Accurate estimation of Origin and Destination (O-D) of passengers has been an essential objective for public transit agencies because knowledge of passengers’ flow enables them to forecast ridership, and plan for bus schedules, and bus routes. However, obtaining O-D information using traditional ways, such as conducting surveys, cannot fulfill today’s requirements of intelligent transportation and route planning in smart cities. Estimating bus passengers’ O-D using Wi-Fi and Bluetooth signals detected from their mobile devices is the primary objective of this project. For this purpose, we collected anonymized passengers’ data using SMATS TrafficBoxTM sensor provided by “SMATS Traffic Solutions” company. We then performed pre-processing steps including data cleaning, feature extraction, and data normalization, then, built various models using data mining techniques. The main challenge in this project was to distinguish between passengers’ and non-passengers’ signals since the sensor captures all signals in its surrounding environment including substantial noise from devices outside of the bus. To address this challenge, we applied Hierarchical and K-Means clustering algorithms to separate passengers from non-passengers’ signals automatically. By assigning GPS data to passengers’ signals, we could find commuters’ O-D. Moreover, we developed a second method based on an online analysis of sequential data, where specific thresholds were set to recognize passengers’ signals in real time. This method could create the O-D matrix online. Finally, in the validation phase, we compared the ground truth data with both estimated O-D matrices in both approaches and calculated their accuracy. Based on the final results, our proposed approaches can detect more than 20% of passengers (compared to 5% detection rate of traditional survey-based methods), and estimate the origin and destination of passengers with an accuracy of about 93%. With such promising results, these approaches are suitable alternatives for traditional and time-consuming ways of obtaining O-D data. This enables public transit companies to enhance their service offering by efficiently planning and scheduling the bus routes, improving ride comfort, and lowering operating costs of urban transportation.

Avec le développement des réseaux informatiques, principalement d'Internet, il devient de plus en plus facile de développer des applications dont l'exécution est répartie entre un ordinateur local, le client, et un ordinateur à distance (à une autre extrémité du canal de transmission), le serveur. Les progrès techniques de ces dernières années au niveau matériel ont rendu possible l'affichage en 3D (jeux, navigation cartographique, mondes virtuels) sur les mobiles. Cependant, l'exécution de ces applications complexes sur le terminal client est impossible, à moins de réduire la qualité des images affichées ou les besoins en calcul de l'application. Différentes solutions ont déjà été proposées dans la littérature mais aucune d'entre elles ne satisfait l'ensemble des besoins. L'objectif de cette thèse est de proposer une solution alternative, c'est à dire une nouvelle architecture client-serveur dans laquelle l'interconnexion des dispositifs mobiles est complètement exploitée. Les principales conditions de mise en œuvre seront traitées: - Minimiser le trafic réseau - Réduire les besoins en puissance de calcul du terminal, et - Préserver l'expérience utilisateur par rapport à une exécution locale. Tout d'abord, un cadre formel est développé afin de définir et modéliser des applications graphiques 3D distribuées. Ensuite, une nouvelle architecture, permettant de dépasser certains inconvénients que l'on trouve dans des architectures de l'état de l'art, est présentée. La conception de la nouvelle architecture client-serveur est validée par l'implémentation d'un jeu et la mise œuvre de simulations. / With the development of the computer networks, mainly the Internet, it became easier to develop applications where the execution is shared between a local computer, the Client, and one located on the other side of the network communication channel, the Server. The hardware advancements in the recent years made it possible to display 3D graphics (games, map navigation, virtual worlds) on mobile devices. However, executing these complex applications on the client terminal is not possible without reducing the quality of the displayed graphics or lowering its processing requirements. Different solutions have already been proposed in academic publications; however none of them satisfies all requirements. The objective of this thesis is to propose an alternative solution for a new client-server architecture where the connectedness of the mobile devices is fully exploited. Several main requirements are addressed: - Minimize the network traffic, - Reduce the required computational power on the terminal, and - Preserve the user experience compared with local execution. First a formal framework is designed that can effectively define and model distributed applications for 3D graphics. Then a model of new architecture is presented, that overcomes the disadvantages of the architectures presented in the state of the art. The core of the architecture is the MPEG-4 standard, which is used to transfer the data between the server and the client in a compressed manner. The last part of explores the design of architectures optimized for running on mobile devices. The design of the new client-server architecture is validated by implementing a game and running simulations.

