Front Cover
Publication Month: January 2022, Page(s): A1 – A1
Editorial Board
Publication Month: January 2022, Page(s): B1 – B1
Editorial
Publication Month: January 2022, Page(s): C1 – C1
Table of Contents
Publication Month: January 2022, Page(s): D1 – D1
Using Interaction Geography to Explore Building Occupant Behaviors in Virtual Reality: A Pilot Study
Hoa Vo, Peter Huesemann-Odom
J. Engg. Res. & Sci. 1(11), 1-7 (2022);
The sole focus of current occupant behavior research on environmental and contextual factors (i.e., physical attributes) in buildings is a missed opportunity. Psychological, physiological, social, time, and random factors also influence building occupants. In this pilot study (n=10), the authors used Interaction Geography to capture human movements across space and time in a Virtual Reality (VR) museum to dissect building occupant behavior. Results indicated that study majors (i.e., psychological) and personal connections (i.e., social) with the space affected how participants explored and spent time in the VR museum.
Modelling, Simulation and Sensitivity Analysis of Generator Control Systems using Coexisting and Cooperative Tools
Javier Urquizo, Diover Bonilla, Francisco Rivera, Rommel Chang
J. Engg. Res. & Sci. 2(1), 1-12 (2023);
This research is about tuning the automatic generator control (AGC) unit within the National Transmission System (NTG) and is intended to provide a set of key insights into problems related to generator control systems oscillations and the possible available solutions. The case study is the Baba Hydroelectric Power Plant in Ecuador. The aim is to model, simulate and validate the controls of the Baba generating units for an optimal and stable response. Both controllers, the Automatic Voltage Regulator (AVR) and Power System Stabilizer (PSS) were tuned using both a component-based approach using an object-orientated tool where the model structure resembles the original system, and a coexisting power flow tool in a signal orientated environment. A key part of this tuning is the adaptation of the model to different operating conditions by testing scenarios where signals ought to be defined before the start of the simulation and others be chosen for visualisation without any limitation, therefore, this paper is about finding a multi-framework environment. Also, the model was disturbed so to observe the field Voltage and terminal voltage values using a simplified and reduced part of the NTG. Results show that a high gain AVR helps the steady state and transient stabilities but may reduce the oscillatory stability and the PSS can provide significant stabilization of such oscillations. The validation strategy uses the average quadratic mean square error statistical method.
CAPEF: Context-Aware Policy Enforcement Framework for Android Applications
Saad Inshi, Mahdi Elarbi, Rasel Chowdhury, Hakima Ould-Slimane, Chamseddine Talhi
J. Engg. Res. & Sci. 2(1), 13-23 (2023);
The notion of Context-Awareness of mobile applications is drawing more attention, where many applications need to adapt to physical environments of users and devices, such as location, time, connectivity, resources, etc. While these adaptive features can facilitate better communication and help users to access their information anywhere at any time, this however bring risks caused by the potential loss, misuse, or leak of users’ confidential information. Therefore, a flexible policy-based access control system is needed to monitor critical functions executed by Android applications, especially, those requiring access to user’s sensitive and crucial information. This paper introduces CAPEF, which is a policy specification framework that enforces context-aware inter-app security policies to mitigate privacy leakage across different Android applications. It also, provides an instrumentation framework to effectively enforce different behaviors based on automated context-aware policies to each Android application individually without modifying the underlying platform. Accordingly, the modified applications will be forced to communicate with our centralized policy engine to avoid any malware collusion that occur without the users’ awareness. Experiments conducted on CAPEF shows an effective performance on the size of the enforced application after the instrumentation. The average size added was 705 bytes, which is about 0.063% of the size of the original applications, which is significantly small compared to other existing enforcement approaches. Also, we have denoted that the size and the execution time of the policy increases whenever the policies become more complex.
