Alexandra Rivero-García

Implementation and Analysis of Real-Time Streaming Protocols

Communication media have become the primary way of interaction thanks to the discovery and innovation of many new technologies. One of the most widely used communication systems today is video streaming, which is constantly evolving. Such communications are a good alternative to face-to-face meetings, and are therefore very useful for coping with many problems caused by distance. However, they suffer from different issues such as bandwidth limitation, network congestion, energy efficiency, cost, reliability and connectivity. Hence, the quality of service and the quality of experience are considered the two most important issues for this type of communication. This work presents a complete comparative study of two of the most used protocols of video streaming, Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP) and the Web Real-Time Communication (WebRTC). In addition, this paper proposes two new mobile applications that implement those protocols in Android whose objective is to know how they are influenced by the aspects that most affect the streaming quality of service, which are the connection establishment time and the stream reception time. The new video streaming applications are also compared with the most popular video streaming applications for Android, and the experimental results of the analysis show that the developed WebRTC implementation improves the performance of the most popular video streaming applications with respect to the stream packet delay.

Patients' Data Management System Protected by Identity-Based Authentication and Key Exchange

A secure and distributed framework for the management of patients’ information in emergency and hospitalization services is proposed here in order to seek improvements in efficiency and security in this important area. In particular, confidentiality protection, mutual authentication, and automatic identification of patients are provided. The proposed system is based on two types of devices: Near Field Communication (NFC) wristbands assigned to patients, and mobile devices assigned to medical staff. Two other main elements of the system are an intermediate server to manage the involved data, and a second server with a private key generator to define the information required to protect communications. An identity-based authentication and key exchange scheme is essential to provide confidential communication and mutual authentication between the medical staff and the private key generator through an intermediate server. The identification of patients is carried out through a keyed-hash message authentication code. Thanks to the combination of the aforementioned tools, a secure alternative mobile health (mHealth) scheme for managing patients’ data is defined for emergency and hospitalization services. Different parts of the proposed system have been implemented, including mobile application, intermediate server, private key generator and communication channels. Apart from that, several simulations have been performed, and, compared with the current system, significant improvements in efficiency have been observed.

VANET Event Verification Based on User Trust

The main objective of this paper is to present a real-time system to improve road safety through the use of event alerts. A collaborative community where users can share traffic warnings to help other users is here proposed. The method is based both on the verification votes of the users, and on their profiles and trust levels. Each user is assigned a trust level depending on its previous behavior. The proposal is based on the assumption that the system will be run in every driver mobile device. Thus, smartphones are the connectors between users and the community, using the cloud, and between the system and the users, using audio notifications.

Distributed Communication System for Emergencies

Nowadays, most communications are centralized. In emergency or catastrophic situations, this could be a problem because common communication infrastructures could collapse or become unavailable. This is exactly the case of mobile communications because they depend on network infrastructures that can fail due to natural disasters, terrorist attacks or huge people agglomerations. This work proposes a secure distributed communication system based on cooperative peer to peer communications through the Wi-Fi Direct technology to solve this problem. A beta version of the system is already implemented in the Android platform and the obtained results are promising.

Real-Time Streaming: A Comparative Study Between RTSP and WebRTC

This work presents a comparative study between two of the most used streaming protocols, RTSP and WebRTC. It describes a system designed to evaluate times at live streaming: establishment time and stream reception time from a single source to a large quantity of receivers with the use of smartphones. Two systems that use the commented protocols have been implemented, specifically, two Android applications that use these protocols in the scope of video surveillance at airports. Both systems are composed of a mobile application and a web service. The design of the systems has been done avoiding differences between these protocols for P2P communication in the same local network. Several simulations have been performed to compare them and the obtained results have been used for a comparative study between streaming establishment and sending package times of each protocol.

