Ubiquitous Computing Environments Research Articles

Enhancing User Experiences in Ubiquitous Soft Computing Environments with Fuzzy Agent Middleware

In the Ubiquitous Computing Environment (UCE) context, the successful provision of user-required services necessitates the collaboration of various system components, encompassing hardware parts, software components, and network connections. The utilization of UCE has presented some difficulties to customers seeking services in a diverse environment, including excessive Memory Usage (MU) and prolonged Component Construction Time (CCT). To optimize the user's experience, fuzzy agent employs a non-intrusive approach in online deep-rooted learning to get insights into user behavior. Integrating the advancements mentioned above aims to enhance the connectivity between users and information technology devices by utilizing an invisible network of UCE devices, creating dynamic computational environments that can effectively meet the users' needs. This work presents a unique methodology called Fuzzy Agent Middleware to Enhance User Experiences (FAM-EUI), which aims to improve user experiences in contexts where computer technology is seamlessly incorporated into everyday activities. This research endeavors to tackle the issues associated with imprecise data and enhance user-friendly interactions by integrating fuzzy logic with intelligent agents. The results highlight the potential of FAM in enhancing user interaction within ubiquitous soft computing, leading to improved efficiency and user-centered computing systems. This study provides valuable insights into integrating soft computing and agent-based technologies to enhance ubiquitous computing paradigms.

Privacy Care

The emergence of ubiquitous computing (UbiComp) environments has increased the risk of undesired access to individuals’ physical space or their information, anytime and anywhere, raising potentially serious privacy concerns. Individuals lack awareness and control of the vulnerabilities in everyday contexts and need support and care in regulating disclosures to their physical and digital selves. Existing GUI-based solutions, however, often feel physically interruptive, socially disruptive, time-consuming and cumbersome. To address such challenges, we investigate the user interaction experience and discuss the need for more tangible and embodied interactions for effective and seamless natural privacy management in everyday UbiComp settings. We propose the Privacy Care interaction framework, which is rooted in the literature of privacy management and tangible computing. Keeping users at the center, Awareness and Control are established as the core parts of our framework. This is supported with three interrelated interaction tenets: Direct, Ready-to-Hand, and Contextual . Direct refers to intuitiveness through metaphor usage. Ready-to-Hand supports granularity, non-intrusiveness, and ad hoc management, through periphery-to-center style attention transitions. Contextual supports customization through modularity and configurability. Together, they aim to provide experience of an embodied privacy care with varied interactions that are calming and yet actively empowering. The framework provides designers of such care with a basis to refer to, to generate effective tangible tools for privacy management in everyday settings. Through five semi-structured focus groups, we explore the privacy challenges faced by a sample set of 15 older adults (aged 60+) across their cyber-physical-social spaces. The results show conformity to our framework, demonstrating the relevance of the facets of the framework to the design of privacy management tools in everyday UbiComp contexts.

An Integrated System for the Seamless Localization and Specification of a Position Based on an Indoor-Outdoor Conditions in Ubiquitous Computing Environments

An Integrated System for the Seamless Localization and Specification of a Position Based on an Indoor-Outdoor Conditions in Ubiquitous Computing Environments

RETRACTED ARTICLE: A novel user interaction middleware component system for ubiquitous soft computing environment by using fuzzy agent computing system

Ubiquitous Computing Environment (UCE) has become increasingly crucial for a component-based Middleware for Ubiquitous Soft Computing Environment by using Fuzzy Agent Computing System (USCE–FACS) that can fully exploit interactive service characteristics to support user-centric services in UCE. It has posed some challenges, such as high Memory Consumption and high Component Building Time to users who are hiring services in a heterogeneous environment. To control the UCE for the user's benefit, FACS works non-rudely in an online deep-rooted learning way to get familiar with the user behavior. The point of incorporation of previously mentioned advances is to make more extensive the connection between individuals and data innovation gear through the use of an undetectable system of UCE devices making dynamic computational-environments equipped for fulfilling the users' prerequisites. Due to a large number of available services without ontology and Metadata Repository (MR), it becomes time-consuming for end-users to find appropriate services to satisfy their various needs. To help end-users obtain their desired services, the USCE–FACS proposed, it reduces MC and CBT in a heterogeneous environment. This paper concentrated on the communication from users to devices to enable a general and quick access to accessible element and administrations gave by the UCE.

Secured Policy based Resource Access and User Authentication in Ubiquitous Computing Environment

Policy-based resource access and data sharing are the most specific in context-aware computing. Granting authentication to the wireless and ad hoc users is usually difficult because the system has got to take into account several context factors whereas authoring access. During this epoch, the mobile phone plays a significant role in info access in a ubiquitous environment. Wireless technologies, significantly the GSM-SMS is efficient and efficient to access shared data around the world with fewer security issues. The shared resources like printers, scanners, databases, books, email, etc. are liable to the users once they try and access with proper authentication. The proposed system provides systematic access policy schemes and creates the access mechanism to remote users. These policies and mechanisms are entirely supported context info. The user should satisfy the defined context and defined the user level. This mechanism provides the facilities to users to request and access control through SMS.

