Professional Documents
Culture Documents
International Journal of
ISSN 2225-658X (Online)
DIGITAL INFORMATION AND WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS
Volume 3, Issue 4
2013
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Original Articles
PAPER TITLE
DEVELOPMENT OF A NETWORKING LABORATORY COMPLEX
AUTHORS
Feliksas
Kuliesius,
Ousinskis
PAGES
Evaldas
335
341
350
363
377
Hannu
385
E-GOVERNMENT WEB ACCESSIBILITY: WCAG 1.0 VERSUS WCAG Faouzi Kamoun, Basel M. Al
2.0 COMPLIANCE
Mourad, Emad Bataineh
390
400
411
430
440
451
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ABSTRACT
This paper reviews the complex system implemented
for teaching the network design and management
topics, taught at Vilnius University. The special
attention to sustain the practical skills is foreseen in
these courses. The set of training tools, blending i) the
emulators, ii) the real in-class lab and iii) the remote
online laboratories, is deployed with the aim to
expand advantages of interactive teaching. These
tools as well as their benefits and limitations in
teaching process are discussed in this paper.
KEYWORDS
Network Management, Virtual/Managed Learning
Environments, Remote/Online/Virtual Laboratories,
Network education
1. INTRODUCTION
Nowadays, especially when services and data
storage virtualization and cloud computing
plays a more and more significant role in the
ICT sector, the demand of enhanced high speed
network infrastructure and, consequently, of
well-educated
network
designers
and
administrators is growing tremendously [1].
Additionally, network engineers must possess
deeper understanding of the processes occurring
in converged networks with mixed services.
It is evident, that when seeking to prepare
highly qualified professionals it isnt enough to
convey solely written knowledge, i.e., theoretic
background a complex teaching environment,
in which special attention to hands-on labs and
case studies, must be planed.
This paper reviews the lab equipment complex
used in the network design and management
courses, taught at Vilnius University, Faculty of
Physics and the ways to achieve the predefined
goals to acquire and sustain practical skills
necessary for network administrators.
International Journal of Digital Information and Wireless Communications (IJDIWC) 3(4): 335-340
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and simulators. All of them have their own pros
and cons. The simulators Packet Tracer,
GNS3, IOU etc. can be used as self-test tools,
even to partly replace lab infrastructure, since
they can be available everywhere you have a
computer, but, unfortunately, they have limited
and reduced functionality [7,8]. Packet Tracer
supports only the basic functionality of real
equipment. GNS3, based on Dynamips, allows
to load genuine IOS, but does not support
switches. IOU, may be is the best choice from
the perspective of functionality, but its usability
is limited due to its proprietary license
limitations. An important fact is that simulators,
especially GNS3 are resource consumptive
software, and it is problematic to design and test
more complicated network topologies.
The real equipment and the experience of
working with it overcome these limitations and
is more preferable, since students can perceive
all aspects of network sets: solving emerging
problems, simulating (quasi)real situations,
setting cabling structures and, what may be the
most important learning to work in teams.
Part of the equipment of the described
laboratory is available directly, part via
remote access. Direct access is very useful for
beginners: students become acquainted with the
appliances, they can do the cabling, see
deployed topology evidently, console directly to
the gear and coordinate team-work as well as
consult classmates or be consulted by the
instructor. The main weakness of this approach
is the limited access to the equipment we have
only 10 workplaces available in our lab for such
direct access training.
The way to utilize the resources and possibilities
of the facility is to enable remote access, which
can be solved in different ways [9-11].
Additionally, remote access helps to develop
creativity, mental visual thinking and the
imagination, which is necessary striving to
better perceive the maintained infrastructure. In
other words, remote access manner accustoms
the students to the conditions close to real ones
which the administrators face every day when
monitoring and configuring extended networks.
When designing the lab, the main points that
were pursued were: in order to meet the needs
of students to experiment effectively, handily
and securely, the main labs (CCNP, Security
and Service provider lab racks) were devoted
International Journal of Digital Information and Wireless Communications (IJDIWC) 3(4): 335-340
The Society of Digital Information and Wireless Communications, 2013 (ISSN: 2225-658X)
International Journal of Digital Information and Wireless Communications (IJDIWC) 3(4): 335-340
The Society of Digital Information and Wireless Communications, 2013 (ISSN: 2225-658X)
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International Journal of Digital Information and Wireless Communications (IJDIWC) 3(4): 335-340
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The Society of Digital Information and Wireless Communications, 2013 (ISSN: 2225-658X)
7. White B., Lepreau J., Stoller L., Ricci R., Guruprasad
S., Newbold M., Hibler M., Barb C., Joglekar A.: An
integrated experimental environment for distributed
systems and networks. SIGOPS Operating Systems
Review. Vol. 36, pp. 255--270 (2002).
8. Jourjon G., Rakotoarivelo T., Ott M.: Why simulate
when you can experience? In: Proc. ACM SIGCOMM
Education Workshop, Toronto (2011)
9. Hua J., Ganz A.: Web enabled remote laboratory (Rlab) framework, In: Proc. 33rd ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in
Education conference, Boulder, CO, T2C pp. 8--13
(2003).
10. DeHart J., Kuhns F., Parwatikar J., Turner J.,
Wiseman C., Wong K.: The Open Laboratory: a resource
for networking research and education.
ACM
SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review, Vol. 35,
No 5, pp. 75--78 (2005).
11. Li Ch.: Developing an Innovative Online Teaching
System. In: Proc. 2010 International Conference on
Education, Training and Informatics, Vol.2, pp. 365-370, Orlando, FL (2010). http://www.iiis.org/CDs2010/C
D2010IMC/ICETI_2010/PapersPdf/EB531TD.pdf
13. CCNP ROUTE
Lab Manual, Cisco Press,
Indianapolis, IN (2011).
12. Release Notes for Zenoss Service Dynamics Version
4.2.2,
http://community.zenoss.org/docs/DOC-13701
(2012).
14. Day D. J., Burns B. M.: A Performance Analysis of
Snort and Suricata Network Intrusion Detection and
Prevention Engines, The Fifth International Conference
on Digital Society CDS 2011, pp.187--192 (2011).
15. Walt D.: Freeradius beginners guide, Pact Publishing
Ltd., Birmingham, UK (2011).
16. Garfinkel S. L., TCPFLOW:
TCP/IP packet
demultiplexer, https://github.com/simsong/tcpflow
340
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ABSTRACT
One of the main keys of positioning and ranging
technologies in wireless telecommunication networks
is the values of distance and RSSI (Received Signal
Strength Indication), side along with the cell
perimeter have a significant relationship for the
effect of the network quality in terms of quality in
services and connectivity, and not less in the roaming
stage. Many research results drove to influence these
keys to the handover delay in the broadband network,
so in many cases that MT handover between the
boarders of location areas or zones has been affected
by long time delay and packet data lost. Over recent
years many signal propagation schemes have been
presented to describe the relationship between cell
size and Mobile terminal distance between the
current and the targeted base station and RSSI. In this
paper, the modify scheme of the location
management area (LMA) -based multimedia
broadcast services scheme has been presented , the
effect of cell size and distance between BS and MT
and the RSSI , which shown their influence of the
handoff delay . The analytical algorithm results
showed the reduction of the handover delay in
smaller perimeter cell size compared to the large cells
in location management area.
KEYWORDS
WiMAX Network, LMA, Distance, RSSI, Handoff
Delay.
1 INTRODUCTION
Mobile WiMAX consists of three entities:
mobile station (MS), access service network
(ASN), and connectivity service network (CSN)
[1]. The BS performs radio-related functions,
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The Society of Digital Information and Wireless Communications, 2013 (ISSN: 2225-658X)
received radio signals [3]. For each base station
there is a threshold point below which
connection breaks with the active base station.
Therefore the signal strength must be greater
than threshold point to maintain the connection
with active BS. The signal gets weaker as the
mobile moves far away from the active base
station and gets stronger signal towards the new
base station as it move closer.
In the modified LMB , RSSI and the distance
between BS are taking a major part as a
parameter in this algorithm , however, MOBNBR-ADV message it continues on the strength
signal power information's of the neighboring
BSs , the MT compare among all these signals
to select the appropriate one to take the initiate
decision for the handover, however, this paper is
organized as follows: second Section the
summery and related work has been presented,
the WiMAX handover and MAC layer were
described in section three, in terms of scanning
and ranging procedures, in section four, the
fundamentals of RSSI ranging is described also
the comparison based on the cells perimeters and
mobile terminal speed is presented ,the modified
model analysis and the results in section five and
six respectively. Finally the conclusion in section
seven.
2 RELATED WORKS
2.1 LMA-based on Multimedia Broadcast
Services
The inner MBS zone handover is a critical issue
when the network planning promotes real-time
multimedia services as ( QoS) function, as the
innate MBS handover zone increases the BSs
numbers where multicast packet increases in
most time no much users, which will cause a
waste of bandwidth channels , beside the packet
delay and lost. It is unnecessary to maintain into
MBS zone handover in the network planning, to
avoid it, the planning design adopts the large
MBS zone to eliminate the inter MBS handover
zone effect.
In [4] MBS zone is divided into multiple
location management areas (LMAs) and then
MBS data packets are transmitted only to the
International Journal of Digital Information and Wireless Communications (IJDIWC) 3(4): 341-349
The Society of Digital Information and Wireless Communications, 2013 (ISSN: 2225-658X)
over backbone when the target is decided.
Alternatively, the BS may trigger handover with
a MOB_BSHO-REQ message.
After handover preparation, handover execution
it will take place to start. The serving BS will
receive a MOB_HO-IND message from the MT
as a final indication of its handover.
After ranging with the target BS successfully, the
MT negotiates basic capabilities such as
maximum
transmit
power
and
modulator/demodulator type.
Then performs
authentication and key exchange procedures, and
finally registers with the target BS. However,
2.2 Cell Size
Previous study, [7] proposed a model for the
TDMA-FDMA mobile cellular communication
system. The authors presented traffic and
coverage analysis for procedure of cell planning.
As the cell radius increases, then the location
area and multicast zones will increase in terms of
numbers and coverage area , so transmitted
power of base station (BS) within these area and
path loss are increased, however the capacity has
better performance with consider the user
capacity and the travelling within the network.
Also three environments of urban areas ,
suburban area, and rural area. The model
presented the result based on these criteria so, In
case of the urban environment, the performance
was very worse comparing to rural or suburban
environment. In [8 present another comparison it
was based on the power consumption of access
networks which are passive optical networks,
fiber to the node, point-to-point optical systems
and WiMAX. The model results showed that
the optical access technologies have a more
power-efficient and saving solutions comparing
to other access technologies which has been
introduced .
2.3 Handoff
In [8]
many considerations have been
investigated to present the performance of
cellular mobile communication systems with
handover procedures. The author considered
cellular organization , frequency reuse, and
handoff for mobile radio telephone systems.
They also analyze the probability distribution of
residing time in a cell . One of the results
International Journal of Digital Information and Wireless Communications (IJDIWC) 3(4): 341-349
The Society of Digital Information and Wireless Communications, 2013 (ISSN: 2225-658X)
neighbors. In the ranging phase, an MT may
switch to a new channel, thus temporally loosing
connection with the serving BS.
(1)
(2)
PR (dBm) = A 10n lg d
(3)
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International Journal of Digital Information and Wireless Communications (IJDIWC) 3(4): 341-349
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p=
(4)
(5)
Where,
(6)
Where,
Y : is the received signal strength.
X : is the distance between the BS and SS.
Generally, The MT selects those BSs whose
RSSI value are higher than the serving BS which
results in a better link for communication with
the target BS with the lower bit error rate (BER).
Typically handover initiated when the RSSI of
the serving BS is less than the targeted BS, and
executed only if there is another BS having RSSI
is at least H higher than the threshold drop. It is
mean that the distance between base stations and
the mobile terminals and RSS is playing a main
key to the handover operation, Using a location
management area mathematical algorithm in [4]
as fundamental to the modified algorithm (7)
has been adopted these new factors and pay
more attention to these factors performances to
present the effect in different scenarios,
particularly under the conditions , when the
Mobiles terminals in the mobility in different
velocities categories.
600
400
300270240
200
210180
150
120
906030
RSS
D
V
9
signal unit
(7)
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International Journal of Digital Information and Wireless Communications (IJDIWC) 3(4): 341-349
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600
400
TVD
V
RSS
300
270
240
210
180
150
120
90
300
200
60
signal unit
500
100
30
0
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
200
180
160
140
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
L4=4000m
200
L3=2500m
100
L2=1000m
L1=400m
0
1
5 4 3 2
8 7 6
10 9
Distance between MTand BS/m
300
MT SPEED/km
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distances of MTs between the current BSs and
target BSs.
160
140
120
100
DLMA,
D=100
m
80
60
40
20
0
330 300 270 240 210 180 150 120 90 60
MT Speed Km/h
HD,
L=100
HDL=200
150
100
HD,L=300
200
50
0
330 300 270 240 210 180 150 120 90 60
MT Speed Km/h
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80
60
50
40
30
DLMA
20
70
10
330
300
270
240
210
180
150
120
90
60
0
MT speed/ KM
7 CONCLUSION
This modified model presents different
parameter which have a significant effect on the
handoff delay these parameter such as the
velocities of the mobile terminals , distance
between the mobile terminal and the target base
station, location managements area size, cell
perimeter and RSSI.
The results shown that the received signal
strength in the high velocity mobile terminal is
increasing parallel with the distaed model nce
between the MT and BS, on the other hands, the
increasing value could be steady after certain
velocity, No much distance can affect the
handover delay in high distance but it's clear
8 REFERENCES
1. Elgembari, E., Seman, K.,: A Study on the Effect of
Different Velocities on the Handover Delay in
WiMAX Systems. International Review on Computers
and Software (I.RE.CO.S.), Vol. 8, N. 1,ISSN 18286003 Praise Worthy Prize S.r.l. , , January (2013).
2. Saini, M., Verma, A., : Analysis of Handover Schemes
in IEEE 802.16 (WiMAX) ,Thesis submitted in partial
fulfillment of the requirements for the award of the
degree of Master of Engineering in Computer Science
and Engineering Thapar University, JUNE (2008).
3. Al-Safwani, A., Sheikh, A., :Signal Strength
Measurement at VHF in the Eastern Region of Saudi
Arabia, The Arabian Journal for Science and
Engineering, Vol. 28, No.2C, December (2003).
4. Lee, J., Kwon, T., Choi, Y., Pack, S.,: Location
Management Area Based MBS Handover in Mobile
WiMAX Systems., 3rd International Conference on
Communication Systems Software and Middleware
and Workshops, COMSWARE (2008).
5. Kim, K.., Kim, C., Kim, T.,: A Seamless Handover
Mechanism for IEEE 802.16e Broadband Wireless
Access, International Conference on Computational
Science vol.2, (2005).
6. Samsung, H., ETRI, H., KUT, Park.,: Mobile IPv6 Fast
Handovers over IEEE 802.16e Networks, ietfipr@ietf.org.SAMSUNG Electronics J. Cha ETRI ,
June (2008).
7. I.H. Cavdar and O. Akcay, The Optimization of Cell
Sizes and Base Stations Power Level in Cell
348
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Planning, VTC 2001, vol. 4, pp. 2344- 2348, May
2001.
8. J. Baliga, R. Ayre, W.V. Sorin, K. Hinton, and R.S.
Tucker, Energy Consumption in Access Networks,
OFC/NFOEC 2008, pp. 1-3, February 2008.
9. D.H. Hong and S.S. Rappaport, Traffic model and
performance analysis for cellular mobile radio
telephone systems with prioritized and nonprioritized
handoff procedures, IEEE Trans. Vehicular
Technology, vol. 35, no. 3, pp. 77-92, August 1986.
10. Handover concept for next-generation heterogeneous
networks, VTC 2005 Spring, vol. 4, pp. 2225-2229,
May 2005.
11. Makelainen, A.,: Analysis of Handoff Performance in
Mobile WiMAX Networks, Helsinki University of
Technology, Espoo, Finland, (2007).
12. Jiuqiang, Xu., Liu, W., Lang, L., Zhang, Y., Wang,
Y.,: Distance Measurement Model Based on RSSI in
WSN
,Wireless
Sensor
Network,
2010,
doi:10.4236/wsn.2010.28072 Published Online August
(2010).