A Tunable Dual-mode SIW Cavity Based Bandpass Filter with Wide Upper Stopband Characteristics
Md. Atiqur Rahman, Pankaj Sarkar
J. Engg. Res. & Sci. 2(1), 24-29 (2023);
A new approach to design a bandpass filter using substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) topology is presented here for 5G applications. The aim of the design is to produce a dual mode passband characteristic with wide upper stopband behaviour, centred at 4.7 GHz. Four identical Stepped Impedance Resonator (SIR) slots are etched into the top surface of the SIW cavity for the proposed filter structure. The SIR slots aid in reducing the cavity’s resonant frequency and to generate the dual mode passband characteristics. The SIR slots also mitigate the higher modes in the SIW cavity which helps to accomplish a wide upper stopband response. In order to improve selectivity, the structure is further modified by introducing two E shaped resonator slots on the ground plane to produce two transmission zeros at 3.9 GHz and 6.2 GHz. Tunable characteristic is achieved by loading two surface mount varactor diodes diagonally on the top of the proposed structure. By suitably applying the bias voltage, the center frequency of the passband is tuned over a range of 600 MHz. The developed filter is fabricated in order to verify the simulated and measured results.
Applied Salt Technique to Secure Steganographic Algorithm
Bo Bo Oo
J. Engg. Res. & Sci. 2(2), 8-14 (2023);
Digital multimedia assets, including photographs, movies, and audio files, have become a staple of contemporary life. Steganography is a method for undetectable information concealment in these files. One can communicate messages to another by modifying multimedia signals so that a human would be unable to tell the difference between the original signal and the altered one. The widespread use of digital data in practical applications has prompted the development of new and efficient methods for ensuring its security. Steganographic techniques can be used to, at least in part, achieve efficient secrecy. There have been suggested new and adaptable audio steganographic techniques. By using cryptography, readable language is converted to unintelligible data. In order to send and receive text, multimedia, or other important digital files safely, this paper discusses secure communication media. To have secure communication tools, the tools must lessen potential risks and weaknesses. Therefore, the primary factor to take into account for creating a solid communication system is transferred media. The objective of steganographic systems is to find a secure and reliable method to hide a significant amount of secret data. This research focuses on digital image audio steganography, which has become a popular method for data concealment.
Blockchain Tokens for Agri-Food Supply Chain
Ricardo Borges Dos Santos, Rodrigo Palucci Pantoni, Nunzio Marco Torrisi
J. Engg. Res. & Sci. 2(2), 15-23 (2023);
The aim of this research is to suggest and analyze a framework to give universal publicity to food properties certificates from any certification authorities. The focus is the certification of agro product instances, i.e. unique for every single harvest, using smart contracts and blockchain non fungible tokens minted by third-party authorities. The development and testing of a set of smart contracts used the newly established ERC-1155 Ethereum token standard to implement Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT)s. The ERC-1155 tokens allow for representing both the uniqueness, thus non-fungibility, between different harvests as well as the quantitative elements within a specific harvest, e.g. mass fractions of product from the same harvest, which can be interchanged, thus fungible. The framework was developed, deployed, and tested on the Ethereum test net blockchain and submitted to extensive testing. The blockchain data is accessible through general-purpose block scanners and can be read through an Android App used by regular consumers during a supermarket visit. The goal is to give consumers easy access to the Third-party Certificates (TPC) URLs available at the public Ethereum blockchain. The benefit for food safety of widespread TPC visibility through web applications can not be underestimated, since the use of blockchain tokens controlled by smart contracts injects trust in the traceability of the merchandise, reducing counterfeiting and green-washing. The broadcasting of the TPCs with the corresponding discipline of tokens transfer and smart contact restriction to possible abuses increases agro-food supply chain transparency. Trust and transparency foster sustainable buying habits by many consumers and transparency in the complete production and distribution links.
