The design and development of multi-agent based RFID middleware system for data and devices management

Thesis (D. Tech. (Electrical Engineering)) - Central University of technology, Free State, 2012Radio frequency identification technology (RFID) has emerged as a key technology for automatic identification and promises to revolutionize business processes. While RFID technology adoption is improving rapidly, reliable and widespread deployment of this technology still faces many significant challenges. The key deployment challenges include how to use the simple, unreliable raw data generated by RFID deployments to make business decisions; and how to manage a large number of deployed RFID devices. In this thesis, a multi-agent based RFID middleware which addresses some of the RFID data and device management challenges was developed. The middleware developed abstracts the auto-identification applications from physical RFID device specific details and provides necessary services such as device management, data cleaning, event generation, query capabilities and event persistence. The use of software agent technology offers a more scalable and distributed system architecture for the proposed middleware. As part of a multi-agent system, application-independent domain ontology for RFID devices was developed. This ontology can be used or extended in any application interested with RFID domain ontology. In order to address the event processing tasks within the proposed middleware system, a temporal-based RFID data model which considers both applications’ temporal and spatial granules in the data model itself for efficient event processing was developed. The developed data model extends the conventional Entity-Relationship constructs by adding a time attribute to the model. By maintaining the history of events and state changes, the data model captures the fundamental RFID application logic within the data model. Hence, this new data model supports efficient generation of application level events, updating, querying and analysis of both recent and historical events. As part of the RFID middleware, an adaptive sliding-window based data cleaning scheme for reducing missed readings from RFID data streams (called WSTD) was also developed. The WSTD scheme models the unreliability of the RFID readings by viewing RFID streams as a statistical sample of tags in the physical world, and exploits techniques grounded in sampling theory to drive its cleaning processes. The WSTD scheme is capable of efficiently coping with both environmental variations and tag dynamics by automatically and continuously adapting its cleaning window size, based on observed readings

Impact of Radio Operating Environments on Broadband Connectivity

Broadband connectivity and services commonly referred to as the Internet is the key enabling facility for the modern digital economy and the driver for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR or Industry 4.0). In Tanzania, there are over 49% Internet subscriptions for mobile broadband services using 3G UMTS and 4G standards infrastructure, which are predominantly available in urban areas. The non-urban areas remain mostly 2G coverage areas and lack mobile broadband connectivity and services. Transforming existing 2G mobile networks to broadband infrastructure can be achieved by swapping 2G sites with 3G or 4G sites or incrementally replacing 2G sites with 3G or 4G sites on demand. In this work, we investigated the performance of the UMTS family of standards to deliver broadband connectivity and services outside major towns and cities in three different radio operating environments, namely hilly, undulating and flat terrain landscapes. Results show that the achievable 3G data rate deteriorates depending on the type of operating environment as the internet user moves away from the base station. Therefore, mobile broadband deployment in non-urban areas is not simply replacement of 2G sites for 3G sites; it will require special deployment strategies to achieve a total broadband coverage. Keywords: Internet Services; Mobile Broadband; Radio Channel Modelling; Telecoms Industry Innovation; Sustainable Infrastructure Developmen

A multi-agent based system RFID middleware for data and device management

Published ArticleRadio-frequency Identification (RFID) technology promises to revolutionize business processes. While RFID technology is improving rapidly, a reliable deployment of this technology is still a significant challenge impeding its widespread adoption. In this paper we provide a brief overview of some common fundamental characteristics of RFID data and devices, which pose significant challenges in the design of RFID middleware systems. In addition, the development of a multi-agent RFID middleware solution to address the RFID data and device management challenges is discussed

Mixed Mode Device-to-Device Communication Scheme for Congestion Reduction and Channel Usage Optimization in 5G Cellular Networks

Device-to-Device (D2D) communication schemes have gained more attention in cellular networks particularly in normalization process of the upcoming 5G networks. They have been investigated in core network offloading, congestion reduction and channel usage optimisation.  The two last cases are among the major constraints in current cellular networks and are the main concerns of this paper. The paper presents a mixed mode D2D communication scheme to decentralize data collection between devices and the base station in order to reduce the number of direct connections at the base station of ultra-dense cells characterized by different levels of channel utilizations or target data rates, as expected for 5G networks. The attachment utility is derived as the overall gain of a device for a target data rate and is used as a metric for D2D association’s decision. Results show that the attachment utility and D2D pairs increase by either increasing the D2D communication range or decreasing devices’ target data rates. A further important consideration is that the proposed mixed mode D2D communication scheme improves the throughput expectation in the cell by 14.2% compared to the regular cellular communication.Keywords:     5G Networks, Channel Usage Optimisation, Congestion Reduction, D2D Communication Scheme, Target Data Rate

Device–to-Device Association Algorithm for Optimal Neighbour Selection and Channel Sharing in 5G Cellular Networks

The integration of device-to-device (D2D) communication in 5G cellular networks has generated the possibility of multiple transmission modes in a single cell. This has motivated scholars to investigate different mode selection and D2D association algorithms that guarantee the selection of proper transmission mode. However, the complexity of algorithms and tractability of devices in the cell are still remarkably challenging. This paper, therefore, presents a utility based D2D association algorithm that ensures optimal neighbour selection by using numerical linear algebra to minimize computational complexity. Simulation results show that the minimum utility based D2D association increases the expected values of attached devices by 6% and 10% compared to the relative distance and maximum utility based D2D associations, respectively. Alternatively, the throughput expectation increases by 2.5% and 4% compared to the relative distance and maximum utility based D2D associations, respectively. Keywords: Cooperative Communication; D2D, Mode Selection; Relay-assisted; Traffic Overloa

Reducing False Negative Reads in RFID Data Streams Using an Adaptive Sliding-Window Approach

Unreliability of the data streams generated by RFID readers is among the primary factors which limit the widespread adoption of the RFID technology. RFID data cleaning is, therefore, an essential task in the RFID middleware systems in order to reduce reading errors, and to allow these data streams to be used to make a correct interpretation and analysis of the physical world they are representing. In this paper we propose an adaptive sliding-window based approach called WSTD which is capable of efficiently coping with both environmental variation and tag dynamics. Our experimental results demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed approach

Brain–computer interface: trend, challenges, and threats

Abstract Brain–computer interface (BCI), an emerging technology that facilitates communication between brain and computer, has attracted a great deal of research in recent years. Researchers provide experimental results demonstrating that BCI can restore the capabilities of physically challenged people, hence improving the quality of their lives. BCI has revolutionized and positively impacted several industries, including entertainment and gaming, automation and control, education, neuromarketing, and neuroergonomics. Notwithstanding its broad range of applications, the global trend of BCI remains lightly discussed in the literature. Understanding the trend may inform researchers and practitioners on the direction of the field, and on where they should invest their efforts more. Noting this significance, we have analyzed 25,336 metadata of BCI publications from Scopus to determine advancement of the field. The analysis shows an exponential growth of BCI publications in China from 2019 onwards, exceeding those from the United States that started to decline during the same period. Implications and reasons for this trend are discussed. Furthermore, we have extensively discussed challenges and threats limiting exploitation of BCI capabilities. A typical BCI architecture is hypothesized to address two prominent BCI threats, privacy and security, as an attempt to make the technology commercially viable to the society