R&D Projects - Multitheme
These projects underpin several CoolCampus research themes.
CoolCampus: An Agent Based Service and Ad-hoc Networking Framework for Ubiquitous Devices
Currently ubiquitous devices suffer from a number of limitations that include: limited power supply, low network bandwidth, limited screen resolution, and inadequate computing resources. These limitations restrict the functionality of applications and the ability for ubiquitous devices to access network services. Existing techniques currently used by traditional Internet based applications/services are not suitable for this environment.
This research will development an agent framework that addresses these limitations for the purpose of improving support for network service and applications in a ubiquitous computing ad-hoc networking environment. The proposed framework will provide support for the following areas:
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Service discovery: The development of new discovery schemes, which conserve both power consumption and network bandwidth, will be investigated.
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Network management: Investigating new methods for the creation and on going support of ad-hoc network group.
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Resource management: Developing new techniques to utilize the available computing resources of the network, in order to reduce the level of computations on a single ubiquitous device.
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Security: Investigating the possibility of applying existing security techniques to provide a secure ad-hoc networking environment.
Based on the four key areas describe above, an efficient communication protocol for the framework will have to be developed. The ubiquity devices will use this protocol to communicate with one another. This framework will cater for the connection of wireless devices such as Personal Digital Assistants (PDA).
Investigator: Prof. Elizabeth Kendall
CoolCampus: Data Mining and Data Analysis in Mobile and Ubiquitous Environments
Data mining has evolved from traditional stand-alone systems to working distributed and heterogeneous environments. The next generation of data mining systems that focus on analysis and learning in mobile and ubiquitous environments including delivery of results to handheld devices are starting to emerge. Data mining techniques that are tailored for operation in such environments have potential benefits for the CoolCampus project, particularly in the context of the CoolCampus scenarios such as myPA which is a digital personification that collates, learns and analyses data collected in a ubiquitous and pervasive campus.
Investigator: Dr. Shonali Krishnaswamy
CoolCampus: Implementation of a Peer-to-Peer Distributed Disk Storage Application within Wireless Networks
Distributed Server (DS) is a P2P application that allows the creation of a virtual network disk between cooperating computers. DS relies on a P2P meta-network known as serverless (P2P) layer.
These two projects have been developed for the conventional 10/100 Mbps networks. We would extend these projects to enable wireless devices to participate in the serverless community; which at present is limited to the desktop computers. In such a scenario PDAs and other wireless devices may contribute to as well as access services from the serverless layer and the virtual network disk application. The set of wireless networking equipment and the analyser software, requested under this proposal, would provide us with a test bed for benchmarking the serverless layer and the virtual network disk application. It would also provide a different infrastructure (broadcast based) for service discovery and communication optimisation.
Investigator: Dr. Asad Khan
CoolCampus: Intelligent Mobile Agents for Resource Constrained Environments
The current focus of mobile agent applications and systems is on mobility rather than on other attributes of agency including autonomous behaviour, proactivity and adaptability. However, there is an emerging focus on imbuing mobile agents with typical characteristics of intelligent agents to maximise the potential benefits of this paradigm. The challenges of integrating mobility and intelligence are enhanced when agents need to operate in resource constrained devices and environments such as PDAs. The vision of the CoolCampus project is to deploy ubiquitous and pervasive technologies to support teaching, research and administration within Monash university. Intelligent mobile agents are intuitively suited for enabling such an environment. However, models and performance issues of facilitating the operation of intelligent mobile agents (which require substantial computational resources) and can support users on PDAs (which typically are low on computational resources) need to be examined.
Investigator: Dr. Shonali Krishnaswamy
CoolCampus: Mobile Software, Distributed Processing
Building and monitoring QoS for multimedia and efficient utilization of bandwidth, to provide controlled environment which adapts dynamically to the required QoS. This might be further adapted on the basis of the time and service required. Such adaptation needs to be driven by an understanding of the service requirement and QoS for visual artifacts.
User-adaptation involves both user service requirements modeling and user quality requests. The important issue is how best to present the visual and audio information to the user, taking into account the user quality requirements and service requested, the network connection, and the viewing environment. Dynamic adaptation of bandwidth and service selection to context is necessary. It is needed to handle different viewing devices (PDA, mobile phone, active network connections), different service requirements and different bandwidths.
Investigators: Dr. Jana Dospisil, Mr. Robert Bram
CoolCampus: Ownership of Internet objects
Objects will require an owner who can decide access rights to that object. Ownership may need to be changed, and this will involve an infrastructure involving PKI. The access granted will need a distributed access control mechanism, again involving PKI. This will involve development of lightweight protocols and algorithms using low computing power.
Investigator: A/Prof. Jan Newmarch
CoolCampus: PDA Application Monitor
This project aims to investigate the use of PDA Pocket PC applications by users. The PDA Application Monitor records when PDA users invoke particular applications and the application invoked. This information is recorded on a server based log and summarised for later analysis. The PDA Application Monitor provides base data for establishing patterns of use of PDAs and PDAbased applications.
Investigators: Prof. Phillip Steele, A/Prof. Arkady Zaslavsky & Mr. Manolo Yanes
CoolCampus: Personalization of location-based information in a wireless indoor environment
One of the current trends in the wired world today is the personalization of user information. With personalization, information can be tailored to individual user preferences and characteristics. The main objective of personalization is to provide services and information to users more effectively and efficiently, thus making user interaction much faster and simpler.
With the emergence of higher bandwidth wireless technologies, the use of mobile devices will grow more rapidly. One factor that sets wireless technologies apart from wired technologies is user mobility. Mobility provides the ability for users to “get connected anywhere, anytime” which is the driving force behind the popularity of wireless technologies.
Mobility brings another aspect into the concept of personalization: - location dependent information. With the precise knowledge of the location of users, information can be further tailored to the needs of the users. This will enable service providers to provide real-time services that cater for not only to the preferences of the users, but also based on their locations.
In this project, we are proposing the design of an architecture for the personalization of location-based information in a wireless indoor environment. This architecture has three main functions:
- Tracking the location of wireless users in the system.
- Personalization of wireless user information based on their access level and location.
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Communication between wireless device with the central server, and with other wireless devices.
Investigators: Prof. Elizabeth Kendall & Mr. Low How Keat
CoolCampus: Towards Zero Configuration
With a room full of devices, either everyone becomes a system administrator or the devices have minimal or zero configuration needs. The initial stage of this project is to determine how s/w can be upgraded in place on always-on devices with no intervention by third parties. This will be extended in a variety of ways, such as device capability descriptions and self-awareness and healing when e.g. error conditions arise.
Investigator: A/Prof. Jan Newmarch
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