Ubiquitous computing and Internet-of-Things (IoT) implies an untapped opportunity in the realm of information and communication technology, in which a large number of micro-devices with communication and/or computing capabilities, provides connectivity for anything, by anyone at anytime and anywhere. Especially, these devices can be equipped with sensors and actuators that interact with our living environment. Barcode, smart contactless card, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) systems, wireless sensor network (WSN), and smart mobile phones are some examples which can be utilized in ubiquitous computing. RFIDs and WSN have been recognized as the two promising enablers for realization of ubiquitous computing. They have some great features such as low-cost and small- size implementation, non-line of sight operation, sensing possibilities, data storing ability, and positioning. However, there are several challenges which need to be addressed, such as limited life time for battery powered device, maintenance cost, longer operation range, higher data rate, and operation in dense multipath and multiuser environment. Ultra-Wideband Impulse Radio (UWB-IR) with its huge advantages has been recognized as a great solution for future WSN and RFID. UWB-IR technique has the possibility of achieving Gb/s data rate, hundreds of meter operation range, pJ energy per bit, centimeter accuracy of positioning, and low cost implementation. In this work utilization of UWB-IR in WSN and RFID is investigated. A wireless sensor network based on UWB-IR is proposed focusing on low-cost and low-power implementation. Our contribution is to imply two different architectures in base station and sensor nodes to satisfy power, complexity and cost constraints. For sensor nodes, an autonomous UWB-IR detection is proposed, which detects the UWB signal autonomously and no restrict synchronization is required. It reduces the circuit complexity significantly. The performance in term of bit-error-rate is compared with two other common detection techniques. It is shown that the new detection is more robustness to timing jitter and clock skew, which consequently reduces the clock and synchronization requirements considerably. A novel wireless sensing and identification system, based on remote-powered tag with asymmetric wireless link, is proposed. Our innovative contribution is to deploy two different UWB and UHF communication techniques in uplink and downlink respectively. In the proposed system, tags capture the required power supply from different environmental sources (e.g. electromagnetic wave transmitted by a reader) and transmit data through an ultra-low power impulse UWB link. A new communication protocol is devised based on slotted-aloha anti-collision algorithm. By introducing several improvements including of pipelined communication, adaptive frame size, and skipping idle slots, the system throughput of more than 2000 tags/s is achieved. To prove the system concept a single chip integrated tag is implemented in UMC 0.18μm CMOS process. The measurement results show the minimum sensitivity of -18.5 dB (14.1 μW) and adaptive data rate up to 10 Mb/s. It corresponds to 13.9 meters operation range, considering 4W EIRP, a matched antenna to the tag with 0dB gain, and free space path loss. This is a great improvement in operation range and data rate, compared with conventional passive RFID, which data rate is limited to a few hundreds of Kb/s. System integration in a Liquid-Crystal-polymer (LCP) substrate is investigated. The integration of a tunable UWB-IR transmitter and a power scavenging unit are studied. Our contribution includes embedding and modeling the RF components and antenna in substrate and co-optimizing the chip and package with on-chip versus off-chip passives trade-offs. Simulation results verify the potential of system-on-package solution for UWB integration. The effect of antenna miniaturization in a UWB system is studied. Our focus is to scale down a UWB antenna and optimize the performance through the chip-antenna co-design. A tunable impulse- UWB transmitter is designed in two cases - a conventional 50Ω design and a co-design methodology. The simulation results show that the standard 50Ω design technique can not reach the best condition in all cases, when a real antenna is placed into the system. The performance can be improved significantly when doing codesign. The antennas and UWB transmitter performances are evaluated in a given UWB systems. It is shown that the operation distance at a target performance is reduced with antenna scaling factor and it can be compensated by antenna-transceiver co-design. The result proves the importance of antenna-transceiver codesign, which needs to be addressed in the earliest phases of the design flow. / QC 20100701

