Ardian Greca

A sun SPOT based automatic vehicular accident notification system

Rapid and timely communication to the appropriate organization is crucial during life threatening events and is especially true for vehicular accidents which may involve crashes, rollovers leading to blasts, etc. Accidents in which a vehicle rolls over account for more than half of all single-vehicle crash deaths. An emergency system for a vehicle would detect and analyze the life threatening event, and, in an automated fashion, notify the emergency medical services (EMS) providers for immediate action. While there are few such systems available, most of them are costly, vehicle specific, requires human intervention, and do not provide information about the environmental condition of the vehicle. This prevents the EMS providers from rushing the required set of aids to the accident site at the earliest. The objective of this work is to develop a general purpose automatic emergency notification system for vehicles using various sensors that will monitor the vehicle and, in the event of a crash, automatically report all possible information (vehicle tilt, temperature, light, speed, location, date and time) to the EMS providers. The design and development although takes into consideration the United States of Americapsilas traffic and network infrastructure; the developed system is free from spatial constraints and may be used universally.

Enhancing learning success in the introductory programming course

This paper is the follow up of a work-in-progress presented at FIE 2002. The goal of the work is to implement those XP practices that contribute to rapid feedback and learning. Grading is based on student achievement. However, it is very important to ensure that a students grade is directly related to course content and the amount they have learned. In this paper we present a detailed analysis of the method used along with the assessment of the final method. We also discuss our evaluation criteria and present the results of evaluation.

On Dijkstra’s Algorithm for Deadlock Detection

We study a classical problem in operating systems concerning deadlock detection for systems with reusable resources. The elegant Dijkstra’s algorithm utilizes simple data structures, but it has the cost of quadratic dependence on the number of the processes. Our goal is to reduce the cost in an optimal way without losing the simplicity of the data structures. More specifically, we present a graph-free and almost optimal algorithm with the cost of linear dependence on the number of the processes, when the number of resources is fixed and when the units of requests for resources are bounded by constants.

Work in Progress – Integrating Student’s Research Project into the Digital Logic Design Course to Enhance Learning

Traditional methods such as exams, projects and labs can assess students understanding of concepts in a digital logic design course. However, there is still a need for innovative instructional pedagogy, so that the material presented is more coherent and learning outcomes are improved. The goal of this work is to implement a student research project that contributes to rapid feedback and a well constructed body of knowledge, thus improving learning outcomes. The project requires students to work in teams and prepare a 10-page research paper and an oral presentation on a topic on digital logic design. We also discuss some of the results that we have gathered in the last 3 years of teaching the digital logic design course

Common-Wavelengths Design Scheme for Efficient Management of Spare Resources in WDM Networks

The author addresses the problem of self-healing capability to recover from network failures for WDM optical networks. One problem in realizing such survivable WDM networks is the inefficient utilization of large spare resources (wavelengths) designed for restoration of the failed traffic, which might not happen frequently. We study “common-wavelengths” design scheme to increase the utilization efficiency of these resources. The “common-wavelength” is an approach that allows some working paths under the failure to efficiently use the available common-wavelengths in the network. The effectiveness of this proposed approach and the effect of physical and traffic connectivity are investigated via simulations. Thus, the survivable WDM networks can be cost effectively designed according to the reliability levels of all working paths in the network.

Routing Issues for IPSTN Network

The Inner Planetary Satellite Telecommunication Network (IPSTN) introduced so far faces a number of challenges in the network layer. These challenges include how the nodes will be identified inside the network as well as the routing approaches needed to be performed. The huge delay on this type of network makes it impossible to use the available conventional approaches. Thus, this paper studies issues raised for the network layer of the IPSTN architecture and its IP2X protocol. This proposed architecture will use the IPv6 addressing format which is hierarchically designed to be able to incorporate all available equipments of the network. Also, a detailed analyze follows for the routing approach to be used in the IPSTN architecture. To fit in the IP2X protocol routing is based on the hop-byhop approach. Numerical results of some computer simulations are presented to study routing strategies.

Network Survivability Management System Design for Broadband Networks

In order to improve the network management ability, an important issue is to design a network survivability management system as an independent function. This paper proposes new structure to preplan and download different response procedures for every network element at different layers, according to overall information of the network. Cooperation among different restoration techniques in different layers is performed by a hybrid escalation mechanism, which is based on the sequential activation of different restoration techniques. General rules and timing issues are also discussed in detail. The design is based on multi-agent framework and describes the cooperation methods for multi-agent system considering the characteristics of network management function