13. Zheng,F., Zhan,Z., Guo,P.,: Analysis of Distance
Measurement Based on RSSI, Chinese Journal of
Sensors and Actuators, Vol. 20, No. 11, ( 2007).
14.Gustafsson,F., Gunnarsson,F.,: Possibilities and
fundamental Limitations of positioning using wireless
communication network measurements, IEEE Signal
Processing Magazine, vol. 22,( 2005).
15. Bshara, M., Deblauwe, N., Biesen, L.,: "Localization
in WiMAX Networks Based on Signal Strength
Observations
Applications
in
Location-based
Services",
Department
of
Electricity
and
Instrumentation. www.ieee-globecom.org/2008, ICTMobile Summit (2008).
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ABSTRACT
An ongoing goal in higher education is to provide
quality education programs and to produce high
quality graduates. While much of the attention to
quality matters is focussed on outputs, there is little
that addresses the preliminary or input side of the
educational program. The purpose of this paper is to
demonstrate that it is feasible to construct a course
profile based on standard inputs in the form of the
behavioral objectives that are stated for the subjects
comprising the course. The application of the course
profile will be found in supplementing the
understanding of quality frameworks in the
assessment of degree programs, thereby becoming a
useful tool for benchmarking courses and comparing
across department and institution boundaries.
KEYWORDS
course profile, benchmarking, course evaluation,
course quality
1. INTRODUCTION
In the higher education sector a continuing issue
remains at the forefront of the teaching and
learning agenda, and that is quality of the degree
programs offered. There are many initiatives
undertaken to investigate the quality of teaching,
the quality of assessment, the quality of
graduates, and other output evaluations. These
are all post-event or post-process activities that
have an important role in attempting to validate
and maintain institutional quality standards.
Applications of this approach are particularly
evident at times of course accreditations or
during benchmarking processes when various
forms of documentation are provided as evidence
of effective quality teaching, learning and
assessment processes being in place.
When these evaluation and audit processes
occur, a significant element that is examined is
the documentation associated with a complete
program (a degree, or a course) and its
component elements (the individual subjects, or
International Journal of Digital Information and Wireless Communications (IJDIWC) 3(4): 350-362
The Society of Digital Information and Wireless Communications, 2013 (ISSN: 2225-658X)
exists the standard cost for production of
component items in manufacturing processes.
Why then should it not be possible to establish a
baseline value that may be used as an indicator
to the educational potential of course-work
studies? As will be shown in the remainder of
this paper, a proposed course profile indicator is
feasible.
2. THE HIGHER EDUCATION SECTOR
For the purposes of this paper, the focus will be
constrained to the degree programs of the higher
education sector.
Structurally, a degree program comprises a
number of specified studies that must be
undertaken in an acceptable combination to
satisfy the requirements of the particular degree.
Typically the studies are organized on a semester
basis, and, depending on the institution
concerned, the studies may have the same
weighting value in each semester, or there may
be differences. For each subject, there is a set of
aims and objectives that are intended to provide
information about the content of the subject and
the skills and knowledge that a student should
attain. To clarify the use of terms in this paper, a
brief set of interpretation definitions and
equivalences is given in Table 1 below:
2.1 Relationship between Elements
The higher education enterprise may be viewed
as a composite set of the elements just discussed
and arranged in an hierarchical order as shown in
Table 2.
At the subject level, the subject specification
may be thought of as the set of the learning
objectives for that subject. Typically these are
expressed in behavioral terms and are therefore
usually prefaced with a statement such as On
successful completion of this subject the student
will be able to .
In practice, each degree/course has its own
course aims and objectives, which are
presumably addressed by one or more of the
individual subject learning objectives. These
overarching aims and objectives are intended to
convey a sense of the overall graduate attributes
that should be realized in the successful students,
and provide some thematic relevance or intent
across the subjects in the course.
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Table 1: Terminology Interpretations
Term
Meaning
Alternative
Terminology
A complete degree program
Degree, award
Course
Specification
for
the
combination
of
subjects
to
be
Degree
Regulations,
Course
completed in order to satisfactorily complete the Schedule of Study
Rule
course
A prescribed study program in a specific discipline Topic, Course
Subject
area, typically over one semester
The effective weight of the subject in the student Course credits, Credit
Unit
load, typically expressed as a fraction of a full-time Points, Units
Value
year
Learning A student learning objective written in behavioral Learning Outcome
Objective terms
Table 2: Degree Hierarchy Structure
Degree Programs
Specific Course 1
Subject 1
Specific Course 2
Subject 2
.
Subject n1
Subject 1
Learning Objective 1
Learning Objective 2
.
Learning Objective
m1
Learning Objective 1
Learning Objective 2
.
Learning Objective
m2
Subject 2
.
Subject n2
.
Fortunately there have been several studies
undertaken in the field of learning objectives,
and two in particular deal with the development
of taxonomies for learning objectives in an
attempt to provide qualitative approaches to the
examination of learning objectives. One of the
key platforms that gained a great deal of support
was the taxonomy of educational objectives
proposed by Bloom, which subsequently became
widely referred to as Blooms Taxonomy. The
underlying basis of Blooms ideas was to create
a framework for classifying the statements of
what was expected for students to learn through
the teaching process. While the original
International Journal of Digital Information and Wireless Communications (IJDIWC) 3(4): 350-362
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types of knowledge and cognitive processes were
involved. It was found that this tabular form was
able to be applied across a range of granularities,
from the fine-grained analysis of a module in a
larger teaching program, to broader analyses of
subject objectives. The application of the revised
Bloom Taxonomy matrix involves the
examination of learning objectives and
classifying them into the appropriate cells of the
matrix.
In the accompanying table (Table 3), the terms in
the cognitive dimension are self-explanatory, and
similarly, the first three terms in the knowledge
dimension
are
equally
self-explanatory.
However, the fourth term, Metacognitive
Knowledge requires further explanation. In a
related work, Pintrich [3] discusses the
importance of metacognitive knowledge and
highlights three distinct types. Specifically,
Pintrich identifies the first type as Strategic
Knowledge, which incorporates the knowledge
of strategies for learning, thinking and problem
solving in the domain area. The second type is
identified as Knowledge about cognitive tasks,
which includes the ability to discern more about
the nature of the problems to be solved and to
begin to know about the what and how of
different strategies as well as when and why
the strategies may be appropriate. The third type
is described as Self-Knowledge, which
includes understanding about ones own
strengths and weaknesses with respect to
learning.
A second significant model is that proposed by
Biggs in the form of the SOLO Taxonomy
(Structure of Observed Learning Outcome),
was not included as no teaching activity would
be deliberately aimed at this ab-initio state.
While the initial intention of using the SOLO
Taxonomy is to classify learning objectives into
the appropriate SOLO categories, the work
undertaken by Brabrand and Dahl enabled a
relative measure of competencies to be
established across the courses in the science
faculties in the universities in the study. The
body of evidence in the Brabrand and Dahl work
has established a method to create a quantitative
measure based on the statements of learning
objectives.
Pre-Structural
Uni-Structural
Multi-Structural
Relational
Extended Abstract
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Table 3: Revised Bloom Taxonomy Matrix
Cognitive Dimension
Knowledge
Remember Understand Apply
Dimension
Factual
knowledge
Conceptual
knowledge
Procedural
knowledge
Metacognitive
knowledge
Analyze
Evaluate
Create
Table 4: Prototypical verbs according to the SOLO Taxonomy per Brabrand and Dahl
Quantitative
SOLO 2
Uni-structural
Paraphrase
Define
Identify
Count
Name
Recite
Follow
(simple)
instructions
Qualitative
SOLO 4
SOLO 5
Relational
Extended Abstract
Analyze
Theorize
Compare
Generalize
Contrast
Hypothesize
Integrate
Predict
Relate
Judge
Explain causes
Reflect
Apply Theory (to its Transfer Theory (to
domain)
new domain)
SOLO 3
Multi-structural
Combine
Classify
Structure
Describe
Enumerate
List
Do algorithm
Apply method
Cognitive Dimension
Knowledge
Dimension
Factual
knowledge
Conceptual
knowledge
Procedural
knowledge
Metacognitive
knowledge
Remember
Understand Apply
Analyze
Evaluate
Create
13
17
21
10
14
18
22
11
15
19
23
12
16
20
24
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interesting question arises to consider whether
similar approaches can be used with the revised
Bloom Taxonomy as a classification and metric
determination tool. Under the equal distance
assumption proposed in Brabrand and Dahl, the
cognitive levels within any one knowledge
dimension should change by an equal amount.
Similarly, a constant distance value between
knowledge dimension levels should apply within
any one cognitive dimension. Accordingly, using
an integral unit value a score value table could
be constructed as in Table 5.
Given the revised Bloom Taxonomy matrix
contains 24 cells, the resultant scale will be in
the range 1 to 24. In pure numeric terms the
scores obtained using this scale will be vastly
different from those using the SOLO scale where
the range is between 2 and 5. However it is
worth examining whether meaningful outcomes
are obtained using the two techniques. This
approach has been taken on the grounds that
behavioral objectives are written as statements of
intended student behaviors and learning
outcomes, which is about the cognitive skills
rather than the subject content. Recognising that
subject content should become more in-depth as
a student progresses through their studies, it is
reasonable to remove the depth of knowledge
factor in determining a profile that examines the
cognate skills.
As the knowledge dimension addresses the
nature of content within a subject, the
comparison is not really comparing like with like
by ranking against the SOLO scores. Therefore,
to be more reflective of a properly constructed
test to compare similar items, namely the
cognate skills specified by learning objectives,
an adjusted scale based purely on the cognitive
dimension by collapsing the knowledge
dimension to a single integral value resulted in a
scoring range between 1 and 6, where 1 was
assigned to Remember and 6 was assigned to
Create.
With two possible measuring instruments
available, the question of how to determine an
individual subject metric must now be answered.
When reviewing syllabus learning objectives it
becomes clear that many are framed in
compound terms that is to do x and do y, or
to understand x, y, and z. The evaluation of
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The scores obtained were then grouped by the
year level of the course to consider whether there
were year level differences, and finally a score
for the degree program was calculated.
In the particular degree program examined, there
were three classes of subjects, the Core subjects
which were compulsory, Selective subjects
where students have a narrow choice from a
limited list of subjects, and Elective subjects
where students may choose from a broad range
of subjects. A total of 20 syllabi statements were
examined in this degree course to provide the
data for the core and selective subjects. To
effectively deal with the mix of subject types, the
following rules were applied:
a) The compulsory subjects were evaluated as
distinct entries;
b) The selective subjects were evaluated
individually but the number of required
selective subjects were included as
cumulative average values. That is, where the
course rule made a statement such as
include 2 of the following 5 subjects ,
then the average score for the 5 subjects
would be calculated and included twice to
allow for the number required;
c) The elective subjects needed for each year
level would be included as the average of the
core subjects for that year level. The
underlying assumption here is that the
subjects across year levels within an
institution
may
be
considered
as
approximately similar in educational content
even though they may come from different
domain areas.
5. RESULTS
It is important to demonstrate the application of
this methodology through an example. In the
case study application, a three-year degree of
Bachelor of Information Technology, there were
24 semester subjects required to complete the
degree. Of these, there were 20 distinct subjects
that were classified as core or selective subjects,
with the remaining 4 being elective choices from
a large range of options taken over different year
levels. Taking as an example the first-year
introductory
subject
COMP1001
Objective #
1
2
3
4
SOLO Score
S3 + S3 + S4 =
3.33
2 * S3 = 3.0
2 * S3 = 3.0
S3 = 3.0
5
Average
S4 = 4.0
3.27
Bloom Score
B2 + B2 + B3 =
2.33
B2 + B3 = 2.5
2 * B2 = 2.0
B2 + B4 + B5 =
3.67
B6 = 6.0
3.30
First Year
Second Year
Third Year
Degree Total
Course
Average
Weighted
SOLO Total
3.43
3.56
3.84
10.83
3.61
Adjusted
Bloom Scores
3.57
3.63
4.04
11.24
3.78
6. DISCUSSION
In evaluating the behavioral objectives for the
subjects in this degree there were several
356
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interesting points that were revealed. These are
discussed as separate items below.
6.1 Appropriateness
approach.
of
Taxonomic
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in this argument, it is defended by the confidence
that we have in the professionalism of the people
charged with making the assessment when they
exercise their professional judgement. This is no
different to examiners marking student papers,
recognising that different examiners may arrive
at slightly different final scores, but overall
should return a similar result. Accreditation and
benchmarking
panels
make
subjective
professional judgements based on the evidence
presented to them when deciding to award
particular achievement or status levels to
courses.
6.5 Language-rich bias.
The subjects which have a stronger focus on
language elements such as report writing and
critiquing of subject materials tended to score
more highly in both taxonomies. Some subject
areas such as computer programming may
involve quite complex levels of problem solving
and formulation of creative approaches to
resolve issues, but these elements were not
explicitly stated in the subject learning
objectives. Discussions with the subject
coordinators highlighted that their impressions of
some of the tasks required of the students
involved
the
higher
order
taxonomy
classifications, yet the subject learning objectives
did not adequately express this.
6.6 Interpretation opportunities.
The two dimensional nature of the revised
Bloom
taxonomy
makes
subsequent
investigation of comparative subsets somewhat
more difficult computationally. On the other
First Year
Second Year
Third Year
Overall
Solo2
5%
7%
4%
5%
Solo3
49%
41%
25%
36%
Solo4
39%
42%
55%
47%
Solo5
7%
10%
16%
12%
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Table 9: Distribution of Bloom Levels across Degree
First Year
Second Year
Third Year
Overall
Example graphical analysis of the Information Technology degree considered in this study.
Overall
5%
36%
Third Yr 4%
Second Yr
First Yr
47%
25%
7%
55%
41%
5%
16%
42%
49%
0%
12%
10%
39%
20%
40%
Solo2
7%
60%
80%
Solo3
Solo4
Solo5
100%
Overall 2%
15%
Third Yr 0% 11%
Second Yr
25%
26%
18%
19%
37%
12%
Bloom1
20%
13%
22%
12%
Bloom2
Bloom3
6%
14%
26%
20%
Bloom4
Bloom5
First Yr 0%
0%
21%
31%
20%
40%
22%
60%
16%
80%
10%
Bloom6
100%
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6.7 What then is the profile of this degree
course?
The analysis undertaken demonstrates that there
are several potential profiles that can be
determined.
6.7.1 Course Index Score
In the first instance, there is the Solo Average of
3.61, or the Bloom Average of 3.78 for this
course. As indicators, these values propose that
the overall course endeavors to go beyond basic
learning activities of recall and application of
standard methods and approaches, and ventures
well into the qualitative realm of analysis and
evaluation that would be expected of graduates
able to display critical thinking attributes in their
chosen field. Since the underlying nature of both
the SOLO and Bloom taxonomies is cumulative,
the equal-distance assumption in creating the
basic scoring system for analyzing the subject
objectives allows the interpretation of
progression to higher levels in this manner. This
can be represented on a graphical scale as shown
in Figure 3, which indicates the positioning of
the course score on a SOLO scale, and is labelled
as a Course Index or C-Index.
Solo3
Solo4
Solo5
Overall
0%
36%
20%
Solo2
47%
40%
Solo3
60%
12%
80%
Solo4
100%
Solo5
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comparable courses to gauge the appropriate
amount of different types of learning activity.
For the course examined in this case study, it
appears that each year level includes the
objectives related to basic recall of factual
material, but the major shift in focus seems to be
from application of routine processes initially
into more critical evaluation and analysis tasks in
later years.
55%
Second Year 7%
41%
First Year 5%
49%
16%
42%
0%
20% 40% 60%
Solo2
Solo3
Solo4
10%
39%
7%
80% 100%
Solo5
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used in conjunction with other examination tools
and inspection of output artifacts, the profile of
expected learning activities in the course should
be a valuable instrument that finds application in
course comparisons, benchmarking, and the
evaluation of course quality.
The language-rich subjects tended to score
higher in the methodology used in this research.
Although this may be a slight impediment to the
technically oriented courses, the overall
influence of the language-rich subjects tends to
be overshadowed by the inherent ratio of
technical to less/non-technical subjects in
structuring technically oriented degree programs.
There are many opportunities to extend the
research associated with this work, including the
expansion of the data sets involved, making
decisions about the relative ease of working with
each taxonomy, investigating the ways to better
interpret the results obtained, and assessing the
applicability of the approach in course
benchmarking when different courses are
compared.