With the increasing pervasiveness of mobile technologies such as cellular phones, personal digital assistants and hand held computers, mobile technologies promise the next major technological and cultural shift. Like the Internet, it is predicted that the greatest impact will not come from hardware devices or software programs, but from emerging social practices, which were not possible before. To capitalize on the benefits of mobile technologies, organizations have begun to implement nomadic computing environments. Nomadic computing environments make available the systems support needed to provide computing and communication capabilities and services to the mobile work force as they move from place to place in a manner that is transparent, integrated, convenient and adaptive. Already, anecdotes suggest that within organizations there are social implications occurring with both unintended and intended consequences being perpetuated. The problems of nomadic computing users have widely been described in terms of the challenges presented by the interplay of time, space and context, yet a theory has yet to be developed which analyzes this interplay in a single effort. A temporal human agency perspective proposes that stakeholders’ actions are influenced by their ability to recall the past, respond to the present and imagine the future. By extending the temporal human agency perspective through the recognition of the combined influence of space and context on human action, I investigated how the individual practices of eleven nomadic computing users changed after implementation. Under the umbrella of the interpretive paradigm, and using a cross case methodology this research develops a theoretical account of how several stakeholders engaged with different nomadic computing environments and explores the context of their effectiveness. Applying a literal and theoretical replication strategy to multiple longitudinal and retrospective cases, six months were spent in the field interviewing and observing participants. Data analysis included three types of coding: descriptive, interpretive and pattern coding. The findings reveal that patterns of technology use in nomadic computing environments are influenced by stakeholders’ temporal orientations; their ability to remember the past, imagine the future and respond to the present. As stakeholders all have different temporal orientations and experiences, they exhibit different practices even when engaging initially with the same organizational and technical environments. Opposing forces emerge as users attempt to be effective by resolving the benefits and disadvantages of the environment as they undergo different temporal, contextual and spatial experiences. Insights about the ability to predict future use suggest that because they are difficult to envisage in advance, social processes inhibit the predictability of what technologies users will adopt. The framework presented highlights the need to focus on understanding the diversity in nomadic computing use practices by examining how they are influenced by individual circumstances as well as shared meanings across individuals.

L'informatique pervasive (ou ubiquitaire) est un support pour des environnements contenant de nombreux objets (ou dispositifs) disséminés, équipés d'électronique et interconnectés. Ces dispositifs fournissent un accès distant à une multitude de fonctionnalités qui nous aident dans notre vie quotidienne. Les Architectures Orientées Services sont adaptées à la conception de logiciels pervasifs. En e ffet, chaque dispositif fournit son propre ensemble de fonctionnalités sous la forme de services. Ainsi, en l'absence de mécanisme complémentaire, les utilisateurs se trouvent limités à utiliser les services isolément alors que leurs besoins correspondent à des scénarios qui impliquent une composition de multiples services o erts par plusieurs appareils. Dans cette thèse, nous défendons qu'un système pervasif doit : d'une part, permettre aux utilisateurs d'exprimer facilement leurs besoins en créant des scénarios et d'autre part, proposer à ses utilisateurs une représentation et des moyens de gestion de leur contexte afin qu'ils puissent tirer le meilleur parti de leur environnement et de ses changements. De plus, la présence de plusieurs utilisateurs implique la nécessité de collaborer. Par ailleurs, l'exécution de scénarios doit être résiliente aux changements environnementaux et aux actions des utilisateurs. Elle doit ainsi s'adapter dynamiquement et, si possible, tirer profit du contexte et des changements de l'environnement. Notre contribution, nommée SaS (Scenarios as Services), répond à ces objectifs. Elle propose une approche interopérable capable de s'adapter à l'environnement. Elle fournit une représentation persistante et personnalisable du contexte et inclut un langage de description de scénarios destiné aux utilisateurs. Ces scénarios sont facilement contrôlables, personnalisables et réutilisables. Elle planifie l'exécution pas à pas des scénarios, afin de s'adapter aux changements de l'environnement et de bénéficier des avantages de la mobilité des utilisateurs (exécution d'un scénario, dans la durée, sur plusieurs lieux). Enfin, elle inclut le partage de scénarios qui permet aux utilisateurs de collaborer. Un prototype de SaS, basé sur des normes industrielles (telle qu'OSGi), prouve la faisabilité de notre contribution et nous permet de l'évaluer sur un cas d'étude simple.