Clustering-based and QoS-aware services composition algorithm for ambient intelligence

Due to the dynamic nature of ubiquitous computing and ambient intelligence (AmI) environments, a challenging issue that needs to be addressed is how to construct composite services that satisfy users’ requirements in terms of quality of service (QoS). In this paper, a clustering-based and QoS-aware services composition algorithm (CQCA) is proposed. To increase the composition optimality and reduce the composition time, the candidate services are first partitioned into clusters, where each cluster represents a QoS level. In addition, a new formulation of the utility function based on the use of the characteristics of the resulting clusters is proposed to remove unpromising candidate services in terms of QoS. A lexicographic optimization method is then exploited to filter out candidate services that have low QoS attributes values. Finally, a search tree is constructed to find near-to-optimal compositions. The obtained performance shows that the proposed algorithm outperforms other composition approaches by finding very near-to-optimal compositions in a reduced composition time.

A Survey of Attention Management Systems in Ubiquitous Computing Environments

Today's information and communication devices provide always-on connectivity, instant access to an endless repository of information, and represent the most direct point of contact to almost any person in the world. Despite these advantages, devices such as smartphones or personal computers lead to the phenomenon of attention fragmentation, continuously interrupting individuals' activities and tasks with notifications. Attention management systems aim to provide active support in such scenarios, managing interruptions, for example, by postponing notifications to opportune moments for information delivery. In this article, we review attention management system research with a particular focus on ubiquitous computing environments. We first examine cognitive theories of attention and extract guidelines for practical attention management systems. Mathematical models of human attention are at the core of these systems, and in this article, we review sensing and machine learning techniques that make such models possible. We then discuss design challenges towards the implementation of such systems, and finally, we investigate future directions in this area, paving the way for new approaches and systems supporting users in their attention management.

Performance Evaluation of Two New Lightweight Real-Time Scheduling Mechanisms for Ubiquitous and Mobile Computing Environments

In ubiquitous and mobile computing environments, most of user requests have timing constraints. Therefore, for their execution, real-time scheduling mechanisms should be employed. In such environments, some mechanisms, such as Earliest Deadline First and Least Slack Time Rate (LSTR), are the most used real-time scheduling algorithms today. However, these existing mechanisms cannot guarantee the execution of the most critical user tasks. Furthermore, the results of executed tasks should also be provided to users on time so as to not waste the resources processing these tasks. The existing scheduling mechanisms, such as Dynamic Adjustment with Time Constraint and Dynamic Priority-based Heuristic action (DPH), are not suitable for this due to some limitations. The current paper proposes two new lightweight real-time mechanisms for scheduling input tasks (received requests) and output tasks (execution results) and evaluates their performance. The first mechanism satisfies users based on the classification of similar tasks and the use of the LSTR algorithm. The second mechanism is an improved form of the combination of the LSTR and DPH algorithms, and aims provide users with the maximum number of services by considering a possibility matrix. Extensive simulation experiments on real workload data demonstrate the superiority of the proposed mechanisms over existing algorithms, in terms of the percentage of executed tasks, makespan, and average turnaround time criteria.

A Novel Framework of Distributed Datacenter Networks to Support Intelligent Services: Architecture, Operation, and Solutions

Existing datacenter networks (DCNs) support the legacy cloud services well; nonetheless, it is inherently short of provisioning the emerging IoT services, such as the vehicle services, where real-time intelligence, cognition, and security are required, mainly due to its long distance with the IoT devices that generate the intelligent services. Regarding this, this paper proposes a new interconnection architecture for distributed DCNs by way of passive optical network (PON) technology to construct a ubiquitous cloud computing (UCC) environment with high scalability, resiliency, and data locality. A novel de-centralized architecture of virtualized mega DCNs on customized next-generation PONs (NGPONs) to provision UCC is proposed under the name of NGPON-DCN. In addition, a cost-effective deployment design framework and an associated revenue-driven elastic infrastructure-as-a-service delivery model are specified for creation and operation of such NGPON-DCN, followed by a discussion of anticipated key research challenges and optimization opportunities in this new NGPON-DCN convergence paradigm.