REFERENCES
1.
362
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ABSTRACT
Software engineering ontology was first developed
to provide efficient collaboration and coordination
among distributed teams working on related software
development projects across the sites. It helped to
clarify the software engineering concepts and project
information as well as enable knowledge sharing.
However, a major challenge of the software
engineering ontology users is that they need the
competence to access and translate what they are
looking for into the concepts and relations described in
the ontology; otherwise, they may not be able to obtain
required information. In this paper, we propose a
conceptual framework of a multi-agent based
recommender system to provide active support to
access and utilize knowledge and project information
in the software engineering ontology. Multi-agent
system and semantic-based recommendation approach
will be integrated to create collaborative working
environment to access and manipulate data from the
ontology and perform reasoning as well as generate
expert recommendation facilities for dispersed
software teams across the sites.
KEYWORDS
Software engineering ontology, multi-agent based
systems, recommendation systems, multi-site software
development, ontology development
1 INTRODUCTION
Due to the emergence of the Internet and the
globalization of software development, there has
been a growing trend towards the traditional
centralized
to
the
distributed
software
development form which means that software
team members work on the same project but they
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discuss software development tasks through
shared displays. Salinger et al. [6] presented Saros
which was an eclipse plug-in for collaborative
programming activities between distributed
parties.
Since the Semantic Web emerged, ontologies
have been widely used as a means of providing the
semantics to support the retrieval information
based on the intended meaning rather than simply
match the search terms [7]. Since then, they have
now applied to several fields including software
engineering throughout the various stages of the
software development life cycle because they can
provide a shared conceptualization of fundamental
concepts and relationships of
software
development projects as well as provide semantics
and mechanisms for communication and
structuring of knowledge. In addition, ontologies
also have a great potential for analysis and design
of complex object-oriented software systems by
using them to create object model for objectoriented software engineering [8].
In
multi-site
software
development
environment, ontologies have played an important
role to support working context. There are several
tools, techniques, models and best practices that
utilizing ontologies to facilitate collaboration,
communication, project knowledge management
including software engineering processes activities
and it is proved that ontologies can bring benefits
such as communication within remote teams,
knowledge sharing and effectiveness in
information management [9].
Wongthongtham et al. [10] introduced the
Software Engineering Ontology which was an
ontology model of software engineering as a part
of a communication framework to define common
software engineering domain knowledge and share
useful project information for multi-site
development environment. They defined the
software engineering ontology as a formal,
explicit specification of a shared conceptualization
in the domain of software engineering [11].
Formal implies that the software engineering
ontology should be machine-understandable to
enable a better communication and semantically
shared knowledge between humans and machines
(i.e. in the form of software application or
software agents). Explicit implies that the type of
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engineering ontology. Finally, the conclusion and
future work are discussed in Section 6.
2 MOTIVATION
The potential benefits of this work are
significant as follows.
2.1 Report in the literature [13] mentions that
not all globally distributed projects can benefit
from working in the global context. Twenty to
twenty-five
percent
of
all
outsourcing
relationships fail within two years and fifty
percent fail within five years. One of the main
reasons for this failure rate is the communication
barrier across multiple sites. The proposed work is
intended to support effective communication
within projects in order to reduce the failure rate
of
geographically
distributed
software
development projects.
2.2 The proposed recommender approach
integrating with automatic reasoning capacity of
autonomous software agents will provide active
support to multi-site software teams by
recommending useful project information and
solutions for project issues that arise as experts.
2.3 With the proposed framework, software
companies can take advantage of developing
software in a global context, the benefits of which
are: reduction in development costs, access to a
large skilled labor pool, effective utilization of
time zones etc. This will enable them to be more
competitive when bidding in the software
development market.
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teams, customer, etc.) worked on the system for
collaborative
acquisition,
navigation
and
documentation activities.
Ontologies can be used to facilitate the
semantic
interoperability
while
Agent
Communication Language (ACL) defined by
FIPA can be used as the language of
communication between agents. There are several
existing researches that integrate the use of
ontologies and MAS. Paydar and Kahani [28]
introduced a multi-agent framework for automated
testing of web-based applications. The framework
was designed to facilitate the automated execution
of different types of tests and different information
sources. Ontology-based computational intelligent
multi-agent for Capability Maturity Model
Integration (CMMI) assessment was proposed by
Lee and Wang [29]. The multi-agent system
consisted of three main agents interacting with one
another to achieve the goal of effectively
summarizing the evaluation reports of the software
engineering process regarding CMMI assessment.
The CMMI ontology was developed to represent
the CMMI domain knowledge. This research did
not cover other knowledge areas of the software
engineering domain but it specifically focused on
the software engineering process with respect to
CMMI assessment only. The integration of two
promising technologies in software engineering
ContextP-GSD
Focus
Web search
Make use of
ontologies
E-learning
Requirements engineering
activities
Software testing
CMMI assessment
366
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coordination in global software development
environment and used ontology to define semantic
information which was quite similar to our
proposed work, it focused only on contextual
software engineering information, not the whole
software engineering domain knowledge.
The summary of the reviewed multi-agent
system applications is presented in Table 1. It is
evident that many researches have exploited multiagent technology in various applications and a
number of them utilizes multi-agent technology
along with the use of ontologies to support
software development tasks. However, most of
them cover only a specific phase or issue in
software
engineering
domain
knowledge.
Currently, there are no multi-agent system
applications that provide active communication
and coordination throughout the whole software
engineering process.
3.2 Recommendation Systems
Recommendation systems are techniques or
software tools assisting users with suggestions for
items, contents or services to be of use in
overloaded amounts of information [32]. The
initial academic work on implementing
recommendation systems was first conducted in
the mid-1990s. Park et al. [33] undertook a
literature
review
and
classification
of
recommender systems based on 210 research
papers on recommendation systems published in
academic journals between 2001 and 2010. The
result showed that publications related to this topic
had increased significantly, especially after 2007
and also extended to fields other than movies and
shopping. They conclude from their review that it
is highly likely that research in the area of
recommendation systems will be active and has
the potential to increase significantly in the future.
Recommendation systems are normally
classified based on how recommendation is
implemented as following [34].
Content-based approach recommends
items which resemble the ones that a specific
user formerly preferred.
Collaborative
filtering
approach
recommends items to the users based on the
similarity between users.
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normally defined through ontology or conceptdiagram (like taxonomy) [36]. Semantic-based
recommendation systems have been proven to
have better performance than previous approaches
by applying a knowledge base and semantic
reasoning filtering techniques. These two elements
can help to improve the accuracy of
recommendation systems because semantic
descriptions are used, unlike syntactic approaches
which consider the word only [37]. Various
applications in several fields have been proposed
which include a semantic reasoning mechanism in
their recommendation systems, for instance,
Blanco-Fernndez et al. [38] presented a
methodology to overcome the overspecialization
problem and improve the effectiveness of contentbased recommendation approaches by applying
semantic descriptions of the items and including
semantic reasoning technique in them. They
claimed that the proposed methodology had the
potential
to
enhance
the
quality
of
recommendations better than the traditional
recommendation systems did and it could be
applied in various domains. This model was
realized through the implementation of the
prototype, AVATAR, a recommender system of
personalized TV content. Cantador et al. [39]
explored a model of an enhanced semantic layer
for hybrid recommendation systems. Different
methods were integrated for different purposes in
order to improve the accuracy and quality of
recommendations such as ontology-based
knowledge representation concept, spreading
activation algorithm and three recommendation
techniques which were personalized, semantic
context-aware and content-based collaborative
recommendation systems. The authors illustrated
the use of their methodology in a news
recommendation system, News@Hand. An
ontology-based semantic recommendation for
programming tutoring system called Protus 2.0
was a research in education domain proposed by
[40]. It was an adaptive and personalized webbased tutoring system that used recommendation
approaches during the personalization process.
Web Ontology Language (OWL) was used to
represent context knowledge while Semantic Web
Rule Language (SWRL) was exploited to deal
with semantic reasoning. Although semantic-
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Some other RSSEs focused on supporting
developers while they were coding or debugging
program. Fishtail was a plugin tool for the Eclipse
IDE which automatically recommended source
code examples from the web to developers that
were relevant to their current tasks [47]. Cordeiro
et al. [48] proposed a context-based
recommendation to support problem-solving in
software development. They developed a
client/server tool to integrate recommendation of
question/answering web resources in the
developers work environment to provide
automatic assistance when the exception errors
occured. DebugAdvisor [49] was proposed as a
search tool for debugging which supported fat
query, a query with all contextual information of
the bug issue. Developers could do a bug report
search from multiple software repositories with a
single query. The system returned a bug
description raked list that matched the query and
then used it to retrieve recommendation of the
related artifacts such as source code and functions
from the generated relationship graph. Jaekel et al.
[50] developed a Semantic Helper component
which was one of the modules of the FACIT-SME
project, a three-year project intended to assist IT
SMEs to select and use quality business process
models and software engineering methods in their
software development projects. Dhruv [51]
advised software developers on relevant software
artifacts and bug reports. Semantic web
technology was explored in this research in order
to facilitate problem-solving in the open-source
software community. It exploited ontologies to
identify where related artifacts were located and
their description including relevant bug
information. A Semantic Helper component aims
was intended to assist other components by
filtering information and doing automatic
matching between the models which were stored
in semantic format in FACIT-SME repositories.
This recommender system also provided ranking
lists of the most relevant models from a given
query.
All the described applications had been
developed to improve the productivity of software
development projects only for one of phases in
SDLC, and most of them focus on the
implementation phase in particular. However,
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2) Semantic recommender agent
Recommend tentative solutions including
affected software artifacts and users.
Work with ontology agent to make a
decision based on knowledge in software
engineering ontology.
Notify affected agents in case of ontology
update.
Coordinate with evolution agent in case
of unresolved issues/queries.
3) Ontology agents
Manage
and
maintain
software
engineering ontology repository.
370
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ontology evolution process.
Notify ontology agents for update from
SESN process.
The agents will work collaboratively throughout
six processes as following.
1) Semantic Annotation Process
As mentioned, in the software engineering
ontology, there are two types of abstraction:
generic software engineering representing a whole
set of software engineering domain concepts, and
application
specific
software
engineering
illustrating the set of software engineering
concepts
used
for
particular
projects.
Instantiations, also known as population, are part
of the abstraction of the application specific
software engineering ontology. They are used for
storing data instances of the projects. Software
project information is often updated according to
changes in requirements or in design processes;
therefore, manually transformation or mapping
new changes into semantically rich form and
populating them as instances of the software
engineering
ontology
is
time-consuming,
laborious, tedious and prone to error. With the
help of agents which perform semantic annotation
process and ontology population, project
information can be automatically transformed or
mapped into concepts defined in the ontology with
a minimum of human intervention.
This process starts from user agents
receiving project information from software team
members. User agents will perform information
extraction process with references to classes and
instances in the software engineering ontology
retrieved by ontology agents. The RDF annotation
is then generated by semantic annotating module
and stored in the repository containing the
annotation of other project information.
2) Ontology Population Process
Ontology population is a process of adding
new instances into an existing ontology. When
project information is successfully annotated, it is
ready to populate into the software engineering
ontology.
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ontology. This is called ontology evolution and
may generate a new version of software
engineering ontology. It is to be noted that a
version of software engineering ontology refers to
a broad category of software applications e.g.
software engineering for CRM, ERP or cloud
computing rather a specific software development
project. Therefore, each version still needs each
ontology agent to manage and maintain including
ensure reliability and consistency.
6) Issue Raising with Instance Update Process
This process is different from ontology
evolution update process. Ontology evolution
update process is a process of an evolution at
concept level that changes will be made to the
underlying
software
engineering
domain
knowledge while instance update process is a
process of an evolution at instance level that deals
with changes in refinement process or in the
conceptualization. This process starts from
software team member raises an issue to his
personal user agent to make a change of instance
in the software engineering ontology. Ontology
agents will check any instance, component, or
people who will be affected from this change and
notify the user. He or other members can propose
their opinions to the change until the final
agreement has been discovered. Ontology agents
will then update related instance in the software
engineering ontology repository and inform the
semantic recommender agent about the update.
The recommender agent will notify only those
team members who should be advised about the
changes and their effects.
5 SCENARIO EXAMPLES OF MULTIAGENT BASED RECOMMENDER SYSTEM
PROVIDING ACTIVE SUPPORT THROUGH
SOFTWARE ENGINEERING ONTOLOGY
Here are some scenarios that can explain how
the proposed system works. Suppose that
Globeware Company is a US multinational
company which has three software development
sites located in US, Australia, and India. They are
currently working on a mobile application project.
All requirement gathering and software
specification are done in US while software design
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with the most relevant and precise situational
knowledge (refer to Figure 1 query process). If
he doubts the output from the design phase, he can
raise a query or an issue through his user agent
who will communicate with the recommender
agent to reason knowledge published in ontology
repository to find a possible solution or
recommend the most suitable person who can
clarify his issue (refer to Figure 1
recommendation process).
Third example: Member C finds out that there
is a bug in the new released system so he informs
his user agent. Before the bug issue is filed, the
recommender agent and ontology agents will try
to locate related problems from the project issue
tracking system based on its associated concepts
defined in the software engineering ontology and
its instances. The benefit is to avoid a bug
duplicated report from other developers which
may create confusion and unnecessary information
overload. Ontology agents will then attempt to
link the bug symptoms to related software artifacts
that are all annotated using the software
engineering ontology in order to help the
developer quickly diagnose which part of the
software artifacts might be causing the problem.
Additionally, before the developer fixes the bug,
Ontology agents will inform him of the classes or
components that might be affected. Furthermore,
with a full record of mappings between previously
reported bugs and people who resolved those
bugs, the recommender agent will be able to
recommend potential people to consult or to
resolve some particular bug issue (refer to Figure
1 recommendation process).
Fourth example: Member D raises an issue
about customer class diagram through the
information platform in plain text. From the
content, the ontology agent will automatically
parse software engineering terms by referring to
the concept in software engineering ontology and
autonomously reason and derive only related
instances which are customer class and other
relevant classes and relationships. Then it will
dynamically draw the diagram from the retrieved
information and show this to Member A. He or
other members can propose their opinions by
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Baskerville [54]. The prototype will be developed
and evaluated by two groups of multi-site software
development teams in order to obtain feedback to
measure the usability and effectiveness of the
system to solve the problem. In addition, to
evaluate the system performance, simulation will
be used by executing a prototype with artificial
data.
8.
9.
7 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Financial supports for this study are funded by
the Australian Government through their provision
of the Endeavour Awards program and the Royal
Thai Government Scholarship program.
10.
8 REFERENCES
11.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
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21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
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38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
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47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.
54.
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Hannu Vanharanta
Dept. of Industrial Management and Engineering
Tampere University of Technology
Pori, Finland
I.
INTRODUCTION
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
A. Organizational Commitment
Organizational commitment refers to the extent to
which an individual regards him or herself as an
organizational person. In particular, organizational
commitment refers to the relative strength of an individual's
identification with and involvement in a particular
organization [5]. Reichers [6] defines commitment as a
process of identification with the goals of an organization's
multiple constituencies [6], such as organization, occupation,
job, supervisor, workgroup, or organizational goals.
While there are several definitions of organizational
commitment, a common three-dimensional theme is found in
most of these definitions: (1) committed employees believe
in and accept organizational goals and values, (2) they are
willing to devote considerable effort on behalf of their
organization, and (3) they are willing to remain with their
organization [7; 8]. Hence, organizational commitment can
be described as a psychological state that binds an
individual to an organization [9] and influences individuals
to act in ways that are consistent with the interests of the
organization [5; 10]. Meyer and Allen [11; 12] defined
organizational commitment as consisting of three
components: affective, continuance, and normative
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commitment. They argue that these components reflect
distinct psychological states and that employees can
experience each of these states to varying degrees. First,
affective commitment refers to how strongly the employee
identifies with, is involved in, and enjoys membership in an
organization. This dimension is closely related to Porter,
Steers, Mowday and Boulians [5] definition. Second,
continuance commitment [11; 12] is the cost-related aspect of
commitment. This form is the function of perceived cost
based on the sacrifices and investments made by the
employee. This view draws upon Beckers [13] early
thoughts about the reasons behind commitment. The third
component of the Meyer and Allen model [11; 12],
normative commitment, sees commitment developing based
on internalized loyalty norms, i.e. the feeling of obligation to
remain with an organization.
