AWAIT Context AWAre Systems for Special DisabilITies

[ESP] A medio plazo será fundamental trasladar la atención al usuario como centro de los servicios y las aplicaciones de las redes de comunicaciones inalámbricas. Una de las potenciales aplicaciones será laauto-adaptación de los entornos a los usuarios y sus capacidades. Esto es, ofrecer a cada una de las personas servicios integrales, que dependan de sus características específicas. No se trata ya tan solo de adaptar la información, o la forma en que ésta se presenta, sino de trasformar el medio físico subyacentepara beneficio del usuario. Por ejemplo, en el mundo de la domótica surgen a menudo tales aplicaciones, las casas son ambientes inteligentes donde sus condiciones cambian para aumentar la comodidad de losusuarios. En nuestra propuesta potenciamos esta propiedad, utilizando información de los usuarios para dirigir las adaptaciones realizadas por el medio. La clave de estas aplicaciones es que no requieren intervención directa por parte del usuario, por ello la plataforma de servicios es válida para usuarios de cualquier nivel, desde expertos a neófitos. Además, como hemos comentado, la adaptación final depende del usuario concreto, de su perfil. Éste debe ser conocido por la red, para poder adaptarse adecuadamente.Sin duda uno de los sectores más beneficiados por la inteligencia del entorno es el de los colectivos conproblemas particulares, como los discapacitados, ancianos o niños. Estos podrían beneficiarse sustancialmente de la propiedad de auto-adaptabilidad de los entornos. Por ejemplo, un discapacitado motriz en el entorno de una red con esta capacidad puede recibir ayudas tales como apertura automática de puertas, llamada a ascensores, indicación implícita del piso al que van, etc. Del mismo modo, un discapacitado visual que utiliza un cajero automático con el sistema AWAIT, puede recibir adaptacionescomo la activación de avisos sonoros o la presentación del texto en un formato más adecuado. Un ancianopodría acceder a asientos reservados mecánicamente en un autobús, y los niños perdidos en un gran almacén podrían localizarse rápidamente si la red inteligente informase automáticamente de la incidencia Todos estos servicios son proporcionados sin la intervención directa del usuario. Estas son, algunas potencialidades de la integración de los servicios en redes con inteligencia ambiental. Como se ha indicado los perfiles deben formar parte del terminal móvil, estar insertados en su memoria (tarjeta inteligente o equivalente). Es necesario, a través de la infraestructura proporcionada por la red(servicios de descubrimiento, transporte de información, seguridad, localización, trazabilidad, detección de persistencia, etc.) acceder a los perfiles de usuario almacenados en los terminales, así como a toda la información suplementaria necesaria. Tras conocerlos, la red debe interactuar con todos los componentes necesarios para conseguir la adaptación, de nuevo a través de los servicios citados. Este entorno multiagente requiere un alta grado de coordinación a nivel de la gestión y de la facturación, y puesto que su desarrollo se realiza dentro de un marco competitivo se requieren normas, técnicas y esquemaseconómicos adecuados para su correcta regulación.[ENG] In the medium term networks will undoubtedly bring the attention to the end-user, who will become thecentre of services and applications. One of the potential applications will be the adaptation to users’ environments and their capacities. This is, offering each person a portfolio of services which will dependon the particular characteristics of his/her context. It is not only about how the information is adapted, or the way it is shown, but also how the subjacent physical medium is adapted to the benefit of the user. For example, such applications often bring up in the digital-home world; homes are intelligent environments where conditions change in order to increase the user comfort. In our proposal this property is fostered, managing user information to direct the adaptations performed by the environment. The key aspect of these applications is that they do not require direct user participation, and thus the services platform isvalid for any user, ranging from expert to beginner ones. Furthermore, as commented before, final adaptation depends on the user herself, on her profile. This must be known by the network, in order to be able to adapt its