Adaptive Security Schemes based on Context and Trust for Ubiquitous Computing Environment: A Comprehensive Survey

Objectives: To present the principle of working of some of the widely used adaptive security schemes in the domain of ubiquitous computing. Methods/Statistical Analysis: The main focus of the study includes analysis of the security schemes with respect to the use of security parameters such as context and trust. Many security schemes applied for various applications are considered and evaluated by considering the security credentials such as access control, privacy, and context-awareness. The study finds context and trust as essential to develop adaptive and accurate security framework. Findings: The paper identified different taxonomies built for trust, context, policy and adaptive security. It pointed many solutions to couple with the security issues like access control, and authentication that are more appropriate to the today’s world. It also discussed many security and implementation credentials with a review summary and suggested the findings could be used to propose adaptive security frameworks which can offer the required level of security. Application/Improvements: The proposed framework can be used to applications built in the Ubiquitous Computing Environment (UCE) such as Ubiquitous-healthcare, U-learning, U-smart campus, and so on.

Lightweight Sensor Authentication Scheme for Energy Efficiency in Ubiquitous Computing Environments.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is the intelligent technologies and services that mutually communicate information between humans and devices or between Internet-based devices. In IoT environments, various device information is collected from the user for intelligent technologies and services that control the devices. Recently, wireless sensor networks based on IoT environments are being used in sectors as diverse as medicine, the military, and commerce. Specifically, sensor techniques that collect relevant area data via mini-sensors after distributing smart dust in inaccessible areas like forests or military zones have been embraced as the future of information technology. IoT environments that utilize smart dust are composed of the sensor nodes that detect data using wireless sensors and transmit the detected data to middle nodes. Currently, since the sensors used in these environments are composed of mini-hardware, they have limited memory, processing power, and energy, and a variety of research that aims to make the best use of these limited resources is progressing. This paper proposes a method to utilize these resources while considering energy efficiency, and suggests lightweight mutual verification and key exchange methods based on a hash function that has no restrictions on operation quantity, velocity, and storage space. This study verifies the security and energy efficiency of this method through security analysis and function evaluation, comparing with existing approaches. The proposed method has great value in its applicability as a lightweight security technology for IoT environments.

Context and Trust Based Adaptive Security for Accessing Services in Ubiquitous Computing Environment

The smart spaces built on the ubiquitous network make the services available for every entity in a seamless way using the most suitable resource provider. However, all services are not equally sensitive; hence do not require the same levels of security. In this paper, the authors propose an adaptive security scheme which handles service requests originating from heterogeneous contexts and belonging to different trust levels. The adaptive security scheme includes user classification, situational analysis and dynamic generation of appropriate security policies. The proposed security scheme can be made use to secure application built on the Ubiquitous Computing Environment (UCE) such as health care, smart office, smart ubiquitous home, etc.

유비쿼터스 컴퓨팅 환경에서 원격진단을 위한 스마트 응용의 설계

유비쿼터스 컴퓨팅 환경에서 원격진단을 위한 스마트 응용의 설계

A Service Oriented Adaptive Trust Evaluation Model for Ubiquitous Computing Environment

The increased participation of various devices and networks, involvement of heterogeneous system, and context-awareness raises a significance of trust and trust evaluation in the ubiqutioius computing environment. Consequently, the trust evaluation based on the context and service requirements is adapted to decide the applicable level of security to the offered services. Therefore, this paper presents a service-oriented adaptive trust evaluation model (SOATEM) in the ubiquitous computing network. The proposed trust evaluation model computes direct trust based on various interaction properties and recommendation trust by filtering the dishonest recommenders based on the time context. A balanced blending of direct and recommendation trust are done with trust weights to make them relevant to current application scenarios. The results are compared with some of the available schemes and found to be a consistently good in performance for the today's ubiquitous network.

Toll Fraud Detection of VoIP Service Networks in Ubiquitous Computing Environments

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is an emerging communication service that has advanced in ubiquitous computing environments. Although VoIP is inexpensive and offers additional services, there has been little provision for attacks at the weak points. With the advances of Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) technologies, the risk is increasing. Due to the resource constraints of WSN, attacks have become easier, making protection of the network more difficult. In this work, we attempt to distinguish fraud call attacks as outliers from normal calls on the basis of call detail records. We adopted and applied a Local Outlier Factor (LOF) method on real call data, which include actual fraud call attacks. Our results show the outlier detection method can be effective in detecting fraud calls. Moreover, introducing two additional attributes related to fraud call characteristics enhanced the detection performance.