Organizational commitment has been considered as a
mediator variable in several causal models of employee
behavior. Often it has been included as a mediator focusing
on predicting other employee reactions or behaviors [14]. As
a consequence, organizational commitment has been linked to
several personal variables, role states, and aspects of the work
environment, such as job characteristics or organizational
structures. From an antecedent point of view, it has been
related to employees absenteeism, performance, turnover,
and other behaviors. In addition, several other variables have
been found to correlate with organizational commitment,
such as job involvement and job satisfaction behaviors [14].
Additionally, DeCotiis and Summers [15] found that
commitment had a direct positive influence on employees
work motivation and objective measures of job
performance, as well as a direct negative influence on
their intention to leave and actual turnover [14]. In other
words, employees who identify with and are involved in their
organization are committed, and presumably want to maintain
membership in their organization and exert effort on its
behalf [7]. Many extensive studies support this prediction
[c.f. 14; 16]. Hence, Mowday et al. [7] argued that the
strongest and most predictable behavioral consequence of
organizational commitment is low turnover. Many extensive
studies support this prediction [c.f. 14]. Meyer and Allen [17]
emphasized the positive correlation between affective
commitment and work attendance. A committed workforce
will be more dedicated to their jobs and more motivated to
give their time and effort to accomplish the required tasks.
This can also lead to a more autonomous and self-controlling
workforce [18]. Therefore, it is important to identify more
clearly what drives employees to become committed to their
organization and to understand how to influence and maintain
commitment in the workforce.
1) External Organizational Commitment
McElroy, Morrow and Laczniak [19] extended the
concept of commitment beyond the boundaries of ones
employing organization to include commitment to another
organization. They argued that an employee could develop
commitment, in other words, a psychological attachment to a
specific organization external to ones own employer. This is
known as external organizational commitment (EOC), and
is predicted to develop among those boundary spanning
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different components of commitment because of their
differences in outcome variables. As Meyer and Herscovitch
[9] argue, the different components of organizational
commitment will have different effects on other variables
such as attitudes and behaviors. However, various studies
have shown that normative commitment overlaps with the
other two types of commitment (e.g. [22; 23]). On the other
hand, constructs of affective and continuance commitment
have been well supported in the literature [14].
It is clear that there will always be employee turnover in
organizations, and total commitment is not required from
all employees. As Pierce and Dunham [24] contend,
organizational commitment is more important in complex
jobs that require adaptability and demand that employees
take the initiative. Clearly, undesirable turnover can be
extremely costly to organizations given the high costs
incurred (e.g. losing productive employees, recruiting,
selecting, and training costs, and the potential negative
impact on current customer relationships). In contrast,
turnover of undesirable employees can be healthy for
organizations [c.f. 14]. For example, highly committed poorer
performers may even decrease organizational effectiveness as
a result of lower absenteeism and turnover. Based on these
arguments, a better understanding concerning the factors
affecting commitment is needed in order to manage the
workforce effectively.
As a result of all these points, leaders need to have an
understanding of how employee commitment develops and is
maintained over time [25]. A deep understanding of the
processes related to the causes and consequences of
commitment will enable management to create better
interventions. Management can, for example, adopt
appropriate leadership behaviors in order to enhance the levels
of job satisfaction, and in turn improve the levels of employee
commitment to their organization and job performance,
consequently increasing productivity and profitability [25].
Mathieu & Zajac [14] conclude that organizational
commitment is a useful criterion for various organizational
interventions designed to improve employees attitudes and
behaviors. At minimum, they suggest that it should be used to
influence
the
employees
socialization
processes,
participation, ownership in the company, and reactions to job
enrichment. However, before interventions can be effectively
planned and executed, measurement of organizational
commitment and other mediating factors should be conducted.
B. Human Aspects in Purchasing and Supply Chain
Management
The purchasing function has evolved into an integral part
of supply chain management [26]. It has increasingly assumed
a more pivotal strategic role in supply chain management
(SCM) [27]. It can be seen as a subset of SCM that deals
primarily with managing all aspects related to the inputs to an
organization (e.g. purchased goods, materials, and services). It
can contribute both in quantitative and qualitative ways to
improving the organizations bottom line [28]. Since
performance in purchasing and materials-related activities can
have a significant effect on the total performance of the
organization [3], increased emphasis has naturally been placed
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TABLE I.
Benefits
Increased customer responsiveness
More consistent on-time delivery
Shorter order fulfillment lead times
Reduced inventory costs
Better asset utilization
Lower cost of purchased items
Higher product quality
Ability to handle unexpected events
Faster product innovation
Preferred & tailored relationships
Barriers
Inadequate information sharing
Poor/conflicting measurement
Inconsistent operating goals
Organizational culture & structure
Resistance to changelack of trust
Poor alliance management practices
Lack of SC vision/understanding
Lack of managerial commitment
Constrained resources
No employee passion/empowerment
Bridges
Senior & functional managerial support
Open & honest information sharing
Accurate & comprehensive measures
Trust-based, synergistic alliances
Supply chain alignment & rationalization
Cross-experienced managers
Process documentation & ownership
Supply chain education and training
Use of supply chain advisory councils
Effective use of pilot projects
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with statements based on Pareeks [52] Organizational Role
Stress Scale.
In general, commitment studies have utilized Likert-type
scales. In this study, we propose to capture subjects responses
through a continuous graphic rating scale. The verbal limit
values of the continuous scale can be set to be statementspecific. By using the continuous scale, the aim is to overcome
some of the disadvantages that the conventionally used Likertscale type measures may possess [c.f. 53]. Russell & Bobko
[53] speculated that the Likert-scale requires subjects to
somehow compress or otherwise reduce their latent response.
They suggest that information loss due to the coarseness of the
scale can cause false increases or decreases in moderated
regression effect sizes, and propose that it could result in an
unknown systematic error, which can have an enormous effect
on the ability to detect true interaction effects.
On a practical level, respondents are asked to evaluate
their current reality and vision for the future as they perceive it
regarding statements describing the identified constructs. This
evaluation results in the creation of a proactive vision, i.e. the
gap between the current reality and future vision. The
reasoning from the indicative statement evaluation to the
visualized proactive vision is made with fuzzy logic; the
statements are semantic entities and the ontology is the
information resident in a knowledge base [c.f. 40; 54]. The
aim of our research application is to help organizations to
identify the prevailing nature of their employees commitment
by examining its related constructs and aspects of working life
collectively at the team, workgroup, or organizational level.
DEMOGRAPHIC CHARACTERISTICS
Several demographic characteristics were also included in
the study as descriptive statistical variables. We included age,
gender, highest education level attained, job type, experience
in current job, and overall tenure in the current organization.
Nationality and total tenure in working life were also included.
As Mathieu and Zajac [19] state, most of the researchers have
included personal variables in commitment studies as
descriptive statistics rather than explanatory variables.
C. Preliminary Research Instrument Testing
The first testing of the instrument was performed in the
fall of 2012 with 18 Finnish industrial management M.Sc.
program students with various engineering backgrounds. All
the subjects were asked to answer the statements in relation to
their own studies at the industrial management school. After
the first test run, adjustments were made to some of the items.
The second test run was made with 15 other M.Sc. students at
the same institution in early 2013. After the second test runs,
additional adjustments were made to the overall construction
of the ontology behind the application and to its statements.
The average age of participants in both studies was 31.5 years
and 70 percent of them were male.
The third testing of the instrument was made in a Polish
technical university in the spring of 2013 with 18 international
students from various countries with an average age of 24.4
years and 65 percent of them were male. After the third test
run some irregularities were detected and some major
381
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results. Fig. 3 shows the ten highest proactive vision results
from the third instrument testing study (n=18).
382
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constructs affecting its development. In particular, retaining
key employees and their commitment can be critical to the
long-term success of the organization.
In this paper we also highlighted the basic principles of our
newly developed application for commitment evaluation
purposes. We developed this tool to make the factors affecting
commitment clearer for management. Also, the visual nature
of this instrument will enable management to gain a better
understanding of this concept and quickly see the degree of
the factors affecting it for a certain specific group. This
information will also help management to compare results of
various evaluated groups and plan specific actions. We believe
that, in addition to scale validity and reliability, the
measurement method and the results it provides must be useful
with regard to the organizations goals and objectives and it
must be possible to administer it cost-effectively and rapidly.
The first test runs of our evaluation instrument have
shown that our application allows the formation of a systemic
view of an organization's commitment-related environment.
We believe that our application can point out the areas where
the organization should direct the focus of its HRM practices
in order to enhance these commitment-related factors. With
the combined collective information gathered, the organization
will be able to provide interventions to improve its employees
working life and consequently the effectiveness of the whole
organization. In addition, it will also be possible to monitor
systematically how various commitment-related aspects will
develop in the organization. However, more development is
needed before we can implement our application in a real
business context.
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ABSTRACT
Fingerprint classification is an important phase in
increasing the speed of a fingerprint verification
system and narrow down the search of fingerprint
database. Fingerprint verification is still a challenging
problem due to the difficulty of poor quality images
and the need for faster response. The classification gets
even harder when just one core has been detected in
the input image. This paper has proposed a new
classification approach which includes the images with
one core. The algorithm extracts singular points (core
and deltas) from the input image and performs
classification based on the number, locations and
surrounded area of the detected singular points. The
classifier is rule-based, where the rules are generated
independent of a given data set. Moreover,
shortcomings of a related paper has been reported in
detail. The experimental results and comparisons on
FVC2002 database have shown the effectiveness and
efficiency of the proposed method.
KEYWORDS
Fingerprint classification, Rule-based classification,
Singular point, Core, Delta
1 INTRODUCTION
In last decades, fingerprint recognition has
received great attention because of its unique
properties like easy acquisition, universality,
permanency and circumvention. The use of
fingerprints for criminal verification, forensics,
access control, credit cards, driver license
registration and passport authentication is
becoming very popular.
International Journal of Digital Information and Wireless Communications (IJDIWC) 3(4): 385-389
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automatic classification [2-10]. Table 1 shows
some of these rules. The key idea of proposed
classification method in [3] is dividing fingerprint
into small sub-images using singular point
location, and then, creating distinguished patterns
for each class using frequency domain
representation for each sub-image. In [4], an
algorithm based on the interactive validation of
singular points and the constrained nonlinear
orientation model is proposed. The final features
used for classification comprises the coefficients
of the orientation model and the singularity
information. This resulted in very compact feature
vector which is used as input to an SVM classifier
to perform the classification. Some of singularity
extraction methods are presented in [6, 8-9].
Qinzhi Zhang et al. in [10] used the pseudo ridge
tracing and analysis of the traced curve, so their
method does not rely on the extraction of the exact
number and positions of the true singular points.
Most of approaches using singularity points use
combination of several features or classification
methods that cause increase in time and
complexity.
On the other hand, those methods relying on exact
number of singularities and some simple rules as
follows, dont have effective rules for accurate
class separation. The quality of the fingerprint
images may depends on many factors such as that
caused by breaks, scars, too oily or too dry.
Besides, in many cases we have a partial image,
usually with the delta point outside the print. So,
all of these factors make it extremely hard to
classify such images according to the simple rules.
Fingerprint class
Arch
Tented arch, Left
loop, Right loop
Whorl
Singular points
No singular points
One loop and one delta
Two loops (or a whorl) and two
deltas
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and no core is extracted, the location of the delta
in ROI determines one of the left loop or right
loop classes. If x coordinate of delta is less than
half of ROI length, fingerprint class is left loop,
and right loop otherwise.
If number of cores and deltas is equal to one,
decision will be one of left loop, right loop and
arch classes. To do this, we calculated differences
between xs coordinate of core and delta
with | X c X d | . If the result is less than a certain
threshold , it means arch class. Otherwise left
loop or right loop is selected. In the case
of X c X d 0 , core lies on the right hand of delta
and the class will be recognized as right loop and
vice versa for left loop. If one core and two deltas
or just two deltas are extracted, the whorl class
will be the one.
In the case that we have no core and two deltas,
the class is whorl. And if one core is extracted, the
number of delta is important for determining the
class type. In this situation, if the number of delta
is zero, we should decide between right and left
loop classes. As mentioned earlier, the general
rules do not support this case. Some references
proposed several methods to solve this problem.
For example [7] is one of the recent ones that
divided ROI to four regions and decided according
to location of core in them. This rule is shown in
Figure 4. But it's obvious that in real world, cores
lie on wrong places sometimes. Rotation and
translation create this situation often. This paper
used FVC2002 DB1-A database, but many
examples of violations for the proposed rule are
found in this database. Some of these images are
shown in Figure 5.
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The overall direction that is average direction
(MeanDir) of all blocks determines the class.
MeanDirs range belongs to the lower half of unit
circle. In the right loop and left loop classes,
MeanDir belongs to lower-right and lower-left
half of unit circle respectively. Figure 6 shows an
example of proposed approach for two right-loop
and left-loop cases. Size and location of the
neighborhood area, and number of the blocks in
the area were achieved by examination of one core
left and right loop images in FVC2002 database.
3 EXPRIMENTAL RESULTS
The proposed algorithm is tested on FVC2002
DB1-A database and the results are reported. The
fingerprint classification problem considered as a
four-class problem, because fingerprint classes A
(arch) and T (tented arch) have a substantial
overlap, and it is very difficult to separate these
two classes. The FVC2002 DB1-A database
consists of 800 fingerprint images with size of
388374 (500 dpi).
Table 2 shows the confusion matrix of our
proposed method classification results on
FVC2002 database and Table 3 shows the
confusion matrix of [7] classification result on the
same images. There are 35 left/right loop
fingerprints that are misclassified by [7] that at
least 24 of them have one core. In our rule-based
388
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Table 4. Comparison of the proposed system with other
similar systems
Ref.
[7]
[13]
[14]
Proposed
System
Accuracy
6.
84.5%
68%
7.
91.4%
97.21%
4 CONCLUSION
This papers focus was on rule-based fingerprint
classification. This classification approach
concentrates on the number and location of
singularity points. This paper proposed a very
accurate rule-based classification approach. This
novel approach is invariant to translation, rotation
and scale changes. Also, it can work with any
number of possible singular points: none, one and
two. For comparison purpose, the rules proposed
in [7] has been presented. We showed that the
proposed rules for images with one core was not
accurate and did not work on many images in
FVC2002 database that they used for experiments.
Their approach did not covered the images with
rotation and transition in FVC2002. Then a very
accurate rule for this kind of images has been
proposed. The experimental results showed that
the proposed method outperforms [7] and others
compared methods.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
7 REFERENCES
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
389
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ABSTRACT
Most e-governments have traditionally used version
1.0 of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
(WCAG) as a basis to ensure that their websites are
accessible by people with disabilities. This was
reflected in their design guidelines, accessibility
evaluations, policy-making and legislations. Recently,
WCAG 2.0 emerged as an ISO/IEC International
accessibility standard that has been recommended for
adoption by the W3C WAI. This paper seeks to
examine if there is a need for e-governments to
reassess their web accessibility conformance, in light
of the latest WCAG 2.0 standard. A case study related
to the 21 Dubai e-government websites is presented
whereby accessibility is evaluated based on the WCAG
1.0 and WCAG 2.0 guidelines and using automated
accessibility testing tools. We found that WCAG 2.0
conformance testing identified some notable
accessibility issues that were not revealed by WCAG
1.0 conformance testing. Hence we recommend that egovernments should develop and update their web
content and accessibility policies to conform to the
latest WCAG 2.0 guidelines and success criteria.
Additional implications for practice and academic
research are also provided.
KEYWORDS
E-services, e-government, web accessibility, universal
access, e-inclusion.
390
International Journal of Digital Information and Wireless Communications (IJDIWC) 3(4): 390-399
The Society of Digital Information and Wireless Communications, 2013 (ISSN: 2225-658X)
There are many ways by which one can assess and
test for e-government web accessibility. These
include expert testing, end-user testing, automated
testing, and surveys targeting e-government
webmasters and site developers [7]. All these
methods are based on cross-checking against some
accessibility targets, usually set by individual
governments, and often derived from the Web
Content Accessibility Guidelines [5].