operation in a suitable way. The application of this of this kind of scenario to specific groups is an example of its capacity. For instance, disable or old people may benefit significantly from the smart environments created, due to theproperty of auto-adaptability. A disable people with limited mobility in the nearby of smart environment may have personalized aids like automatic door opening, automatic elevators call with an implicit indication of the destination floor (that is, without the necessity that the user push the button, and action that may be difficult because of his/her disability). In addition, people with vision problems may use AWAIT-enabled cash machines that will provide adaptations like the activation of sound aids or specific format texts. Other examples are the accessibility of old people to electromechanical reserved sits in busesor trains, and the automatic and fast discovery of loss children in malls. Such applications are possible in the context-aware AWAIT networks, that will use information from the surroundings and from the users inside them. Notice that in all the previous examples services are provided without direct actions of the users. These are just some examples of the potentiality of the integration of services in the environment of network with ambient intelligence. Profiles must be part of the mobile device; they must be inserted in its memory (smart card or similar). It is necessary, through the infrastructure provided by the network (discovering services, transport ofinformation, security, location, monitoring, persistence detection, etc.) to access to user profiles which are stored in the devices, just as well as the necessary supplementary information. Once the profiles are known, the network interacts with all the necessary components to achieve the adaptation, again through the mentioned services. This multi-agent environment requires a high degree of coordination at the management and billing levels, and as far as its development takes place within a high competitive framework, some economical rules, techniques and schemes are required so as to ensure its properregulation.[ESP]UPCT, España. Terminales móviles para la adaptación de entornos a colectivos especiales (discapacitados, personas mayores, niños). Uso de redes inalámbricas, redes de sensores inalámbricos y RFID tags. Se utilizan sistemas de bajo coste para identificación, localización, trazabilidad e información adicional. El sistema modifica el entorno y ofrece servicios de valor añadido y ayuda a los usuarios potenciales de forma transparente. El sistema puede extenderse para dotar de inteligencia a objetos.[ENG]UPCT, Spain. Mobile terminals employed to adapt special collectives (handicapped people, seniors,children …). Application of wireless networking, wireless sensor and RFID tags networks. Use of costeffective systems for identification, location, tracking, monitoring and additional information. The system seamless modifies the environment offering value-added services and help to the users. The system can be also extended to add intelligence and pervasiveness to objects.[ESP]Los entornos auto-adaptables AWAIT pueden mejorar sustancialmente la calidad de trabajo de usuarioscon discapacidades. Problema con el que se enfrentan reiteradamente las administraciones en busca desoluciones. La implantación de AWAIT supone un avance. Además proponemos su uso en centros especializados, como hospitales o centros de gerontología, donde el uso de AWAIT puede ayudar a mejorar la calidad de vida de los pacientes e internos y a reducir el personal dedicado a sus cuidados.[ENG]In our opinion the AWAIT system can improve the work quality of disabled employees considerably. This is a recurrent problem that authorities often face to seek of solutions. The use of the AWAIT network would allow to advance toward successful solutions to this issue. Besides, we foresee its use into specialized centres, such as hospitals or gerontology facilities, where the AWAIT system can help to improve the patients quality of life and, indeed, to reduce the staff devoted to their care.Arquitecturas de conmutación electrónica y fotónica. Redes Overlay (desarrollo de protocolos multicast y P2P, distribución de contenidos multimedia). Calidad de servicio en redes heterogéneas.Redes inalámbicas.Redes de sensores y actuadores inalámbricos. Desarrollo de aplicaciones y servicios telemáticos avanzados

