Technological and business challenges of smart grids

Growing recognition of the electricity grid modernization to enable new electricity generation and consumption schemes has found articulation in the vision of the Smart Grid platform. The essence of this vision is an autonomous network with two-way electricity power flows and extensive real-time information between the generation nodes, various electricity-dependent appliances and all points in-between. Three major components of the Smart Grids are distributed intelligence, communication technologies, and automated control systems. The aim of this thesis is to recognize the challenges that Smart Grids are facing, while extinguishing the main driving factors for their introduction. The scope of the thesis also covers possible place of electricity Aggregator Company in the current and future electricity markets. Basic functions of an aggregator and possible revenue sources along with demand response feasibility calculations are reviewed within this thesis.

Determining the location for a mobile device by utilization of local resources of the environment

The subject being analyzed of this Master’s Thesis is a development of a service that is used to define a current location of a mobile device. The service utilized data that is obtained from own GPS receiver in some possible cases and as well data from mobile devices which can be afforded for the current environment for acquisition of more precise position of the device. The computation environment is based on context of a mobile device. The service is implemented as an application for communicator series Nokia N8XX. The Master’s Thesis presents theoretical concept of the method and its practical implementation, architecture of the application, requirements and describes a process of its functionality. Also users’ work with application is presented and recommendations for possible future improvements are made.

The Contribution of Mobile Device Manufacturers’ Site Usage to Brand Satisfaction and Loyalty

Recently most of the mobile phone manufacturer companies started to pay extra attention to their websites. This research investigates the sources of value creation on the mobile phone manufacturers’ website and the affect visiting the manufacturers’ website has on brand loyalty and brand satisfaction. The results show a correlation between positive website usage experience, brand loyalty and brand satisfaction. Moreover there is a relation between Novelty, Efficiency, Lock-in and the perceived usefulness the manufacturers’ website has on the mobile phone device. And finally the main reason behind Finnish student’s mobile phone brand loyalty is its country of origin.

Packaging concept development for an assortment of medical device products

Diplomityön tavoitteena oli kehittää Wipak Oy:n valmistamille sterilointipakkauksille tulevaisuuden pakkauskonsepti. Sterilointipakkaukset luokitellaan lääkelaitedirektiivin mukaan lisätarvikkeiksi luokan 1 lääkelaitteille, ja tämä näkökulma oli vahvasti mukana konseptin kehityksessä. Lähtökohtana pakkauskonseptin suunnittelulle oli tuotteiden arvoketjussa, eli pakata tuotteet siten että pakkausten avulla voidaan tuottaa lisäarvoa arvoketjun toimijoille. Tavoitteena oli parantaa pakkausten viestintää, toimivuutta/tehokkuutta toimitusketjussa sekä vahvistaa brändin imagoa myynti- ja kuljetuspakkauksen avulla. Lääkinnälliset laitteet ja tarvikkeet ovat lainsäädännön ja normien avulla tarkasti säädeltyjä. Näiden normien vaatimukset asettavat perusteet myynti- ja kuljetuspakkausten kehittämiselle. Tämän lisäksi suunnittelussa on huomioitu asiakkaiden toiveet ja kehitystarpeet. Kirjallisuusosuudessa on keskitytty lääkinnällisten laitteiden pakkausyksiköiden toimintoihin sekä niiden kehitysnäkymiin. Pääpaino on ollut pakkausmerkintöjen ja jäljitettävyyden kehittämisellä, koska tietojen automaattisen tunnistuksen hyödyntäminen lääkintälaitteiden pakkausten arvoketjussa on kasvava trendi. Manuaalisesti tehtävät tuotevirtojen kirjaukset ketjun eri toimijoiden osalta lisäävät riskejä jäljitettävyyden kannalta ja aiheuttavat lisätyötä ja – kustannuksia ketjun kaikille osapuolille. Ehdotus uudesta pakkauskonseptista on kehitetty näiden tietojen pohjalta. Ehdotuksessa on huomioitu lainsäädännöstä ja ketjun toimijoilta tulevat tarpeet, sekä alan tulevaisuuden kehitysnäkymät. Ehdotetun pakkauskonseptin avulla saadaan lisättyä myynti- ja kuljetuspakkausten tehokkuutta, parannettua jäljitettävyyttä ja helpotettu arvoketjun alavirran toimijoiden työtä lisäämällä erillinen sisäpakkaus myyntiyksikön sisälle. Työssä on lisäksi selvitetty pakkauskonseptin kustannusvaikutukset tuotteiden hintaan. Lopussa on ehdotettu jatkotoimenpiteet suunnitelman implementoimisesta käytäntöön.

