University of Southern Queensland Design
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University of Southern Queensland Faculty of Engineering and Surveying Design, Development and Implementation of Innovative & Pervasive Applications using Emerging Communication Technologies for Highly Mobile Organisations A Dissertation submitted by Keyurkumar Jayantibhai Patel, BE, MEng For the Award of Engineering Doctorate Principal Supervisor Dr Wei Xiang Associate Supervisor Associate Professor Nigel Hancock Abstract Information and Communications Technology (ICT) industry is rapidly expanding, constantly changing and oriented around emerging technologies. In recent times, research data from industry skills demand and job advertisements shows that there is clearly vast skills shortages to develop applications leading to computer and telecommunications networks for financial, banking, energy, health, engineering, aviation, tourism, hospitality and education sectors. Applications based on the wireless technologies both short range (Bluetooth® and IEEE 802.11x family) and long range (next generation cellular technologies) reliant on telecommunication networks are growing at an alarming rate with an increased demand for security, quality of service, scalability, mobile multimedia, bandwidth usage, infrastructure and innovation. This demand brings major technological challenges for the management, developers and end-users in the ICT sector. This dissertation presents an investigation into these challenges in form of a decade of individual professional projects requiring fundamental design from the principles of wireless communications. Innovative and pervasive solutions are developed for the highly mobile organisations using amalgamation of compatible and cost effective emerging communication technologies. Highly mobile organisations span the aviation, power generation and distribution, hospitality, tourism, education, and telecommunication sectors. These industries execute numerous and distinctively different real-time business transactions. From the preliminary research and investigations in each, suitable technological solution for each organisation’s problem is designed, developed then implemented. This dissertation is assembled from my research input to nine commercial projects executed between 2001 and 2010. Each was ‘cutting edge’ and technically challenging at the time of execution. These comprise: a secure wireless technology implementation at the Sydney Airport Corporation Limited (SACL) between 2001 and 2003; implementation of a secure on-site and off-site electricity meter reading solutions for the Hong Kong Electricity Company (HEC) between 2004 and 2005; design and development of wireless food ordering system, iPod as a visitor’s personal guide and voice over internet protocol (VoIP) for student attendance i recording and retrieval application (SARRA) for the Box Hill Institute (BHI) between 2005 and 2007; a new three layered packet switching media access control (MAC) framework was developed with the quality of service mechanism for the Aricent® Group between 2007 and 2009; a new modular data link layer (M-DALL) was developed for a multiple radio access technologies (RATs) for the Aricent® Group between 2008 and 2009; digital living network alliance (DLNA) enabled mobile terminals integrated with home gateway (HG) and an adaptive quality framework was developed for the Aricent® Group between 2009 and 2010; and a heuristic buffer management scheme on Android® to enhance video quality for smart phones was developed for the Aricent® Group between 2009 and 2010. One of the major key performance indicators for these projects was to develop and implement solutions in their respective organisations. This dissertation is based on these projects. To date a total of 15 manuscripts (international refereed conferences and journals) and one book in the form of international refereed conference proceedings are published. ii Certification of Dissertation I certify that the ideas, experimental work, results, analyses and conclusions reported in this dissertation are entirely my own effort, except where otherwise acknowledged. I also certify that the work is original and has not been previously submitted for any other tertiary award, except where otherwise acknowledged. ____________________________________ ______________ Signature of Candidate Date (Keyurkumar Jayantibhai Patel) Endorsement ____________________________________ ______________ Signature of Principal Supervisor Date (Dr Wei Xiang) ____________________________________ ______________ Signature of Associate Supervisor Date (Associate Professor Nigel Hancock) iii Acknowledgement I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Dr Wei Xiang and Associate Professor Nigel Hancock for their guidance, support and critical reviews of the entire dissertation and many constructive suggestions from the initial to the final level that enabled me to develop my projects into the dissertation. This thesis would not be possible without immense help and support from my collaborators and ex-colleagues Mr Steve McCubben of the Sydney Airport Corporation Ltd (SACL), Dr Wing Tam of the Hong Kong Electricity Company (HEC), Mr S. Vijay Anand and Mr Suman Kumar Prasanna of Aricent® Group, and Mr Henry Wiebell, Mr Steven Besford and Mr Jose Straube of Box Hill Institute. I am grateful to my colleagues at Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter Project Office, Mr Dong Le (Nova Defence) and Squadron Leader Mikel Schmid for their time and contribution towards proof reading of this dissertation. I am obliged to the Australian Defence Force and in particular, the Army, Defence Materiel Organisation (DMO), Colonel Robert B. Crowe, Mr Brett J. Worsley and Major Aaron J. Rose for providing a flexible working conditions and much needed study leaves in order to pursue the Engineering Doctorate. I am heartily thankful to Mr Mohan Trada, Mrs Lata Trada, Dr Vipul Parikh and Mrs Preeti Parikh for providing much needed hospitality during my several visits to Toowoomba. I am indebted to my wife, Dr Deval Patel and my parents for their unconditional support and continuous encouragement that kept me constantly focused towards completion of the study. Needless to say, without all the above help and support, the writing of this dissertation would not have been possible. Lastly, I offer my sincere regards to all of those who supported me in any respect during the completion of the Engineering Doctorate. iv Dissertation Overview Telecommunication is the fastest growing part of the Information Communication Technology (ICT) industry with the emergence of real-time and multimedia rich applications, distributed systems and mobile technologies needs to be compatible with the existing skills sets, applications and infrastructures. Chapter 1 presents a fundamental understanding on emerging communication technologies, their classification and implications on the third and fourth generation wireless and mobile services. Discussions on standards and technologies are done only as needed and relevant to projects to get the readers up to speed on the technologies. This chapter undertakes qualitative comparison of emerging technologies and demonstrates with examples, the features, effort and investments in these technologies. Chapter 1 concludes with the implications of current downturn in global economy and consumer reaction towards new technologies. Chapters 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 are based on five major projects carried out between 2001 and 2007. These projects are based on short range communication technologies and were commercially financed and business driven which warranted return on investment, ease of use, simple design, and scalable. They mainly focus on data communication. In summary, the topics of these chapters are as follows. Chapter 2 presents wireless technology implemented at the Sydney Airport Corporation Limited (SACL). Wireless Technology, an integral part of the telecommunication industry, is growing at an alarming rate with increased security being the main challenge for developers and end users. It discusses tackling initial challenges and issues faced during the implementation of wireless technology and how security issues and wireless application were implemented at the Sydney Airport – a highly mobile organisation. The decision to deploy and manage the wireless spectrum throughout the Airport campus meant the Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) will be a shared medium with public users, tenants and aircraft communications, sharing the same available bandwidth. Therefore to protect unintended users from breach of existing security policies adopted by their corporate network a comprehensive security solution needed to be established. This chapter focuses on how WLAN architecture and security challenges of implementing a v common use wireless infrastructure were addressed. Authentication and data privacy challenges are also presented. The complete WLAN connectivity for tenants, public and corporate usage is presented. My role in this project was as a research engineer. Tasks included but not limited to, infrastructure research, feasibility analysis, technical proposal development and design review. Chapter 3 presents a comprehensive technical overview on how a wireless application is developed and implemented using short range wireless technology – Bluetooth®, to securely collect electricity meter readings using on-site and off-site techniques. A huge manpower is coordinated by electricity distributor – Hong Kong Electricity Company (HEC), to collect electricity usage data from the electricity meters.