Designing Critical and Secondary Information in Augmented Reality Headsets for Situational Awareness
Julia Woodward, Jesse Smith, Isaac Wang, Sofia Cuenca, Jaime Ruiz
J. Engg. Res. & Sci. 2(3), 1-15 (2023);
Augmented Reality (AR) headsets are being used in different contexts (e.g., the oil industry, healthcare, military); however, there is a lack of research and design recommendations on how information should be presented in the AR headset displays, especially for aiding users’ situational awareness. We present two studies: one examining if existing findings on the perceptibility of three types of visual stimulus (color, text, shapes) can be applied to AR headsets for critical information, and one analyzing three different presentation styles (Display, Environment, Mixed Environment) for textual secondary information in AR headsets. Our study on secondary information is an extension of prior work. For critical information, we found that existing visual perception findings can be applied to AR headsets; there is a hierarchy of salient visual features. Understanding that we can utilize prior work on visual features helps in designing salient critical information for AR headset displays. For secondary information, we found that having the text in the Display and Environment presentation styles assisted in participants’ perception and comprehension when compared to the Mixed Environment presentation style. Based on our results, we provide design recommendations on how to present critical and secondary information in AR headset displays to aid in users’ situational awareness, which is essential in safety crucial domains such as the military.
Coding: First Steps from Kindergarten up to Primary School
Elisa Benetti, Gianluca Mazzini
J. Engg. Res. & Sci. 2(3), 16-30 (2023);
Computational thinking is now featured in many school curricula around the world. It is in fact defined as the “new English”, emphasizing its universally recognized indispensability. Despite this, the subject is almost never addressed until primary school where, however, hours dedicated to it are often too limited. Our first training proposal, including basic coding concepts in kindergarten, led to better results than expected in terms of children’s understanding and involvement. Our field training has led to a refinement and expansion of the program in these past three years. The primary objective is to begin the study of coding at the age of three, when the foundations of logical thinking are actually already present, due to get to the writing of the first programs in pseudocode and analysis of programming languages at the end of elementary school. All methodologies used are chosen on the basis of the possibility of following a single logical trend, which gradually increases the concepts to be learned and their difficulty, but always starting from already known bases, previously addressed. This allows to optimize learning times by minimizing the necessary hours and human resources and still obtaining the desired results. In addition to not burdening the number of hours available, a further firm point was not to burden schools economically either: costs were in fact always achievable without any problems. Having no impact either on the budget, or on the number of hours, or on the required staff makes this program easily feasible for any school.
Graph-based Tool for Bandwidth Estimation, Health Monitoring and Update Planning in Broadband Networks
Gian Paolo Jesi, Andrea Odorizzi, Gianluca Mazzini
J. Engg. Res. & Sci. 2(4), 1-13 (2023);
This paper focuses on the genesis and evolution of our specific Company tool. It is aimed to tackle the problem of verifying the health status and availability of residual bandwidth between any node over the Lepida ScpA broadband network. In fact, there must be a correspondence between active contractual obligations signed by local network operators and the physical bandwidth which we allocate. This is the key factor that must be addressed in the early phases when processing any bandwidth requests from local customers. Before the introduction of our tool, this verification process has been carried out almost manually with a substantial cost in terms of time. The adoption of this in-house developed tool allowed us to substantially shrink of the verification time required and to provide an overview of the network status. Our tool is grounded on building a graph representation of the network and on well known graph algorithms.
Orthogonal Polynomials in the Problems of Digital Information Processing
Yaroslav Pyanylo, Valentyna Sobko, Halyna Pyanylo, Oksana Pyanylo
J. Engg. Res. & Sci. 2(5), 1-9 (2023);
The paper examines spectral methods based on classical orthogonal polynomials for solving problems of digital information processing. Based on Jacobi polynomials, signal approximation methods are built to identify objects in the natural environment. Based on Chebyshev-Laguerre polynomials, methods of filtering multiplicative signal noises in linear filter models are proposed. Numerical experiments on model problems were conducted.