Interactions in the style of the ubiquitous computing paradigm are possible today, but only in handcrafted environments within one administrative and technological realm. This thesis describes an architecture (called Continuum), a design that realises the architecture, and a proof-of-concept implementation that brings ubiquitous computing to chaotic environments. Essentially, Continuum enables an ecology at the edge of the network, between users, competing service providers from overlapping administrative domains, competing internet service providers, content providers, and software developers that want to add value to the user experience. Continuum makes the ubiquitous computing functionality orthogonal to other application logic. Existing web applications are augmented for ubiquitous computing with functionality that is dynamically compiled and injected by a middleware proxy into the web pages requested by a web browser at the user?s mobile device. This enables adaptability to environment variability, manageability without user involvement, and expansibility without changes to the mobile. The middleware manipulates self-contained software units with precise functionality (called <i>frames</i>), which help the user interact with contextual services in conjunction with the data to which they are attached. The middleware and frame design explicitly incorporates the possibility of discrepancies between the assumptions of ubiquitous-computing software developers and field realities: multiple administrative domains, unavailable service, unavailable software, and missing contextual information. A framework for discovery and authorisation addresses the chaos inherent to the paradigm through the notion of <i>role assertions</i> acquired dynamically by the user. Each assertion represents service access credentials and contains bootstrapping points for service discovery on behalf of the holding user. A proof-of-concept prototype validates the design, and implements several frames that demonstrate general functionality, including driving discovery queries over multiple service discovery protocols and making equivalences between service types, across discovery protocols.

Interactions in the style of the ubiquitous computing paradigm are possible today, but only in handcrafted environments within one administrative and technological realm. This thesis describes an architecture (called Continuum), a design that realises the architecture, and a proof-of-concept implementation that brings ubiquitous computing to chaotic environments. Essentially, Continuum enables an ecology at the edge of the network, between users, competing service providers from overlapping administrative domains, competing internet service providers, content providers, and software developers that want to add value to the user experience. Continuum makes the ubiquitous computing functionality orthogonal to other application logic. Existing web applications are augmented for ubiquitous computing with functionality that is dynamically compiled and injected by a middleware proxy into the web pages requested by a web browser at the user?s mobile device. This enables adaptability to environment variability, manageability without user involvement, and expansibility without changes to the mobile. The middleware manipulates self-contained software units with precise functionality (called <i>frames</i>), which help the user interact with contextual services in conjunction with the data to which they are attached. The middleware and frame design explicitly incorporates the possibility of discrepancies between the assumptions of ubiquitous-computing software developers and field realities: multiple administrative domains, unavailable service, unavailable software, and missing contextual information. A framework for discovery and authorisation addresses the chaos inherent to the paradigm through the notion of <i>role assertions</i> acquired dynamically by the user. Each assertion represents service access credentials and contains bootstrapping points for service discovery on behalf of the holding user. A proof-of-concept prototype validates the design, and implements several frames that demonstrate general functionality, including driving discovery queries over multiple service discovery protocols and making equivalences between service types, across discovery protocols.

This paper aims to study the possibilities and challenges the car industry has to face with applying information technology in cars. The goal is to describe and analyse all the existing technology in the cars out on the market today as well as future possible technologies in cars. By interviewing people who has been working or are working with information technology in cars, we aim to clarify the obstacles and opportunities in the process of implementing informatics in cars. With this knowledge we want to learn more about Ubiquitous computing and how humans interact with Ubiquitous computers today and will be interacting in the future. Technology has a rapid development pace and we find it interesting to examine how the car industry can keep up with the rapid development pace of technology.

Despite the proliferation of large-scale displays in the workplace, creating groupware applications that take advantage of their potential for collaboration and communication remains a challenge. Interactions with large displays yield user experiences that are quite different from interaction with conventional desktop groupware. Thus, unique hurdles exist for designing and deploying large display groupware applications (LDGAs) that are useful and adopted into actual work practice In this dissertation we uncover and address some of the primary challenges for large display groupware applications though the design, development, deployment and evaluation of LDGA systems, as well as through the analysis of existing deployed LDGA systems. We present novel LDGA designs that address the issues of information awareness and informal communication through the use of large shared displays in workplaces and describe the findings from evaluations of their deployments. We then discuss a broad study of several existing LDGAs that we conducted and a framework of adoption challenges that we subsequently derived. We describe the application of this framework to the design a large display groupware application for supporting lightweight communication among workgroup members. We also present a field study of the use of LDGAs within the context of multi-display environments, looking specifically at the display technologies used by NASA scientists and engineers for the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) missions. This work uncovers how the display environment provides flexible support for science tasks as collaboration styles and mission goals evolve. We offer suggestions for how LDGAs should be designed and evaluated in light of our findings regarding the roles of LDGAs within an ecology of displays. Finally, we use the results of this evaluation as input for further refining our framework for LDGA adoption challenges.

