Fondazione Ugo Bordoni Research Articles

Empowering citizens by a blockchain-Based Robinson list

Robinson lists are adopted in many countries to protect phone subscribers against commercial spam calls. In its essence, they collect the denial of the subscribers to be contacted by marketing operators. Nowadays, all Robinson lists run as centralised services. Namely, citizens have to rely on trusted third parties for the management of their own choices. The Blockchain allows us to envision the development of a decentralised Robinson list in which citizens are finally empowered to autonomously manage their choices. In this paper, we present a proof-of-concept (PoC) of a decentralised Robinson list developed with the Algorand technology. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to implement a Robinson list on a blockchain technology. The PoC has been designed to support the requirements provided by Fondazione Ugo Bordoni, the manager of the Italian Robinson list. The evaluation of the PoC shows that our decentralised solution provides satisfactory performance, in terms of scalability, latency and costs, when compared to the current centralised service.

Measured Interference of LTE Uplink Signals on DVB-T Channels

Because of the decision, taken during the ITU WRC-07, to allocate the upper part of the so-called digital dividend spectrum for mobile services on a co-primary basis with TV broadcast services, the involved stakeholders have a great interest in avoiding any interference caused by signals transmitted in adjacent bands. In this context the paper presents some experimental results of a study addressed to assess the effects produced by an interferential LTE signal transmitted from a user terminal when it is in proximity of a television antenna that receives DVB-T signals. The study has been conducted in the context of collaboration between Fondazione Ugo Bordoni and ISCTI, the scientific and technical body of the Italian Ministry of Economic Development, using high professional laboratory equipments and considering different experimental simulation test setups. Several simulation scenarios have been analyzed and results in terms of protection ratio and protection distance have been carried out.

Il ruolo svolto da ISPT, FUB e COST nelle Telecomunicazioni

I am particularly glad to intervene during this conference dedicated to Professor Renato Koch for having worked with him for more than twenty years. After my degree in 1963 and two years in the laboratories of Contraves Italiana I was hired by Professor Koch as a Researcher at the Fondazione Ugo Bordoni. Professor Koch had become Director of this Fondazione in 1964 substituting Professor Bruno Peroni. Professor Koch nominated me Head of the Radiopropagation Group and subsequently in 1976 Head of the Radiocommunications Division. I will describe first the activities of Fondazione Bordoni and of the Istituto Superiore Poste e Telecomunicazioni since after twenty years under the guidance of Professor Koch I became Director of this Fondazione in 1985. In the year 2000 I left the Fondazione and was involved in the research activities at the European level. The COST Programme - an acronym for European Cooperation in Science and Technology - is the other activity in which I was involved for about forty years. After coordinating two COST Actions in a row from 1970 to 1985 I became Chairman of the Scientific Committee "Telecommunications and Information Science. In 2004 I was elected by the representatives of the 35 COST countries President of the entire COST programme and confirmed in this position in 2007 for the subsequent three years.

The Italian national electromagnetic field monitoring network

The paper describes the Italian national electromagnetic field monitoring network that the Italian Ministry of Communications established with the technical support of Fondazione Ugo Bordoni and in collaboration with the local Environmental Protection Agencies of all Italian regions.

BROADBAND NETWORKS FOR DISTANCE EDUCATION AND TRAINING: SOME RESULTS AND PRACTICAL SOLUTIONS FROM A HUMAN FACTORS INVESTIGATION

Distance education and training is one of the most promising application fields of broadband networks. The present contribution is focused on one of the main opportunities provided by broadband communication networks for distance education: advanced and interactive virtual classroom situations. In particular a virtual classroom field experiment, which employs broadband cellular radio telecommunication technologies is described. The investigation was realised, in cooperation, by Fondazione Ugo Bordoni (FUB) and RAI (Italian Public TV), using the tools made available by the human factors discipline. Some results of the investigation are presented concerning learners' performance and usability of the multimedia tele-education system including factors such as: ease of use usefulness; telepresence efficiency; users' satisfaction. Furthermore, operational results and practical solution coming out of the experiment are shown as well. They include the basic features of multimedia systems used in virtual classroom and the correct procedures for training teachers and learners in the equipment use.

Cognitive factors in the evaluation of synthetic speech

This paper illustrates the importance of various cognitive factors involved in perceiving and comprehending synthetic speech. It includes findings drawn from the relative psychological and psycholinguistic literature together with experimental results obtained at the Fondazione Ugo Bordoni laboratory. Overall, it is shown that listening to and comprehending synthetic voices is more difficult than with a natural voice. However, and more importantly, this difficulty can and does decrease with the subjects' exposure to said synthetic voices. Furthermore, greater workload demands are associated with synthetic speech and subjects listening to synthetic passages are required to pay more attention than those listening to natural passages.

Psychological factors in virtual classroom situations: A pilot study for a model of learning through technological devices

Multimedia Communication Systems (MMCS) are particularly promising for the realization of advanced virtual classroom situations, in which people spatially distributed can communicate in real time using text, voice, sound, still and moving pictures. They could provide the opportunity to improve flexibility of learning and cooperation in the learning team. On the other hand, there is evidence that the availability of MMCS in a distance learning situation does not ensure their use and adoption by the users. Among the barriers to the diffusion of these forms of distance learning, human factors, in particular psychological factors, may play a prominent role. On these topics further theoretical and experimental work is needed. In order to examine these topics a new tool has been implemented at Fondazione Ugo Bordoni (Roma): the distance learning laboratory (DLL). This tool is being utilized in an investigation concerning the use of virtual classroom situation realised using multimedia systems. The present paper is related to the explorative phase of the investigation. In particular its main obectives are: a) to present a pilot study (realised using the DLL) to gain some insights on the psychological variables that can affect performance in virtual classroom situations; b) to propose a Model of Learning through Technological devices (MLT) in a virtual classroom situation. This model has been developed from previous research on computer acceptance, attitudes, social learning, and from the outcomes of our pilot study.