Abstract The development of mobile and ubiquitous computing has recently been rapid. One of the most promising research and development fields has been location-aware services. These services are challenging as they require a lot of resources for generating maps from spatial data and for visualizing temporary data gathered from the environment. Applying location-awareness and ubiquitous computing in the industry is currently under intensive research and development activities especially because of signs of promising new business opportunities. This thesis studies the development and evaluation of a location-aware system platform called Locawe designed for indoor and outdoor conditions. This decentralized middleware-based platform has been developed at CENTRIA Research and Development, Ylivieska. The main objectives of this research have been primarily to study and develop new ubiquitous features for the Locawe platform with various software and hardware combinations. In addition, during these studies gathered experiences have been used in order to design new versions of the Locawe architecture. These ubiquitous features, covering the use of GPS, RFID and WSAN technologies, have been tested in five field experiments, one laboratory experiment and several industrial pilots. In these evaluations, the author has considered what software and hardware alternatives are feasible and appropriate for improving the newly developed features in the Locawe platform. These features have been evaluated from usability, visualization and communication techniques perspective. As a result the author presents in this thesis main characteristics in location-aware system development from system layers, ubiquitous computing, mobility, and restrictions perspective. The author also suggests that the architeture presented in this thesis enables location-aware system development in indoor and outdoor conditions. With respect of state-of-the-art platforms, the Locawe platform is, at the moment, in some sense unique, although only as a research prototype. This platform combines two approaches, namely research on location platforms, and research on geosensor networks or smart environments. In addition, this platform gives one answer how RFID or WSAN technologies could be integrated under one framework together with mobile devices. Finally, the author also proposes that the research and development approach presented in this thesis can be applied successfully in research and development organizations specialized in applied research. / Tiivistelmä Mobiilin ja sulautetun tietotekniikan kehitys on ollut viime aikoina nopeaa. Yksi lupaavimmista tutkimus- ja kehityskohteista on ollut paikkatietoiset palvelut. Näiden palveluiden kehittäminen on varsin haasteellista, koska kehittämistyö vaatii runsaasti resursseja sekä karttojen generoimisessa paikkatietoaineistoista että ympäristöstä kerättävän väliaikaisen tiedon visualisoinnissa. Paikkatietoisten sovellusten ja sulautetun tietotekniikan soveltaminen teollisuudessa on aktiivisen tutkimus- ja kehittämistoiminnan keskiössä, koska näköpiirissä on selvästi uusia lupaavia liiketoimintamahdollisuuksia. Tässä väitöskirjassa keskitytään Locawe-nimisen paikkatietoisen ohjelmistoalustan kehittämisen ja arvioinnin raportointiin. Locawe-alusta on suunniteltu sekä sisä- että ulko-olosuhteisiin. Tämä hajautettu väliohjelmistopohjainen alusta on kehitetty CENTRIA Tutkimus ja kehityksen Ylivieskan yksikössä. Väitöskirjan tavoitteena on ollut ensisijaisesti tutkia ja kehittää uusia, sulautettua tietotekniikkaa hyödyntäviä ominaisuuksia Locawe-alustaan hyödyntäen erilaisia ohjelmisto- ja laitteistokombinaatioita. Väitöskirjaan liittyvän tutkimustyön aikana käyttäjiltä on useaan otteeseen kerätty käyttökokemuksia. Kokemuksia on hyödynnetty Locawe-arkkitehtuurin seuraavien versioiden suunnittelussa. Uusia, sulautettua tietotekniikkaa hyödyntäviä ominaisuuksia on testattu kaikkiaan viidessä kenttätestissä, yhdessä laboratoriotestissä sekä useissa teollisissa piloteissa. Ominaisuuksien toteuttamisessa käytettiin GPS-, RFID- ja WSAN-teknologioita. Testeissä kirjoittaja arvioi, minkälaiset ohjelmisto- ja laitteistovaihtoehdot ovat toteuttamiskelpoisimpia ja soveliaimpia uusien ominaisuuksien kehittämiseksi Locawe-alustaan. Ominaisuuksia on arvioitu käytettävyyden, visualisoinnin ja viestintätekniikoiden näkökulmista. Tutkimustyön tuloksena kirjoittaja esittelee väitöskirjassa paikkatietoisten järjestelmien kehittämiseen liittyviä ominaispiirteitä järjestelmätasojen, sulautetun tietotekniikan, mobiliteetin ja rajoitteiden näkökulmista. Lisäksi kirjoittaja esittää väitöskirjassa arkkitehtuurin, joka mahdollistaa paikkatietoisen järjestelmän kehittämisen soveltuen niin sisä- kuin ulko-olosuhteisiin. Huomioiden paikkatietoisten alustojen tason maailmanlaajuisesti väitöskirjassa kuvattu Locawe-alusta on tutkimusprototyyppinäkin tällä hetkellä tietyssä määrin ainutlaatuinen. Alustan tutkimisessa on nimittäin keskitytty sekä paikkatietoisten alustojen että geosensoriverkkojen ja älykkäiden ympäristöjen tutkimiseen. Lisäksi Locawe-alusta tarjoaa yhden ratkaisun RFID ja WSAN teknologioiden integrointiin yhdeksi kehykseksi yhdessä mobiililaitteiden kanssa. Lopuksi kirjoittaja esittää, että väitöskirjassa esitetty tutkimus- ja kehittämistoiminnan lähestymistapaa voidaan soveltaa vastaavissa tutkimusorganisaatioissa kuin CENTRIA.

