Abstract: Over last two decades, due to hostilities of environment
over the internet the concerns about confidentiality of information
have increased at phenomenal rate. Therefore to safeguard the information
from attacks, number of data/information hiding methods have
evolved mostly in spatial and transformation domain.In spatial domain
data hiding techniques,the information is embedded directly on
the image plane itself. In transform domain data hiding techniques the
image is first changed from spatial domain to some other domain and
then the secret information is embedded so that the secret information
remains more secure from any attack. Information hiding algorithms
in time domain or spatial domain have high capacity and relatively
lower robustness. In contrast, the algorithms in transform domain,
such as DCT, DWT have certain robustness against some multimedia
processing.In this work the authors propose a novel steganographic
method for hiding information in the transform domain of the gray
scale image.The proposed approach works by converting the gray
level image in transform domain using discrete integer wavelet
technique through lifting scheme.This approach performs a 2-D
lifting wavelet decomposition through Haar lifted wavelet of the cover
image and computes the approximation coefficients matrix CA and
detail coefficients matrices CH, CV, and CD.Next step is to apply the
PMM technique in those coefficients to form the stego image. The
aim of this paper is to propose a high-capacity image steganography
technique that uses pixel mapping method in integer wavelet domain
with acceptable levels of imperceptibility and distortion in the cover
image and high level of overall security. This solution is independent
of the nature of the data to be hidden and produces a stego image
with minimum degradation.
Abstract: The psychological and physical trauma associated with the loss of a human limb can severely impact on the quality of life of an amputee rendering even the most basic of tasks very difficult. A prosthetic device can be of great benefit to the amputee in the performance of everyday human tasks. This paper outlines a proposed mechanical design of a 12 degree-of-freedom SMA actuated artificial hand. It is proposed that the SMA wires be embedded intrinsically within the hand structure which will allow for significant flexibility for use either as a prosthetic hand solution, or as part of a complete lower arm prosthetic solution. A modular approach is taken in the design facilitating ease of manufacture and assembly, and more importantly, also allows the end user to easily replace SMA wires in the event of failure. A biomimetric approach has been taken during the design process meaning that the artificial hand should replicate that of a human hand as far as is possible with due regard to functional requirements. The proposed design has been exposed to appropriate loading through the use of finite element analysis (FEA) to ensure that it is structurally sound. Theoretical analysis of the mechanical framework was also carried out to establish the limits of the angular displacement and velocity of the finger tip as well finger tip force generation. A combination of various polymers and Titanium, which are suitably lightweight, are proposed for the manufacture of the design.
Abstract: In this paper, we present a novel, principled approach to resolve the remained problems of substitution technique of audio steganography. Using the proposed genetic algorithm, message bits are embedded into multiple, vague and higher LSB layers, resulting in increased robustness. The robustness specially would be increased against those intentional attacks which try to reveal the hidden message and also some unintentional attacks like noise addition as well.
Abstract: The trend of growing density on chips has increases not
only the temperature in chips but also the gradient of the temperature
depending on locations. In this paper, we propose the balanced skew
tree generation technique for minimizing the clock skew that is
affected by the temperature gradients on chips. We calculate the
interconnect delay using Elmore delay equation, and find out the
optimal balanced clock tree by modifying the clock trees generated
through the Deferred Merge Embedding(DME) algorithm. The
experimental results show that the distance variance of clock insertion
points with and without considering the temperature gradient can be
lowered below 54% and we confirm that the skew is remarkably
decreased after applying the proposed technique.
Abstract: Functional imaging procedures for the non-invasive assessment of tissue microcirculation are highly requested, but require a mathematical approach describing the trans- and intercapillary passage of tracer particles. Up to now, two theoretical, for the moment different concepts have been established for tracer kinetic modeling of contrast agent transport in tissues: pharmacokinetic compartment models, which are usually written as coupled differential equations, and the indicator dilution theory, which can be generalized in accordance with the theory of lineartime- invariant (LTI) systems by using a convolution approach. Based on mathematical considerations, it can be shown that also in the case of an open two-compartment model well-known from functional imaging, the concentration-time course in tissue is given by a convolution, which allows a separation of the arterial input function from a system function being the impulse response function, summarizing the available information on tissue microcirculation. Due to this reason, it is possible to integrate the open two-compartment model into the system-theoretic concept of indicator dilution theory (IDT) and thus results known from IDT remain valid for the compartment approach. According to the long number of applications of compartmental analysis, even for a more general context similar solutions of the so-called forward problem can already be found in the extensively available appropriate literature of the seventies and early eighties. Nevertheless, to this day, within the field of biomedical imaging – not from the mathematical point of view – there seems to be a trench between both approaches, which the author would like to get over by exemplary analysis of the well-known model.