Low motivation levels experienced by students with exceptionalities in the area of mathematics are often cited as a major factor negatively affecting their potential for success (Baird & Scott, 2009; Reichrath, de Witte, & Winkens, 2010). In the wake of many ongoing experiments using new mobile technology and tablet devices in schools, this study examines the use of iPads from Apple in a secondary mathematics classroom and its potential effect on the motivation of students with exceptionalities. In addition, the study also takes an exploratory approach to documenting the factors impacting the planning, implementation and student use of mobile devices in the classroom. A total of 16 students, 1 teacher and 1 educational assistant participated in this study. A mixed methodology approach was taken which included collecting evidence from surveys and scales as well as from descriptive journals, interviews and observational field notes. In order to assess the students’ level of motivation, the four attributes from Keller’s 2006 ARCS Model were used as the basic analysis framework. These were: attention, relevance, confidence and satisfaction (Keller, ARCS Model, 2006). Preliminary analysis of the attributes indicates relative consistency over the course of the study, with some minor oddities explained further in the conclusions. An extensive list of exploratory findings regarding planning, implementation and student use of mobile devices in the mathematics classroom with students with exceptionalities indicated both positive and negative aspects regarding the integration of the devices. Some positive aspects include the ability to meet the needs of different levels, and types, of learners with a number of applications, as well as a noticed increase in the collaboration and healthy competition among students. Contrary to this, some negative aspects include the lack of availability of topic-specific applications and the level of frustration experienced by some student in the initial stages of learning a new application. / UOIT

Mobile devices are increasingly being used to access Web content but lack the resources for proper presentation to the user. To address this problem, content is typically customized to be more suitable for a mobile environment. Automatic customization of web content is a challenging problem because fine-grain adaptation often depends on both the relevance of individual objects on a web page, as well as the context of access (e.g., screen size of device being used, network connectivity, location, etc.). We present Usage-aware Interactive Content Adaptation, an adaptation technique that allows a user who is unsatisfied with the system’s adaptation decision to take control of the adaptation process and make changes until the content is suitably adapted for her purposes. The adaptation system learns from the user’s modifications and adjusts its prediction for future accesses by other users. With this approach, users are empowered to correct bad adaptation decisions made by the system without being overly burdened. We applied the technique in two domains: adapting the quality of images to reduce download times and save energy and bandwidth, and customizing the layout of images to improve the utilization of screen real-estate. The work was evaluated through a series of user studies, and the results show that user feedback can be effectively used to provide appropriate customizations (i) for objects with varying relevance, (ii) when context affects the users adaptation requirements, and (iii) when the same content can be used for multiple purposes by different users.

Sketch recognition allows computers to understand and model hand drawn sketches and diagrams. Traditionally sketch recognition systems required a pen based PC interface, but powerful mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones can provide a new platform for sketch recognition systems. We describe a new sketch recognition library, Strontium (SrL) that combines several existing sketch recognition libraries modified to run on both personal computers and on the Android platform. We analyzed the recognition speed and accuracy implications of performing low-level shape recognition on smartphones with touch screens. We found that there is a large gap in recognition speed on mobile devices between recognizing simple shapes and more complex ones, suggesting that mobile sketch interface designers limit the complexity of their sketch domains. We also found that a low sampling rate on mobile devices can affect recognition accuracy of complex and curved shapes. Despite this, we found no evidence to suggest that using a finger as an input implement leads to a decrease in simple shape recognition accuracy. These results show that the same geometric shape recognizers developed for pen applications can be used in mobile applications, provided that developers keep shape domains simple and ensure that input sampling rate is kept as high as possible.

Mobile devices are increasingly being used to access Web content but lack the resources for proper presentation to the user. To address this problem, content is typically customized to be more suitable for a mobile environment. Automatic customization of web content is a challenging problem because fine-grain adaptation often depends on both the relevance of individual objects on a web page, as well as the context of access (e.g., screen size of device being used, network connectivity, location, etc.). We present Usage-aware Interactive Content Adaptation, an adaptation technique that allows a user who is unsatisfied with the system’s adaptation decision to take control of the adaptation process and make changes until the content is suitably adapted for her purposes. The adaptation system learns from the user’s modifications and adjusts its prediction for future accesses by other users. With this approach, users are empowered to correct bad adaptation decisions made by the system without being overly burdened. We applied the technique in two domains: adapting the quality of images to reduce download times and save energy and bandwidth, and customizing the layout of images to improve the utilization of screen real-estate. The work was evaluated through a series of user studies, and the results show that user feedback can be effectively used to provide appropriate customizations (i) for objects with varying relevance, (ii) when context affects the users adaptation requirements, and (iii) when the same content can be used for multiple purposes by different users.

The use of mobile devices is increasing due to the constant development of more advanced and appealing applications and computing features. However, these new features are very power hungry leading to short battery lifetimes. Research shows that a major reason for fast battery depletion is the excessive and inefficient use of the wireless interfaces. This thesis studies how we can attempt to increase the battery lifetime of the devices without having to sacrifice the usage of these advanced features in some applications. The thesis focuses on adapting the traffic pattern characteristics of mobile communication using a widespread wireless communication technology like 3G. Traffic pattern adaptation is performed at packet level in kernel space in Android. The data transfers are scheduled with the knowledge of the energy consumption characteristics of 3G. The performed measurements indicate that our solution can provide energy savings ranging from 7% to 59%. This work confirms that 3G conscious scheduling of network traffic reduces energy consumption, and that, both applications and energy saving libraries are potential directions to be further studied.