This work was particularly motivated by the fact
that most of the earlier reported e-government
accessibility assessment studies were based on the
WCAG 1.0 standard. This might be due to the lack
of WCAG 2.0 support on most automated
accessibility tools and to the fact that it was only
on October 2012 that WCAG 2.0 became an
official and stable International ISO standard
(ISO/IEC 40500:2012). However, the W3C Web
Accessibility Initiative (WAI) recommends using
WCAG 2.0 instead of WCAG 1.0, although it
recognizes that most sites that already conform to
WCAG 1.0 should not make significant changes to
conform to WCAG 2.0 [5]. Accordingly, through
the lens of a specific case study related to Dubai egovernment, this paper aims to address the
following research question: Should e-government
web accessibility be retested against the latest
WCAG 2.0 guidelines? In other words, using
WCAG 2.0 conformance testing results as a
baseline, are there any noteworthy accessibility
issues that a WCAG 1.0 conformance testing
might not reveal? To the best of our knowledge,
this research question has not been empirically
validated by the current literature.
The remaining of this paper is organized as
follows: Section 2 presents a comparative analysis
between WCAG 1.0 and WCAG 2.0 standards.
Section 3 outlines our research methodology,
while section 4 presents and discusses the results
of our quantitative study. In section 5, we present
a summary of the main findings of the paper and
highlight the implication of this research for
practice and academic research.
2 HOW is WCAG 2.0 DIFFERENT FROM
WCAG 1.0?
WCAG 2.0 emerged in response to the new
challenges posed by emerging interactive
International Journal of Digital Information and Wireless Communications (IJDIWC) 3(4): 390-399
The Society of Digital Information and Wireless Communications, 2013 (ISSN: 2225-658X)
guidelines. Each guideline consists of a number
of checkpoints, each being assigned a priority
level (1, 2 or 3) that is based on the checkpoints
impact on accessibility [5]. Therefore WCAG 1.0
uses 65 checkpoints as the basis for determining
and testing for conformance. The full listing of the
WCAG 1.0 checkpoints under each priority level
can be found at the W3C WAI website [5].
Accordingly, WAI defines three possible WCAG
1.0 accessibility conformance levels, as illustrated
in Table 2.
WAI-AA
(intermediate
accessibility)
WAI-AAA
(high accessibility)
International Journal of Digital Information and Wireless Communications (IJDIWC) 3(4): 390-399
The Society of Digital Information and Wireless Communications, 2013 (ISSN: 2225-658X)
conformance level AA, all level A and level AA
success criteria must be met. Furthermore, a
particular accessibility issue can be covered by
more than one success criteria at different
conformance levels. These conformance levels
are similar to WCAG 1.0 checkpoint priority
levels; although WCAG 2.0 emphasizes that all
the success criteria are important. Consequently,
unlike WCAG 1.0, which uses checkpoints as a
basis for determining conformance, WCAG 2.0
uses 61 success criteria instead.
As illustrated in figure 2, for each of the three
conformance levels, there is a clear disparity in the
number of WCAG 1.0 checkpoints versus WCAG
2.0 success criteria. While the number of WCAG
2.0 success criteria at conformance levels A and
AAA outweighs the corresponding number of
WCAG 1.0 checkpoints, this is not the case at
conformance level AA.
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
AA
AAA
WCAG 1.0 Checkpoints
International Journal of Digital Information and Wireless Communications (IJDIWC) 3(4): 390-399
The Society of Digital Information and Wireless Communications, 2013 (ISSN: 2225-658X)
different cases to address our research question
was deemed appropriate for the purpose of this
study. Moreover, for the sake of simplicity,
objectivity and scalability, we opted for an
automated testing method, based on WCAG 1.0
and WCAG 2.0 guidelines. In addition we limited
the accessibility testing to the home page of each
tested website to keep the scope of the study
manageable and consistent. Accordingly, we
adopted a quantitative research method to derive a
comparative
analysis
of
accessibility
conformance, based on the WCAG 1.0 and
WCAG 2.0 standards.
Several automatic accessibility tools are available
to assess web accessibility. For the purpose of this
study, we selected the 3.08 standalone version of
TAW (Test de Accesibilidad Web) software
accessibility testing tool (http://www.tawdis.net/)
to test for conformance to WCAG 1.0
checkpoints. We also selected the 1.10 standalone
version of the Web Accessibility Assessment Tool
(WaaT)
(http://sourceforge.net/projects/waat/files/?source
=navbar) to test for conformance to WCAG 2.0
success criteria. Both tools can test conformance
against all the checkpoint levels (A, AA, and
AAA).
Using TAW and WaaT automatic accessibility
tools, we conducted several rounds of WCAG 1.0
and WCAG 2.0 accessibility conformance tests on
the 21 Dubai e-Government Websites. All
accessibility conformance checks were performed
during the period August-September 2013, using
Internet Explorer 8.0 (IE) running Windows XP
operating system with MS Service Pack 3.
Therefore, our accessibility results might change
since the last time we carried our testing. We
provisioned TAW and WaaT tools to use the
highest AAA conformance level, thus testing all
WCAG 1.0 and WCAG 2.0 [A, AA, and AAA]
conformance levels.
4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
Table 3 summarizes the accessibility conformance
results for each tested Dubai e-government
website, based on WCAG 1.0 and WCAG 2.0
standards. It should be noted that the three (A,
AA, and AAA) conformance levels in WCAG 1.0
International Journal of Digital Information and Wireless Communications (IJDIWC) 3(4): 390-399
The Society of Digital Information and Wireless Communications, 2013 (ISSN: 2225-658X)
International Journal of Digital Information and Wireless Communications (IJDIWC) 3(4): 390-399
The Society of Digital Information and Wireless Communications, 2013 (ISSN: 2225-658X)
1.0 requirements might not comply with the new
WCAG 2.0 success criteria. In particular, we
found that since some WCAG 2.0 success criteria
are more specific and testable than the
corresponding WCAG 1.0 checkpoints, there is a
WCAG 1.0
Level A
errors
34
64
14
2
0
15
8
38
13
33
42
0
64
46
2
4
120
12
28
1
16
WCAG 2.0
Level A
errors
146
183
556
811
84
781
180
1411
818
2702
993
126
892
372
19
174
1014
233
851
153
202
WCAG 1.0
Level AA
errors
153
246
141
48
2
158
2
256
83
372
372
17
731
61
15
163
368
28
67
16
5
WCAG 2.0
Level AA
errors
38
137
45
6
105
33
2
282
42
324
395
2
4
2
6
31
2
0
2
0
10
WCAG 1.0
Level AAA
errors
50
54
50
35
1
111
1
73
43
145
57
2
85
135
3
23
52
2
25
0
1
WCAG 2.0
Level AAA
error
76
243
192
32
276
85
18
441
75
291
557
7
2
25
51
33
8
25
14
22
60
International Journal of Digital Information and Wireless Communications (IJDIWC) 3(4): 390-399
The Society of Digital Information and Wireless Communications, 2013 (ISSN: 2225-658X)
Table 4. Accessibility barriers identified by WCAG 2.0 conformance testing
L
Violated WACG 2.0 Success Criteria [5]
2.2.1 Timing Adjustable: For each time limit that is set by the content, at least one
of the following is true:
- Turn off: The user is allowed to turn off the time limit before encountering it; or
- Adjust: The user is allowed to adjust the time limit before encountering it over a
wide range that is at least ten times the length of the default setting; or
- Extend: The user is warned before time expires and given at least 20 seconds to
extend the time limit with a simple action (for example, "press the space bar"),
and the user is allowed to extend the time limit at least ten times; or
- Real-time Exception: The time limit is a required part of a real-time event (for
example, an auction), and no alternative to the time limit is possible; or
- Essential Exception: The time limit is essential and extending it would invalidate
the activity; or
- 20 Hour Exception: The time limit is longer than 20 hours.
2.4.2: Web pages have titles that describe topic or purpose (The intent of this SC is
to help users find content and orient themselves within it by ensuring that each Web
page has a descriptive title)
3.3.1: If an input error is automatically detected, the item that is in error is identified
and the error is described to the user in text (The intent of this SC is to ensure that
users are aware that an error has occurred and can determine what is wrong by
referring to the error message)
3.3.2: Labels or instructions are provided when content requires user input (The
intent of this SC is to have content authors place instructions or labels that identify
the controls in a form so that users know what input data is expected. These labels
will provide important cues and instructions that will benefit people with
disabilities)
1.4.3. Contrast (Minimum): The visual presentation of text and images of text has a
contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1, except for the following:
Large Text: Large-scale text and images of large-scale text have a contrast ratio of
at least 3:1;
Incidental: Text or images of text that are part of an inactive user interface
component, that are pure decoration, that are not visible to anyone, or that are part
of a picture that contains significant other visual content, have no contrast
requirement.
Logotypes: Text that is part of a logo or brand name has no minimum contrast
requirement.
e
v Affected Websites
e
l
A DMI
A AMAF
DPP
DEWA
A DMI
DHA
DCD
A AMAF
DPP/DM
DEWA/DCUS
DGW
Dubai.ae
DHA
DP
DC/DCCI
A AMAF/DCD
DPP
A
DEWA
DCUS
RTA
DGW
Dubai.ae
DM
DNRD/DCAA
DP
DC
LD
A AMAF
DPP
A
DEWA
A
RTA
DMI/DCCI
DGW
Dubai.ae
DM
DP
LD
DCAA
DCD
A AMAF/DEWA/DCCI/DP/DC
DCUS/LD
A
DCAA
A
Number
of
violations
7
1
1
1
1
1
1
14
8
6
20
35
11
2
4
6
36
19
4
62
1
28
19
2
3
31
24
52
150
151
180
1
49
194
503
28
112
2
23
2
1
3
397
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Finally, once the additional work that is needed to
meet the WCAG 2.0 success criteria is identified,
the required fixes can be prioritized, based on their
impact on people with disabilities, the amount of
additional efforts involved and the risk associated
with the retrofit. As a rule of thumb, priority
should be given to fix the most frequently-visited
webpages that have the highest impact on
accessibility (in accordance with the associated
conformance level) and that can be fixed with
least efforts and least risk [7].
5.2. Implication for Research
In this contribution, we established through
empirical evidence the need to design, code and
test e-government websites based on compliance
to the latest WCAG 2.0 standards through a single
case study conducted in Dubai, UAE. It would be
interesting to explore if the research findings of
this case study can be replicated or validated
across other contexts. We also invite other
researchers to develop automated web content
adaptation tools in line with the applicable WCAG
2.0 guidelines in order to serve the particular
needs of people with disabilities. The work of
Anam, Ho and Lim [12] in the context of mobile
devices can be a starting point for further
contributions to better adapt web content towards
enhanced accessibility.
5.3. Limitations
This research has few limitations. First, the
findings of this contribution were based on a case
study involving 21 e-government websites in UAE
and therefore it is not sure whether these are also
applicable elsewhere. Second, our accessibility
testing for conformance compliance to WCAG
standards were exclusively based on automated
testing tools. However, not all WCAG success
criteria can be tested by automated accessibility
checker tools, as some criteria still require human
evaluation and judgment. Finally, the WCAG
accessibility violations reported from automatic
accessibility tools are proxy indicators of web
accessibility and may not capture all the
accessibility barriers that people with disabilities
might encounter in real-life situations. For
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
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10. Benbasat, I., Goldstein, D.K., Mead, M.: The Case
Research Strategy in Studies of Information Systems,
MIS Quarterly, 11 (3), pp. 369--386 (1987).
11. Kapsi, M., Vlachogiannis, E., Spyrou, T., Darzentas, J.:
A Preliminary Feedback for the WCAG 2.0-WCAG 1.0
Vs WCAG 2.0 Evaluation Study, Proceedings of the 2nd
International Conference on PErvasive Technologies
Related to Assistive Environments (PETRA) 2009, pp. 1-6, June 9-13, Corfu, Greece,. (2009).
12. Anam, R., Ho, C.K., Lim, T.Y.: Flexi-adaptor; An
Automated Web Content Adaptation for Mobile Devices,
International Journal of Digital Information and Wireless
Communications (IJDIWC) 1(3), pp. 656670 (2011).
Appendix 2
WCAG 2.0 Accessibility Requirements [5]
Conformance Level
AA
Appendix 1
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 [5]
1.
Guideline 1.1
[Text alternatives]
Guideline 1.2
[time-based media]
Guideline 1.3 [Adaptable]
Guideline 1.4
[Distinguishable]
Guideline 2.1
[Keyboard accessible]
Guideline 2.2
[Enough time]
Guideline 2.3 [Seizures]
Guideline 2.4 [Navigable]
3.
Guideline 3.1 [Readable]
Guideline 3.2 [Predictable]
Guideline 3.3
[Input Assistance]
Guideline 4.1[Compatible]
Perceivable
Provide text alternatives for any
non-text content so that it can be
changed into other forms people
need, such as large print, braille,
speech, symbols or simpler
language.
Provide alternatives for time-based
media.
Create content that can be presented
in different ways (for example
simpler layout) without losing
information or structure.
Make it easier for users to see and
hear content including separating
foreground from background
2. Operable
Make all functionality available
from a keyboard
Provide users enough time to read
and use content
Do not design content in a way that
is known to cause seizures
Provide ways to help users navigate,
find content, and determine where
they are
Understandable
Make text content readable and
understandable.
Make Web pages appear and operate
in predictable ways
Help users avoid and correct
mistakes
4. Robust
Maximize compatibility with current
and future user agents, including
assistive technologies
AAA
399
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The Society of Digital Information and Wireless Communications, 2013 (ISSN: 2225-658X)
Adaptive Channel Equalization for FBMC Based on Variable Length Step Size and
Mean-Squared Error
Mashhoor AlTarayrah and Qasem Abu Al-Haija
King Faisal University, Department of Electrical Engineering,
Al-Ahsa 31982, P.O. Box 380, Saudi Arabia
Emails: Mtarayrah@kfu.edu.sa; Qalhaija@kfu.edu.sa
ABSTRACT
Recently, increasing data transmission rates and the
demand of more bandwidth at the same time have been
a challenge. The trend now is to support high data rates
in wireless communications. Multicarrier systems have
overcome many challenges of high bandwidth
efficiency and at the same time provided also high
spectral efficiency. Filter bank multicarrier systems
(FBMC) provide some advantages more than the
traditional orthogonal frequency division multiplexing
(OFDM) with cyclic prefix (CP). FBMC systems
provide a much better spectral shaping of the
subcarriers than orthogonal frequency division
multiplexing (OFDM). Therefore, the most obvious
difference between the two techniques is in frequency
selectivity. In this paper, we will present a least-meansquare (LMS) algorithm which is based on well-known
cost functions, which is the mean-squared error (MSE)
adapted for FBMC system with offset QAM
modulation (OQAM). This leads to a per-subchannel
adaptive equalizer solution with low complexity. The
proposed simulations have used practical channel
information
based
on
the
International
Telecommunications
Union
(ITU)
Standards.
Moreover, we will discuss how the proposed algorithm
will optimize and evaluate the convergence
characteristic curves of LMS equalization algorithm
per-subcarrier.
Frequency
Selectivity
Multipath
Intersymbol
interference
KEYWORDS
Filter Banks, Multicarrier Modulation, Offset
Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (OQAM), PerSubchannel Equalization, LMS- Algorithm.
1 INTRODUCTION
Wireless communication systems are amongst the
most complicated communication systems which
arise essentially from the hostile nature of wireless
International Journal of Digital Information and Wireless Communications (IJDIWC) 3(4): 400-410
The Society of Digital Information and Wireless Communications, 2013 (ISSN: 2225-658X)
Figure 2 illustrates the MCM principle where
represents a bit stream of the input data to be
transmitted over the channel which will be divided
to be allocated to each
into blocks of length
subcarrier has a set of
subcarrier such that the
bits. Thus the total number of bits per block
can be expressed as:
(2)
Subcarrier
Modulator
To channel
D/A
serial to
parallel
converter
Symbol xM-1(n)
Mapper
Subcarrier
Modulator
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leads to a substantial simplification of the required
channel equalizers; due to its ability to combat the
multipath/ISI effects of the frequency selective
wireless channel [5].
2 LITERATURE REVIEW
Tarayrah and Abu Al-Haija in [1] (2013) proposed
a preliminary study of this paper as a
reconfigurable design of channel equalization
algorithms for FBMC system with offset QAM
modulation (OQAM). They optimized their
algorithms based on the mean-squared error
(MSE) criterion and the Least-Mean-Square
(LMS) and applied them to each sub-carrier which
resulted in an adaptive equalizer with lower
complexity.
