Innovation for People with Disabilities in Hospitality Industry: A Theoretical Approach

Hotels are forms of businesses connected to the entire system of production and distribution of tourist products. Essentially, they provide hospitality goods and services to travelers, individuals with different profiles and interests, and thus play a very important role in the tourism sector. Therefore, the purpose of the article is to point out the theoretical approach of innovation in the context of its utilization in hotels for individuals with disabilities. We have reviewed the existing theoretical approaches to innovation and then analyzed their applicability in the tourism sector. Based on the findings, we developed theoretical approaches, such as the coupling theory and the innovation diffusion theory, that can be applied to the target sectors and provide valuable insights to the relevant actors. Research shows that innovation, whether it concerns technological applications or processes, affects the enrichment of hotel services provided for people with disabilities and influences the technical-functional and organizational processes of hospitality. On this basis, innovation is a key factor of growth for any hotel, as it increases its competitiveness and sustainability through the utilization of the potential provided by the use of new innovative technological applications or processes for people with disabilities.JEL Classification: L83, O30. Doi: 10.28991/HIJ-2022-03-01-010 Full Text: PD

Scalable monitoring for multiple virtualized infrastructures for 5G services

This paper presents a high level architecture and functionality details of the monitoring framework that has been implemented and integrated within the SONATA project, in order to support the management of 5G services under the Software Defined Networking / Network Function Virtualization (SDN/NFV) paradigm. The innovative framework, extending the functionality of Prometheus.io, is unique in its support for multiple Points of Presence (PoP), its extensibility using Websockets, and its availability as opensource

Towards a blockchain-enabled crowdsourcing platform

Crowdsourcing has been pursued as a way to leverage the power of the crowd for many different purposes in diverse sectors from collecting information, aggregating funds, and gathering employees to perform tasks of different sizes among other targets. Data integrity and nonrepudiation are of utmost importance in these systems and are currently not guaranteed. Blockchain technology has been proven to improve on these aspects. In this article, we investigate the benefits that the adoption of Blockchain technology can bring in crowdsourcing systems. To this end, we provide examples of real-life crowdsourcing use cases and explore the benefits of using Blockchain, mainly as a database

New methods to control access in broadband networks

The information volume and the application variety is constantly increasing imposing new demands on the telecommunication networks. The emerging technologies intend to offer new broadband services to the end users, extending the access opportunities in wider areas and broader user groups. The next step includes the development of new methods to control access that will maximize the utilization providing at the same time service differentiation, efficient switching techniques and new systems to cover the new functional requirements. The demand for Quality of Service becomes imperative nowadays with the multi-media services spreading around. The solution is pursued in the study, development and implementation of new dynamic and flexible mechanisms embedded in every networking component. Addressing this need, the dissertation investigates access mechanisms for three different systems and focuses on the service strategy and the design of the controller, which is responsible for allocating the resources satisfying a set of requirements. The first system dealt with is this of a Hybrid Fiber Co-axial network of tree-topology, where the Medium Access Controller is allocating the upstream channel slots. The MAC controller governs this distributed queuing system collecting requests from the modems and issuing transmission permits. The dissertation presents an innovative algorithm, which is aligned with the Differentiated Services architecture, to efficiently allocate the resources and provide different Quality of Service levels. The connections are grouped/aggregated in four different classes with different Quality of Service guarantees and are dynamically serviced on request basis. The implementation cost is assessed while the performance evaluation is based on results of a large set of tests that were carried out on the corresponding laboratory demonstrator system using either traffic generators boards or real applications to inject traffic in the system. A wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) ring covering metropolitan areas is the second system that is referenced. Every node attached to this ring is allowed to transmit in slots of fixed duration in multiple wavelengths at 10Gbps. A dynamic access algorithm based on the empty slot protocol is proposed to offer service differentiation. The execution of the algorithm is performed in a distributed way and is based on the information circulating in one wavelength, which carries control information. The basic scheme is this of the class reservation instead of individual node reservation. The functional requirements are analyzed while the implementation architecture is presented to certificate that the algorithm is executable in less than a slot time (1 μs) and with very little hardware resources, while backing different node’s configurations in terms of number of tunable and fixed transceivers. Finally, the access to the processing engines and to the output path of a protocol processor implemented as system on a chip is addressed. The dissertation proposes a scheme for the task and the traffic schedulers which employs flow classification and aggregation in scheduling queues and allows them to operate on the same structures -eliminating the cost- while satisfying the very different requirements imposed on them. The main result is the design of a task scheduler that supports processing throughput of 2,5Gbps and capable of implementing different service algorithms and, on the other hand, the design of a traffic scheduler which performs peak rate shaping for the transmission of both fixed size packets (e.g. ATM cells) or variable length packets (as in the case of IP networks). The implementation requirements and cost are also analyzed. The dissertation presents new methods to control access in different systems, which prove to be efficient and flexible while their implementation cost and performance is analyzed. The target has in all systems be the maximization of the utilization and the service differentiation, while their impact on the system scalability is also presented