<p>Advances in mobile hardware and operating systems have made mobile a first-class development platform. Activities such as web browsing, casual game play, media playback, and document reading are now as common on mobile devices as on full-sized desktop systems. However, developers are still constrained by the inherent resource limitations of mobile devices. Unlike desktop systems, mobile devices must sacrifice performance to accomodate smaller form factors and battery-backed operation. Opportunistic offloading of computation from a mobile device to remote server infrastructure (i.e., "code offload") offers a promising way to overcome these constraints and to expand the set of applications</p><p>(i.e., "apps") that can run on devices.</p><p>Deciding to offload requires a careful consideration of the costs and benefits of a range of possible program partitions. This cost-benefit analysis depends on external factors, such as network conditions and the resources availability, as well as internal app properties, such as component dependencies, data representations, and code complexity. Thus, benefiting from offload requires some assistance from developers, but requiring developers to adopt arcane or unnatural programming models will hinder adoption of regardless of the potential benefits.</p><p>In this dissertation we characterize two frameworks that reduce the amount of developer effort required to improve the performance of mobile apps through code offload. The first, MAUI, is designed for computationally intensive general-purpose apps such as speech</p><p>and facial recognition. The second, Kahawai, is designed for graphics-intensive apps like fast-action video games.</p><p>MAUI continuously monitors the device, network, and app, and uses its measurements to compute an energy-efficient program partition. MAUI reduces the burden on developers by taking advantage of core features of the managed code environments common to mobile</p><p>platforms: code portability, serialization, reflection, and type safety. These features allows MAUI to automatically instrument and potentially offload methods that the developer has tagged as suitable for offload. MAUI is particularly effective on applications composed by operations whose computational cost is large compared to the transfer cost of their input parameters and their output results.</p><p>Kahawai is designed for graphics-intensive apps such as console-style games and takes advantage of two features of today's mobile gaming platforms: capable mobile GPUs and reusable game engines. Even though today's mobile devices cannot duplicate the sophisticated graphical detail provided by gaming consoles and high-end desktop GPUs, devices have seen rapid improvements in their GPU processing capabilities. Kahawai leverages a device's GPU to provide collaborative rendering. Collaborative rendering relies on a mobile GPU to generate low-fidelity output, which when combined with server-side GPU output allows a mobile device to display a high-fidelity result. The benefits of collaborative rendering are substantial: mobile clients can experience high-quality graphical output using relatively little bandwidth. Fortunately, because most modern games are built on top of reusable game engines, developers only have to identify the sources of non-determinism</p><p>in the game logic to take advantage collaborative rendering.</p><p>Together, MAUI and Kahawai demonstrate that code offload can provide substantial benefits for mobile apps without overburdening app developers.</p> / Dissertation

Authentication protocols are very common mechanisms to confirm the legitimacy of someone’s or something’s identity in digital and physical systems. This thesis presents a new and robust authentication method based on users’ multiple devices. Due to the popularity of mobile devices, users are becoming more likely to have more than one device (e.g., smartwatch, smartphone, laptop, tablet, smart-car, smart-ring, etc.). The authentication system presented here takes advantage of these multiple devices to implement authentication mechanisms. In particular, the system requires the devices to collaborate with each other in order for the authentication to succeed. This new authentication protocol is robust against theft-based attacks on single device; an attacker would need to steal multiple devices in order to compromise the authentication system. The new authentication protocol comprises an authenticator and at least two user devices, where the user devices are associated with each other. To perform an authentication on a user device, the user needs to respond a challenge by using his/her associated device. After describing how this authentication protocol works, this thesis will discuss three different versions of the protocol that have been implemented. In the first implementation, the authentication process is performed by using two smartphones. Also, as a challenge, a QR code is used. In the second implementation, instead of using a QR code, NFC technology is used for challenge transmission. In the last implementation, the usability with different platforms is exposed. Instead of using smartphones, a laptop computer and a smartphone combination is used. Furthermore, the authentication protocol has been verified by using an automated protocol-verification tool to check whether the protocol satisfies authenticity and secrecy properties. Finally, these implementations are tested and analyzed to demonstrate the performance variations over different versions of the protocol.

Research paper / The use of Mobile technologies in organisation including institution of higher education has increased significantly in recent years. In institution of higher education, the focuses have been on its use for teaching and learning. Due to the flexibility and easy accessibility, learners and educators are increasingly depending mobile technologies for their academic activities. The development of mobile technology has resulted in shifting the academic environment from traditional to mobile learning settings. This paper focused on the possible implications of mobile devices on teaching and learning. The qualitative case study approach was employed in the study. Based on the finding from the analysis of the empirical data, a Framework was developed. The Framework could be employed to address the implications in the drive to enhance the services of academic library. Mobile learning has a lot of potential for quick and wide reaching out to the geographically wide spread of learners. The paper helps to gain a deeper understanding of the impact of mobile technology in providing services in the library of academic institutions.