India-UK Advanced Technology Centre (IU-ATC) of Excellence in Next Generation Networks Systems and Services

Lead Research Organisation: Queen Mary University of London
Department Name: Sch of Electronic Eng & Computer Science

Abstract

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Description Theme 3 focused on Seamless Mobility and Provisioning of Emergency Services (SeMPES). The project investigated and developed novel solutions for integrated access, adaptable service delivery, and alternative infrastructure and management solutions to support communication to and from citizens and emergency personnel, though a rapidly deployable communication system. The theme took into account the different challenges that UK and India face in providing next generation communication systems and the hugely variable communication coverage. The top key findings arising from the project are:

1. QMUL: A Delay Tolerant Network (DTN) test bed for emergency situations was implemented providing real node discovery and fully automated selection of wireless medium for transmission. The show case used real equipments (laptops and mobile phones) communicating in a DTN ad hoc fashion in different networks. Nokia N-810, Android phones and laptops were used to communicate via Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. The adaptive service provision implemented allowed civilians and rescue teams to communicate and exchange texts, images, and voice.

2. QMUL: Energy efficiency investigation for DTN mobile app: The effects of multiple radio access, routing algorithm and application activity on energy efficiency were investigated, the energy efficiency and the message delivery performance based on the collected data from test mobile phones were analysed to reduce battery drainage of the mobile devices and hence extend operational lifetime.

3. QMUL: Location estimation with cluster in emergency situation using intersection method for outdoor environment: The improved intersection method is present to find the most likely intersection area of the more than three base stations (BSs) circles in geographical spaces to compute user's location and compared with the common existing localization approaches.

4. QMUL: A signal strength based media access scheme for OFDMA based mobile ad hoc networks was extended. It can distribute allocate sub-channels among mobile users to avoid co-channel interference and reduce the signalling overhead. Based on the proposed media access scheme, a QoS on demand routing protocol has been proposed to provide a cross layer solution for concurrent transmissions to further improve the system throughput. To make the proposed cross layer routing protocol more feasible, a null subcarrier based frequency and partial time synchronization scheme is proposed to support implementing OFDMA in mobile ad hoc networks.

5. Infosys: A Proxy-based Fast Pre-Authentication Protocol has been designed based on EAP-TLS. The method enhances existing EAP-TLS based pre-authentication scheme to deliver improved and consistent performance (in terms of handoff latency) even under extreme congestion conditions A patent for the fast pre-authentication protocol has been filed.

6. CEWiT: Context-aware, Policy-Driven Service Adaptation Framework: The key outcome is a model to enable intelligent adaptation of content based on inputs from different contexts - network, device and user. Even if the handover is seamless, when switching from one type of access to another, there is no guarantee that the same Quality of Service (QoS) can be provided to the user. It is important to ensure that the degradation in service experienced by the user is managed gracefully and an acceptable quality of service (QoS) perceived by a user is sustained. A patent was filed for the content adaptation platform developed in the project.
Exploitation Route The Android application and server implemented in the content adaptation platform has been used for the National Program for Technology-Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) in India. As part of NPTEL, the Indian Institutes of Technology provide video recording of lectures to students in two formats (one with high transmission rate and the other with a low transmission rate). However, the students must choose the format. With the content adaptation platform an automated content adaptation is performed on the fly that adapts the quality and transmission rate of the video depending on the user device and access network the user (student) is at that moment.

The real emergency DTN can be used in many different emergency situations where infrastructure communications (Cellular telephony or Wi-Fi) are temporary or permanently unavailable.

Dr John Bigham performed consultancy in Message Oriented Middleware (June 2011) for IP Group plc in the city of London on the future of message oriented middleware and investment in particular middleware software.
The rapidly deployable communication system for emergencies: to develop a generic out-of the box solution for similar circumstances in a mountain area. Consultation and collaborative development with the immediate community of the area could be sought to allow the use of the smart phones in emergencies. This could be extended to local government as well as district and local stakeholders with a view to future development of a generic template.

The content adaptation platform: to be used for the National Program for Technology-Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) in India, allowing automated content adaptation on the fly that adapts the quality and transmission rate of the video depending on the user device and access network the student is at that moment.
Sectors Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software)
URL http://www.iu-atc.com/
 
Description Top five impact highlights arising from the project 1.Infosys: A Proxy-based Fast Pre-Authentication Protocol has been designed based on EAP-TLS (Figure 1). A patent for the fast pre-authentication protocol has been filed. 2.QMUL: DTN test bed for emergency situations providing real node discovery and fully automated selection of wireless medium for transmission. The show case uses real equipments (laptops and mobile phones) communicating in a DTN ad hoc fashion in different networks. Nokia N-810, Android phones and laptops were used to communicate via Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. The adaptive service provision implemented allows civilian and rescue teams to communicate in this ad hoc fashion and they can exchange texts, images, and voice. 3.QMUL: Dr John Bigham was Invited by a large music festival organiser to undertake a pilot validation with our location estimation software at one of their events (September 2011). 4.QMUL team performed consultancy in Message Oriented Middleware for IP Group plc in the city of London on the future of message oriented middleware and investment in particular middleware software. 5.CEWiT: A patent was filed for the content adaptation platform. . Beneficiaries: Training of PhD students, skill progression of researchers, students in India with adapted online lectures.
First Year Of Impact 2011
Sector Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software)
Impact Types Cultural
 
Description "Queen Mary, University of London"
Amount £21,650 (GBP)
Funding ID GPF 12-126 
Organisation Queen Mary University of London 
Sector Academic/University
Country United Kingdom
Start 04/2012 
End 12/2012
 
Description RCs
Amount £340,297 (GBP)
Funding ID EP/J016691/1 
Organisation Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) 
Sector Public
Country United Kingdom
Start 05/2012 
End 12/2014
 
Description Research work in user and data protection systems 
Organisation BT Group
Department BT Research
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Private 
PI Contribution From the meetings and work with BT during IUATC phases 1 and 2, a collaboration emerged with the security group in BT, QMUL team developed also research work in user and data protection systems. A fully funded QMUL student (QMUL scholarship) received co-supervision from Dr Theo Dimitrakos (BT) and had an internship in BT. The outcomes of this research were: A PhD thesis that articulates the property of specialisation in adaptive software systems and propose a novel methodological framework for the realisation of policy-driven adaptive systems capable of specialisation via adaptive policy transformation. Furthermore, this thesis proposes three distinctive novel protection mechanisms, all three mechanisms exhibit adaptation via specialisation, but each one presenting its own research novelty in its respective field. They are: 1. A Secure Execution Context Enforcement based on Activity Detection; 2. Privacy and Security Requirements Enforcement Framework in Internet-Centric Services; 3. A Context-Aware Multifactor Authentication Scheme Based On Dynamic Pin. The other outcomes related to this work are three research publications, and three patents (which belongs to BT) along with the awarded PhD degree (Mr Yair Diaz-Tellez) in QMUL.
Collaborator Contribution Co-supervision of the research, payment of internship to student, payment of travel expenses for conferences.
Impact Three research publications, and three patents (which belongs to BT) along with the awarded PhD degree (Mr Yair Diaz-Tellez) in QMUL.
Start Year 2011