A Software Defined Network Based Research on Fairness in Multimedia

Ahmed Osama Basil, Mu Mu, Ali Al-Sherbaz

Abstract

The demand for online distribution of high quality and high throughput content has led to non-cooperative competition of network resources between a growing number of media applications. This causes a significant impact on network efficiency, the quality of user experience (QoE) as well as a discrepancy of QoE across user devices. Within a multi-user multi-device environment, measuring and maintaining perceivable fairness becomes as critical as achieving the QoE on individual user applications. This paper discusses application- and humanlevel fairness over networked multimedia applications and how such fairness can be managed through novel network designs using programmable networks such as software-defined networks (SDN).

Original language	English
Title of host publication	Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency in MultiMedia
Publisher	ACM Press
Pages	11-18
Number of pages	8
ISBN (Print)	9781450369152
Publication status	Published - 25 Oct 2019
Event	FAT/MM: Fairness Accountability and Transparency in Multimedia : An ACM MM 2019 Workshop - Nice, France Duration: 21 Oct 2019 → 25 Oct 2019 https://acmmm.org/workshops/

Publication series

Name	Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency in MultiMedia

Internet address	https://acmmm.org/workshops/

DOI: 10.1145/3347447.3356750

Paper available at: http://www.mendeley.com/research/software-defined-network-based-research-fairness-multimedia


All views and opinions are the author's and do not necessarily reflected those of any organisation they are associated with. Twitter: @scottturneruon

University receives over £500,000 worth of technology to enrich students’ learning

Taken from: http://www.northampton.ac.uk/news/500k-technology-donation/

Computing students at the University of Northampton are benefiting from more than £550,000 worth of new cutting-edge hardware and software, which has been donated to the institution by leading players in the technology industry.

The hardware kits, which are widely recognised in both industry and academia, will allow University of Northampton students the opportunity to develop their learning at an industry standard – ensuring that once they graduate they leave University with the skills and experience that employers require.

The hardware and software – which is worth collectively over £553,000 – has been donated by three leading computing organisations: Altera (now part of Intel), ARM, and Texas Instruments.

The donated kit includes two different types of circuit boards; one which supports high-intensity computing applications such as cloud computing, data acquisition and network processing, and another which is suitable for a wide range of exercises in courses on digital logic and computer organisation.

The computing software and hardware that have been donated will be used in research projects and group work to provide students with the knowledge required to design an ‘Internet of Things’ system and/or modern embedded systems applications. The ‘Internet of Things’ concept will mean that every device that can ‘power up’ could potentially be controlled from the internet – either from a PC or smart device, or by using Bluetooth technology.

All of the donations will be embedded into the teaching curriculum and used by students studying Computing (Computer Systems Engineering), and those undertaking postgraduate research at the University.

Dr Michael Opoku Agyeman, Lecturer in Computing, explained: “The kits are well equipped with state-of-the-art technology to cover a wide scope of applications in Computer Systems Engineering. Both our undergraduate and postgraduate research students will benefit from rapid prototype and evaluation of basic to advanced digital world projects in game console design, robotics, home and industrial automation, wearable computing, digital signal processing, reconfigurable computing, digital electronic devices and Very-Large-Scale-Integration circuit design.

“Donations such as these support the University’s mission to transform lives and inspire change.”

The University of Northampton’s Computing (Computer Systems Engineering) degree allows students to study the integral role that effective computer systems play in 21st Century society –  from local, small scale systems that may be developed by a single person to make their devices interact; through to larger multi-national companies with employees who need to communicate fast and securely.

Find out more Computer Systems Engineering at the University of Northampton. Computer Science at the University was recently ranked 19th in the United Kingdom, in the 2017 Guardian University Guide.

—

Pictured: Dr Michael Opoku Agyeman, with some of the donated technology.

If you'd like to find out more about Computing at the University of Northampton go to: www.computing.northampton.ac.uk. All views and opinions are the author's and do not necessarily reflected those of any organisation they are associated with

mini-projects: Play with micro:bit software - dancing bot (update)

The micro:bit (https://www.microbit.co.uk/about) has been in the press quite a bit recently - rightly so. 

At the moment I have not got my hands on an actual one, though someone generously (more in later posts on that) will be lending me one to play with. 


Luckily you do not need the device to start playing; the code editor (https://www.microbit.co.uk/create-code) has an emulator built in, so you can start playing. This post reports on my first go.

So, I am starting with experimenting with the editor, using Microsoft's Block Editor - which is similar to Blockly and Scratch as an interface.

What I built is simple but that is fine - A dancing bot - 3x3 box for the body, with two legs. I wanted to play with getting some interaction that uses the buttons (A and B) and shaking. So the functions for the idea were:

• Button A - make it bob up and down;
• Button B - makes it move to the left and right;
• Shaking it - makes it appear to jump and land (see below);
• Button A+B together makes it do one of the moves of up, down, left and right.