Decentralized Authentication for Opportunistic Communications in Disaster Situations

This work presents a new secure system for deploying opportunistic communications for emergency management after any disaster in which network infrastructures have become collapsed or unavailable. This proposal uses different wireless technologies such as Bluetooth Low Energy, Wi-Fi Direct and LTE Direct to enable device-to-device communications between users through their smartphones. In this way, the system allows the deployment of decentralized communications in fragmented scenarios, what is essential for disaster relief applications. The general procedure of the proposed system is based on the use of chat rooms with possibility of real-time streaming. Two different types of chat rooms are defined: public chat rooms with open access for all registered and authenticated users, and private chat rooms that can be used by different authorized groups of people. The permissions required to use different chat room are established thanks to the use of a decentralized authentication scheme based on public keys and certificate graphs, where different trust levels can be applied. The proposed scheme includes also a decision protocol to choose the most appropriate communication technology in every moment, and a power saving protocol that minimizes the impact of the system on the device’s battery consumption. The first results of field experiments made with a beta application developed for Android smartphones are promising.

Secure System Communication to Emergencies for Victims Management Through Identity Based Signcryption Scheme

In this proposal an optimized system designed to help the greatest number of injured people in emergency situations is described, using the shortest possible time and cost. It is composed of a mobile application (assigned to medical staff and helpers), a web service and Near Field Communication wristbands assigned to victims. The mobile application is devoted to providing medical staff with the geolocation of victims as well as with an assistant indicating the best route to follow in order to take care of them based on the severity of their conditions and based on a triage method. Resolution of the routes is solved based on a classical problem, a Travelling Salesman Problem, using a k-partition algorithm to divide the huge number of victims in different clusters. Thus, each doctor has a specific area to assist victims. Besides, doctors can use a functionality of the application to contact their peers through a chat when additional help is needed. An IDentity-Based Signcryption is used for communication confidentiality, authenticity and integrity, both among peers, and between server and medical staff.

IBSC System for Victims Management in Emergency Scenarios.

This work describes an optimized system designed to help the greatest number of injured people in emergency situations, using the shortest possible time and cost. It is composed of a mobile application (assigned to medical staff and helpers), a web service and Near Field Communication wristbands assigned to victims. The mobile application is devoted to providing medical staff with the geolocation of victims as well as with an assistant indicating the best route to follow in order to take care of them based on the severity of their conditions and based on a triage method. Resolution of the routes is solved based on a classical problem, a Travelling Salesman Problem, using a k-parition algorithm to divide the huge number of victims in different clusters. Thus, each doctor has a specific area to assist victims. Besides, doctors can use a functionality of the application to contact their peers through a video call when additional help is needed. The proposal combines an keyed-Hash Message Authentication Code scheme to protect Near Field Communication tags and an IDentity-Based Cryptosystem to the wireless communication. Specifically an IDentity-Based Signcryption is used for communication confidentiality, authenticity and integrity, both among peers, and between server

A Comparative Study for Real-Time Streaming Protocols Implementations

The airports security and protection model involves using different resources to ensure its infrastructure. The most used are equipment for the inspection of persons and luggage, closed circuit television cameras throughout the airport, anti-intrusion systems and, detection and recording systems. However, all these resources imply a high cost that not all airports can afford.

A Secure Mobile Platform for Intelligent Transportation Systems

The number of vehicles around the world has increased a lot during the last decades and will continue to grow in the next years. This factor is closely related to the increase of air pollution, traffic congestion and road non-safety. Due to this, the automotive industry and research entities have put lots of efforts in exploring the potential of the Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). These efforts have been focused on trying to add ITS systems to the new cars of the future. The present work describes a proposal for taking advantage of ITS possibilities using the vehicles that are nowadays on our roads. In particular, the described platform is mainly based on smartphones, but also on sensors and servers. The proposal is based on a hybrid scheme that combines an online mode using the Internet access of the smartphone, with an offline mode using wireless technologies such as WiFi Direct and Bluetooth Low Energy to define various ITS applications related with traffic collisions, violations, jams, signs and lights, and parking management. The described system has been developed for the Android platform, producing promising results.