Smart homes as service platforms. Research report of ÄLYKOP sub-project “Competitive advantage from customer value”

In this report, we summarize results of our part of the ÄLYKOP-project on customer value creation in the intersection of the health care, ICT, forest and energy industries. The research directs to describe how industry transformation and convergence create new possibilities, business opportunities and even new industries.The report consists of findings which are presented former in academic publications. The publication discusses on customer value, service provision and resource basis of the novel concepts through multiple theorethical frameworks. The report is divided into three maim sections which are theoretical background, discussion on health care industry and evaluations regarding novel smart home concepts. Transaction cost economics and Resource- Based view on the firm provides the theoretical basis to analyze the prescribed phenomena. The health care industry analysis describes the most important changes in the demand conditions of health care services, and explores the features that are likely to open new business opportunities for a solution provider. The third part of the report on the smart home business provides illustrations few potential concepts that can be considered to provide solutions to economical problems which arise from aging of population. The results provide several recommendations for the smart home platform developers in public and private sectors. By the analysis, public organizations dominate service provision and private markets are emergent state at present. We argue that public-private partnerships are nececssary for creating key suppliers. Indeed, paying attion on appropriate regulation, service specifications and technology standards would foster diffusion of new services. The dynamics of the service provision networks is driven by need for new capabiltities which are required for adapting business concepts to new competitive situation. Finally, the smart home framework revealed links between conventionally distant business areas such as health care and energy distribution. The platform integrates functionalities different for purposes which however apply same resource basis.

Diffusion of Smart Meters in Central East Europe

The present study deals with innovation diffusion as the central component of innovation process and takes smart meters as a concrete example from the electric power industry. Smart meters are seen as key enablers of the industry-wide shift towards smart grids and are recognized by the European Union as means of reaching its environmental and energy goals. However, the spread of smart meters through the market, especially in Central East Europe (CEE), is not corresponding to the expectations and identified benefits. The current work synthesizes available data for the under-researched geographical region of CEE and clarifies the process of smart meter diffusion and drivers behind it. In addition to innovation theories the methods applied are rate of adoption and thematic analysis. The results prove the large gap between optimal and actual diffusion as well as the lagging position of CEE in comparison to the EU’s market leaders. The smart metering market is driven from bottom-up and the majority of CEE countries have already carried out or started the initial activities. Therefore, in coming years more intensive smart meters deployment will be seen.

A design and a prototype for a mobile information service for tourists

Tourism is one of the biggest industry branches with billions of tourists traveling every year around the world. Therefore, solutions providing tourist information have to be up to date with both changes in the industry and the world’s technological progress. The aim of this thesis is to present a design and a prototype of a tourist mobile service which is individual-oriented, cost-free for the end user, and secure. On the information providers’ side, the solution is implemented as a Webbased database. The end users access the information through a Bluetooth application on their mobile devices. The Bluetooth-based solution allows to avoid any costs for the end users, that is tourists. The study shows that, even with small data transfers, the tourists could save significantly when compared to possible roaming charges for data transfer. Also, the proposed mobile service is not intrusive, as it is provided through an application installed by tourists voluntarily on their mobile devices. Through design and implementation this work shows that it is possible to build a system which can be used to provide information services to tourists through mobile phones. The work achieved a successful ongoing synchronization between the client and the server databases. Implementation and usage were limited to smart phones only, as they provide better technological support for the solution having features like maps, GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Databases. Moreover, the design of this system shows how Bluetooth technology can be used effectively as a means of communication while minimizing its shortcomings and risks, such as security, by bypassing Bluetooth server service discovery protocol (SDP) and connecting directly to the device. Apart from showing the design and implementation of the end-user costfree mobile information service, the results of this work also highlight the possible business opportunities to the provider of the service.

