Education : South Asia

South Asia, a source of great literary and literacy traditions and a generator of great philosophies, also contains a large percentage of illiterate people, the majority of them women. South Asia includes India, Pakistan, Bhutan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Burma and Afghanistan. The progress of these countries is dependent on female literacy because health, hygiene, and nutrition problems can be partly overcome through educating women. “Illiteracy is closely related to underdevelopment and poverty, and the elimination of illiteracy represents an essential condition for the development and well-being of peoples and nations" (UNESCO PROAP, 1989: II ). In South Asia, women constitute nearly two- thirds of illiterate adults. There is an inherent contradiction in the region between modern amenities, modern educational systems, and advanced communication systems, on the one hand, and the high level of illiteracy and significant backwardness, on the other.

Classifier selection using sequential error ratio criterion for multi-instance and multi-sample fusion

Classifier selection is a problem encountered by multi-biometric systems that aim to improve performance through fusion of decisions. A particular decision fusion architecture that combines multiple instances (n classifiers) and multiple samples (m attempts at each classifier) has been proposed in previous work to achieve controlled trade-off between false alarms and false rejects. Although analysis on text-dependent speaker verification has demonstrated better performance for fusion of decisions with favourable dependence compared to statistically independent decisions, the performance is not always optimal. Given a pool of instances, best performance with this architecture is obtained for certain combination of instances. Heuristic rules and diversity measures have been commonly used for classifier selection but it is shown that optimal performance is achieved for the `best combination performance' rule. As the search complexity for this rule increases exponentially with the addition of classifiers, a measure - the sequential error ratio (SER) - is proposed in this work that is specifically adapted to the characteristics of sequential fusion architecture. The proposed measure can be used to select a classifier that is most likely to produce a correct decision at each stage. Error rates for fusion of text-dependent HMM based speaker models using SER are compared with other classifier selection methodologies. SER is shown to achieve near optimal performance for sequential fusion of multiple instances with or without the use of multiple samples. The methodology applies to multiple speech utterances for telephone or internet based access control and to other systems such as multiple finger print and multiple handwriting sample based identity verification systems.

A family of Alltop functions that are EA-inequivalent to the cubic function

Sequences with optimal correlation properties are much sought after for applications in communication systems. In 1980, Alltop (\emph{IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory} 26(3):350-354, 1980) described a set of sequences based on a cubic function and showed that these sequences were optimal with respect to the known bounds on auto and crosscorrelation. Subsequently these sequences were used to construct mutually unbiased bases (MUBs), a structure of importance in quantum information theory. The key feature of this cubic function is that its difference function is a planar function. Functions with planar difference functions have been called \emph{Alltop functions}. This paper provides a new family of Alltop functions and establishes the use of Alltop functions for construction of sequence sets and MUBs.

Communicating personal amnesty : a model for health promotion in an Australian disability context

Currently pathological and illness-centric policy surrounds the evaluation of the health status of a person experiencing disability. In this research partnerships were built between disability service providers, community development organizations and disability arts organizations to build a translational evaluative methodology prior to implementation of an arts-based workshop that was embedded in a strengths-based approach to health and well-being. The model consisted of three foci: participation in a pre-designed drama-based workshop program; individualized assessment and evaluation of changing health status; and longitudinal analysis of participants changing health status in their public lives following the culmination of the workshop series. Participants (n = 15) were recruited through disability service providers and disability arts organizations to complete a 13-week workshop series and public performance. The study developed accumulative qualitative analysis tools and member-checking methods specific to the communication systems used by individual participants. Principle findings included increased confidence for verbal and non-verbal communicators; increased personal drive, ambition and goal-setting; increased arts-based skills including professional engagements as artists; demonstrated skills in communicating perceptions of health status to private and public spheres. Tangential positive observations were evident in the changing recreational, vocational and educational activities participants engaged with pre- and post- the workshop series; participants advocating for autonomous accommodation and health provision and changes in the disability service staff's culture. The research is an example of translational health methodologies in disability studies.

