Md. Abdur Rahman

Wireless Sensor Network Transport Layer: State of the Art

This chapter describes the essence of a generic transport layer of a Multi-hop Wireless Sensor Network (WSN). The transport layer of the Internet handles the congestion generated due to the network traffic and the end-to-end reliability of individual packets. Similar to the Internet, many WSN applications require a congestion control mechanism to regulate the amount of traffic injected within the WSN to avoid packet loss and to guarantee end-to-end reliable packet/event delivery. WSN researchers thus argue the presence of a transport layer for WSN similar to the Internet. Because of the resource constraint nature of sensor devices, researchers however admit that an Internet-scale transport layer will indeed be a matter of challenge. Literature reveals detailed analysis of the requirements and constraints of a WSN transport layer. The advancements in microprocessor technology, high speed and large memories, high speed networks, Ultra Wide Band frequency spectrums, very efficient sensor network Operating Systems and miniaturization of many heterogeneous sensor devices, to name a few, have led to the development of many transport layer protocols. This chapter addresses the unique characteristics of a WSN transport layer, classifies the attributes that characterize different functionalities offered by a transport layer, presents the most popular transport layer protocols based on the attributes found in each protocol, and finally, points out open research issues of this domain, which need further attention to overcome the aforementioned challenges.

Ant colony-based many-to-one sensory data routing in Wireless Sensor Networks

An ant colony-based routing protocol is presented in this paper that is specifically designed to route many-to-one sensory data in a multi-hop wireless sensor network (WSN). Because a many-to-one routing paradigm generates lots of traffic in a multi- hop WSN resulting in greater energy wastage, higher end-to-end delay and packet loss, the proposed routing protocol also comes with a lightweight congestion control mechanism, which is capable of handling both event-based and periodic upstream sensory data flow to the base station. The proposed protocol works in two-phases. During the first phase, the protocol uses ant-based intelligence to find and enforce the shortest path and in the second phase, when the actual many- to-one sensory data transmission takes place, the protocol combines the knowledge gained during the first phase with the congestion control mechanism to avoid packet loss and traffic while routing the sensory data. When compared with the related algorithms, the proposed algorithm shows promising results.

Adding haptic feature to YouTube

In this paper, we present a web-based framework in which users can annotate tactile feeling to a YouTube video and experience the tactile feeling by wearing a tactile device while watching\annotating the video. The tactile device is embedded into a wearable garment, a haptic jacket and a haptic arm band in this paper, and has a rectangular layout like a video screen. Therefore, the tactile information is represented as a sequence of rectangular arrays with time stamps and stored in XML format. Each element of the array represents a tactile intensity, a magnitude of actuation. In the framework we provide a web-based authoring tool to add tactile feeling while navigating a video and setting tactile intensity in a time line. We also introduce a web browser in which a tactile device driver is embedded to activate the tactile device based on the annotated tactile information.

Cyberphysical cloud-oriented multi-sensory smart home framework for elderly people

The emerging CyberPhysical Systems (CPSs) provide a number of services ranging from smart homes to elderly care. With a CPS, a users (elderly persons) interactions with smart home appliances are sensed, collected, and shared in physical spaces. This interaction is then delivered to cyberspaces for processing in order to monitor energy efficiency. In this paper, we propose an energy-efficient cyberphysical smart home system for monitoring the elderly that uses the potential of cloud computing and big data technologies. Given that an elderly person may need assistance with the complex activities of maintaining energy efficiency, a smart multimedia-enabled middleware assistant is proposed that enables him/her to observe different energy-efficient processes, control smart home appliances through gestures, receive notifications regarding appliance statuses, and share multimedia messages with a community of interest. For data processing, robust and low-dimensional discriminative features are extracted in a server from the data available via sensors and multimedia. Events are also automatically classified in the server to assist caregiver decision-making. To save energy, an automatic switch on/off control system using speech or gesture is developed. Keywords are detected from the speech and used as control commands. Experimental results show the encouraging potential of deploying this framework at a large scale. Our energy-efficient cyberphysical smart home system can efficiently monitor the elderly people.Smart home event detection using multi-sensory environment to assist the caregiver for making decisions.An automatic control system using speech or gesture is developed to save energy.We adopted an energy-aware cloud-based framework for load balancing.Low-dimensional discriminative features are extracted from the multimedia sensors.