Towards combining interactive mobile TV and smart spaces : architectures, tools and application development

Technological developments in microprocessors and ICT landscape have made a shift to a new era where computing power is embedded in numerous small distributed objects and devices in our everyday lives. These small computing devices are ne-tuned to perform a particular task and are increasingly reaching our society at every level. For example, home appliances such as programmable washing machines, microwave ovens etc., employ several sensors to improve performance and convenience. Similarly, cars have on-board computers that use information from many di erent sensors to control things such as fuel injectors, spark plug etc., to perform their tasks e ciently. These individual devices make life easy by helping in taking decisions and removing the burden from their users. All these objects and devices obtain some piece of information about the physical environment. Each of these devices is an island with no proper connectivity and information sharing between each other. Sharing of information between these heterogeneous devices could enable a whole new universe of innovative and intelligent applications. The information sharing between the devices is a diffcult task due to the heterogeneity and interoperability of devices. Smart Space vision is to overcome these issues of heterogeneity and interoperability so that the devices can understand each other and utilize services of each other by information sharing. This enables innovative local mashup applications based on shared data between heterogeneous devices. Smart homes are one such example of Smart Spaces which facilitate to bring the health care system to the patient, by intelligent interconnection of resources and their collective behavior, as opposed to bringing the patient into the health system. In addition, the use of mobile handheld devices has risen at a tremendous rate during the last few years and they have become an essential part of everyday life. Mobile phones o er a wide range of different services to their users including text and multimedia messages, Internet, audio, video, email applications and most recently TV services. The interactive TV provides a variety of applications for the viewers. The combination of interactive TV and the Smart Spaces could give innovative applications that are personalized, context-aware, ubiquitous and intelligent by enabling heterogeneous systems to collaborate each other by sharing information between them. There are many challenges in designing the frameworks and application development tools for rapid and easy development of these applications. The research work presented in this thesis addresses these issues. The original publications presented in the second part of this thesis propose architectures and methodologies for interactive and context-aware applications, and tools for the development of these applications. We demonstrated the suitability of our ontology-driven application development tools and rule basedapproach for the development of dynamic, context-aware ubiquitous iTV applications.

Research and development of III-V semiconductor surfaces for improved device interfaces

This thesis is devoted to understanding and improving technologically important III-V compound semiconductor (e.g. GaAs, InAs, and InSb) surfaces and interfaces for devices. The surfaces and interfaces of crystalline III-V materials have a crucial role in the operation of field-effect-transistors (FET) and highefficiency solar-cells, for instance. However, the surfaces are also the most defective part of the semiconductor material and it is essential to decrease the amount of harmful surface or interface defects for the next-generation III-V semiconductor device applications. Any improvement in the crystal ordering at the semiconductor surface reduces the amount of defects and increases the material homogeneity. This is becoming more and more important when the semiconductor device structures decrease to atomic-scale dimensions. Toward that target, the effects of different adsorbates (i.e., Sn, In, and O) on the III-V surface structures and properties have been investigated in this work. Furthermore, novel thin-films have been synthesized, which show beneficial properties regarding the passivation of the reactive III-V surfaces. The work comprises ultra-high-vacuum (UHV) environment for the controlled fabrication of atomically ordered III-V(100) surfaces. The surface sensitive experimental methods [low energy electron diffraction (LEED), scanning tunneling microscopy/spectroscopy (STM/STS), and synchrotron radiation photoelectron spectroscopy (SRPES)] and computational density-functionaltheory (DFT) calculations are utilized for elucidating the atomic and electronic properties of the crucial III-V surfaces. The basic research results are also transferred to actual device tests by fabricating metal-oxide-semiconductor capacitors and utilizing the interface sensitive measurement techniques [capacitance voltage (CV) profiling, and photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy] for the characterization. This part of the thesis includes the instrumentation of home-made UHV-compatible atomic-layer-deposition (ALD) reactor for growing good quality insulator layers. The results of this thesis elucidate the atomic structures of technologically promising Sn- and In-stabilized III-V compound semiconductor surfaces. It is shown that the Sn adsorbate induces an atomic structure with (1×2)/(1×4) surface symmetry which is characterized by Sn-group III dimers. Furthermore, the stability of peculiar ζa structure is demonstrated for the GaAs(100)-In surface. The beneficial effects of these surface structures regarding the crucial III-V oxide interface are demonstrated. Namely, it is found that it is possible to passivate the III-V surface by a careful atomic-scale engineering of the III-V surface prior to the gate-dielectric deposition. The thin (1×2)/(1×4)-Sn layer is found to catalyze the removal of harmful amorphous III-V oxides. Also, novel crystalline III-V-oxide structures are synthesized and it is shown that these structures improve the device characteristics. The finding of crystalline oxide structures is exploited by solving the atomic structure of InSb(100)(1×2) and elucidating the electronic structure of oxidized InSb(100) for the first time.