Reflection is one of the most important factors that affects learning. A good learning strategy is supposed to improve a learner's reflection level. In addition, the past studies has proved u-learning can enhance learning performance, motivation and efficiency of learners. This study integrates these into learning activity of distinguishing vegetation, let learner reflect in u-learning environment. Almost of past researches promoted learners¡¦ reflection was by text-based. However, the limit of learning activity's character and mobile device¡¦s screen, the design of text-based promotes is confined. Therefore, this study proposes a video-based reflection prompts strategies in high media richness, and the Context-Aware Reflection Prompt System (CRPS) can detect learner¡¦s location by QR Code to provide appropriate guidance, facilitating learner to observe and reflect. Further to explore effects of reflection level and satisfaction between video-based and text-based reflection prompt strategies. This study recruited 70 college students to participate in this experiment, and divide into two groups of video-based and text- based reflection prompts. The results showed that the reflection level of the video-based reflection prompt group is significantly improved than of the text-based reflection prompt group; however, there was no differences found on the satisfaction. In addition, this study further investigated the learners¡¦ opinions and perspectives toward a video-based and a text-based reflection prompt strategy, and interviewed some learners to obtain the potential factors which may affect satisfaction.

This thesis focuses on the technological trends in smart products, and analyzes their conformity to the user expectations. The advances in computation technologies have totally revolutionized the product concept, and with the integration of microchips, software and sensors into the classical everyday objects, smart products, able to sense the context, reason about the sensed data and act according to the situation, have emerged. This new way of computing basing on the ubiquitous and calm computing visions, has distributed the digital information into the surrounding environment, and once freed from the limited resources provided by the classical desktop based computing, attempted to enhance user product communication and collaboration in everyday environments. Via their sensing - decision making - acting process and advanced interaction capabilities, smart products have gained the ability to better interpret user needs and intuitively communicate with users through simplified interfaces involving the majority of the senses without even disturbing or overburdening their users. The study first, throughout a literature review, examines these improvements in computation technologies and determines the trends related to smart products. An empirical research is then conducted to find out to what extend user expectations from smart products overlap with the ongoing researches in this area. The findings including users&rsquo / conception about smartness and expectations from different types of smart products are analyzed regarding to the technological trends to deduce the coherence between literature&rsquo / s orientation and user preferences. The study considered the technological trends as a database and takes the user expectations as the design motivation.

A Display Computer (DC) is an everyday object: Display Computer = Display + Computer. The “Display” part is the standard viewing surface found on everyday objects that conveys information or art. The “Computer” is found on the same everyday object; but by its ubiquitous nature, it will be relatively unnoticeable by the DC user, as it is manufactured “in the margins”. A DC may be mobile, moving with us as part of the everyday object we are using. DCs will be ubiquitous: “effectively invisible”, available at a glance, and seamlessly integrated into the environment. A DC should be an example of Weiser’s calm technology: encalming to the user, providing peripheral awareness without information overload. A DC should provide unremarkable computing in support of our daily routines in life. The nbaCub (nightly bedtime ambient Cues utility buddy) prototype illustrates a sample application of how DCs can be useful in the everyday environment of the home of the future. Embedding a computer into a toy, such that the display is the only visible portion, can present many opportunities for seamless and nontraditional uses of computing technology for our youngest user community. A field study was conducted in the home environment of a five-year old child over ten consecutive weeks as an informal, proof of concept of what Display Computers for children can look like and be used for in the near future. The personalized nbaCub provided lightweight, ambient information during the necessary daily routines of preparing for bed (evening routine) and preparing to go to school (morning routine). To further understand the child’s progress towards learning abstract concepts of time passage and routines, a novel “test by design” activity was included. Here, the role of the subject changed to primary designer/director. Final post-testing showed the subject knew both morning and bedtime routines very well and correctly answered seven of eight questions based on abstract images of time passage. Thus, the subject was in the process of learning the more abstract concept of time passage, but was not totally comfortable with the idea at the end of the study.