The video below shows it action. 


 

The other nice thing is go convert to the Microsoft touch Developer version (see below) with a click.

Now to be repeat most of this just using events.


So the functions for the idea were:

• Button A - make it bob up and down;
• Button B - makes it move to the left and right;

• On shake - make it jump up and down.

 



Thanks to a loan of a Micro:Bit from Lancaster University I can experiment with an actual micro:bit (@SCC_Lancaster @LMcUnderwood)

Experiment  1 - Using the buttons

So the functions for the idea were:

• Button A - Move to the left and then back to the starting position;
• Button B - Move to the right and then back to the starting position;
• Buttons A+B - Jump up and then back to the starting position;
• Shake - 'Crouches' and then back to the starting position

On the Microbit

 







Experiment 2- To add left and right tilting to it.
So if the micro:bit is tilted to the right the 'bot'  moves to the right, and the same for the left.

The tilting operation here is essentially - when the x on the accelerometer is less than zero move the 'bot' to the left and when it greater than zero go to the right.

Video showing it in action

All opinions in this blog are the Author's and should not in any way be seen as reflecting the views of any organisation the Author has any association with.

11th China – Europe International Symposium on Software Industry Orientated Education

11th China – Europe International Symposium on  Software Industry Orientated Education:

29-30th April 2015, 

Westsächsische Hochschule Zwickau, 

University of Applied Science

For more details go to:http://whz-cms-10.zw.fh-zwickau.de/bo/index_CEISEE.html

Paper extended deadline: 31st January 2015

Call for papers



If you'd like to find out more about Computing at the University of Northampton go to: www.computing.northampton.ac.uk. All views and opinions are the author's and do not necessarily reflected those of any organisation they are associated with

Model-Based Development (MBD)

Welcome to Oyindamola Olajubu who has recently joined the Department of Computing and Immersive Technology, University of Northampton as a PhD researcher on a collaborative project  with GE Aviation Systems on Model-Based software development. A summary of the project can be found below.

Project Description

Model-Based Development (MBD) is seeing widespread adoption in a variety of domains within industry, especially in aviation. Industries around the world are reporting significant benefits from its use. However, the extent to which MBD can be used effectively in the software development lifecycle is unclear.

GE Aviation Systems primarily uses natural language (textual ‘shall’ statements) to express software requirements. These textual statements are often ambiguous, untestable, incorrect, missing detail, etc. Finding this out late in the development lifecycle proves very expensive. To this end, GE Aviation Systems has turned to MBD. They still use textual statements to express software requirements, but they supplement the requirements writing activity with modelling and simulation so that engineers gain a better understanding of the requirements and their faults. The models can then be refined and improved and serve as the Software Design artifacts that are used to auto-generate code. Currently, this means they have to write tests manually to test the design against the requirements. The study will investigate whether they could use models to express requirements and use those models to auto-generate test cases for testing the design model. This would then increase their productivity. To summarise, the research project will study the feasibility of model based tool support to capture requirements and automate requirements based testing.

Supervisors
Dr Suraj Ajit
Dr Mark Johnson
Dr Scott Turner

China and Europe coming to Milan

9th China-Europe International Symposium on 

Software Engineering Education. 

The conference will be held in Milan, Italy 

13th and 14th May 2013

Theme: Software Engineering Education for Global 

E-Service Economy

The conference website is http://camellia.unipv.it:15000/

The deadline is currently March 10 2013
Call for papers: http://camellia.unipv.it:15000/web/guest/topics-call-for-paper

Background to the conference: http://camellia.unipv.it:15000/web/guest/background-objectives

Provisional schedule.

• May 13 - Morning:  Opening ceremony and  Keynote Speech
• May 13 – Afternoon: Parallel sessions
• May 13 – Evening:  Banquet and Social Event
• May 14- Morning:  Industry Track, Software Engineering for the Industry
  • University and Industry cooperation in a global world 
  • Field education of Software Engineer and Enterprise Architects: internships, stages and post-graduate education; 
  • Panel Session Education on Software Engineering and Services Science for Global E-Service
•  May 14- Afternoon (optional): Visit Politecnico di Milano or University of Milano Bicocca

Further information is on the website:http://camellia.unipv.it:15000/

BCS Northampton student awards

The Northampton branch of the BCS awards several prizes to promising and high preforming students at the University of Northampton from both the School of Science and Technology and the Northampton Business School.

The 2012 Students Prize winners are:
Northampton Business School - Park Campus: 
Best Student:
Sabah Dada - BSc Business Computing Systems
Most promising Student:
Timothy Bradley - BSc Business Computing Systems

School of Science and Technology - Avenue Campus: 
Best Final Year Student
John Marsh BSc Computing (Computer Networks Engineering).
Most promising Student:
Gaurav Ravindra - BSc Computing (Software Engineering).