RSA-DABE: A Novel Approach for Secure Health Data Sharing in Ubiquitous Computing Environment

Contemporary business models deals with gargantuan amount of data which governs the complete business body and such mammoth amount of data need to be shared among distributed entities for better productivity. In this paper we have proposed a secure data sharing model which ensures that the data remains unaltered while sharing it with other entities. Any information which is shared with other system entities gets vanished from the data owner, which makes data sharing more vulnerable in the present scenario. The proposed model incorporates the concept of assigning distributed authority which takes care of the shared information. The model adopts the distributed attribute based encryption technique to secure the data sharing process in a distributed environment and implemented against the traditional attribute based model and proved that the attribute spooling is eliminated. To enable a secure data sharing and access in a multi access ubiquitous environment, the proposed secured data sharing protocol enhances the attribute based encryption for distributed environment (DABE). The security model uses a two-folded approach for enabling secure data sharing among the parties, initially it allows the data owner to define their access policy along with their attributes then it encapsulates the attributes with the cryptographic parameters and keeps it under the control of attribute authority. As a second fold, to enhance the data interaction process within the system entities a secured channel is created using a public key crypto system. In our model, we encrypted every attribute of the user against a unique private key component, hence spooling of known attribute yields no results to the adversaries. The proposed model remains owner centric, by granting permission to the data user to determine who can access what, when and where while other traditional models fail to achieve this. The confidentiality threshold has been increased by validating the data origin and accessing entity by using robust cryptographic methodology. Our model is designed to offer low overhead and high secure platform to share the data between the data owner and accessing entities. The protocol uses a distributed approach by creating independent authorities thus increasing the system efficiency. The proposed security protocol has been tested in a ubiquitous health care environment and the results are proved to be efficient in terms of overhead, security and spooling.

A Protocol Design for Ubiquitous Object Categorization and Communication through Query Language

An autonomous and intelligent computing object that can be accessed by anything, anytime, anywhere is known as ubiquitous object. An environment in which these objects are present is known as Ubiquitous Computing environment. Advancement in computing technologies resulting in the growth of computer technologies and computer based applications; there is a demand to access information at anytime, anywhere remotely. This has resulted into the research focus towards ubiquitous computing. In ubiquitous environment a large number of objects communicate with each other. The question is how to provide a unique identification to objects in growth. This requires the design of unique protocols to establish meaningful communication between the ubiquitous objects. And it also provides the uniqueness of object identity and object categorization. In this paper protocols are designed for ubiquitous objects categorization and query language for communication of objects.

A Multipurpose Key Agreement Scheme in Ubiquitous Computing Environments

Due to the rapid advancement of cryptographic techniques, the smart card has recently become a popular device because it is capable of storing and computing essential information with such properties as tamper resistance. However, many service providers must satisfy the user’s desire to be able to access services anytime and anywhere with the smart card computing devices. Therefore, multipurpose smart cards have become very popular identification tokens. In 2011, Wang et al. proposed an authentication and key agreement scheme for smart card use. Even so, two drawbacks still exist; that is, (1) the security requirement of mutual authentication has not been satisfied and (2) the authentication scheme cannot be used for multipurpose smart cards. In this paper, we propose an efficient and secure multipurpose, authenticated, key agreement scheme in which the user is required to register only once and can be authenticated without any registration center. Furthermore, the proposed scheme can be used in ubiquitous environments because of its low computation and communication overhead.

Location Estimation for Personalization based on Received Signal Strength from AP causing the GPS Signal Attenuation in Building

Location estimation (LE) is important in Ubiquitous Computing Environments (UCE). For positioning application, Global Positioning System (GPS) and Received Signal Strength (RSS) from Access Pointer (AP) using LE is increasingly popular choice especially after pervasive adoption of IEEE 802.11 Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN). Fundamental requirement of such LE is to estimate location from RSS at a particular location. Multi-Path Fading Effects (MPFE) make RSS to fluctuate in unpredictable manner, introducing uncertainty in LE. Moreover, in practical situations, RSS values RF Signal (RFS) from AP are not available at some locations all the time making the problem more difficult. To deal with this problem, machine learning techniques have been applied so that the carried along devices can learn and make decision where they are in the building, especially. Recent machine learning techniques remain many unsolved problem such as high cost of computation, high complexity of model structures and scalability. In this paper, we will introduce a few methods which give high accuracy and overcome other methods’ disadvantages, such as Support Vector Machine (SVM), Push Pull Estimation (PPE), and Modular Multi-Layer Perceptron (MMLP) with Neural Networks (NN) using RFS from AP.

Toward a distributed architecture for context awareness in ubiquitous computing

The applications in Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp) environments must be aware of their contexts of interest and adapt to changes in them. Thus, a major research challenge in the area of UbiComp is related to context awareness. Considering the high distribution, heterogeneity, dynamism, and mobility of ubiquitous environments, this paper presents an architectural model for context awareness, called EXEHDAUC (Execution Environment for Highly Distributed Applications - Ubiquitous Context awareness). The proposal includes elements to support contextual data acquisition, actuation in the environment, and processing of contextual information. We consider that the main contribution of this work is an architecture that supports the managing of the acquisition, storage, and processing of context data, in a distributed way, independently of the application, in an autonomic and rule-based perspective. To assess the functionalities of the EXEHDA-UC, we present a case study, highlighting the prototypes developed, technologies employed, and tests carried out.Keywords: ubiquitous computing, context awareness, distributed architecture.