System level tests of transformer differential protection using an IEC 61850 process bus

The IEC 61850 family of standards for substation communication systems were released in the early 2000s, and include IEC 61850-8-1 and IEC 61850-9-2 that enable Ethernet to be used for process-level connections between transmission substation switchyards and control rooms. This paper presents an investigation of process bus protection performance, as the in-service behavior of multi-function process buses is largely unknown. An experimental approach was adopted that used a Real Time Digital Simulator and 'live' substation automation devices. The effect of sampling synchronization error and network traffic on transformer differential protection performance was assessed and compared to conventional hard-wired connections. Ethernet was used for all sampled value measurements, circuit breaker tripping, transformer tap-changer position reports and Precision Time Protocol synchronization of sampled value merging unit sampling. Test results showed that the protection relay under investigation operated correctly with process bus network traffic approaching 100% capacity. The protection system was not adversely affected by synchronizing errors significantly larger than the standards permit, suggesting these requirements may be overly conservative. This 'closed loop' approach, using substation automation hardware, validated the operation of protection relays under extreme conditions. Digital connections using a single shared Ethernet network outperformed conventional hard-wired solutions.

An efficient proactive route maintenance process for reliable data transmissions in sensor networks

For industrial wireless sensor networks, maintaining the routing path for a high packet delivery ratio is one of the key objectives in network operations. It is important to both provide the high data delivery rate at the sink node and guarantee a timely delivery of the data packet at the sink node. Most proactive routing protocols for sensor networks are based on simple periodic updates to distribute the routing information. A faulty link causes packet loss and retransmission at the source until periodic route update packets are issued and the link has been identified as broken. We propose a new proactive route maintenance process where periodic update is backed-up with a secondary layer of local updates repeating with shorter periods for timely discovery of broken links. Proposed route maintenance scheme improves reliability of the network by decreasing the packet loss due to delayed identification of broken links. We show by simulation that proposed mechanism behaves better than the existing popular routing protocols (AODV, AOMDV and DSDV) in terms of end-to-end delay, routing overhead, packet reception ratio.

Residential voltage dip and swell mitigation using Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle in smart grid

Solutions to remedy the voltage disturbances have been mostly suggested only for industrial customers. However, not much research has been done on the impact of the voltage problems on residential facilities. This paper proposes a new method to reduce the effect of voltage dip and swell in smart grids equipped by communication systems. To reach this purpose, a voltage source inverter and the corresponding control system are employed. The behavior of a power system during voltage dip and swell are analyzed. The results demonstrate reasonable improvement in terms of voltage dip and swell mitigation. All simulations are implemented in MATLAB/Simulink environment.

Doppler and Pathloss Characterization for Vehicle-to-Vehicle communications at 5.8 GHz

Due to significant increase in vehicular accident and traffic congestions, vehicle to vehicle (V2V) communication based on the intelligent transport system (ITS) was introduced. However, to carry out efficient design and implementation of a reliable vehicular communication systems,a deep knowledge of the propagation channel characteristics in different environments is crucial, in particular the Doppler and pathloss parameters. Therefore, this paper presents an empirical V2V channel characterization and measurement performed under realistic urban, suburban and highway driving conditions in Brisbane, Australia. Based on Lin Cheng statistical Doppler Model (LCDM), values for the RMS Doppler spread and coherence time due to time selective nature of V2V channels were presented. Also, based on Log-distance power law model, values for the mean pathloss exponent and the standard deviation of shadowing were reported for urban, suburban and highway environments. The V2V channel parameters can be useful to system designers for the purpose of evaluating, simulating and developing new protocols and systems.

Empirical vehicle-to-vehicle pathloss modeling in highway, suburban and urban environments at 5.8GHz

In this paper, we present a pathloss characterization for vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications based on empirical data collected from extensive measurement campaign performed under line-of-sight (LOS), non-line-of-sight (NLOS) and varying traffic densities. The experiment was conducted in three different V2V propagation environments: highway, suburban and urban at 5.8GHz. We developed pathloss models for each of the three different V2V environments considered. Based on a log-distance power law model, the values for the pathloss exponent and the standard deviation of shadowing were reported. The average pathloss exponent ranges from 1.77 for highway, 1.68 for the urban to 1.53 for the suburban environment. The reported results can contribute to vehicular network (VANET) simulators and can be used by system designers to develop, evaluate and validate new protocols and system designs under realistic propagation conditions.

