implemented a prototype, based upon ANT+ enabled sensors for a real-time scenario. This paper presents a system architecture, with its software organization, for real-time message interpretation, event-driven based real-time bidirectional communication, and schema flexible storage. A computer user uses it to acquire and to transmit the data using a Windows service to the context server

Online tutoring system for programming courses to improve exam pass rate

University students enrolled in the first year of the Computer Science degree may have problems approaching programming, negatively affecting their study during the course. Tutoring programming projects are very important in helping students with difficulty in learning by providing the right approach to study, improving their knowledge and skills in computing. The aim of this work is to realize a new Java Programming tutoring online course that allows students to have an effective online tool to achieve the learning goals of the course and this will enhance the programming exam pass rate. The course we have designed consists of tools to help students with video tutorials, self-assessment quizzes, code evaluations and exercises to solve using an online Java editor. Because the Moodle platform lacks tools to check the quality of the code syntax, a new software was created. It performs a syntax analysis of the Java code and, as a tutor, automatically provides feedbacks and tips to the students to improve the quality. For each online tool the immediate feedback technique is used to amplify students’ engagement. A Clustering Machine Learning technique is performed to identify different students’ behaviors. A correlation between them and the final performance showed the most influential features of the completed activities. Quantitative analysis highlighted the effectiveness of the tutoring system and the online course designed in this work to enhance the final exam pass rate. At the end, students filled a questionnaire to report their perception and satisfaction about the course

Symbolic verification of event–condition–action rules in intelligent environments

In this paper we show how state-of-the art SMT-based techniques for software verification can be employed in the verification of event–condition–action rules in intelligent environments. Moreover, we exploit the specific features of intelligent environments to optimise the verification process. We compare our approach with previous work in a detailed evaluation section, showing how it improves both performance and expressivity of the language for event–condition–action rules

Light Routing Algorithm for Utility Networks

In several application domains like Ambient Assisted Living systems or in users accounting services, specific network protocols are called for to interconnect different data processing devices having limited processing power and energy [1]. Typically, the interconnections are accomplished through dedicated cables or as power lines, or through wireless, but even if the cables are fully utilized, few protocols have been drawn up or planned to optimize communication among a high number of devices. One reason for the limited development of these protocols lies in the difficulty of reconciling the efficiency and efficacy of a protocol with scarce power computing of the nodes. This article will propose an efficient algorithm for routing applicable to networks with many nodes and with interferences typically present in power lines, and with low management overhead. The algorithm guarantees reliability and transparent distribution over large networks like accounting networks for the distribution of water, gas and tele-heating. Implementation of the protocol can be realized within the European M-Bus

Energy Efficient Light Routing in Utility Network

Nowadays, automatic meter reading is an essential technology for customers and providers. The meter communication infrastructure is frequently subject to interference and is composed of nodes with limited memory and processing capability. These limitations make the development of routing protocols a challenging task. We propose a new centralised reliable protocol based on European M-Bus [EN13757] that uses a distributed cache with a master/slave model. This reduces the network overhead while keeping a good throughput. We have validate our protocol by considering a network with white Gaussian noise and binary symmetric channels. The simulation shows a reduced fault while keeping a good throughput and low power consumption