Yahia Medjahdi et. al. in [8] (2011) provided a
theoretical performance evaluation of the
downlink of asynchronous orthogonal frequency
division multiplexing (OFDM) and filter bank
based
multicarrier(FBMC)
cellular
radio
communication systems, and they developed an
accurate derivation for the interference caused by
the timing synchronization errors in the
neighboring cells. Their system considered the
multipath effects on the interfering and desired
signal are also considered as well as the frequency
correlation fading in the case of block subcarrier
assignment scheme. Finally, they derived the exact
expressions for average error rates of OFDM and
FBMC systems.
Tero Ihalainen et. al. in [9] (2011) studied the
channel equalization in filter bank multicarrier
(FBMC) transmission based on the offset
quadrature-amplitude
modulation
(OQAM)
subcarrier modulation. They derived the finite
impulse response (FIR) per-subchannel equalizers
based on the frequency sampling (FS) approach,
both for the single-input multiple-output (SIMO)
receive diversity and the multiple-input multiple-
output
(MIMO)
spatially
multiplexed
FBMC/OQAM systems. Their FS design consisted
of computing the equalizer in the frequency
domain at a number of frequency points within a
subchannel bandwidth and deriving the
coefficients of subcarrier-wise equalizers. Also,
they evaluated the error rate performance and
computational complexity for both antenna
configurations and compared them with the
SIMO/MIMO OFDM equalizers. The results
obtained confirmed the effectiveness of their
proposed technique with channels that exhibit
significant frequency selectivity at the subchannel
level and showed a performance comparable with
the optimum minimum mean-square-error
equalizer, despite a
significantly lower
computational complexity.
Tero Ihalainen et. al. in [10] (2010) presented a
new approach to generate an FBMC signal
waveform focusing on the contiguous narrowband
subcarrier allocation, which is often encountered
in uplink transmission. Their proposed scheme
relies on a cascade of aP-subchannel synthesis
bank (P << M), time domain interpolation, and a
user-specific frequency shift. Their approach
provided a notable computational complexity
savings over a wide range of practical user
bandwidth allocations, when compared to the
conventional implementation consisting of equally
sized filter banks. Also, their novel scheme
provided a flexible and low-complexity synthesis
of spectrally well-localized FBMC uplink
waveforms with a strong potential for future
broadband mobile communications.
Tobias Hidalgo Stitz et. al. in [7] (2010) presented
a detailed analysis of synchronization methods
based on scattered pilots for filter bank based
multicarrier(FBMC) communications, taking into
account the interplay of the synchronization,
channel estimation, and equalization methods.
402
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The Society of Digital Information and Wireless Communications, 2013 (ISSN: 2225-658X)
They showed that by applying pilots designed
specifically for filter banks, the carrier frequency
offset (CFO), fractional time delay (FTD), and
channel response can be accurately estimated.
Also, they performed the channel parameter
estimation and compensation are in the frequency
domain, in a subchannel-wise fashion. Finally, the
performance evaluation was applied in a
hypothetical WiMAX scenario in which an FBMC
system would substitute OFDM maintaining as
much physical layer compatibility as possible.
Eleftherios
Kofidis
and
Athanasios
A.
Rontogiannis in [11] (2010) proposed an adaptive
T/2-spaced decision-feedback equalization (DFE)
algorithm for MIMO-FBMC/OQAM systems, that
is both computationally efficient and numerically
stable. The structure of their algorithm followed
the V-BLAST idea where the algorithm was
applied in a per subcarrier fashion. Their
simulation results reported that the proposed
algorithm demonstrated its effectiveness in timevarying MIMO channels with high frequency
selectivity.
Assa Ikhlef and Jerome Louveaux in [12] (2009)
investigated the problem of equalization for filter
bank multicarrier modulation based on offset
OQAM (FBMC/OQAM). They found that the
existing equalizers for FBMC/OQAM do not
completely cancel inter carrier interference (ICI)
and hence some ICI remains even after
equalization. To cope more efficiently with ICI,
they proposed a two stages MMSE (TSMMSE)equalizer; the first stage consisted in
applying an MMSE equalizer and taking some
preliminary decisions, then subsequently using
these decisions to remove the term corresponding
to ICI from the received signal for each
subchannel. The resulting signal from the first
stage has its ICI practically removed (up to
channel estimation errors and decision errors) and
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International Journal of Digital Information and Wireless Communications (IJDIWC) 3(4): 400-410
The Society of Digital Information and Wireless Communications, 2013 (ISSN: 2225-658X)
transmission. They analyzed the performance of
various designs using the offset-QAM based
FBMC system and provided numerical results to
characterize different optimization criteria in
terms of frequency selectivity of resulting
prototype filters and total interference level of the
filter bank structure. Finally, they have shown the
kind of performance trade-offs that can be
obtained by adjusting those free parameters which
offered a useful information to a system designer.
Assa Ikhlef and Jerome Louveaux in [16] (2009)
studied the distortions of multiple-input multipleoutput (MIMO) filter bank multicarrier
modulation (FBMC) systems such as inter-symbol
interference (ISI), and inter-carrier interference
(ICI), and using multiple antennas creates inter
antenna interference (IAI), which are caused by
the frequency selective transmission channel. To
mitigate these distortions, they derived an MMSE
equalizer assuming spatial multiplexing is used
and they proposed a successive interference
cancellation (SIC) and Ordered SIC (OSIC)
techniques to extract the transmitted streams as
well as they improved the performance by
introducing a two stage OSIC (TSOSIC)
technique. Their simulation results confirmed the
effectiveness of the proposed techniques over the
classical one tap equalizer.
Dirk S. Waldhauser, Leonardo G. Baltar and Josef
A. Nossek in [17] (2008) presented a least-meansquare (LMS) algorithm adapted to the principle
of orthogonally multiplexed QAM filter
banks(OQAM-FBMC) which led to an adaptive
equalizer solution with low complexity. The
initialization of the LMS equalizer resulted from a
pilot based channel estimation. They compared
their results with a classical OFDM system, where
the loss in data rate is compensated with a higher
modulation scheme.
conversion is followed
sequence, where
by
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The Society of Digital Information and Wireless Communications, 2013 (ISSN: 2225-658X)
(3)
is discrete time variable that runs at twice the
rate of . The pattern of real and imaginary
samples must follow the sign of the
sequences can be as follows
sequences. Here
as an example [7]:
C2R
d0,n
0,n
0,n
A0(z2)
M/2
Z-1
C2R
1,n
1,n
d1,n
A1(z2)
M/2
IFFT
Z-1
M-1,n
dM-1,n
C2R
AM-1(z2)
OQAM modulation
Transform block
Polyphase
filtering
M/2
P/S conversion
is complex-valued.
The output signal of SFB
We can express the discrete-time baseband signal
at the output of the SFB of an FBMC transmitter
based on OQAM modulation as
Where
for even/odd values of
&
Even
Odd
Even
Odd
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The Society of Digital Information and Wireless Communications, 2013 (ISSN: 2225-658X)
*0,n
M/2
B0(z2)
*0,n
x
Re
d 0,n
R2C
Subchannel
processing
R2C
Subchannel
processing
Z-1
*1,n
M/2
*1,n
d 1,n
B1(z )
Re
FFT
Z-1
*M-1,n *M-1,n
M/2
S/P conversion
d M-1,n
BM-1(z )
Polyphase
filtering
Transform block
Re
R2C
Subchannel
processing
(10)
OQAM demodulation
(11)
(12)
at
(7)
(13)
(8)
Here the extra delay is merged to S/P converter.
3.4 OQAM POST-PROCESSING
In the post-processing operation there are 2 steps,
firstly, the real part should be taken after
sequence. The second
multiplication by
operation is real-to-complex conversion, where
two successive real-valued symbols (with one
multiplied by ) form a complex-valued symbol
. This conversion decreases the sample rate by
a factor [3, 7].
C(z)
y(n)
detector
^
x(n)
e(n)
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Assumed to be consisted of the sum of
sequences, each transmitted in one of
subchannels. Mathematically, well have
(14)
4 SIMULATION ENVIRONMENTS
The output of the channel can be as follows:
(15)
is a noisy and distorted
The received signal
is the
.
signal version of the input signal
estimated value which is the output of the
detector, but may it will be not identical to the
transmitted signal because of ISI caused by
channel which is because of multipath fading and
limitation in bandwidth, and noise
, this will
give us a nonzero probability of error
In wireless communication, the channels are time
varying so a single
cant be used to represent
them successfully [6].
3.7 DOWNSAMPLERS/UPSAMPLERS
x(n)
M/2
y(n)
(16)
x(n)
M/2
Figure 9:
y(n)
-fold down-sampler
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(18)
Then, the prototype filter coefficients are obtained
by inverse DFT as
Where
In fact, the condition h1 0 determines the desired
. It is necessary to
and
values
make the number of coefficients an odd number,
so that the filter delay is an integer number of
sample periods. The Impulse response of the
prototype filter is shown in figures 10 and 11
show the frequency response obtained. In this
figures, the sub-channel spacing f is taken as
unity (f =1).
impulse response
1.2
4.5
4
MSE(dB)
0.8
3.5
magnitude
0.6
2.5
2
0.4
1.5
0.2
100
200
300
400
500
600
Number of Iterations
700
800
900
1000
-0.2
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
time
channel
frequency response
0
-10
-20
-30
-5
MSE(dB)
dB
-40
-50
-10
-15
-60
-20
-70
-80
-25
-90
-30
-100
0.5
1.5
2
2.5
frequency (unit:subchannel spacing)
3.5
100
200
300
400
500
600
Number of Iterations
700
800
900
1000
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Figures 13 and 14. It was taken to Vehicular
channel type A, 3 tap equalizer and 12 dB SNR.
We noticed that the MSE in Vehicular A channel
model with step size
converges to 18 dB
which is better than with
which converges
to 4 dB.
Vehicular A,N=3,Mu=0.008
5
SC#173
SC#253
SC#330
MSE(dB)
-5
6 CONCLUSIONS
-10
-15
-20
100
200
300
400
500
600
Number of Iterations
700
800
900
1000
5
SC#173
SC#253
SC#330
MSE(dB)
-5
-10
-15
-20
-25
100
200
300
400
500
600
Number of Iterations
700
800
900
1000
Comparsion between
the convergence
characteristic curves of LMS algorithm for
different subcarriers (173,263 and 330) and
different step size of the equalizers is shown in
Figures 15 and 16
We noticed that it converges quickly for subcarrier
173 with 0.008 step size to -15 dB and for step
size
it converges to -10 dB.
Howeever, for subcarrier 330 with 0.007 step size
it converges quickly to -10 dB and with
step size it converges to 4 dB.
409
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7 REFERENCES
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14. Yahia
Medjahdi,
et.
Al.,
"INTER-CELL
INTERFERENCE ANALYSIS FOR OFDM/FBMC
SYSTEMS ", on Signal.
15. Ari Viholainen et. al., "PROTOTYPE FILTER
DESIGN
FOR
FILTER
BANK
BASED
MULTICARRIER TRANSMISSION", 17th European
Signal Processing Conference (EUSIPCO 2009).
16. Aissa Ikhlef and Jerome Louveaux, " Per subchannel
equalization for MIMO FBMC/OQAM system", on
Communications
17. Dirk S. Waldhauser, Leonardo G. Baltar and Josef A.
Nossek, "Adaptive Equalization for Filter Bank Based
Multicarrier Systems" IEEE Circuits and Systems,
2008.
410
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ABSTRACT
1 INTRODUCTION
KEYWORDS
Elliptical Trigonometry, Window functions, Signal
processing, Fourier series, Truncated series.
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2 BRIEF INTRODUCTION
ELLIPTIC JES FUNCTION
TO
THE
b) = 0.2
a) = 0.001
c) = 3/3
d) = 1
e) = 3
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() =
=
=
=
25 21
+
46 46
(3)
f) = 90
(1)
=
46
46
a)
= 0.001
With 0 1 and
And
25
21
= +
46
46
With and
(2)
b) = 0.2
413
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= 3/3
c)
d) = 1
e)
= 3
f) = 90
Figure 2, multi form signals of the function Elliptic Jes
window form 3 and for different values of > 0.
414
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if b<0,
b
error('ATTENTION: ERROR b must be greater than
Zero');
end;
Ejes=(1./(sqrt(1.+((a/b).*tan(x)).^2))).*angx(x); % the
Elliptic Jes "Ejes"
Emar=(1./(sqrt(1.+((a/b).*tan(x)).^2))).*angx(x).*tan(x).*a/b
; % the Elliptic Mar "Emar"
% Elliptic Jes Window form 3
EjesW3=25./4621./46.*((1./(sqrt(1.+((a/b).*tan(2.*pi.*x)).^2))).*angx(2.*pi.
*x));
plot(x,EjesW3);
%xlabel('X''OX axis'); ylabel('f(x)=AEjesx(x)');
title('Absolute Elliptic Jes-x: AEjesx(x)');
axis([0 M-1 0 1.1]);
grid on;%grid Minor (for more details)/ grid on (for less
details)
fprintf('Do you want to repeat ?\nPress y for ''Yes'' or any
key for ''No''\n');
repeat=input('Y/N=','s'); %string input
clc
close all
end; %End while
%-----------------------------------------------------------
(4)
(5)
= 1
1
2
With 0 1 and
With is the radical of the function, it is an
integer with
And
= 1 +
2
With and
() =
=
= 1 +
2
(6)
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a) = 0.001 and = 1
b) = 0.2 and = 1
c)
= 3/3 and = 1
d) = 1 and = 1
e)
= 3 and = 1
f) = 90 and = 1
Figure 3, multi form signals of the function Elliptic Jes
window form 4 and for different values of > 0 and = 1.
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= 3/3 and = 4
c)
d) = 1 and = 4
a)
= 0.001 and = 4
e)
= 3 and = 4
b) = 0.2 and = 4
f) = 90 and = 4
Figure 4, multi form signals of the function Elliptic Jes
window form 4 and for different values of > 0 and = 4.
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Ejes=(1./(sqrt(1.+((a/b).*tan(x)).^2))).*angx(x); % the
Elliptic Jes "Ejes"
Emar=(1./(sqrt(1.+((a/b).*tan(x)).^2))).*angx(x).*tan(x).*a/b
; % the Elliptic Mar "Emar"
% Elliptic Jes Window form 4
X=(2.*pi.*x);
EjesW4=(1./2.*(1(1./(sqrt(1.+((a/b).*tan(X)).^2))).*angx(X))).^(1./R);
plot(x,EjesW4);
%xlabel('X''OX axis'); ylabel('f(x)=EjesW4(x)');
title('Elliptic Jes Window form 4');
axis([0 M-1 0 1.1]);
grid on;%grid Minor (for more details)/ grid on (for less
details)
fprintf('Do you want to repeat ?\nPress y for ''Yes'' or any
key for ''No''\n');
repeat=input('Y/N=','s'); %string input
clc
close all
end; %End while
%--------------------------------------------------------------------
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5 ELLIPTIC
FUNCTION
JES
WINDOW
FORM
a)
= 0
= 1 +
2 (+1) 1
2
(7)
With 0 1 and
And
= 1 +
2
1 (+2)
2 (+1)
With and
(8)
b) = 0.01
() =
1
1 ( + 2)
1 +
2
2 ( + 1)
(9)
c)
= 0.2
d) = 3/3
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= 1
f)
= 3
g) = 90
Figure 5, multi form signals of the function Elliptic Jes
window form 5 and for different values of > 0.