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Mobility is an increasingly important aspect of communication for the Internet. The usage of handheld computing devices such as tablets and smartphones is increasingly popular among Internet users. However, the current Internet protocol, IP, was not originally designed to support mobility over the Internet. Mobile users currently suffer from connection disruption when they move around. Once a device changes point of attachments between different wireless technology (vertical handoff) e.g. from WiFi to 3G, the IP address changes, and the bound session (e.g. TCP session) breaks. While the IETF Mobile IPv4 (MIPv4) and Mobile IPv6 (MIPv6) solutions have been defined for some time, and implementations are available, they have seen little deployment due to their complexity and performance. This thesis has examined how IP mobility can be supported as first class functionality, i.e. mobility can be enabled through the end hosts only, without changing the current network infrastructure. Current approaches such as MIPv6 require the use of proxies and tunnels which introduce protocol overhead and impact transport layer performance. The Identifier-Locator Network Protocol (ILNP) is an alternative approach which potentially works end-to-end, but this is yet to be tested. This thesis shows that ILNP provides mobility support as first class functionality, is implemented in an operating system kernel, and is accessible from the standard API without requiring changes to applications. Mobility management is controlled and managed by the end-systems, and does not require additional network-layer entities, only the end hosts need to be upgraded for ILNP to operate. This work demonstrates an instance of ILNP that is a superset of IPv6, called ILNPv6, that is implemented by extending the current IPv6 code in the Linux kernel. A direct performance comparison of ILNPv6 and MIPv6 is presented, showing the improved control and performance of ILNPv6, in terms of flow continuity, packet loss, handoff delay, and signalling overhead.

With the rapid development of wireless technologies, traditional mobile devices, such as pagers and cellular phones, have evolved from a purely communications and messaging-oriented medium to one that supports mobile data communication in general and acts as an application platform. As shown in a recent survey conducted by MDA, easy access to the present-day wireless Internet has resulted in mobile devices gaining more and more attention and popularity. The growth of and demand for mobile Web applications is expected to increase rapidly in the near future, as a range of software companies and mobile device manufacturers release increasingly accessible tools for creating mobile Web application and services. From a variety of possible development environments of this kind, the author has selected and examined two leading contenders, the J2ME and the Microsoft .NET mobile Web application development environments. This document reports the product life cycle of pilot mobile web applications, designed and implemented in each host environment in tum. A feature-by-feature investigation and comparison of the J2ME and .NET environments was carried out, covering the range of issues necessary for a complete mobile Web application development life cycle. The resulting analysis addresses features and efficiencies of the application development environment and the target deployment environment, the degree to which the resultant services are compatible on a variety of platforms, and the ease with which applications can be designed to be extensible. The thesis offers an objective evaluation of the J2ME and the .NET mobile development environments, which highlights their strengths and weaknesses, and suggests guidelines for designing, creating, and deploying high quality mobile Web applications. The research uncovers no clear winner across all categories assessed. J2ME currently favours situations in which bandwidth is limited and client side processing power is relatively sufficient, it exerts the processing power of mobile devices over distributed network environments. .NET requires a less constrained network throughput, but performs adequately on clients with more limited processing power, supports a more diverse target platform range, and offers a more efficient, in terms of development time, development environment. Both technologies are likely to receive significant user support for some time. / KMBT_363 / Adobe Acrobat 9.54 Paper Capture Plug-in

Contact Centres (CCs) are at the forefront of interaction between an organisation and its customers. Currently, 17 percent of all inbound calls are not resolved on the first call by the first agent attending to that call. This is due to the inability of the contact centre agents (CCAs) to diagnose customer queries and find adequate solutions in an effective and efficient manner. The aim of this research is to develop an intelligent user interface (IUI) model to support and improve CC operations. A literature review of existing IUI architectures, modelbased design and existing CC software together with a field study of CCs has resulted in the design of an IUI model for CCs. The proposed IUI model is described in terms of its architecture, component-level design and interface design. An IUI prototype has been developed as a proof of concept of the proposed IUI model. The IUI prototype was evaluated in order to determine to what extent it supports problem identification and query resolution. User testing, incorporating the use of eye tracking and a post-test questionnaire, was used in order to determine the usability and usefulness of the prototype. The results of this evaluation show that the users were highly satisfied with the task support and query resolution assistance provided by the IUI prototype. This research resulted in the design of an IUI model for the domain of CCs. This model can be used to assist the development of CC applications incorporating IUIs. Use of the proposed IUI model is expected to support and enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of CC operations. Further research is needed to conduct a longitudinal study to determine the impact of IUIs in the CC domain.

