Joel J. P. C. Rodrigues

Mobile-health

Health telematics is a growing up issue that is becoming a major improvement on patient lives, especially in elderly, disabled, and chronically ill. In recent years, information and communication technologies improvements, along with mobile Internet, offering anywhere and anytime connectivity, play a key role on modern healthcare solutions. In this context, mobile health (m-Health) delivers healthcare services, overcoming geographical, temporal, and even organizational barriers. M-Health solutions address emerging problems on health services, including, the increasing number of chronic diseases related to lifestyle, high costs of existing national health services, the need to empower patients and families to self-care and handle their own healthcare, and the need to provide direct access to health services, regardless of time and place. Then, this paper presents a comprehensive review of the state of the art on m-Health services and applications. It surveys the most significant research work and presents a deep analysis of the top and novel m-Health services and applications proposed by industry. A discussion considering the European Union and United States approaches addressing the m-Health paradigm and directives already published is also considered. Open and challenging issues on emerging m-Health solutions are proposed for further works.

Methodological ReviewMobile-health: A review of current state in 2015

Health telematics is a growing up issue that is becoming a major improvement on patient lives, especially in elderly, disabled, and chronically ill. In recent years, information and communication technologies improvements, along with mobile Internet, offering anywhere and anytime connectivity, play a key role on modern healthcare solutions. In this context, mobile health (m-Health) delivers healthcare services, overcoming geographical, temporal, and even organizational barriers. M-Health solutions address emerging problems on health services, including, the increasing number of chronic diseases related to lifestyle, high costs of existing national health services, the need to empower patients and families to self-care and handle their own healthcare, and the need to provide direct access to health services, regardless of time and place. Then, this paper presents a comprehensive review of the state of the art on m-Health services and applications. It surveys the most significant research work and presents a deep analysis of the top and novel m-Health services and applications proposed by industry. A discussion considering the European Union and United States approaches addressing the m-Health paradigm and directives already published is also considered. Open and challenging issues on emerging m-Health solutions are proposed for further works.

From Delay-Tolerant Networks to Vehicular Delay-Tolerant Networks

This paper provides an introductory overview of Vehicular Delay-Tolerant Networks. First, an introduction to Delay-Tolerant Networks and Vehicular Delay-Tolerant Networks is given. Delay-Tolerant schemes and protocols can help in situations where network connectivity is sparse or with large variations in density, or even when there is no end-to-end connectivity by providing a communications solution for non real-time applications. Some special issues like routing are addressed in the paper and an introductory description of applications and the most important projects is given. Finally, some research challenges are discussed and conclusions are detailed.

GeoSpray: A geographic routing protocol for vehicular delay-tolerant networks

Vehicular networks are characterized by a highly dynamic network topology, and disruptive and intermittent connectivity. In such network environments, a complete path from source to destination does not exist on the most part of the time. Vehicular delay-tolerant network (VDTN) architecture was introduced to deal with these connectivity constraints. VDTN assumes asynchronous, bundle-oriented communication, and a store-carry-and-forward routing paradigm. A routing protocol for VDTNs should make the best use of the tight resources available in network nodes to create a multi-hop path that exists over time. This paper proposes a VDTN routing protocol, called GeoSpray, which takes routing decisions based on geographical location data, and combines a hybrid approach between multiple-copy and single-copy schemes. First, it starts with a multiple-copy scheme, spreading a limited number of bundle copies, in order to exploit alternative paths. Then, it switches to a forwarding scheme, which takes advantage of additional contact opportunities. In order to improve resources utilization, it clears delivered bundles across the network nodes. It is shown that GeoSpray improves significantly the delivery probability and reduces the delivery delay, compared to traditional location and non location-based single-copy and multiple-copy routing protocols.

