Antonio D. Kheirkhahzadeh

Domain-Specific XML Compression

Our compression technique is an abstraction of Packed Encoding Rules and has been implemented by the Packed objects structured data compression tool. Rather than trying to support a complex standard we instead describe a very simple technique which allows us to implement a very light-weight encoder capable of compressing structured data represented in XML. We call this work Integer Encoding Rules (IER). The technique is based on a simple mapping of data values belonging to a set of data types to a series of integer values. The data values come from XML data and the data types come from XML Schema.

Fingerprinting Seismic Activity across an Internet of Things

In this paper we will present technology designed to detect seismic events using pervasive computing. The project is focused on using low-cost open hardware in developing countries to provide an alternative more sustainable solution to the costly infrastructure used in countries such as Japan. The work involves building a network of embedded computing devices capable of forming a broadcast group across a range of different networking technologies including emerging 802.15.4-based networks. Soft- ware is been developed capable of detecting patterns of network activity which will act as an early identifier of significant seismic events across our network.

Towards a Real-Time Data Sharing System for Mobile Devices

Mobile devices are increasingly used for information sharing. The sensors embedded inside these devices are generating a range of information about their location, surrounding environment and user activities. This information can be shared with others in real-time so that it can be used or analysed instantaneously. The popularity of participatory sensing involving humans and mobile devices(phones, PDAs, tablets etc) has also fuelled the growth of large scale data management. Although the typical network bandwidth available in mobile devices has been improving it remains limited with the rise in communication activity. Therefore, data could be optimised on the device to make it more suitable for the available network bandwidth. A scalable real-time data sharing system can be built by using existing message formats, messaging architectures and compression techniques. We will look at the bandwidth limitation and scalability issue with special focus on the impact of message compression in such networks.

Towards Markup-Aware Text Compression

Although text compression can be successfully applied to markup languages, it does so without any semantic knowledge of the data types present within the markup. In this paper we illustrate how this added knowledge can be used to develop a hybrid tool which combines traditional text compression with markup-awareness to improve compression size against existing well known text compression tools. Our results show that for highly structured markup it is possible to improve the level of compression by around 20% compared to the best performing existing tool we studied. We describe the limitations of our approach and discuss potential implementation options with the overall goal being to produce a practical Unix-like tool.

XML-compression techniques for efficient network management

XML has become a standard widely used in wireless networking technologies to improve flexibility and interoperability between heterogeneous applications. However, applying this technology to areas such as network management across a wireless embedded internet can pose significant challenges due to the verbosity of XML. A number of compression techniques and tools have been applied to this problem to help transform highly-structured data into a more compact form. Despite this choice, there is a lack of support for tools which are optimised for embedded computing. In this paper we will show the performance trade-offs that exist when compression is applied using different techniques. Furthermore, we will describe a tool which has been specially designed to be used within the domain of network management within a constrained environment.

Comparison of Messaging Protocols for Emerging Wireless Networks

In this paper we will compare messaging protocols that are suitable for wireless sensor networks. We will discuss different messaging architectures provided by the protocols. The messaging protocol needs to send large amount of structured data with bandwidth limitation in sensor networks. Although processing power of embedded devices on such network is in- creasing it needs to be considered as well. We examine messaging architecture and size of overhead per message used by the protocols.

A sustainable information kiosk driven by sound

In this paper we describe nibble.io, an offline information kiosk that has been designed for deployment within the rural communities of developing countries. We show how a pervasive technology such as sound can be used as a method of interaction between low-end feature phones and information kiosks built using standard PC monitors. By connecting an embedded computer to a monitor we show how we are able to create an interactive experience driven by the users phone using a variety of interfaces ranging from music players to web browsers.

Energy consumption trade-offs for XML compression on embedded devices

Wireless data transmission over sensor networks is known to consume a significant share of energy compared to data computation on the device itself. Thus data compression techniques have been used to reduce the data size at the cost of extra processing time on the device. This paper investigates the energy consumption trade-off of XML compression and data communication on embedded devices with low-bandwidth network.

Teaching Networking Fundamentals with Sound

There have been significant levels of research into how to use technology to teach programming principles. However, there has been less research to show how technology can be used to help teach network fundamentals in a creative way. Instead, simulation has been widely adopted as the main software tool when teaching networking concepts. In this paper we examine a more applied approach to help students gain some knowledge of fundamental concepts in networking such as bandwidth, throughput and latency. We achieved this by designing a tool to support the transmission of data over sound and examined its use on a group (n=20) of networking students.

The application of Domain-specific languages within distributed computing

During the last decade scientists have developed earthquake early warning systems EEWS with the intent of alerting citizens of seismic events. The technology is based on the fact that warning signals travels faster than seismic waves. Current EEWS however rely on expensive equipment which are not feasible to deploy in developing countries. This project describes the development of a system based on a more open and low-cost solution. In this scenario the project will focus on the application of Domain-specific languages DSLs to orchestrate different aspects of the system. The DSL will be used to filter, store and share data over the network as well improve the functionality. This will enhance the software to allow an easier understanding of the domain problem and therefore making it faster to write, debug and maintain.