We developed a real-world oriented mobile constellation learning environment. Learners point at a target constellation by gazing through a cylinder with a gyro-sensor under the real starry sky. The system can display information related to the constellation. The system has original exercise functions which are not supported by existing systems or products by other research group or companies. Through experimentation, we evaluated the learning environment to assess its learning effects.

This paper presents a wideband technique for a mobile handset antenna. The proposed method inserts a distributed LC resonator into a loop antenna in order to provide non-uniform resonance shifts; without the use of a multi-radiator the bandwidth can be increased from 320 MHz (1900-2220 MHz) to 880 MHz (1750-2630 MHz). As a result of the wide bandwidth and good radiation efficiency, the proposed antenna can be employed in DCS/PCS/WDCMA/Bluetooth mobile handsets.

Network Coding (NC) can improve the information transmission efficiency and throughput of data networks. Random Linear Network Coding (RLNC) is a special form of NC scheme that is easy to be implemented. However, quantifying the performance gain of RLNC over conventional Store and Forward (S/F)-based routing system, especially for wireless network, remains an important open issue. To solve this problem, in this paper, based on abstract layer network architecture, we build a dynamic random network model with Poisson distribution describing the nodes joining the network randomly for tree-based single-source multicast in MANET. We then examine its performance by applying conventional Store and Forward with FEC (S/F-FEC) and RLNC methods respectively, and derive the analytical function expressions of average packet loss rate, successful decoding ratio and throughput with respect to the link failure probability. An experiment shows that these expressions have relatively high precision in describing the performance of RLNC. It can be used to design the practical network coding algorithm for multi-hop multicast with tree-based topology in MANET and provide a research tool for the performance analysis of RLNC.

Despite the recent advances in personal communication devices and access network technology, users still face problems such as high device maintenance costs, complication of inter-device cooperation, illegal access to devices, and leakage of personal information. Consequently, it is difficult for users to construct a secure network with local as well as remote personal devices. We propose a User-driven Service Creation Platform (USCP), which enables users to construct a secure private network using a simple and intuitive approach that leverages the authentication mechanism in mobile phone networks. USCP separates signaling and data paths in a flat, virtual network topology. In this paper, we describe the basic design of USCP, the current implementation, and system evaluations.

The systematic processes exactly define the development cycle and help the development team follow the same development strategies and techniques, thus allowing a continuous improvement in the quality of the developed products. Likewise, it is important that the development process used integrates security aspects from the first stages at the same level as other functional and non-functional requirements. Grid systems allow us to build very complex information systems with different and remarkable features (interoperability between multiple security domains, cross-domain authentication and authorization, dynamic, heterogeneous and limited mobile devices, etc). With the development of wireless technology and mobile devices, the Grid becomes the perfect candidate for letting mobile users make complex works that add new computational capacity to the Grid. A methodology of development for secure mobile Grid systems is being defined. One of the activities of this methodology is the requirements analysis which is based in reusable use cases. In this paper, we will present a UML-extension for security use cases and Grid use case which capture the behaviour of this kind of systems. A detailed description of all these new use cases defined in the UML extension is necessary, describing the stereotypes, tagged values, constraints and graphical notation. We show an example of how to apply and use this extension for building the diagram of use cases and incorporating common security aspects for this kind of systems. Also, we will see how the diagrams built can be reused in the construction of others diagrams saving time and effort in this task.

A min-max model predictive controller is developed in this paper for tracking control of wheeled mobile robots (WMRs) subject to the violation of nonholonomic constraints in an environment without obstacles. The problem is simplified by neglecting the vehicle dynamics and considering only the steering system. The linearized tracking-error kinematic model with the presence of uncertain disturbances is formed in the frame of the robot. And then, the control policy is derived from the worst-case optimization of a quadratic cost function, which penalizes the tracking error and control variables in each sampling time over a finite horizon. As a result, the input sequence must be feasible for all possible disturbance realizations. The performance of the control algorithm is verified via the computer simulations with a predefined trajectory and is compared to a common discrete-time sliding mode control law. The result shows that the proposed method has a better tracking performance and convergence.