Abstract: Security has been an important issue and concern in the
smart home systems. Smart home networks consist of a wide range of
wired or wireless devices, there is possibility that illegal access to
some restricted data or devices may happen. Password-based
authentication is widely used to identify authorize users, because this
method is cheap, easy and quite accurate. In this paper, a neural
network is trained to store the passwords instead of using verification
table. This method is useful in solving security problems that
happened in some authentication system. The conventional way to
train the network using Backpropagation (BPN) requires a long
training time. Hence, a faster training algorithm, Resilient
Backpropagation (RPROP) is embedded to the MLPs Neural
Network to accelerate the training process. For the Data Part, 200
sets of UserID and Passwords were created and encoded into binary
as the input. The simulation had been carried out to evaluate the
performance for different number of hidden neurons and combination
of transfer functions. Mean Square Error (MSE), training time and
number of epochs are used to determine the network performance.
From the results obtained, using Tansig and Purelin in hidden and
output layer and 250 hidden neurons gave the better performance. As
a result, a password-based user authentication system for smart home
by using neural network had been developed successfully.
Abstract: Knowledge of an organization does not merely reside
in structured form of information and data; it is also embedded in
unstructured form. The discovery of such knowledge is particularly
difficult as the characteristic is dynamic, scattered, massive and
multiplying at high speed. Conventional methods of managing
unstructured information are considered too resource demanding and
time consuming to cope with the rapid information growth.
In this paper, a Multi-faceted and Automatic Knowledge
Elicitation System (MAKES) is introduced for the purpose of
discovery and capture of organizational knowledge. A trial
implementation has been conducted in a public organization to
achieve the objective of decision capture and navigation from a
number of meeting minutes which are autonomously organized,
classified and presented in a multi-faceted taxonomy map in both
document and content level. Key concepts such as critical decision
made, key knowledge workers, knowledge flow and the relationship
among them are elicited and displayed in predefined knowledge
model and maps. Hence, the structured knowledge can be retained,
shared and reused.
Conducting Knowledge Management with MAKES reduces work
in searching and retrieving the target decision, saves a great deal of
time and manpower, and also enables an organization to keep pace
with the knowledge life cycle. This is particularly important when
the amount of unstructured information and data grows extremely
quickly. This system approach of knowledge management can
accelerate value extraction and creation cycles of organizations.
Abstract: The advances in multimedia and networking technologies
have created opportunities for Internet pirates, who can easily
copy multimedia contents and illegally distribute them on the Internet,
thus violating the legal rights of content owners. This paper describes
how a simple and well-known watermarking procedure based on a
spread spectrum method and a watermark recovery by correlation can
be improved to effectively and adaptively protect MPEG-2 videos
distributed on the Internet. In fact, the procedure, in its simplest
form, is vulnerable to a variety of attacks. However, its security
and robustness have been increased, and its behavior has been
made adaptive with respect to the video terminals used to open
the videos and the network transactions carried out to deliver them
to buyers. In fact, such an adaptive behavior enables the proposed
procedure to efficiently embed watermarks, and this characteristic
makes the procedure well suited to be exploited in web contexts,
where watermarks usually generated from fingerprinting codes have
to be inserted into the distributed videos “on the fly", i.e. during the
purchase web transactions.
Abstract: Internet is largely composed of textual contents and a
huge volume of digital contents gets floated over the Internet daily.
The ease of information sharing and re-production has made it
difficult to preserve author-s copyright. Digital watermarking came
up as a solution for copyright protection of plain text problem after
1993. In this paper, we propose a zero text watermarking algorithm
based on occurrence frequency of non-vowel ASCII characters and
words for copyright protection of plain text. The embedding
algorithm makes use of frequency non-vowel ASCII characters and
words to generate a specialized author key. The extraction algorithm
uses this key to extract watermark, hence identify the original
copyright owner. Experimental results illustrate the effectiveness of
the proposed algorithm on text encountering meaning preserving
attacks performed by five independent attackers.