We live today in the information age with users being able to access and share information freely by using both personal computers and their handheld devices. This, in turn, has been made possible by the Internet. However, this poses security risks as attempts are made to use this same environment in order to compromise the confidentiality, integrity and availability of information. Accordingly, there is an urgent need for users and organisations to protect their information resources from agents posing a security threat. Organisations typically spend large amounts of money as well as dedicating resources to improve their technological defences against general security threats. However, the agents posing these threats are adopting social engineering techniques in order to bypass the technical measures which organisations are putting in place. These social engineering techniques are often effective because they target human behaviour, something which the majority of researchers believe is a far easier alternative than hacking information systems. As such, phishing effectively makes use of a combination of social engineering techniques which involve crafty technical emails and website designs which gain the trust of their victims. Within an organisational context, there are a number of areas which phishers exploit. These areas include human factors, organisational aspects and technological controls. Ironically, these same areas serve simultaneously as security measures against phishing attacks. However, each of these three areas mentioned above are characterised by gaps which arise as a result of human involvement. As a result, the current approach to mitigating phishing threats comprises a single-layer defence model only. However, this study proposes a holistic model which integrates each of these three areas by strengthening the human element in each of these areas by means of a security awareness, training and education programme.

M.Ing. / Mobile adhoc networks (MANETs) are multihop wireless topologies that have rapidly changing node structure and limited connectivity. Since MANETs are not deployed on a wide scale, the research community still depends on the simulators such as the network simulator (Ns2) to evaluate MANET protocols. The topic of how to accurately model an indoor environment in the MANET research community is explored in this dissertation. We take an empirical and simulative approach to model our mobility pattern. Our mobility model is based on activity patterns drawn from the transport science. A comparison with the random way point is made in order to understand the weighty discrepancy between the two models. Our contribution in this research is three fold: 1. We argue that mobility modelling should be based on activities other than stochastic process that have got no realistic backing; 2. We model our network using by putting up an algorithm and take an empirical approach to model the radio frequency propagation. To show the difference of the two mobility models, the behaviour of the signal strength on the two mobility models is drawn; and 3. Finally an implementation of our mobility pattern and RF measurements in ns2 is done.

Aplicações que demandam uma sincronização entre usuários móveis requerem um mecanismo para a difusão (multicast) de mensagens entre dispositivos móveis. Em alguns casos, o multicast deve ser atômico, isto é, ou todos os elementos do grupo processam a mensagem difundida, ou nenhum deles. O AM2C é um protocolo para multicast atômico em Computação Móvel. Entretanto, o principal problema do AM2C é sua falta de escalabilidade, uma vez que este protocolo faz uma difusão para todas as estações-base na rede fixa. Esta dissertação descreve o projeto, implementação, simulação e avaliação dos protocolos AM2C e iAM2C, onde o segundo protocolo é uma variante escalável do primeiro. As implementações e simulações foram feitas usando o ambiente MobiCS - Mobile Computing Simulator, que é uma ferramenta para o teste e a análise de desempenho de protocolos distribuídos em redes móveis. A dissertação apresenta uma comparação detalhada dos protocolos para diferentes configurações de rede e diversos padrões de migração dos hosts móveis. / Applications that demand some synchronization among mobile users require a mechanism for reliable delivery of multicast messages to a group of mobile hosts. In some cases, the multicast must be atomic, i.e., either all or none of the mobile hosts accept each message. The AM2C is a protocol for atomic multicast in Mobile Computing. However, the main problem of AM2C is its lack of scalability, since it is based on broadcasts to all base stations in the fixed network. This work describes the project, implementation, simulation and evaluation of the protocols AM2C and iAM2C, where the second protocol is a scalable variant of the first. The implementations and simulations were performed using MobiCS - Mobile Computing Simulator, that is a tool for testing and doing performance analysis of distributed protocols in mobile networks. This work presents a detailed comparison of the protocols for different network configurations and various patterns of mobile hosts migrations.

Ubiquitous computing aims to make computing widely available, easy to use, and completely transparent to the user. Umbilical Cord is intended to be the first step in researching ubiquitous computing at CSUSB. It implements a model scalable network with a client-server architecture that features consistent user interaction and global access to user data. It is based on the Linux operating system which can be leveraged for future research due to the open nature of its source code. It also features a scalable network swap.