Testing the performance and feasibility of Bluetooth communications in pervasive systems

Smart and mobile environments require seamless connections. However, due to the frequent process of ''discovery'' and disconnection of mobile devices while data interchange is happening, wireless connections are often interrupted. To minimize this drawback, a protocol that enables an easy and fast synchronization is crucial. Bearing this in mind, Bluetooth technology appears to be a suitable solution to carry on such connections due to the discovery and pairing capabilities it provides. Nonetheless, the time and energy spent when several devices are being discovered and used at the same time still needs to be managed properly. It is essential that this process of discovery takes as little time and energy as possible. In addition to this, it is believed that the performance of the communications is not constant when the transmission speeds and throughput increase, but this has not been proved formally. Therefore, the purpose of this project is twofold: Firstly, to design and build a framework-system capable of performing controlled Bluetooth device discovery, pairing and communications. Secondly, to analyze and test the scalability and performance of the \emph{classic} Bluetooth standard under different scenarios and with various sensors and devices using the framework developed. To achieve the first goal, a generic Bluetooth platform will be used to control the test conditions and to form a ubiquitous wireless system connected to an Android Smartphone. For the latter goal, various stress-tests will be carried on to measure the consumption rate of battery life as well as the quality of the communications between the devices involved.

Dealing with Energy-QoE Trade-Offs in Mobile Video

Scalable video coding allows an efficient provision of video services at different quality levels with different energy demands. According to the specific type of service and network scenario, end users and/or operators may decide to choose among different energy versus quality combinations. In order to deal with the resulting trade-off, in this paper we analyze the number of video layers that are worth to be received taking into account the energy constraints. A single-objective optimization is proposed based on dynamically selecting the number of layers, which is able to minimize the energy consumption with the constraint of a minimal quality threshold to be reached. However, this approach cannot reflect the fact that the same increment of energy consumption may result in different increments of visual quality. Thus, a multiobjective optimization is proposed and a utility function is defined in order to weight the energy consumption and the visual quality criteria. Finally, since the optimization solving mechanism is computationally expensive to be implemented in mobile devices, a heuristic algorithm is proposed. This way, significant energy consumption reduction will be achieved while keeping reasonable quality levels.

Lehen Hezkuntzako irakasleen gaitasun digitala hobetzeko proposamena

Lan honen helburua, egungo gizarte eta hezkuntzaren desoreka digitala egiaztatzea eta horri aurre egiteko proposamen bat planteatzea izan da. Hori burutzeko, irakasle talde bati Informazio eta komunikaziorako Tresnen (IKT) inguruko galdera batzuk egin zaizkie, teknologia berriekiko haien jakintza, prestakuntza eta erabilera zeintzuk diren ezagutzeko. Jasotako emaitzak aztertu dira eta irakasle hauen ezjakintasun maila baliabide teknologiko berritzaileekiko altua dela ondorioztatu da, haien gaitasun digitala oso baxua izanda. Hori dela eta, arazo horri irtenbide berritzaile bat bilatu zaio, Lehen Hezkuntzako irakasleen prestakuntzara bideratutako tutorial ezberdinak sortu direlarik, web 2.0-ko baliabide batzuen erabilera zein den azalduz.