More information about the Northampton Branch can be found at:
http://northampton.bcs.org/
Events information can be found at: Events

SELF SERVING SOFTWARE FOR THE FAST FOOD INDUSTRY

Kumuditha Achini Kariyawasam

As the consumers, we are expecting the best quality products and services
from the every customer focused industry and when we are considering the
fast food industry, it has not achieved the full potential of the technological development. After completing the ethnographical research, the developer has realised that the self-serving software model can only achieve the existing and upcoming challenges of this industry.

Therefore this project based on designing and developing the customer focused self-serving software model for the fast food restaurant. A Large fast food company providede the key system for the entire project and the developer mainly focused the human computer interaction techniques to enhance the usability of the developing system according to the Agile Methodology and Rapid Application Development Methods.


The final output of the project is the fully functional self-serving software model for the fast food restaurant.  The implementation of the new system development could theoretically improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the industry as well as the high standard customer satisfaction.

BSc and HND Computing Provision (click on the links below for more details of the courses)

• BSc (Hons) Computing (also available part-time)
• BSc (Hons) Computing (Computer Networks Engineering)
• BSc (Hons) Computing (Computer Systems Engineering)
• BSc (Hons) Computing (Graphics and Visualisation)
• BSc (Hons) Computing (Internet Technology and Security)
• BSc (Hons) Computing (Mobile Computing)
• BSc (Hons) Computing (Software Engineering)
• BSc (Hons) Computing - One Year Top-up
• BSc  Computer Games Development
• HNC Computing (part-time)
• HND Computing (Computer Networks Engineering)
• HND Computing (Computer Systems Engineering)
• HND Computing (Graphics and Visualisation)
• HND Computing (Internet Technology and Security)
• HND Computing (Mobile Computing)
• HND Computing (Software Engineering) 
• HND Computing
• HND Computer Games Development

The University of Northampton's, Department of Computing and Immersive Technologies offers five courses within the MSc Computing postgraduate provision (shown below) all available either part-time or full-time. 

• MSc Computing
• MSc Computing (Internet Technology and Security)
• MSc Computing (Computer Networks Engineering)
• MSc Computing (Software Engineering)
• MSc Computing (Immersive Technologies)

Book chapter: Problems First

Two members of the Computing Division of the University of Northampton have contributed a chapter to the book  Software Industry-Oriented Education Practices and Curriculum Development: Experiences and Lessons  edited by Drs. Matthew Hussey, Xiaofei Xu and Bing Wu.  ISBN: 978-1609607975 IGI Global to be published later this year.

Problems First

Gary Hill and Scott Turner

ABSTRACT

This chapter considers the need to focus initial programming education on problem-solving, in advance of programming syntax and software design methodology. The main vehicle for this approach is simple Lego based robots programmed in Java, followed by the programming of a graphical representation/simulation to develop programming skills. Problem solving is not trivial (Beaumont & Fox, 2003) and is an important skill, central to computing and engineering.

An approach will be considered, illustrated with a series of problem-solving tasks that increase in complexity at each stage and give the students practice in attempting problem-solving approaches, as well as assisting them to learn from their mistakes. Some of the problems include ambiguities or are purposely ill-defined, to enable the student to resolve these as part of the process.

The benefits to students will be discussed including students’ statements that this approach, using robots, provides a method to visually and physically see the outcome of a problem. In addition, students report that the method improves their satisfaction with the course.

The importance of linking the problem-solving robot activity and the programming assignment, whilst maintaining the visual nature of the problem, will be discussed, together with the comparison of this work with similar work reported by other authors relating to teaching programming using robots (Williams, 2003). 

Robots and Graphical Programming: Xi'an China

Two members of the computing division recently presented a paper "Innovative use of Robots and Graphical Programming in Software Education " at  6th China Europe International Symposium on Software Industry Oriented Education (CEISIE2010) Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an China.


Problem solving is an important skill for a computer scientist. Mindstorm based robots have been used previously, for teaching programming to computing and engineering students here we look at problem solving. These approaches focus upon the development of problem solving skills and not on learning a new programming language from the outset. Therefore, initially, any programming is kept simple with the minimum of commands, with „objects‟ unknowingly used, as these are later introduced/learnt during the programming stage of the computing module. This work suggests that using LEGO robots within the teaching of problem solving and the resulting java GUI emulation has some benefits for the students when learning to program. 


More details can be found in the following article :
Turner S and Hill G (2010) "Innovative use of Robots and Graphical Programming in Software Education" Computer Education Ser. 117 No. 9 pp 54-57 ISSN: 1672-5913