L'arrivée récente de plateformes véhiculaires connectées à internet permet la diffusion de contenus d'infodivertissement en flux poussés et tirés pour les conducteurs et les passagers en situation de mobilité d'une manière comparable aux appareils de communication nomades actuels. Toutefois, la voiture constitue un terminal d'accès très différent d'un téléphone portable que ce soit en termes de caractéristiques techniques, mais aussi en matière d'usages. Cette thèse aborde le sujet de la fourniture personnalisée du contenu multimédia pour les automobilistes. Une étude des caractéristiques techniques des plateformes d'infodivertissement, des types de contenus et de métadonnées nous permet dans un premier temps de cerner les contraintes d'une architecture de fourniture individualisée pour un véhicule. La mise en perspective de ces contraintes nous permet d'établir une architecture de fourniture de contenu à la demande, implémentée dans un prototype. Nous abordons ensuite le problème de la personnalisation suivant deux axes complémentaires : D'une part, la personnalisation active qui fait intervenir une interface homme machine multimodale que nous étudions dans le cadre spécifique d'un navigateur de bibliothèque musicale en ligne permettant de créer facilement des listes de lectures multicritères dans un véhicule ; et d'autre part, la personnalisation passive du contenu qui fait intervenir une modélisation du contexte de l'utilisateur. Nous discutons de la répartition de composants fonctionnels permettant cette personnalisation passive et construisons une architecture répartie prenant en compte la définition individualisée de préférences contextuelles et son intégration dans l'architecture multimédia présentée plus haut. Les différentes solutions proposées sont enfin évaluées selon des méthodes expérimentales faisant intervenir des utilisateurs et des méthodes dites expertes.

<p>In our homes and in the enterprise, in our leisure and in our professions, mobile computing is no longer merely "exciting;" it is becoming an essential, ubiquitous tool of the modern world. New and innovative mobile applications continue to inform, entertain, and surprise users. But, to make the daily use of mobile technologies more gratifying and worthwhile, we must move forward with new levels of sophistication. The Mobile App Stores of the future must be built on stronger foundations. </p><p>This dissertation considers a broad view of the challenges and intuitions behind a diverse selection of such new primitives. Some of these primitives will mitigate existing and fundamental challenges of mobile computing, especially relating to wireless communication. Others will take an application-driven approach, being designed to serve a novel purpose, and be adapted to the unique and varied challenges from their disparate domains. However, all are related through a unifying goal, to provide a seamless, enjoyable, and productive mobile experience. This dissertation takes view that by bringing together nontrivial enhancements across a selection of disparate-but-interrelated domains, the impact is synergistically stronger than the sum of each in isolation. Through their collective impact, these new "building blocks" can help lay a foundation to upgrade mobile technology beyond the expectations of early-adopters, and into seamless integration with all of our lives.</p> / Dissertation

This paper aims at giving answers to the question of how and why mobile device usage patterns differ in China, Germany and the United States of America. Triangulation was chosen as the appropriate research method: qualitative date from focus groups is complemented with quantitative date from an online questionnaire. Firstly, a short overview over past research results on psychological differences between people from different cultures is given. Then, qualitative data gathered in focus groups is presented. Quantitative data on mobile device usage patterns from an online questionnaire in the three countries is presented. About 300 questionnaires were completed and evaluated. Many statistically significant effects from the quasi-variable culture could be found. For example, although almost all participants from all three cultures use mobile devices for communication purposes, the usage frequencies of other functions differ strongly. Cultures differ also in the acceptance of autonomous interventions by a technical system. Probable explanations for these differences and their consequences on HMI design are discussed. / Diese Veröffentlichung soll die Frage beantworten, wie und warum sich die Nutzungsmuster von mobilen Endgeräten in China, Deutschland und den USA unterscheiden. Als angemessene Untersuchungsmethode wurde die Triangulation ausgewählt: Qualitative Daten aus Fokusgruppen werden ergänzt durch quantitative Daten aus einem Online-Fragebogen. Zuerst wird ein kurzer Überblick über bestehende Forschungsergebnisse über psychologische Unterschiede zwischen Menschen aus verschiedenen Kulturen gegeben. Anschließend werden qualitative Daten aus Fokusgruppen und quantitative Daten aus einem Online-Fragebogen über Nutzungsmuster von mobilen Endgeräten präsentiert. Mehr als 300 Fragebögen wurden ausgefüllt und ausgewertet. Viele statistisch signifikante Auswirkungen der Quasi-Variable Kultur konnten gefunden werden. Während beispielsweise fast alle Teilnehmer aus allen drei Kulturen mobile Endgeräte für Kommunikationszwecke nutzen, unterscheiden sich die Nutzungshäufigkeiten anderer Funktionen stark. Die Kulturen unterscheiden sich auch in der Akzeptanz von autonomen Eingriffen durch ein technisches System. Mögliche Erklärungen für diese Unterschiede und deren Folgen für die Gestaltung von Mensch-Maschine-Schnittstellen werden diskutiert.

Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Texas at Arlington, 2009.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Florida, 2002. / Title from title page of source document. Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M. Phil.)--Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 156-159). Also available in electronic version. Access restricted to campus users.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Florida, 2002. / Title from title page of source document. Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (MTech. degree in Information Networks)--Tshwane University of Technology, 2009. / With this research, we focus on utilizing a distributed file system to combat congestion problems in wireless networks. The Coda file system is our choice of a distributed file system, as it offers several services, such as data pre-fetching, hoarding of files, disconnected operation and data consistency.

published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Electrical and Electronic Engineering / Master / Master of Philosophy

The past few years have witnessed a significant evolution in mobile computing and communications, in which new trends and applications have the traditional role of computer networks into that of distributed service providers. In this thesis we explore an alternative way to form wireless ad-hoc networks whose topologies can be customized as required by the users’ software applications. In particular, we investigate the applicability of mobile codes to networks created by devices equipped with Bluetooth technology. Computer simulations results suggest that our proposed approach can achieve this task effectively, while matching the level of efficiency seen in other salient proposals in this area. This thesis also addresses the issue of service discovery in mobile ad-hoc networks. We propose the use of a directory whose network location varies in an attempt to reduce traffic overhead driven by users’ hosts looking for service information. We refer to this scheme as the Service Directory Placement Algorithm, or SDPA. We formulate the directory relocation problem as a Markov Decision Process that is solved by using Q-learning. Performance evaluations through computer simulations reveal bandwidth overhead reductions that range between 40% and 48% when compared with a basic broadcast flooding approach for networks comprising hosts moving at pedestrian speeds. We then extend our proposed approach and introduce a multi-directory service discovery system called the Service Directory Placement Protocol, or SDPP. Our findings reveal bandwidth overhead reductions typically ranging from 15% to 75% in networks comprising slow-moving hosts with restricted memory availability. In the fourth and final part of this work, we present the design foundations and architecture of a middleware system that called WISEMAN – WIreless Sensors Employing Mobile Agents. We employ WISEMAN for dispatching and processing mobile programs in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). Our proposed system enables the dynamic creation of semantic relationships between network nodes that cooperate to provide an aggregate service. We present discussions on the advantages of our proposed approach, and in particular, how WISEMAN facilitates the realization of service-oriented tasks in WSNs.