Design Space Exploration of a Multi-Model AI-Based Indoor Localization System

In this paper, we present the results of a performance evaluation and optimization process of an indoor positioning system (IPS) designed to operate on portable as well as miniaturized embedded systems. The proposed method uses the Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) values from multiple Bluetooth Low-Energy (BLE) beacons scattered around interior spaces. The beacon signals were received from the user devices and processed through an RSSI filter and a group of machine learning (ML) models, in an arrangement of one model per detected node. Finally, a multilateration problem was solved using as an input the inferred distances from the advertising nodes and returning the final position approximation. In this work, we first presented the evaluation of different ML models for inferring the distance between the devices and the installed beacons by applying different optimization algorithms. Then, we presented model reduction methods to implement the optimized algorithm on the embedded system by appropriately adapting it to its constraint resources and compared the results, demonstrating the efficiency of the proposed method

Novel Simulation Approaches for Smart Grids

The complexity of the power grid, in conjunction with the ever increasing demand for electricity, creates the need for efficient analysis and control of the power system. The evolution of the legacy system towards the new smart grid intensifies this need due to the large number of sensors and actuators that must be monitored and controlled, the new types of distributed energy sources that need to be integrated and the new types of loads that must be supported. At the same time, integration of human-activity awareness into the smart grid is emerging and this will allow the system to monitor, share and manage information and actions on the business, as well as the real world. In this context, modeling and simulation is an invaluable tool for system behavior analysis, energy consumption estimation and future state prediction. In this paper, we review current smart grid simulators and approaches for building and user behavior modeling, and present a federated smart grid simulation framework, in which building, control and user behavior modeling and simulation are decoupled from power or network simulators and implemented as discrete components. This framework enables evaluation of the interactions between the communication infrastructure and the power system taking into account the human activities, which are at the focus of emerging energy-related applications that aim to shape user behavior. Validation of the key functionality of the proposed framework is also presented

Resource and Service Virtualisation in M2M and IoT Platforms

Decoupling hardware, software and service provisioning through principles of virtualisation has enabled the exponential uptake of today’s Internet. The currently emerging Internet of Things (IoT), be it through its more academic embodiment of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) or more industrial embodiment of Machine-to- Machine Networks, is, however, still fragmented due to dispersed business models, isolated administrative control, heterogeneity of devices and platforms, proprietary communications protocols, different economic interest of stakeholders and a lack of well-crafted solutions for data, information and knowledge exchange. This work presents a novel platform supporting different aspects of WSN virtualisation to cope with requirements dictated by diverse IoT application domains. It introduces beyond state of the art technological advancements following the recent standardization efforts in this research area. The implementation of the platform and its validation through a representative real-life application scenario exploring different virtualisation facets are also reported