Ubiquitous Computing Services Research Articles

Software Defined Wireless Networks: Part 2 [Guest Editorial

The concept of software defined wireless networks (SDWN) has been rapidly evolving as the solution to meet the demand for dynamic wireless services in ubiquitous computing. In SDWN, the control plane and data plane are decoupled, network intelligence is logically centralized, and the underlying network infrastructure is abstracted from the applications. Thus it highly simplifies network administration and management, which facilitates the dynamic nature of future network functions and intelligent applications while lowering operating costs through simplified hardware, software, and management. This is the second part of the Software Defined Wireless Networks Feature Topic. In Part 1, which was published in November 2015, we provided an overview of the latest major developments and progress in SDWN architecture. In this Part II, we present articles that provide fruitful insights into selected topics such as Cloud-RAN management, flexible spectrum management, SDWN security, and SDN-based self organizing strategies. We believe that it complements Part I, and together they provide a holistic overview of features and trends in future SDWN development.

Emerging Wireless and Mobile Technologies

Recent advances in wireless and mobile technologies have led to a new paradigm of the high-techsociety and people’s daily life. Accordingly, wireless and mobile technologies have been gainingtremendous attentions from researchers all over the world in recent years. However, a lot of newchallenges, which go much beyond conventional network systems, still need to be solved for advancedapplications. To further improve the quality of the modern communication, new techniques need tobe continuously explored and developed. This special issue looks for significant contributions andhigh quality research results on wireless and mobile technologies in theoretical and practical aspects,especially on QoS routing, distributed authentication mechanism, automatic security assessment, fasthandover security mechanism, enhancing MISP with Fast Mobile IPv6 and applications in wirelessmobile networks, as well as ad-hoc networks.This special issue grew out of selected best papers from the Fifth International Conference on Broad-band and Wireless Computing, Communication and Applications (BWCCA 2010), held in Fukuoka,Japan, and the 4th International Workshop on Intelligent, Mobile and Internet Services in UbiquitousComputing(IMIS 2010), heldin Krakow,Poland. Thiseventwasaneffort to takeupthe challengesandto bring together an international community in the area.The first paper [1], “QoS Routing in Ad-hoc Networks Using GA and Multi-Objective Optimization”from Admir Barolli, EvjolaSpaho,LeonardBarolli, FatosXhafaandMakotoTakizawa,proposesaQoSrouting in ad-hoc networks. Distinguishing from existing works related to routing in ad-hoc networks,this paper designs a QoS-guaranteed solution based on Genetic Algorithms (GAs) and multi-objectiveoptimization. In particular, the authors implemented a search space reduction algorithm, which reducesthe search spacefor GAMAN (GA-based routing algorithm for Mobile Ad-hoc Networks)tofind a newroute.In the second paper [2], Inshil Doh, Jiyoung Lim and Kijoon Chae propose a “Distributed Authen-tication Mechanism for Secure Channel Establishment in Ubiquitous Medical Sensor Networks”, inwhich bio-datais collectedanddeliveredto the serversystemthrough mobile devicesor gateways. Thisschemeadoptscandidatedevices,whichactastheintermediarywhentheoriginaldevicecannotfunctionproperly. In this way, bio-data of patients can be sensed and collected to monitor their body statusuninterruptedly.The next paper [3] entitled “Design of a secure RFID authentication scheme preceding market trans-actions” by Chin-Ling Chen, proposes a RFID mutual authentication protocol for market application

Editorial: Special Issue on “Trustworthy and Intelligent Services for Ubiquitous Computing”

Ubiquitous Computing (UC) has emerged rapidly as an exciting new computing paradigm and includes pervasive, grid, and peer-to-peer computing including sensor networks to provide computing and communication services at anytime and anywhere. There might be many issues to realize and provide UC services and much effort and enormous attention have been focused on the UC environments. The UC research area poses challenges such as context information fusion, security, reliability, autonomous and intelligent networking, trust application and framework, and so on. InUCenvironments, themost important andfinal goal is to provide users amore secure and richer ubiquitous services. In a word, we should try to guarantee and provide trustworthy and intelligent services. Most of all, ubiquitous applications and services are required Wireless Networks. Therefore, much more attention and effort should be focused on the trustworthy and intelligent ubiquitous applications and services in wireless personal communication environments.

Developing Ubiquitous Computing Service Model for Family Restaurant Management

The purpose of this study is to seek new u-business services in restaurant management. Using the concept of business model methodology in family restaurant management domain, this study identifies customers’ needs in services at the stage of management of purchase of materials, the production management, and the sales management. In addition, this study suggests two killer applications of a family restaurant management linking with the latest ubiquitous computing technologies: the service of the customer-oriented menu recommendation and the service of the inventory-oriented menu recommendation. These findings may offer practical insights in the context of ubiquitous service model of restaurant management.

A Spatial Communication Model for Ubiquitous Computing Services

The paper presents a location-aware communication approach in smart home environments. It is constructed on a symbolic location model to represent the containment relationships between physical objects, computing devices, and places. It enables people and devices to discover and connect with their communication partners according to their co-locations. It also provides non-smart objects, including home appliances, everyday objects, and places, with virtual counterpart, which are not only their representations but also work as proxies of their targets. This paper presents the design for this approach and describes its implementation and applications.

A Spatial Model for Ubiquitous Computing Services

We present a world model for location-aware and user-aware services in ubiquitous computing environments. It can be dynamically organized like a tree based on geographical containment, such as in a user-room-floor-building hierarchy and each node in the tree can be constructed as an executable software component. The model is unique to existing approaches because it enables location-aware services to be managed without databases, can be managed by multiple computers, and provides a unified view of the locations of not only physical entities and spaces, including users and objects, but also computing devices and services. A prototype implementation of this approach was constructed on a Java-based mobile agent system. This paper presents the rationale, design, implementation, and applications of the prototype system.