Consumer acceptance of buying goods and services online via the Internet is growing, although e-ecommerce has been mostly a mirror of traditional methods of pricing transactions – fixed price or auctions. The proliferation of personal mobile devices with pervasive Internet access and localization capability means a richer set of pricing parameters can be used. Allowing buyers and sellers to more explicitly price requests and filter offers, including information about time and place, allows for better transaction results for both parties. This paper examines the impacts of including the time and place of performance of a service as part of the price. A system for implementation is proposed, a simulation of the system is evaluated, and the results presented. / text

An OALS/MRI Report. / "This report was prepared with the support of National Science Foundation Grant No. PRA 78-11632. Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of NSF.

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Team coordination is vital to the success of team missions. On the battlefield and in other hazardous environments, mission outcomes are often very unpredictable because of unforeseen circumstances and complications encountered that adversely affect team coordination. In addition, the battlefield is constantly evolving as new technology, such as context-aware systems and unmanned drones, becomes available to assist teams in coordinating team efforts. As a result, we must re-evaluate the dynamics of teams that operate in high-stress, hazardous environments in order to learn how to use technology to enhance team coordination within this new context. In dangerous environments where multi-tasking is critical for the safety and success of the team operation, it is important to know what forms of interaction are most conducive to team tasks. We have explored interaction methods, including various types of user input and data feedback mediums that can assist teams in performing unified tasks on the battlefield. We’ve conducted an ethnographic analysis of Soldiers and researched technologies such as sketch recognition, physiological data classification, augmented reality, and haptics to come up with a set of core principles to be used when de- signing technological tools for these teams. This dissertation provides support for these principles and addresses outstanding problems of team connectivity, mobility, cognitive load, team awareness, and hands-free interaction in mobile military applications. This research has resulted in the development of a multimodal solution that enhances team coordination by allowing users to synchronize their tasks while keeping an overall awareness of team status and their environment. The set of solutions we’ve developed utilizes optimal interaction techniques implemented and evaluated in related projects; the ultimate goal of this research is to learn how to use technology to provide total situational awareness and team connectivity on the battlefield. This information can be used to aid the research and development of technological solutions for teams that operate in hazardous environments as more advanced resources become available.

High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) is a cellular system that was standardized by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). HSDPA can support data rates of up to 14.4 Mbps through the use of a shared channel. Due to its high transmission rates, the highly popular multimedia applications are converging over this network. Moreover, as the shared channel is assigned to a single user in a given time interval, the scheduling decision is considered as a crucial one. Conventional HSDPA scheduling schemes utilize the fluctuations in channel condition to maximize system throughput by selecting users with relatively good radio conditions. However, this raises the issue of fairness as users with relatively poor channel conditions might not be served and consequently may suffer from starvation. Furthermore, Real-Time (RT) applications have strict delay constraints and require that packets are transmitted within a certain delay threshold. In this thesis, a Delay Based Scheduler (DBS) is proposed for HSDPA which aims at minimizing the average queuing delay at the packet scheduler without compromising system throughput and fairness. In addition, the scheme can balance the tradeoff between throughput maximization and the minimization of queuing delay through the attunement of a parameter, thus allowing the service provider to choose between these two metrics. The DBS maintains the delay constraints of RT applications by defining delay thresholds for each traffic class and dropping packets that exceed their delay limit. The DBS accommodates Quality of Service (QoS) prioritization by defining and utilizing desired QoS parameters in the scheduling assignment. Finally, it was mathematically shown that the DBS can converge to a Non-Real-Time (NRT) scheme known as the Max CIR algorithm, allowing the scheduler to support RT and NRT applications simultaneously. The performance of the DBS was evaluated and compared to other well known schemes. It was found that the DBS can minimize the aggregate queuing delay of the system and maintain similar throughput and fairness. / Thesis (Master, Computing) -- Queen's University, 2007-08-15 16:12:36.22

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