Mobility for the Internet of Things

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El avance de las nuevas tecnologías contextuales en el ámbito de la integración de los discapacitados

La tecnología se configura como un instrumento privilegiado para trata de analizar de manera exhaustiva las necesidades y demandas de las personas con discapacidad en todos y cada uno de los ámbitos relacionados con las Nuevas Tecnologías. Los sistemas analizan el contexto del usuario y realizan acciones de manera automática, adelantándose incluso a las necesidades del usuario.Fundación Séneca. Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia. Fondo Social Europeo

Stability of synchronous queued RFID networks

Queued Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) networks arise naturally in many applications, where tags are grouped into batches, and each batch must be processed before the next reading job starts. In these cases, the system must be able to handle all incoming jobs, keeping the queue backlogs bounded. This property is called stability. Besides, in RFID networks, it is common that some readers cannot operate at the same time, due to mutual interferences. This fact reduces the maximum traffic that readers can process since they have to share the channel. Synchronous networks share the channel using a TDMA approach. The goal of this work is to analytically determine whether a synchronous queued RFID network attains stable operation under a given incoming traffic. Stability depends on the service rate, which is characterized in this paper using an exact numerical method based on a recursive analytical approach, overcoming the limitations of previous works, which were based on simplifications. We also address different flow optimization problems, such as computing the maximum joint traffic that a network can process stably, selecting the minimal number of readers to process a given total load, or determining the optimal timeslot duration, which are novel in the RFID literature.Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad | Ref. TEC2016-76465-C2-1-

A simulation study on the health concerns derived from GSM base station placement

In the last years a great concern has raised among population due to the placement of the base stations (BS) of cellular systems in urban areas. In some cases, it has been addressed with the (re)installation of BSs in far suburban areas. However, in these cases, mobile stations (MS) must raise transmission power. Thus, users may -potentially- suffer a higher radio exposure. In this paper we quantified the variation of the transmission power in this application scenario. The study has been done by means of the OPNET/GSM framework simulation tool. Suitable propagation models and the GSM power control algorithm have been added to the model, in order to compute the MS transmission power in a real environment. Results reveal a significative increment of the MS transmission power when the BS is relocated to suburban areas. Therefore, we conclude that it is necessary to introduce modifications in the GSM network architecture to solve this issue together with the BS placement problemThis work has been funded by the Spanish Economy, Industry and Innovation Council under the SOLIDMOVIL project (2I04SU044), by Fundación Séneca (Región de Murcia, Spain) ARENA project (00546/PI/04) and by the Spanish Research Council under the ARPaq project (TEC2004-05622- C04-02/TCM). The authors are also indebted to OPNET Technologies Inc. for granting licenses under the OPNET University program

On the Optimal Identification of Tag Sets in Time-Constrained RFID Configurations

In Radio Frequency Identification facilities the identification delay of a set of tags is mainly caused by the random access nature of the reading protocol, yielding a random identification time of the set of tags. In this paper, the cumulative distribution function of the identification time is evaluated using a discrete time Markov chain for single-set time-constrained passive RFID systems, namely those ones where a single group of tags is assumed to be in the reading area and only for a bounded time (sojourn time) before leaving. In these scenarios some tags in a set may leave the reader coverage area unidentified. The probability of this event is obtained from the cumulative distribution function of the identification time as a function of the sojourn time. This result provides a suitable criterion to minimize the probability of losing tags. Besides, an identification strategy based on splitting the set of tags in smaller subsets is also considered. Results demonstrate that there are optimal splitting configurations that reduce the overall identification time while keeping the same probability of losing tags

Stability of synchronous queued RFID networks

Queued Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) networks arise naturally in many applications, where tags are grouped into batches, and each batch must be processed before the next reading job starts. In these cases, the system must be able to handle all incoming jobs, keeping the queue backlogs bounded. This property is called stability. Besides, in RFID networks, it is common that some readers cannot operate at the same time, due to mutual interferences. This fact reduces the maximum traffic that readers can process since they have to share the channel. Synchronous networks share the channel using a TDMA approach. The goal of this work is to analytically determine whether a synchronous queued RFID network attains stable operation under a given incoming traffic. Stability depends on the service rate, which is characterized in this paper using an exact numerical method based on a recursive analytical approach, overcoming the limitations of previous works, which were based on simplifications. We also address different flow optimization problems, such as computing the maximum joint traffic that a network can process stably, selecting the minimal number of readers to process a given total load, or determining the optimal timeslot duration, which are novel in the RFID literature.This work was supported by the Project AIM, (AEI/FEDER, EU) under Grant TEC2016-76465-C2-1-R