Abstract: A new blind gray-level watermarking scheme is described. In the proposed method, the host image is first divided into 4*4 non-overlapping blocks. For each block, two first AC coefficients of its Hadamard transform are then estimated using DC coefficients of its neighbor blocks. A gray-level watermark is then added into estimated values. Since embedding watermark does not change the DC coefficients, watermark extracting could be done by estimating AC coefficients and comparing them with their actual values. Several experiments are made and results suggest the robustness of the proposed algorithm.
Abstract: In the last decade digital watermarking procedures have
become increasingly applied to implement the copyright protection
of multimedia digital contents distributed on the Internet. To this
end, it is worth noting that a lot of watermarking procedures
for images and videos proposed in literature are based on spread
spectrum techniques. However, some scepticism about the robustness
and security of such watermarking procedures has arisen because
of some documented attacks which claim to render the inserted
watermarks undetectable. On the other hand, web content providers
wish to exploit watermarking procedures characterized by flexible and
efficient implementations and which can be easily integrated in their
existing web services frameworks or platforms. This paper presents
how a simple spread spectrum watermarking procedure for MPEG-2
videos can be modified to be exploited in web contexts. To this end,
the proposed procedure has been made secure and robust against some
well-known and dangerous attacks. Furthermore, its basic scheme
has been optimized by making the insertion procedure adaptive with
respect to the terminals used to open the videos and the network transactions
carried out to deliver them to buyers. Finally, two different
implementations of the procedure have been developed: the former
is a high performance parallel implementation, whereas the latter is
a portable Java and XML based implementation. Thus, the paper
demonstrates that a simple spread spectrum watermarking procedure,
with limited and appropriate modifications to the embedding scheme,
can still represent a valid alternative to many other well-known and
more recent watermarking procedures proposed in literature.
Abstract: In this present work, the development of an avionics
system for flight data collection of a Raptor 30 V2 is carried out. For the data acquisition both onground and onboard avionics systems are developed for testing of a small-scale Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
(UAV) helicopter. The onboard avionics record the helicopter state
outputs namely accelerations, angular rates and Euler angles, in real time, and the on ground avionics system record the inputs given to
the radio controlled helicopter through a transmitter, in real time. The avionic systems are designed and developed taking into consideration
low weight, small size, anti-vibration, low power consumption, and easy interfacing. To mitigate the medium frequency vibrations
embedded on the UAV helicopter during flight, a damper is designed
and its performance is evaluated. A number of flight tests are carried
out and the data obtained is then analyzed for accuracy and repeatability and conclusions are inferred.
Abstract: This paper features the proposed modeling and design
of a Robust Decentralized Periodic Output Feedback (RDPOF)
control technique for the active vibration control of smart flexible
multimodel Euler-Bernoulli cantilever beams for a multivariable
(MIMO) case by retaining the first 6 vibratory modes. The beam
structure is modeled in state space form using the concept of
piezoelectric theory, the Euler-Bernoulli beam theory and the Finite
Element Method (FEM) technique by dividing the beam into 4 finite
elements and placing the piezoelectric sensor / actuator at two finite
element locations (positions 2 and 4) as collocated pairs, i.e., as
surface mounted sensor / actuator, thus giving rise to a multivariable
model of the smart structure plant with two inputs and two outputs.
Five such multivariable models are obtained by varying the
dimensions (aspect ratios) of the aluminum beam, thus giving rise to
a multimodel of the smart structure system. Using model order
reduction technique, the reduced order model of the higher order
system is obtained based on dominant eigen value retention and the
method of Davison. RDPOF controllers are designed for the above 5
multivariable-multimodel plant. The closed loop responses with the
RDPOF feedback gain and the magnitudes of the control input are
observed and the performance of the proposed multimodel smart
structure system with the controller is evaluated for vibration control.
Abstract: Tasks of an application program of an embedded system are managed by the scheduler of a real-time operating system
(RTOS). Most RTOSs adopt just fixed priority scheduling, which is not optimal in all cases. Some applications require earliest deadline
first (EDF) scheduling, which is an optimal scheduling algorithm.
In order to develop an efficient real-time embedded system, the
scheduling algorithm of the RTOS should be selectable. The paper presents a method to customize the scheduler using aspectoriented
programming. We define aspects to replace the fixed priority scheduling mechanism of an OSEK OS with an EDF scheduling
mechanism. By using the aspects, we can customize the scheduler
without modifying the original source code. We have applied the
aspects to an OSEK OS and get a customized operating system with
EDF scheduling. The evaluation results show that the overhead of
aspect-oriented programming is small enough.
