Chin-Ming Hsu

A Student-Oriented Class-Course Timetabling Model with the Capabilities of Making Good Use of Student Time, Saving College Budgets and Sharing Departmental Resources Effectively

This paper proposes a student-oriented class-course timetabling model to make good use of student time, save college budgets, and share departmental resources effectively. To achieve these goals, the study proposes a heuristic driven process coupled with two fitness functions to satisfy students’ needs for taking or retaking certain courses without delaying their graduation; the proposed method balances class sizes to decrease the number of elective courses opened to the students; and the research formulates the allocating rules for utilizing the classrooms and the laboratories to ensure that the resources can be shared effectively. From the experimental results, the minimum and maximum average satisfaction for all students’ needs is 0.8 and 0.9, respectively, where the lowest score is 0.7 and the highest score is 1. These results show that the difference of each student’s satisfaction is small and students’ expectations on taking specific subjects can be satisfied as nearly as possible.

A Heuristic Based Class-Faculty Assigning Model with the Capabilities of Increasing Teaching Quality and Sharing Resources Effectively

This paper proposes a class-faculty assigning model to increase teaching quality and share resources effectively. To increase teaching quality, both faculty and classes are classified into different groups based on teachers’ specialties and courses’ attributes. The classified data are processed by a heuristic driven process and two fitness functions. To share resources effectively, the allocating rules for using the classrooms and laboratories are formulated based on the attributes of courses and availabilities of the resources. From the experimental results, there are about 90% of 168 courses assigned to the specific professional teacher. The minimum and maximum average satisfaction for all teachers is 0.9 and 0.95, respectively, where the lowest score is 0.7 and the highest score is 1. These results show that the difference of each teacher’s satisfaction is small; the courses can be assigned to a specific professional teacher; and teachers’ expectations on specific teaching subjects can be satisfied as nearly as possible.

An Autonomous Mobile Robot System for Advanced Microcontroller Education

This paper introduces an autonomous mobile robot (AMR) system to enhance students’ project planning, designing, and implementing capabilities while taking the advanced microcontroller course. The AMR system includes three parts of interface circuitries: the main I/O controls, parallel I/O extensions, and serial I/O extensions. In the circuitries of the main I/O controls, an AT89S51 single chip is used as the major controller to trigger LEDs, switches, voice, and RS232 controls; the interface circuitries of the parallel I/O extensions consist of LCM display, keyboard, and optical sensors; as for the serial I/O extensions, 7-segment display, A/D converter, DC motors’ drivers, and memory controls are included. According to the students’ feedbacks, introducing the ARM system in the advanced microcontroller course can attract more students interesting in designing the microcontroller-based applications and influence them in preparation for the senior laboratory project.

A Two-Stage Heuristic Based Class-Course-Faculty Assigning Model for Increasing Department-Education Performance

This study proposes a two-stage class-course-faculty assigning model to increase the overall department- education performance. In this paper, both faculty and classes are classified into different groups based on teachers’ specialties and courses’ attributes; the allocating rules for using the classrooms and laboratories are formulated based on the attributes of the courses and the availabilities of the resources; and the class sizes are balanced and merged to decrease the number of elective courses opened to the students. The classified data and organized rules are processed by a heuristic driven process and two fitness functions. Conclusively, the proposed approach provides the advantages of enhancing teaching quality, making good use of student time, saving college budgets, and sharing departmental resources effectively. From the experimental results, there are about 90% of 168 courses assigned to the specific professional teacher. The teachers’ and students’ expectations on teaching specific subjects and taking certain courses can be satisfied as nearly as possible.

Constructing µ-Controller Teaching Tool with the Integration of Hardware and Software Technology

This paper constructs a set of 89S51 μ-controller teaching tool for students to learn the knowledge of μ-controller system designing and debugging techniques. The constructed teaching tool includes four parts: software simulating tool, flash downloading tool, basic I/O control board, and remote controlled vehicle system. The software simulating tool is used to compile, link, and debug programming codes. The flash downloading tool is used to download the codes into 89S51 μ-controller chip. The basic I/O control board is used to run fundamental I/O control experiments. The remote controlled vehicle system is used to clarify the system design methodology using 89S51 μ-controller. Some investigations and evaluations have been done when the students finished the course. Conclusively, the results indicate that applying the constructed teaching tool in the μ-controller course has had very favorable feedbacks from the students. The proposed tool can attract more students interesting in designing μ-controller-based systems and influence them in preparation for their senior laboratory project.

