Zaini Jamaludin

Trace Analyzer for NS-2

Network simulator 2 (NS-2) is an open source discrete event simulation tool used for simulating Internet protocol (IP) networks. It was developed by UC Berkeley and widely used worldwide for network simulation purposes. The NS-2 software uses TCL as a front-end interpreter and C++ as the back end network simulation engine. Network simulation scripts in TCL are used to create the network scenarios and upon the completion of the simulation, trace files that capture events occurring in the network are produced. The trace files would capture information that could be used in performance study, e.g. the amount of packets transferred from source to destination, the delay in packets, packet loss etc. However, the trace file is just a block of ASCII data in a file and quite cumbersome to access using some form of post processing technique. In order to ease the process of extracting data for performance study, the NS-2 trace analyzer is proposed. This software is a tool for extracting and presenting trace files for the network simulation environment of NS-2. The NS-2 trace analyzer software consists of three layers. The first layer is the source layer which consists of the trace file data. The second layer is the processing layer. This layer processes the data obtain from the source and convert it to meaningful format for the third layer. The third layer is the presentation layer. This layer presents meaningful data in the form of graph, table and report for network performance study, i.e. throughput, end-to-end delay, packet loss and jitter. Through the NS-2 trace analyzer the user would be able to do performance study of a network scenario through interactive GUI. This will benefit the user since he or she can concentrate on developing new algorithms or new architectures rather spending too much time on post processing of data.

Live Monitoring System for Ethernet Passive Optical Network health using Fiber Bragg Grating

This paper presented a Live Monitoring System (LMS) for Ethernet Passive Optical Network (EPON) condition. Fiber Bragg Gratings (FBG) with different center frequencies is used as the monitoring devices. Different bit rates, of 2.5 Gbps and 10 Gbps are used as transmission speed. The performance of downstream signal with the monitoring signal propagating in the same fiber is observed. The simulation result shows that the performance of EPON system with 8 users is in acceptable range where transmission distance at bit error rate (BER) 10-9 is 47 km for 2.5 Gbps and 27 km for 10 Gbps system.

Development of wireless controller area network using low cost and low power consumption ARM microcontroller for solar car application

In this paper, a wireless controller area network (CAN) was developed using low cost microcontroller. The system is low cost and low power consumption for CAN application in order to receive data such as velocity, temperature and batteries power from Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT). A programming was written for the microcontroller to receive data from MPPT and sent it out through wireless transceiver for a chase car to determine whether the solar car is in the optimum condition. However the microcontroller receives data at a baud rate of 1Mbps need to down rates to 9600bps due the maximum limitation of the wireless transceiver. This may cause losses of data during transmission and as such an interval is introduced between CAN messages by using interrupt function.

Stability of erbium-doped fiber laser for high pressure measurement: Ring vs linear cavity

The application of optical fiber sensor in fields such as heavy industries has to greater extent become very important as the optical sensors is immune to EMI. This paper presented a stable high pressure sensor using an erbium-doped fiber laser (EDFL). The pressure sensor head is made of fiber Bragg grating (FBG) encased in stainless steel housing to withstand high pressure of up to 10bar. The stability of the sensing system is measured over 30 minutes and the result shows about 1.50% and 0.41% variation of peak output power for ring and linear respectively. In addition, the wavelength variation for ring is 1.16% and there is no significant variation linear configuration.

Message from the technical program chairs

The 14 IEEE International Conference on Autonomic Computing (ICAC 2017) will take place in Columbus, Ohio USA. ICAC is the premiere forum for research on autonomic computing techniques, foundations and applications. In 2017, ICAC will feature 4 keynote speakers, one for each day of the conference. On July 17, Dr. Nelly Bencomo from Aston University will champion the rold of autonomic methods to create models of software interactions at runtime. Mr. Mark Patton from the Columbus Smart Cities Initiative will discuss integrated data exchanges, data APIs and city-scale applications in America’s Smart City on July 18. Dr. Ragunathan Rajkumar from Carnegie Mellon will talk about his breakthrough work on autonomous vehicles, especially self-driving cars, on July 19. On July 20, Dr. John Wilkes will talk about building Google’s wharehouse-scale computers that manage themselves.

A multidrop optical network testbed for EPON platform

In an Ethernet Passive Optical Network (EPON) environment, the Optical Line Terminal (OLT) and Optical Network Unit (ONU) are the main end components that are required for the transfer of data. For the data transmission process, a communication protocol, i.e Multi-Point Control Protocol (MPCP) is required to avoid collision of the data that travel between the OLT and ONU. This paper describes an effort in developing an EPON environment with MPCP for the OLT and ONU communications. A multidrop optical network testbed was developed on a platform intergrated with PIC microcontrollers. Although the microcontrollers have some limitations, the testbed can be used to test out protocols and algorithms for the EPON environment.