Abstract: In this paper, a novel scheme is proposed for ownership identification and authentication using color images by deploying Cryptography and Digital Watermarking as underlaying technologies. The former is used to compute the contents based hash and the latter to embed the watermark. The host image that will claim to be the rightful owner is first transformed from RGB to YST color space exclusively designed for watermarking based applications. Geometrically YS ÔèÑ T and T channel corresponds to the chrominance component of color image, therefore suitable for embedding the watermark. The T channel is divided into 4×4 nonoverlapping blocks. The size of block is important for enhanced localization, security and low computation. Each block along with ownership information is then deployed by SHA160, a one way hash function to compute the content based hash, which is always unique and resistant against birthday attack instead of using MD5 that may raise the condition i.e. H(m)=H(m'). The watermark payload varies from block to block and computed by the variance factorα . The quality of watermarked images is quite high both subjectively and objectively. Our scheme is blind, computationally fast and exactly locates the tampered region.
Abstract: A separation-kernel-based operating system (OS) has been designed for use in secure embedded systems by applying formal methods to the design of the separation-kernel part. The separation kernel is a small OS kernel that provides an abstract distributed environment on a single CPU. The design of the separation kernel was verified using two formal methods, the B method and the Spin model checker. A newly designed semi-formal method, the extended state transition method, was also applied. An OS comprising the separation-kernel part and additional OS services on top of the separation kernel was prototyped on the Intel IA-32 architecture. Developing and testing of a prototype embedded application, a point-of-sale application, on the prototype OS demonstrated that the proposed architecture and the use of formal methods to design its kernel part are effective for achieving a secure embedded system having a high-assurance separation kernel.
Abstract: We present a low frequency watermarking method
adaptive to image content. The image content is analyzed and
properties of HVS are exploited to generate a visual mask of the
same size as the approximation image. Using this mask we embed the
watermark in the approximation image without degrading the image
quality. Watermark detection is performed without using the original
image. Experimental results show that the proposed watermarking
method is robust against most common image processing operations,
which can be easily implemented and usually do not degrade the
image quality.
Abstract: The photocatalytic activity efficiency of TiO2 for the degradation of Toluene in photoreactor can be enhanced by nano- TiO2/LDPE composite film. Since the amount of TiO2 affected the efficiency of the photocatalytic activity, this work was mainly concentrated on the effort to embed the high amount of TiO2 in the Polyethylene matrix. The developed photocatalyst was characterized by XRD, UV-Vis spectrophotometer and SEM. The SEM images revealed the high homogeneity of the deposition of TiO2 on the polyethylene matrix. The XRD patterns interpreted that TiO2 embedded in the PE matrix exhibited mainly in anatase form. In addition, the photocatalytic results show that the toluene removal efficiencies of 30±5%, 49±4%, 68±5%, 42±6% and 33±5% were obtained when using the catalyst loading at 0%, 10%, 15%, 25% and 50% (wt. cat./wt. film), respectively.
Abstract: Rapid advancement in computing technology brings
computers and humans to be seamlessly integrated in future. The
emergence of smartphone has driven computing era towards
ubiquitous and pervasive computing. Recognizing human activity has
garnered a lot of interest and has raised significant researches-
concerns in identifying contextual information useful to human
activity recognition. Not only unobtrusive to users in daily life,
smartphone has embedded built-in sensors that capable to sense
contextual information of its users supported with wide range
capability of network connections. In this paper, we will discuss the
classification algorithms used in smartphone-based human activity.
Existing technologies pertaining to smartphone-based researches in
human activity recognition will be highlighted and discussed. Our
paper will also present our findings and opinions to formulate
improvement ideas in current researches- trends. Understanding
research trends will enable researchers to have clearer research
direction and common vision on latest smartphone-based human
activity recognition area.
Abstract: A novel circuit for generating a signal embedded with
features about data from three sensors is presented. This suggested
circuit is making use of a resistance-to-time converter employing a
bridge amplifier, an integrator and a comparator. The second resistive
sensor (Rz) is transformed into duty cycle. Another bridge with
varying resistor, (Ry) in the feedback of an OP AMP is added in
series to change the amplitude of the resulting signal in a proportional
relationship while keeping the same frequency and duty cycle
representing proportional changes in resistors Rx and Rz already
mentioned. The resultant output signal carries three types of
information embedded as variations of its frequency, duty cycle and
amplitude.