This paper proposes a new approach for the joint processing of signal detection and channel estimation based on the expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) mobile communications. Conventional schemes based on the EM algorithm estimate a channel impulse response using Kalman filter, and employ the random walk model or the first-order autoregressive (AR) model to derive the process equation for the filter. Since these models assume that the time-variation of the impulse response is white noise without considering any autocorrelation property, the accuracy of the channel estimation deteriorates under fast-fading conditions, resulting in an increased packet error rate (PER). To improve the accuracy of the estimation of fast-fading channels, the proposed scheme employs a differential model that allows the correlated time-variation to be considered by introducing the first- and higher-order time differentials of the channel impulse response. In addition, this paper derives a forward recursive form of the channel estimation along both the frequency and time axes in order to reduce the computational complexity. Computer simulations of channels under fast multipath fading conditions demonstrate that the proposed method is superior in PER to the conventional schemes that employ the random walk model.

This letter proposes a simple k-hop flooding scheme for the temporarily lost child node of a multicast tree in a mobile ad hoc network where a group of nodes move together within a bound. Through simulation, we show that our scheme improves the packet delivery ratio of MAODV to be comparable to the epidemic routing with only small additional duplicate packets.

In this paper, we develop a VCASS substitution system (S-VCASS) using a personal mobile terminal in order to improve the effectiveness of VCASS in an environment comprising both VCASS and non-VCASS vehicles. We propose three new pedestrian state judgment algorithms that can be implemented on a personal mobile terminal for inter-vehicle communications. We evaluate the performances of the three proposed algorithms with real vehicles. Finally, we show that the proposed algorithms can recognize vehicles without VCASS.

In large-scale wireless sensor networks, in order to support group mobility of mobile sinks, this letter proposes a novel strategy for energy-efficient and robust data dissemination to the sinks based on cluster-based communication. The novel strategy is composed of two major mechanisms for reduction of structure construction overhead and routing state maintenance overhead: 1) a virtual infrastructure construction through grid-referred clustering and 2) inter-cluster communication by geographic routing relying on recursive location search. Based on the two major mechanisms, the strategy provides representative location management per sink group, distributed data collection, and per-cluster foot-print chaining in order to effectively adapt the traditional strategy for individual mobile sinks. Simulation results prove the proposed strategy shows better performances in terms of energy efficiency and robustness of data dissemination.

This paper evaluates the performance of a pilot-assisted fine carrier frequency offset (CFO) estimation scheme for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) in time-varying channels. An analytical closed-form expression of the mean square error (MSE), of the post-FFT based CFO synchronization scheme, is presented in terms of time-variant fading channels. To verify our analysis in this paper, simulations are carried out within the framework of mobile WiMAX systems.

In this paper, we study the decentralized coverage control problem for an environment using a group of autonomous mobile robots with nonholonomic kinematic and dynamic constraints. In comparison with standard coverage control procedures, we develop a combined controller for Voronoi-based coverage approach in which kinematic and dynamic constraints of the actual mobile sensing robots are incorporated into the controller design. Furthermore, a collision avoidance component is added in the kinematic controller in order to guarantee a collision free coverage of the area. The convergence of the network to the optimal sensing configuration is proven with a Lyapunov-type analysis. Numerical simulations are provided approving the effectiveness of the proposed method through several experimental scenarios.

One of the most important duties of government is to maintain safety. In 2007, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications of Japan tested 16 different models of a safety support system for children on school routes. One of the models was constructed and tested at a school in an area of the city of Hiroshima from September to December of 2007. A consortium was established by the city of Hiroshima; Hiroshima City University; Chugoku Electric Power Co., Inc.; and KDDI Corporation to conduct this project. For the model project, we developed a new safety support system for children on school routes by using a mobile ad hoc network constructed from mobile phones with the Bluetooth function. About 500 students and 50 volunteers used this system for four months. The support system provided good performance and accuracy in maintaining the safety of students on the way to school [7]. The basic idea of the safety support system is the grouping of children and volunteers using a mobile ad hoc network. In this paper, we present an outline of this system and evaluate the performance of grouping and the effectiveness of our approach.

A cognitive radio will have to sense and discover the spectral environments where it would not cause primary radios to interfere. Because the primary radios have the right to use the frequency, the cognitive radios as the secondary radios must detect radio signals before use. However, the secondary radios also need identifying the primary and other secondary radios where the primary radios are vulnerable to interference. In this paper, a method of simultaneously identifying signals of primary and secondary radios is proposed. The proposed bandwidth differentiation assumes the primary and secondary radios use orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), and the secondary radios use at the lower number of subcarriers than the primary radios. The false alarm and detection probabilities are analytically evaluated using the characteristic function method. Numerical evaluations are also conducted on the assumption the primary radio is digital terrestrial television broadcasting. Result showed the proposed method could achieve the false alarm probability of 0.1 and the detection probability of 0.9 where the primary and secondary radio powers were 2.5 dB and 3.6 dB higher than the noise power. In the evaluation, the reception signals were averaged over the successive 32 snapshots, and the both the primary and secondary radios used QPSK. The power ratios were 4.7 dB and 8.4 dB where both the primary and secondary radios used 64QAM.