SENORA: A P2P Service-Oriented Framework for Collaborative Multirobot Sensor Networks

SENORA is an open hardware and software architecture for the cooperative coordination of multiple heterogeneous mobile robots operating in a common environment. It is designed to meet the stringent requirements of modern loosely coupled multirobot architectures, such as flexibility, reliability, and fault tolerance. As such, the proposed architecture enables the robots to cope with the ubiquitous presence of various types of uncertainties in their operating environments. SENORA is a fully autonomous and scalable sensory-based peer-to-peer (P2P) framework. It also offers a real-time inter-robot communication protocol and it is based on the state-of-the-art P2P technology, which is specifically designed to satisfy the requirements of physical sensory data publishing and fusion. This architecture is implemented and evaluated on a team of indoor mobile robots. The test results manifest the architectures distinguished features and capabilities

Modeling therapy rehabilitation sessions using non-invasive serious games

The use of non-invasive methods for detecting motion of the human body in three dimensions has become very popular in recent years due to commercial availability of economically priced 3D sensors. In this paper, we present a web-based interactive serious game interface that uses noninvasive methods to recognize the movements of the body. Our framework provides a mechanism that can engage disabled children in playing serious games while tracking, in the background, their movements in the 3D axes. Motion data of the subjects is collected through multiple sensors in a noninvasive manner. This information can be displayed on screen in a live manner or recorded for offline replaying and data analysis. The system incorporates an intelligent authoring tool that allows the therapist to design a therapy and assign it to a patient. The subject as well as other members of the Community of Interest such as therapists, parents and caregivers can view the results at any time and thus could follow up with patients progress.

Data visualization: From body sensor network to social networks

Sensors can capture very sensitive and valuable information without human intervention and send it to remote location. However, capturing sensory data from a Body Sensor Network (BSN) and sending it to social networks is a challenging task. This is because it requires a number of distributed networks to work together seamlessly. The task becomes more challenging when both the BSN and the social networks are mobile. It requires a framework which can handle the mobility of both the BSN and members of social networks and can send the sensory data to the social networks for real-time visualization. In this paper, we propose an open source framework, named SenseFace, which seamlessly incorporates a four-tier network including a BSN, cellular network, Internet and an overlay network consisting of social networks, to pass sensory data from a mobile BSN to the overlay network. The overlay network can intelligently manage ones social network and produce different data visualization formats suitable for email, fax, voicemail, SMS, MMS, APRS network, IM networks such as hotmail, gmail, yahoo, and existing social networks such as Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, delicious, Wordpress etc. Finally, we present the framework design and the hardware and software that have been used for the implementation of the framework.

Multimedia environment toward analyzing and visualizing live kinematic data for children with Hemiplegia

In this paper we propose a multimedia environment that can capture kinematic data from live gestures of a child having Hemiplegia disability and generate live analytical results as part of decision making system of a therapist. The kinematic data is obtained from clinically suggested therapy modules that are used to monitor quality of improvement of a disabled child, which includes exercises involving the affected joints and muscles. The methodology proposed is non-invasive as the child does not need to wear any external devices in the body. The multimedia environment incorporates Second Life serious game environment coupled with Microsoft Kinect where the live therapeutic movement of child, and therapist is synchronized between physical and virtual world. Our preliminary test results are validated by the therapists from three different disability hospitals that treat children with Hemiplegia, which is presented in this paper.

Context-aware social networks mashup: A personalized web perspective

Web2.0 has ushered a new era of Internet where social networks offer numerous services that can be consumed in a ubiquitous manner. In this paper, we introduce a context-aware social network framework that can dynamically mashup a persons social networks. The context-awareness is realized by combining a novel real estate based layout management system and sensory data coming from ones body sensor network and the ambient environment. We finally present the design and architecture of the proposed system and the preliminary test results.

An ambient intelligent body sensor network for e-Health applications

Body sensor network (BSN) has played a key role in the rapid advancement of e-Health applications. If it is properly designed, a BSN can act as an ambient intelligent environment by providing us not only time critical human body information but also the context and events mapped with raw sensory data. In this paper, we propose the design of a BSN, which offers two features 1) capability of pushing sensory data and events from ones BSN, and ambient information from surrounding environment to a remote healthcare center and 2) facility of remotely querying any sensory data from ones BSN even if he is at home or outside. As a proof of concept, we created a testbed which can interact with the BSN in both communication ways. Finally, we present some preliminary test results that show the viability of the system.