Adaptive estimation of hidden semi-Markov chains with parameterised transition probabilities and exponential decaying states

This paper develops maximum likelihood (ML) estimation schemes for finite-state semi-Markov chains in white Gaussian noise. We assume that the semi-Markov chain is characterised by transition probabilities of known parametric from with unknown parameters. We reformulate this hidden semi-Markov model (HSM) problem in the scalar case as a two-vector homogeneous hidden Markov model (HMM) problem in which the state consist of the signal augmented by the time to last transition. With this reformulation we apply the expectation Maximumisation (EM ) algorithm to obtain ML estimates of the transition probabilities parameters, Markov state levels and noise variance. To demonstrate our proposed schemes, motivated by neuro-biological applications, we use a damped sinusoidal parameterised function for the transition probabilities.

Implementation and evaluation of open source unified communications for SMBs

Unified Communication (UC) is the integration of two or more real time communication systems into one platform. Integrating core communication systems into one overall enterprise level system delivers more than just cost saving. These real-time interactive communication services and applications over Internet Protocol (IP) have become critical in boosting employee accessibility and efficiency, improving customer support and fostering business agility. However, some small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are far from implementing this solution due to the high cost of initial deployment and ongoing support. In this paper, we will discuss and demonstrate an open source UC solution, viz. “Asterisk” for use by SMBs, and report on some performance tests using SIPp. The contribution from this research is the provision of technical advice to SMBs in deploying UC, which is manageable in terms of cost, ease of deployment and support.

Multi-modal deformable medical image registration

Non-rigid image registration is an essential tool required for overcoming the inherent local anatomical variations that exist between images acquired from different individuals or atlases. Furthermore, certain applications require this type of registration to operate across images acquired from different imaging modalities. One popular local approach for estimating this registration is a block matching procedure utilising the mutual information criterion. However, previous block matching procedures generate a sparse deformation field containing displacement estimates at uniformly spaced locations. This neglects to make use of the evidence that block matching results are dependent on the amount of local information content. This paper presents a solution to this drawback by proposing the use of a Reversible Jump Markov Chain Monte Carlo statistical procedure to optimally select grid points of interest. Three different methods are then compared to propagate the estimated sparse deformation field to the entire image including a thin-plate spline warp, Gaussian convolution, and a hybrid fluid technique. Results show that non-rigid registration can be improved by using the proposed algorithm to optimally select grid points of interest.

MIMO enhanced slotted cooperation in urban vehicular networks

The requirement of isolated relays is one of the prime obstacles in utilizing sequential slotted cooperative protocols for Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANET). Significant research advancement has taken place to improve the diversity multiplexing trade-off (DMT) of cooperative protocols in conventional mobile networks without much attention on vehicular ad-hoc networks. We have extended the concept of sequential slotted amplify and forward (SAF) protocols in the context of urban vehicular ad-hoc networks. Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) reception is used at relaying vehicular nodes to isolate the relays effectively. The proposed approach adds a pragmatic value to the sequential slotted cooperative protocols while achieving attractive performance gains in urban VANETs. We have analysed the DMT bounds and the outage probabilities of the proposed scheme. The results suggest that the proposed scheme can achieve an optimal DMT similar to the DMT upper bound of the sequential SAF. Furthermore, the outage performance of the proposed scheme outperforms the SAF protocol by 2.5 dB at a target outage probability of 10-4.

Impact of mobility and topology on information diffusion in MANETs

In some delay-tolerant communication systems such as vehicular ad-hoc networks, information flow can be represented as an infectious process, where each entity having already received the information will try to share it with its neighbours. The random walk and random waypoint models are popular analysis tools for these epidemic broadcasts, and represent two types of random mobility. In this paper, we introduce a simulation framework investigating the impact of a gradual increase of bias in path selection (i.e. reduction of randomness), when moving from the former to the latter. Randomness in path selection can significantly alter the system performances, in both regular and irregular network structures. The implications of these results for real systems are discussed in details.