The demand for data/audio streaming/video streaming multicast services in large scale networks has been increasing. Moreover, the improved transmission speed and mobile-device capability in wireless access networks enable people to use such services via their personal mobile devices. Peer-to-peer (P2P) architecture ensures scalability and robustness more easily and more economically than server-client architecture; as the number of nodes in a P2P network increases, the amount of workload per node decreases and lessens the impact of node failure. However, mobile users feel much larger psychological cost due to strict limitations on bandwidth, processing power, memory capacity, and battery life, and they want to minimize their contributions to these services. Therefore, the issue of how we can reduce this psychological cost remains. In this paper, we consider how effective a social networking service is as a platform for mobile P2P multicast. We model users' cooperative behaviors in mobile P2P multicast streaming, and propose a social-network based P2P streaming architecture for mobile networks. We also measured the psychological forwarding cost of real users in mobile P2P multicast streaming through an emulation experiment, and verify that our social-network based mobile P2P multicast streaming improves service quality by reducing the psychological forwarding cost using multi-agent simulation.

Mobile devices such as cell phones and personal digital assistants (PDAs) are becoming increasingly popular tools to access the Internet. Unfortunately, the experience of users attempting to access web pages with these mobile devices has been less than satisfactory because of their small display areas, slow communications links and low computing power. In this paper, we propose a trained scorer to estimate the mobile-friendliness scores of web pages, providing an indication of their suitability for mobile devices. These scores help mobile-friendly pages receive higher ranks in search results when mobile users seek information on the web. Our experiments show that the search results re-ranked by our mobile-friendliness scores increase mobile user satisfaction.

Wireless Sensor and Actor Networks (WSAN) are commonly used to monitor physical parameters and execute opportune actions in response to specific events. In order to achieve this goal it is necessary to implement efficient coordination and cooperation among the network nodes (i.e. sensors and actors) with the aim of reducing the energy consumption and improving the response time of the system. This work propose a clustering mechanism that organizes the sensor nodes to form clusters where the mobile actors nodes in the WSAN perform the cluster head role. The proposal considers the mobility aspect of the actor nodes and implements a mechanism to dynamically change the geographical location of the actors while trying to reduce the load in terms of the number of sensors within each cluster, all this with the aim of extending the network lifetime.

In PMIPv6, all packets sent by mobile nodes or correspondent nodes are transferred through the local mobility anchor. This unnecessary detour results in high delivery latency and significant processing cost. Several PMIPv6 route optimization schemes have been proposed to solve this issue. However, they also suffer from the high signaling costs when determining the optimized path. The proposed scheme which adopts the prediction algorithm in PFMIPv6 can reduce the signaling costs of the previous schemes. Analytical performance evaluation is performed to show the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.

In 2006, Yeh and Tsai proposed a mobile commerce security mechanism. However, in 2008, Yum et al. pointed out that Yeh-Tsai security mechanism is not secure against malicious WAP gateways and then proposed a simple countermeasure against the attack is to use a cryptographic hash function instead of the addition operation. Nevertheless, this paper shows that both Yeh-Tsai's and Yum et al.'s security mechanisms still do not provide perfect forward secrecy and are susceptible to an off-line guessing attack and Denning-Sacco attack. In addition, we propose a new security mechanism to overcome the weaknesses of the previous related security mechanisms.

This paper proposes a channel capacity maximization method for Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) antennas with parasitic elements. Reactive terminations are connected to the parasitic elements, and the reactance values are determined to achieve stochastically high channel capacity for the environment targeted. This method treats the S-parameter and propagation channel of the antenna, including the parasitic elements, as a combined circuit. The idea of the 'parasitic channel,' which is observed at the parasitic antenna, is introduced to simplify the optimization procedure. This method can significantly reduce the number of necessary measurements of the channel for designing the antenna. As a design example, a bidirectional Yagi-Uda array, which has two driven antennas at both ends of the linear array, is measured in an indoor environment. The resulting design offers enhanced channel capacity mainly due to its improved signal-to-noise ratio compared to the antenna without the parasitic antennas.