A group digital signature technique for authentication

A group digital signature technique using a digital signature algorithm and a challenge-response identification protocol is proposed to provide effective authentication. The proposed digital signature algorithm is based on solving quadratic congruence, factorization, and discrete logarithm problems. Based on the public key infrastructure, group members generate their public-private keys first. The designed authority generates the group members identity code (ID), the group identity mark, and the group secret key. Every group member keeps his/her private key and the ID for signing. These parameters can ensure only members who can make signatures and provide data authenticity and nonrepudiation for any signer. The challenge-response identification protocol with overlapping-shifting-EXOR logical operations is proposed to ensure the signer to obtain group secret key securely and prevent any signer from making false claims. According to the security analysis, the processing time of the proposed approach is faster than the existing RSA and ElGamal group digital signature systems. Moreover, the proposed method would be suited to microprocessor-based devices such as smart cards, computer systems, networks and control systems because of its simplicity, confidentiality, and fast processing speed.

An online fraud-resistant technology for credit card E-transactions

This study proposes an online fraud-resistant technology for credit card e-transactions, which provides three characteristics: cardholder-driven identification, merchant-driven verification, and issuer-driven authorization. This paper also presents the resistant capability of credit card frauds against online e-transactions as well as the security analysis and the computational cost of the method proposed. Conclusively, the proposed method can increase the fraud-resistant capability with less computational cost and can be compatible with the current mechanisms such as the secure socket layer (SSL) and the secure electronic transaction (SET) used to secure online e- commerce transactions.

Multi-infusion Timing Controller with User-Friendly Interface for Loose Leaf Tea Brewing Service

This study proposes a multi-infusion timing controller with user friendly interface for loose leaf tea brewing service. The proposed timing controller uses AT89S51 programmable microcontroller to detect the input signals and trigger the corresponding outputs. The input signals come from a power switch for turning the controller on/off, three push buttons for setting the brewing time, and two other push buttons for controlling initial/extra brewing time setting and start/stop timing. The corresponding outputs include a power LED for indicating whether the controller is working or nonworking, a buzzer for reminding the completion of timing, and three 7 segments for displaying the remaining time. Conclusively, the proposed microcontroller-based tea brewing service device can remind users remembering pour the water out timely, allow users to adjust brewing time based on personal favorite tastes, and allow users to make multi-rounds of tea infusion time for each individual setting. Therefore, the tea quality can be self-guaranteed.

Intelligent Laboratory Resource Supply Chain Conceptual Network Model with Process and Information Integration, Visibility and Flexibility

This paper proposes a web-based laboratory resource supply chain conceptual model for an educational institution to increase the process and information integration, visibility and flexibility. The proposed model utilizes a reasoning engine with fuzzy, parallel fuzzy rules, and de-fuzzy processes to decide the optimal purchase ordering quantity and the best constant stocks in the laboratory. The fuzzy takes the crisp input data through the characteristic function and maps the input data into its corresponding membership degree. The fuzzy rules are processed with different degree of membership and all rules in the system are processed before triggering an action. The de-fuzzy takes each items purchase ordering degree of membership through the singleton output membership function and generates corresponding crisp data. The model allows users keying in their required experimental materials via the Web Site, uses the database management system to integrate all related information, and applies the fuzzy reasoning engine to generate the final purchase order reports to support the executor making the optimal decisions.

Securing Computerized Personal Data during Transit and at Rest Using Programmable System on Chip (PSoC) Technology

This study proposes a programmable system-on-chip (PSoC) based technology to prevent unauthorized users from abusing or disclosing computerized personal identification data (PID) during transit and at rest. The hardware of the PSoC based cipher/decipher is built by an MCS-51 based programmable microcontroller and an EPF10K based FPGA device. The programmable microcontroller is used to program the encryption/ decryption codes. A part of a stream cipher’s simple logical operations, including segmentation, XOR, and rotation, is implemented in the FPGA device. Coupled with Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) protocol, the study prevents invaders from revealing their PID transmitted on the Internet. From the experimental results, the design of FPGA hardware is of low hardware cost and low design complexity. The software of PSoC based cipher/decipher using 8-bit instruction length allows better code density, thereby decreasing software complexity.