Design and implementation of a peer-to-peer client for device management

The aim of this master’s thesis was to specify a system requiring minimal configuration and providing maximal connectivity in the vein of Skype but for device management purposes. As peer-to-peer applications are pervasive and especially as Skype is known to provide this functionality, the research was focused on these technologies. The resulting specification was a hybrid of a tiered hierarchical network structure and a Kademlia based DHT. A prototype was produced as a proof-of-concept for the hierarchical topology, demonstrating that the specification was feasible.

Vapastii ohjelmoitavan automaatioyksikön suunnitteluprosessi

Rakennusautomaatiossa tulee esiin sovelluksia, joissa järjestelmän ohjaus-, säätö- tai valvontaratkaisun toteuttaminen ohjelmoitavilla logiikoilla ei ole riittävän edullista. Tällöin vaihtoehtona on oman laitteen suunnittelu. Työn tavoitteena oli suunnitella ja toteuttaa kustannustehokas CAN-väylään liitettävä vapaasti ohjelmoitava automaatioyksikkö. Suunnittelua ohjasivat asiakkaan laatimat vaatimusmäärittelyt. Niistä laitteen konfigurointimahdollisuudet ja piirilevyn tavoitekoko asettivat suurimmat haasteet laitteen suunnittelulle. Työn tuloksena toteutettiin asiakkaan tarpeisiin soveltuva automaatioyksikkö. Tavoitteisiin päästiin komponenttivalinnoilla ja hyödyntämällä tehokkaasti mikro-ohjaimen integroituja ominaisuuksia. Näiden avulla pystyttiin karsimaan monia yksiköitä, joita tavanomaisesti toteutetaan erilliskomponenteilla. Työssä perehdyttiin sulautetun järjestelmän elektroniikan tuotekehitysprosessiin ideasta prototyyppiin. Samalla on kuvailtu valittuja ratkaisuja sekä suunnittelussa tapahtuneita virheitä ja miten ne on ratkaistu.

Social Networking Sites as a part of Medical Device Manufacturer's Marketing Communications

The purpose of the thesis is to examine how a medical device manufacturer can exploit social networking sites as a part of its everyday marketing communications. The ultimate goal is to create an ideal process of developing marketing communications in social networking sites as a medical device manufacturer with the help of theoretical knowledge and hands-on experience. Theoretical part examines the traditional process of developing marketing communications, defines social networking sites and presents marketing activities carried out on these sites as well as introduces the characteristics of healthcare technology industry. Empirical part is collected through participation in medical device manufacturer’s marketing operations and by observing effects of different factors and actions on social media marketing. In addition, completed interviews and a meeting with company’s personnel have been utilized for data collection. This part offers comprehensive information on the examined company’s current marketing operations, industry, and activities carried out on social networking sites. As a result of the thesis a comprehensive process description of integrating and using social networking sites as a part of company’s marketing communications was formed. With the help of the process description factors and actions which have an effect on marketing operations in social networking sites are presented and methods for further developing these activities are introduced.

The improvement of enclosure protection class of power electronics device

Tässä diplomityössä tutkittiin vaihtoehtoja tehoelektroniikkalaitteiden kotelointiluokan kehittämiseksi. Haasteena paremman suojauksen suunnittelussa on laitteiden tuottama suuri määrä lämpöä, joka vaatii tehokkaan jäähdytyksen. Työn tuloksena saatu prototyyppi IP33 luokkaa varten täyttää standardissa SFS-EN 60529+A1 asetetut vaatimukset kyseiselle kotelointiluokalle. Rakenteessa ja valmistettavuudessa havaittiin muutama ongelma, jotka ovat korjattavissa pienillä muutoksilla. Korkeampia suojausluokkia varten testattiin IP54-luokiteltujen filtterituulettimien vaikutusta laitteen jäähdytykseen. Testien perusteella jäähdytysteho on riittävä ja filtterituulettimet todettiin toimivaksi ratkaisuksi korkeammille suojausluokille. Työn perusteella voidaan todeta, että nykyiset laitteet voidaan muokata vastaamaan IP33 luokan vaatimuksia kohtuullisen pienillä muutoksilla. Tätä korkeammat suojausluokat vaatisivat niin suuria muutoksia designiin, että todennäköisesti täysin uuden laitteen suunnittelu olis kannattavin vaihtoehto.