Cloud Computing Applications for Smart Grid: A Survey

The fast-paced development of power systems necessitates smart grids to facilitate real-time control and monitoring with bidirectional communication and electricity flows. Future smart grids are expected to have reliable, efficient, secured, and cost-effective power management with the implementation of distributed architecture. To focus on these requirements, we provide a comprehensive survey on different cloud computing applications for the smart grid architecture, in three different areas-energy management, information management, and security. In these areas, the utility of cloud computing applications is discussed, while giving directions on future opportunities for the development of the smart grid. We also highlight different challenges existing in the conventional smart grid (without cloud application) that can be overcome using cloud. In this survey, we present a synthesized overview of the current state of research on smart grid development. We also identify the current research problems in the areas of cloud-based energy management, information management, and security in smart grid.

Review: A survey on cross-layer solutions for wireless sensor networks

Ever since wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have emerged, different optimizations have been proposed to overcome their constraints. Furthermore, the proposal of new applications for WSNs have also created new challenges to be addressed. Cross-layer approaches have proven to be the most efficient optimization techniques for these problems, since they are able to take the behavior of the protocols at each layer into consideration. Thus, this survey proposes to identify the key problems of WSNs and gather available cross-layer solutions for them that have been proposed so far, in order to provide insights on the identification of open issues and provide guidelines for future proposals.

Cloud Mobile Media: Reflections and Outlook

This paper surveys the emerging paradigm of cloud mobile media. We start with two alternative perspectives for cloud mobile media networks: an end-to-end view and a layered view. Summaries of existing research in this area are organized according to the layered service framework: i) cloud resource management and control in infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), ii) cloud-based media services in platform-as-a-service (PaaS), and iii) novel cloud-based systems and applications in software-as-a-service (SaaS). We further substantiate our proposed design principles for cloud-based mobile media using a concrete case study: a cloud-centric media platform (CCMP) developed at Nanyang Technological University. Finally, this paper concludes with an outlook of open research problems for realizing the vision of cloud-based mobile media.

A layered architecture for Vehicular Delay-Tolerant Networks

Vehicular Delay-Tolerant Network (VDTN) is a new network architecture based on the concept of Delay Tolerant Networks (DTN). It aims to be an architecture that handles non-real time applications at low cost, under unreliable conditions, enabling connectivity in diverse scenarios, using vehicles to carry data between terminal nodes. For example, it can be applied in rural and remote areas, or in emergency scenarios. This paper proposes a layered architecture for VDTNs, using out-of-band signaling, based on the separation of the control plane and data plane. It presents the layers interactions and the envisioned protocols required at each layer. The paper provides a deep understanding of the characteristics of VDTN and reveal some design issues in its modeling, leading to insights for future theoretic study and protocol design.

Review: Real-time data management on wireless sensor networks: A survey

In the recent past, search in sensor systems focused on node hardware constraints and very limited energy resources. But nowadays, that new applications need data processing with temporal constraints in their tasks; then one of the new challenges faced by wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is handling real-time storage and querying the data they process. Two main approaches to storage and querying data are generally considered warehousing and distributed. The warehousing approach stores data in a central database and then queries may be performed to it. In a distributed approach, sensor devices are considered as local databases and data are managed locally. The data collected by sensors must represent the current state of the environment; for this reason they are subject to logic and time constraints. Then, this paper identifies the main specifications of real-time data management and presents the available real-time data management solutions for WSNs, in order to discuss them and identify some open issues and provide guidelines for further contributions.

Metaheuristic Scheduling for Cloud: A Survey

Cloud computing has become an increasingly important research topic given the strong evolution and migration of many network services to such computational environment. The problem that arises is related with efficiency management and utilization of the large amounts of computing resources. This paper begins with a brief retrospect of traditional scheduling, followed by a detailed review of metaheuristic algorithms for solving the scheduling problems by placing them in a unified framework. Armed with these two technologies, this paper surveys the most recent literature about metaheuristic scheduling solutions for cloud. In addition to applications using metaheuristics, some important issues and open questions are presented for the reference of future researches on scheduling for cloud.