EjesW5=1/2.*(1+(1./(sqrt(1.+((a/b).*tan(X)).^2))).*angx(X))
;
plot(x,EjesW5);
%xlabel('X''OX axis'); ylabel('f(x)=EjesW1(x)');
title('Elliptic Jes Window form 5');
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JES
WINDOW
FORM
= 2 1 +
(11)
With and
() =
1
1
= 1 +
2
(12)
= 1 +
2
With 0 1 and
(10)
a)
= 0.01, = 1, = 1
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b) = 0.2, = 1, = 1
c)
= 3/3, = 1, = 1
e)
= 3, = 1, = 1
f) = 90, = 1, = 1
Figure 5, multi form signals of the function Elliptic Jes
window form 6 and for different values of > 0 and
= 1, = 1.
d) = 1, = 1, = 1
a)
= 0.01, = 1, = 4
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b) = 0.2, = 1, = 4
c)
= 3/3, = 1, = 4
e)
= 3, = 1, = 4
f) = 90, = 1, = 4
Figure 6, multi form signals of the function Elliptic Jes
window form 6 and for different values of > 0 and
= 1, = 4.
d) = 1, = 1, = 4
a)
= 0.01, = 1.5, = 1
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b) = 0.2, = 1.5, = 1
c)
= 3/3, = 1.5, = 1
d) = 1, = 1.5, = 1
e)
= 3, = 1.5, = 1
f) = 90, = 1.5, = 1
Figure 7, multi form signals of the function Elliptic Jes
window form 6 and for different values of > 0 and
= 1.5, = 1.
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plot(x,EjesW6);
%xlabel('X''OX
axis');
ylabel('f(x)=EjesW6(x)');
title('Elliptic Jes Window form 6');
axis([0 M-1 0 1.1]);
grid on;%grid Minor (for more details)/ grid on (for less
details)
fprintf('Do you want to repeat ?\nPress y for ''Yes'' or any
key for ''No''\n');
repeat=input('Y/N=','s'); %string input
clc
close all
end; %End while
%--------------------------------------------------------------
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() = 1
1
2
+1
2
(15)
(14)
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() = 2 1 cos 1
(16)
Figure 12, Tukey window function (from Wikipedia [46]).
And so on
1)
2
( 1)
=
1
( 1) 1
2
2
1 1 + cos 2
+ 1 ( 1) 1 ( 1)
2
( 1)
2
(17)
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25.
26.
27.
28.
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3
1
ABSTRACT
Nowadays, the evolution in transportation technologies
makes the necessity for increasing road safety. In this
context, we propose the implementation of a smart
onboard GPS/GPRS system to be attached to vehicles
for monitoring and controlling their speed. In case of
traffic speed violation, a GPRS message containing
information about the vehicle such as location and
maximum speed is sent to a hosting server located in
an authorized office so that the violated vehicle is
ticketed. Moreover, this system can also track the
vehicles current location on a Google Map, which is
mostly beneficial when vehicles should follow a
specific road and in case of robbery. Also geo-casting
can have a major role in this model. Some sensors,
such as shock/vibration sensor usually attached to the
air-bags in vehicles, are attached to the system that in
case of accident, it will send notifications to the nearest
hospital, police station and civil defense. Our proposed
model can be utilized for different implementations,
both in public and private sectors. While similar
existing systems in Palestine have focalized just on the
tracking aspect of vehicles monitoring, it would be the
first system supporting both ticketing and tracking.
KEYWORDS
GPS; GPRS; Transportation; Ticking; Tracking;
Intelligent Transport System; ITS; Machine-toMachine; M2M; Internet of Things; IoT; Smart
City;GSM.
1. INTRODUCTION
Recent studies show that all over the world,
including Palestine, there has been a rapid increase
in vehicle numbers. The latest statistics show that
there are approximately 140,000 licensed vehicles
in West Bank in 2011. About 17,000 of them are
newly registered [1]. As a result, as Figure [1]
illustrates, traffic crashes increase in past few
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standard, allowing data transmission in packet
mode and providing higher throughputs compared
with the circuit switched mode [6], [7].
1.2. GPS Technology
Global Positioning System (GPS) is a worldwide
radio navigation system formed from the
constellation of 24 satellites and their ground
stations. The Global Positioning System is mainly
funded and controlled by the U.S Department of
Defense (DOD). The system was initially created
and designed for the U.S. military use. But
nowadays, it is available for civilian, without any
kind of charge or restrictions. Global Positioning
System tracking is a method of working out
exactly the position of GPS sensors holder based
on a simple mathematical principle called
trilateration or triangulation. Trilateration falls into
two categories: 2-D Trilateration and 3-D
Trilateration. It requires having at least four
satellites transmitting coded signals from known
positions. Three satellites are required to provide
the three distance measurements, and the fourth to
remove receiver clock error [9].
A GPS tracking system can work in various ways
i.e. Active and passive tracking. In Passive
tracking, the position is usually stored in internal
memory or on a memory card along the ride, while
in the active tracking, also refers to a real time
tracker, data is to be transmitted to central
database via a modem within the GPS unit [9].
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between GSM module and dialup modem, which
is a dialup modem sends and receives data through
a fixed telephone line while a wireless modem
sends and receives data through radio waves. The
module can be connected to a computer through a
serial cable or a USB cable. In our project we use
the SM5100B Cellular Shield, since it is easy to
deal with and more flexible, also it supports AT
Commands. It has unlimited transmission range
and distance, so we can use it in any place. GSM
can easily send and receive data across the mobile
network, and it can transmit instructions,
commands, SMS and receive them from
microcontroller [15].
3.2.
Arduino Microcontroller
The Arduino Uno is a microcontroller board,
which has 14 digital input/output pins (of which 6
can be used as PWM outputs), 6 analog inputs, a
16 MHz ceramic resonator, a USB connection, a
power jack, and a reset button. It contains
everything needed to support the microcontroller;
simply connect it to a computer with a USB cable
or power it with an AC to DC adapter or battery to
get started [15].
3.3.
GPS-11058 Module
GPS-11058 is a development board that uses the
smallest, most powerful, and most versatile GPS
receiver. The module can be configured to an
amazingly powerful 10Hz update rate, with 14
channel tracking. It has two serial ports, UART
and SPI interfaces, 28 mA operating current and
high sensitivity. It needs to connect it with an
external battery or super capacitor to the board, to
support very fast restarts after power is removed.
There are even pads on the bottom of the board for
the 0.2F super capacitor, which keeps the board
hot start-able for up to 7 hours without power [15].
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Services.
Figure [5] illustrates the high level network
architecture of the system and shows the main
communication technologies used for information
and event flow between the system major
components.
4.1.
Cloud Based Web Application
A Web Service (WS) [16] is a communication
paradigm which allows two Internet applications
or two electronic devices (such as computers,
embedded processors and microcontrollers, smart
sensors and actuators, smart phone, cellular
mobile and tablet PCs) to interact in order to
exchange information and events between each
other through the WWW (World Wide Web).
There are two important Kinds of Web Services,
Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) [17] and
Representation Stateless Transfer (REST) [18].
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The second tire runs the business logic and computations.
Finally, the clients tire.
SmartBoard
4.3.
Google Maps API
Google MAP API [5] is a public and free service
offered by Google cooperation. This service
composed of a set Application Programming
Interfaces (APIs) which aims to facilitate the
integration of Google Maps and services into
newly created geographical applications and
services by developers. We embedded a Google
Map in our web application. After that, we used
Google Map APIs to put over this Map a series of
geographical location information they are
longitude and latitude pair values. Google MAP
APIs are based on Web Services technology. In
Web Service, retrieving, creating, deleting and
updating geographic data is made through HTTP
request to specific Uniform Resource Identifier
URI. The response of Google MAP APIs is based
on JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) or
Extensible Markup Language (XML) data format.
5. THE PROPOSED TICKETING AND
TRACKING ALGORITHM
Our proposed model performs online monitoring,
ticketing and tracking. Moreover, our module
supports geo-casting features. The geo-casting
function is activated if an accident occurs in a
certain area, all the vehicles within a range of
specific geographical coordinates will receive a
message to choose another road trip. So, traffic
jamming and unnecessary delays can be avoided
and help in saving time and money. GPS receiver
is used to determine the position and speed of
vehicles. The location is used for tracking, while
the measured speed is to be compared with a
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limited, predetermined value stored in the
microcontroller, extracted from legal maps. When
the vehicles speed is approaching the specified
limit, alarm will go on to warn the driver. If the
driver does not slow down, and the speed is still
increasing and exceeding the maximum allowed
speed, GPRS packet containing the speed will be
sent to the hosting server. The ticket will be
registered at the server side. Moreover, SMS will
invoice the driver about his ticket. Because, GPS
signal requires Line Of Sight (LOS), in case, there
is no valid GPS signal; accelerometer is used to
measure the vehicles speed.
For accidents prevention and notification, we will
use vibration sensor which is attached to the
vehicles air-bags. When air-bags are launched,
then an accident is detected. So the nearest
hospital is informed to help and send paramedics
to handle the situation and all other vehicles near
the crash will receive a message to configure
another route. GSM/GPRS module and GPS
sensor are being controlled using an Arduino
microcontroller. Not all the available data will be
sent to the web server from the microcontroller.
On the contrary, just a selected set of data will be
send - i.e, location and speed after having been
processed and analyzed.
Figure [8] illustrates the proposed model.
5.1.
Flowchart
Figure 9 depicts the flowchart of our project,
starting with measuring the speed and location of a
vehicle, as longitude and latitude points. These
readings will be compared with standard specified
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else {
retrun outside;
} // end else
}// end function
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6. EXPERMENTAL RESULTS
This section presents selected results from our
experiments with the established Ticketing and
tracking module in our laboratory.
The purpose of these experiments is to validate the
proposed system under different real driving
environments and to show a functional prototype.
We mounted two SmartBoards into two cars
belonging to our faculty teachers. And within the
university campus, we used a laptop to track the
cars on Google map. Furthermore, for the
proposed demonstration, we print all the
communication messages on another screen.
After getting the model tested, one of the cars
made a short trip around the university campus.
The university campus is located in rural area (in
an open space with scattered buildings around
with very wide streets). This campus is close to
Nablus city where we found that there is a good
GPS signal quality. Hence, the algorithm always
reads the speed and the geographical location in
terms of longitude and latitude values from the
GPS module and it never needs to read the vehicle
speed from the vehicles accelerometer.
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efforts and money will be essential to accomplish
and maintain a very good level of road safety. Our
target is to design a Low cost GPS/GPRS based
wireless controlling model. Due to the wide spread
of GSM network which increases the chance for
applying this model in many areas around the
world. The proposed model hope to be able to
achieve what is meant for, reducing road traffics,
leading to cut in crashes expenses, decreasing the
number of resulting casualties. All these are in
favor of human road safety.
The economic study shows the feasibility of our
project. After running our model for long enough
period, we expect that tracking and ticketing
system can be fed by authorized department which
can be utilized to get clear view about
infrastructure which can be used for developing
and planning to improve the infrastructure on
some field or apply some regulation which will
aim to reduce traffic accidents.
We will keep working to expand the experimental
section of the proposed model, and also we will
consider additional features (such geo-casting
feature) to the designed model. To add the
vibration sensor and complete the geo-casting
procedures, all the vehicles within a range of
specific geographical coordinates will receive a
message to choose another route, so traffic
jamming and unnecessary delays can be avoided,
help in saving time and money, leading to cutting
in crashes expenses and decreasing the number of
resulting casualties. All these are in favor of
human road safety.
8. REFERENCES
[1] Transportation and Communication Statistics in the
Palestinian Territory: Annual Report 2011. [Online]
Available
at:
http://www.pcbs.gov.ps/Portals/_pcbs/PressRelease/tran
s_comm2011e.pdf [Accessed:24 Nov 2013].
[2] Alkandari, Abdulrahman A., and Imad Fakhri
Alshaikhli. "Traffic Management System Based On
WSN IN Kuwait: AN INITIAL DESIGN." The
International Conference on Informatics and
Applications (ICIA2012). The Society of Digital
Information and Wireless Communication, 2012.
[3] Weiland, Richard J., and Lara Baughman Purser.
"Intelligent transportation systems." Transportation in
the New Millennium (2000).
25 Nov
2013].
[8] Arduino Microcontroller. [Online] Available at
http://arduino.cc/ [Accessed: 24 Nov 2013].
[9] T. Pratt, Ch. W. Bostian, J. E.Allnutt. (Oct 25, 2002).
Satellite Communications.
[10] P. D. Patinge, N. R. Kolhare. (July 2012). Smart
Onboard Public Information System using GPS and
GSM Integration for Public Transport. International
Journal of Advanced Research in Computer and
Communication Engineering, Vol. 1, Issue V.
[11] IEETimes. How does a GPS tracking system work?
2013.
[Online]
Available
at:
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=127836
3 [Accessed: 9 Oct 2013].
[12] S.KALLAS, J. YATES (December 2009) CIVITAS II,
Cleaner and Better Transport in Cities. [Online]
Available
at:
http://www.civitas.eu/.../CIVITAS_II_Final_Brochure_
E N.pdf [Accessed: 10 Sep 2013].
[13] V. Goud, V. Padmaja. (July 2012). Vehicle Accident
Automatic Detection and Remote Alarm Device.
International Journal of Re-configurable and Embedded
Systems (IJRES), Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 49 54.
[14] S.Tarapiah, R. AbuHania, I. Hindi, D. Jamal. (October
2013). Applying Web Based GPS/GPRS Ticketing and
Tracking Mechanism to Reduce Traffic Violation in
Developing Countries.
[Online] Available at:
http://sdiwc.net/digital-library/applying-web-basedpsgprs-ticketing-and-tracking-mechanism-to-reducetraffic-violation-in-developing-countries.html
[Accessed: 20 Nov 2013].
[15] SparkFun Electronics. 2013. [Online] Available at:
www.sparkfun.com[Accessed: 2 Sep 2013].
[16] Alonso, Gustavo, Fabio Casati, Harumi Kuno, and
Vijay Machiraju. Web services. Springer Berlin
Heidelberg, 2004.
[17] Box, Don, David Ehnebuske, Gopal Kakivaya, Andrew
Layman, Noah Mendelsohn, Henrik Frystyk Nielsen,
Satish Thatte, and Dave Winer. "Simple object access
protocol (SOAP) 1.1." (2000).
[18] R. T. Fielding, Architectural styles and the design of
network-based
software
architectures,
Ph.D.
dissertation, University of California, 2000.
[19] W. W. Eckerson, Three tier client/server architecture:
Achieving scalability, performance, and efficiency in
438
International Journal of Digital Information and Wireless Communications (IJDIWC) 3(4): 430-439
The Society of Digital Information and Wireless Communications, 2013 (ISSN: 2225-658X)
client server applications. Open Information Systems,
vol. 10, no. 1, 1995.
[20] Flanagan, David. JavaScript. O'Reilly, 1998.
[21] Chaffer, Jonathan, and Karl Swedberg. Jquery
reference guide: a comprehensive exploration of the
popular javascript library. Packt Publishing, 2010.
[22] Fielding, Roy T., and Gail Kaiser. "The Apache HTTP
server project." Internet Computing, IEEE 1.4 (1997):
88-90.
[23] Vegh, Aaron. "MySQL Database Server." Web
Development with the Mac(2010): 317-340.
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[25] Durda, Frank. "Serial and UART Tutorial." FreeBSD
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[27] S.Tarapiah, R. AbuHania, S.Atalla. "Web Based
GPS/GPRS
Ticketing
and
Tracking
Vehicles." Technical report (2013). [Online] Available
at:http://www.retitlc.polito.it/tarapiah/Technical_Report
_Web_Based_GPS_GPRS_GSM_Ticketing_and_Track
ing_Vehicles.pdf [Accessed:26 Nov 2013].
439
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The Society of Digital Information and Wireless Communications, 2013 (ISSN: 2225-658X)
Abstract
In a time when virtual organizations are fast
becoming a phenomenon, this paper aims to explore
how IT-based approachesand in specific the
object-oriented (organic) approachcan be used to
structure and facilitate the management of such
virtual organizations.
As with traditional organizations, a virtual
organization needs a structure that is fast, reliable,
adaptable and deterministic. In addition, such
organizations need a time and cost-efficient structure
to allocate resources and maximize their utilization in
a way that avoids deadlock and priority inversion.
This paper sets out to present how the organic
approach can meet the virtual organizations needs; it
will also illustrate how this approach can be applied
to the technology sector of Egypts Ministry of
Transport.
Keywords: Organization Structure, Object-Oriented,
Organic Organization.
1. Introduction
Management is the set of tasks or activities that
govern, design and maintain the environment in
which employees work together while
competing at the same time for the
organizations resources to accomplish a set of
jobs or tasks effectively and efficiently. As such,
This paper sets out to review the object-oriented
(organic) approach and to explain how it can be
applied to structure and manage the multitude of
complex tasks that make the virtual organization.
International Journal of Digital Information and Wireless Communications (IJDIWC) 3(4): 440-450
The Society of Digital Information and Wireless Communications, 2013 (ISSN: 2225-658X)
International Journal of Digital Information and Wireless Communications (IJDIWC) 3(4): 440-450
The Society of Digital Information and Wireless Communications, 2013 (ISSN: 2225-658X)
International Journal of Digital Information and Wireless Communications (IJDIWC) 3(4): 440-450
The Society of Digital Information and Wireless Communications, 2013 (ISSN: 2225-658X)
International Journal of Digital Information and Wireless Communications (IJDIWC) 3(4): 440-450
The Society of Digital Information and Wireless Communications, 2013 (ISSN: 2225-658X)
International Journal of Digital Information and Wireless Communications (IJDIWC) 3(4): 440-450
The Society of Digital Information and Wireless Communications, 2013 (ISSN: 2225-658X)
International Journal of Digital Information and Wireless Communications (IJDIWC) 3(4): 440-450
The Society of Digital Information and Wireless Communications, 2013 (ISSN: 2225-658X)
446
International Journal of Digital Information and Wireless Communications (IJDIWC) 3(4): 440-450
The Society of Digital Information and Wireless Communications, 2013 (ISSN: 2225-658X)
Name
Minister of Transport
Name
Finance, Admin &
HR
Name
Research & Development
Name
Technology Development
Name
Information Centers
Name
Funding and Investments
Name
Projects
Name
Transport Technology
Name
Analysis &
Statistical
Name
Intelligent
Transport Sys.
Name
Telecomm
Name
Quality
Name
Portals
Name
Transport
Operations Sys.
Name
IT
Name
Policies and Planning
Name
Information &
Communication
Technology
Name
Safety
Name
Transport Safety
Name
Follow-Up & Coordination
447
International Journal of Digital Information and Wireless Communications (IJDIWC) 3(4): 440-450
The Society of Digital Information and Wireless Communications, 2013 (ISSN: 2225-658X)
Name
Information and Communication Technology
Consultants
Name
Roads and Bridges
Name
Railways and Metro
Name
Maritime and River
Digital
Telecommunication
Roads
Telecommunication
Roads
Safety
Railways
Telecommunication
Railways
Safety
Maritime
Telecommunication
Maritime
Safety
Safety
ICT Infrastructure
Roads
ICT Infrastructure
Roads
Quality
Railways
ICT Infrastructure
Railways
Quality
Maritime
ICT Infrastructure
Maritime
Quality
Quality
ICT Resources
Roads
ICT Resources
Roads
Luxurious
Railways
ICT Resources
Railways
Luxurious
Maritime
ICT Resources
Maritime
Luxurious
Luxurious
ICT Services
Roads
ICT Services
Roads
Super-Luxurious
Railways
ICT Services
Railways
Super-Luxiourious
Maritime
ICT Services
Maritime
Super-Luxurious
Super-Luxurious
Virtual Organization
Organization Structure Tools
Employees List
Managers List
Index List
Index List
Employee
Object
Manager
Object
Communication Resources
Semaphore Objects
FIFO
Priority
Best-Fit
First-Fit
Mailbox Objects
FIFO
Priority
Pipe Objects
FIFO
Priority
Jobs List
Ready Jobs
Delayed Jobs
Priority/Time Queue
Priority Queue
Priority/Time Queue
Priority/Time Queue
Job
Object
Job
Object
Job
Object
Job
Object
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International Journal of Digital Information and Wireless Communications (IJDIWC) 3(4): 440-450
The Society of Digital Information and Wireless Communications, 2013 (ISSN: 2225-658X)
Job Object
Create
Object Manager
Order:jb1
Add: JobID
JobID
Add: JobID
Jobs List
Priority/Time Queue
Priority Queue
Job
Object
Employees List
Request
Job
Object
Index List
Employee
Object
Grante
Grante
Add: JobID
Semaphore Object
Delayed Jobs
Priority Queue
Priority/Time Queue
Add:JobID
Job
Object
Job
Object
Object
Department
Object
Semaphore
Init:
Signal:
Wait:
Object
Pipes
Init:
claim:
release:
Send:
Receive:
Object
Business Resource
Object
OrderedCollection
Object
Stream
Object
Mailbox
Init:
Send:
Receive:
Object
FIFOQueue
Add:
Del:
delAll:
DelFirst:
DelProcess:
Object
Business Process
Init
Terminate:
addPipe:
delPipe:
getEntry
addResource
delResource
delAllResource:
Object
SortedCollection
Object
Manager
Init:
newID:
Object
SortedQueues
Add:
Del:
delAll:
DelFirst:
DelProcess:
Object
PriorityQ
Delete:
New:
Object
FirstFitQ:
Delete:
New:
Object
Priority/SizeQ:
Delete:
New:
Object
BestFitQ:
Delete:
New:
Object
DelayQ::
Delete:
New:
449
International Journal of Digital Information and Wireless Communications (IJDIWC) 3(4): 440-450
The Society of Digital Information and Wireless Communications, 2013 (ISSN: 2225-658X)
Works Cited
[1]
Henry
C.jr
Lucas
and
Jack
Baroudi,
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of
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in
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The
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Anatolij,
Koval
Konstantin,
Kavaliauskas
Valdas,
and
Sakalas
Algimantas,
"Organizational
Structure
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Problems
in
Modern
Industrial
Enterprise,"
ISSN
1392-
2785Engineering
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W.
Snell,
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Nov
1994.
[11]
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Cordeiro
and
Joaquim
Filipe,
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of
the
Theory
of
Organized
Activity
to
the
Coordination
of
Social
Information
Systems,".
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CA
Barlett
and
S
Ghoshal,
"Matrix
Management:
Not
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Structure
a
Frame
of
Mind,"
Harvard
Business
Review,
July-August
1990.
[13]
Thomas
Sy
and
Laura
D'Annunzio,
"Challenges
and
Strategies
of
Matrix
Organizations:
Top-
Level
and
Mid-Level
Managers'
Perspectives,"
Human
Resource
Planning.
[14]
E.W.
Dijkstra,
"Co-Operating
Sequential
Processes,"
London
Academic
Press,
1965.
[15]
Peter
Coad
and
Edward
Yourdon,
Object-Oriented
Analysis.
New
Jersy:
Prentice
Hall
International,
1991.
450
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The Society of Digital Information and Wireless Communications, 2013 (ISSN: 2225-658X)
ABSTRACT
Regression tests are executed when some changes are
made in the existing application in order to check the
negative impact of the changes in the rest of the system
or on the expected behavior of other parts of the
software. There are two primary options for test suites
used during regression testing, first generate test suites
that fulfill a certain criterion, or user session based test
suites. User-sessions and cookies are unique features of
web applications that are useful in regression testing.
The main challenge is the effectiveness of average
percentage fault detection rate and time constraint in
the existing techniques. Test case prioritization
techniques improve the performance of regression
testing, and arrange test cases in order to obtain
maximum available fault that is going to be detected in
a shorter time. Thus, in this research the priority is
given to test cases that are performed based on some
criteria related to log file which collected from the
database of server side. In this technique some fault
will be seeded in subject application then applying the
prioritization criteria on test cases to obtain the
effectiveness of average percentage fault detection rate.
KEYWORDS
Software testing, web application, regression testing,
prioritization test cases, clustering, user session
1 INTRODUCTION
Web applications have served as critical tools for
different business. Failure of these critical tools
means the loss of millions of dollars for the
organizations that are using them [1], [2].
Web
applications
are
presentations
of
organizations and in front of a large number of
audience faces. Most of the web applications must
run without any interruption during the day and
night. This requires that Software testers to detect
the software bugs and software engineers to x
International Journal of Digital Information and Wireless Communications (IJDIWC) 3(4): 451-459
The Society of Digital Information and Wireless Communications, 2013 (ISSN: 2225-658X)
expensive. This leads the software engineers to
think about deploying efficient techniques to
reduce the effort that is required for regression
testing in different ways.
In the life cycle of an application, a new version
of the application is created as a result of (a) bug
xes and (b) requirements modications [5]. A
large number of reusable test cases may be
accumulated from different application versions
suitable to test newer versions of the application.
However, running all the test cases may take a
signicant amount of time. An example that may
spend weeks in the execution of all the test cases
of an earlier version [6], Regarding the time
restrictions, software testers need the selection and
ordering of a covering subset of test cases for
execution.
The three major approaches for regression testing
are test suite minimization, test case selection and
test case prioritization [7]. Test case prioritization
(TCP) helps us to find out the different optimal
combinations of the test cases. A prioritization
process is not associated with the selection process
of test cases, and it is assumed that all test cases
must be executed. But, it tries to get the best
schedule running of test cases in a way that if the
test process is interrupted or early halted at an
arbitrary point, the best result is achieved in
which more faults are detected. TCP is introduced
by Wong et al. [8]. The general TCP criteria and
techniques are described in the literature review
[7]. Structural coverage is the most commonly
used metric for prioritization [9].
The logic of this criterion is that faster structural
coverage of the whole software code leads to
maximum detection of faults in a limited time.
Therefore, the aim of this approach is achieving
452
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The Society of Digital Information and Wireless Communications, 2013 (ISSN: 2225-658X)
Table 1. Test case prioritization techniques
Study
Description technique
Strength
Limitation
(Rothermel et
(Elbaum et al.,
(Srikanth et al.,
(Sampath et al.,
(Sampath and
2002)[9].
2005)[11].
2008)[3].
Bryce, 2012)[13].
The techniques
used for test
cases prioritize
for regression
testing,
including
criteria, such
as coverage
code
The technique
The technique is a
The technique
The technique to
is leverage
Prioritization of
applied several
captured user
Requirements for
new
reduction and
behavior to
Test (PORT).
prioritization
prioritization for
generate test
criteria to test
cases
suites
application
Improved the
rate of fault
detection
Leads to a
Improves
Increased the
reduction in the
detection of
of fault detection
effectiveness of
amount of
severe faults
test suite
required tester
during the
reduction
intervention
regression testing
Not cost
Faults need to
Not effectiveness
Considering the
Using reduction
effective
be seeded in the
costs associated
with the
prioritization
strategies
and consequently
application.
effect on the
finding faults
3 PROBLEM STATEMENTS
The current researchers have been using reduction
test suite or prioritization test suite for
effectiveness of fault detection rate and time. This
research will address the useful new technique
offered by Sampath et al. named session based
technique. Although in [3], both approaches were
used to improve the effectiveness of user session
based testing but the reduction test suites cause to
omit some part of the test case and consequently
effects on the fault detection in web application.
International Journal of Digital Information and Wireless Communications (IJDIWC) 3(4): 451-459
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verify the new technique for improving the
effectiveness of fault detection rate and time of
testing in session-based test case prioritization of
web applications.
3.1 Research Questions
In this paper a new technique has applied into the
all test cases which is collecting from log files of
respect subject, book store portal. The research
question is:
How can we increase the effectiveness of current
session based on test case prioritization techniques
for the web applications?
In order to answer the above question the
following questions need to be answered:
Question 1: How can the new technique with
prioritized test cases based on number of most
common http requests in pages will improve the
rate of average percentage fault detection
(APFD)?
Question 2: What is the effectiveness of the new
technique with an ordered length of http request
chains to obtain a better APFD rate?
Question 3: How can we use the new technique
with an order dependency of http requests helps to
improve the rate of APFD?
3.2 Objectives
The permutation of test cases in a way that leads
to faster detection of maximum available faults in
a modified version of web application needs to
find good criteria. The goal of this research is to
propose a new technique which merges two
approaches of prioritizing and the clustering test
suite to improve one of test case prioritization
techniques called session-based technique in web
application regression testing.
The research aimed to improve the accuracy of
existing test suites with respect to the
effectiveness of time and the rate of fault
detection. The following objectives need to be
accomplished in order to achieve our goals:
International Journal of Digital Information and Wireless Communications (IJDIWC) 3(4): 451-459
The Society of Digital Information and Wireless Communications, 2013 (ISSN: 2225-658X)
file from server side for subject Bookstore web
application which choose as case study in this
research. Online Book Store is a shopping portal
for buying books. The online book store allows
users to register, log in, browse for books, search
for books by keyword, rate books, add books to a
shopping cart, modify personal information, and
log out. Book uses JSPs for its front end and a
MySQL database for the back end.
The Bookstore application has introduced to under
graduate students of University Teknologi
Malaysia (UTM) for collect log files on server
side. The log files have been collected for 60 days.
Clustering the previous works and documents and
gathering useful information for next steps is
basically done in step 2. A new problem is defined
and explained in step 3. This step includes the
techniques and methods that used to solve the
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International Journal of Digital Information and Wireless Communications (IJDIWC) 3(4): 451-459
The Society of Digital Information and Wireless Communications, 2013 (ISSN: 2225-658X)
4.1 Literature Review
The focus of research is on two approaches in web
application regression testing which are clustering
test suite and prioritization test suite in case of
effectiveness time and fault detection rate. This
step is aimed to search about the current state of
the art and challenges in web application test
considering prioritization test case technique for
better fault detection in less time. The drawbacks
of these approaches are explored thoroughly in
literature review step of the research process.
4.2 Problem Definition
The analysis of the problem, in test cases
prioritization and web application testing is
performed making the current literature review as
a base for the issue or problem.
4.3 Proposed Solution
The goal of this research is to propose a new
technique in test case prioritization for improving
effectiveness of fault detection rate and time, due
to these objectives the first step of the proposed
solution is generating test cases base on the user
session data which is using logs file in server side.
Then we clustered the test suite into equivalence
classes or groups of test suites in step 2. In the end
we are prioritizing the test suite based on new
criteria which are proposed in the research
question.
For test case generation, the test cases come from
real user session for web application testing, while
using log file in sever side then convert each log
file to the test cases.
Test Suite clustering techniques could be
categorized into modes partitioned or hierarchical.
A partitional clustering algorithm constructs
partitions of the data, where each cluster optimizes
a clustering criterion, such as the minimization of
the sum of squared distance from the mean within
each cluster. The complexity of Partitional
clustering is large because it enumerates all
possible groupings and tries to find the global
optimum. Even for a small number of objects, the
number of partitions is huge. Thats why; common
solutions start with an initial, usually random,
International Journal of Digital Information and Wireless Communications (IJDIWC) 3(4): 451-459
The Society of Digital Information and Wireless Communications, 2013 (ISSN: 2225-658X)
(1)
(2)
Where
Where: N
cluster
4.5 Evaluation
The rate of fault detection is dened as the total
number of faults detected in a given subset of the
prioritized test case order [6]. For a test suite, T
with n test cases, if F is a set of m faults detected
by T, then let TFi be the position of the rst test
case t in T', where T' is an ordering of T, that
detects fault i. Then, the APFD metric for T' is
given as:
(3)
(5)
(4)
5 Results
4-if the new centers are different from previous
ones repeat step 2, 3 and 4 otherwise terminate the
algorithm.
4.4 Prioritization
Test case prioritization (TCP) helps in finding out
the different optimal combinations of the test
cases. A prioritization process is not associated
with the selection process of test cases, and it is
assumed that all test cases must be executed, but it
tries to best schedule running of test cases in a
way that if the test process is interrupted or early
halted at an arbitrary point, the best result that is
finding more faults is achieved.
The three proposed prioritization criteria which
are based on following: prioritization criterion
with number of most common http requests in
pages, prioritization criterion with an ordered
length of http request chains, and prioritization
criterion with an order dependency of http
requests have been applied in this technique to
obtain a better result.
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Table2: Average percentage of fault detection for Bookstore
Percentage of test cases
execute
fault detected by
first criterion
fault detected by
second criterion
fault detected by
third criterion
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
76.67
83.33
83.33
83.33
86.67
93.33
93.33
93.33
93.33
93.33
70
80
86.67
86.67
86.67
86.67
86.67
93.33
93.33
93.33
76.67
76.67
83.33
83.33
93.33
93.33
93.33
93.33
93.33
93.33
53.33
53.33
66.67
80
80
80
80
86.67
93.33
93.33
100.00%
90.00%
80.00%
APFD
70.00%
60.00%
FIRST CRITERION
50.00%
SECOND CRITERION
40.00%
THIRD CRITERION
30.00%
RANDOM CRITERION
20.00%
10.00%
0.00%
30
60
90
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7 REFERENCES
1.
2.
3.
4.
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