The Influence of a User-Centred Design Focus on the Effectiveness of a User Interface for an Agricultural Machine

As agricultural machines become more complex, it is increasingly critical that special attention be directed to the design of the user interface to ensure that the operator will have an adequate understanding of the status of the machine at all times. A user-centred design focus was employed to develop two conceptual designs (UCD1 & UCD2) for a user interface for an agricultural air seeder. The two concepts were compared against an existing user interface (baseline condition) using the metrics of situation awareness (Situation Awareness Global Assessment Technique), mental workload (Integrated Workload Scale), reaction time, and subjective feedback. There were no statistically significant differences among the three user interfaces based on the metric of situation awareness;however, UCD2 was deemed to be significantly better than either UCD1 or the baseline interface on the basis of mental workload, reaction time and subjective feedback. The research has demonstrated that a user-centred design focus will generate a better user interface for an agricultural machine.

Towards Specifications for Automatic Recognition Software:An Example of a User-Centred Design

This article describes a user-centred method used to design innovative pattern recognition software for technical paper documents. This kind of software can make some errors of interpretation. It will therefore be important that human operators are able to identify and correct these mistakes. The identification of errors is a difficult task because operators need to establish co-reference between the initial document and it interpretation. Moreover, users must be able to checks the interpretation without forgetting any area. This task requires the interface is easy to use. The experiments showed that the sequential display of interpretation is the most effective and that the interruptions by user reduce task duration. Moreover, queries by the system may improve error detection. This paper summarizes the main results of the research conducted in the context of this design for enhance the interface, and describes the specifications to which it gave rise.

Load Distribution of Base Stations in User-Centric Heterogeneous UDN

In ultra-dense networks(UDN),multiple association can be regarded as a user-centric pattern in which a user can be served by multiple base stations(BSs).The data rate and quality of service can be improved.However,BSs in user-centric paradigm are required to serve more users due to this multiple association scheme.The improvement of system performance may be limited by the improving load of BSs.In this letter,we develope an analytical framework for the load distribution of BSs in heterogeneous user-centric UDN.Based on open loop power control(OLPC),a user-centric scheme is considered in which the clustered serving BSs can provide given signal to interference plus noise ratio(SINR)for any typical user.As for any BS in different tiers,by leveraging stochastic geometry,we derive the Probability Mass Function(PMF)of the number of the served users,the Cumulative Distribution Function(CDF)of total power consumption,and the CDF bounds of downlink sum data rate.The accuracy of the theoretical analysis is validated by numerical simulations,and the effect the system parameters on the load of BSs is also presented.

A Successful Transmission Probability Based AP Clustering Scheme in User-Centric Cell-Free Networks

Cell-free network is a promising architecture with numerous merits in energy efficiency and macro diversity,which is easy and flexible to integrate with other communication technologies.However,its current network topology where access points(APs)are connected to a central processing unit(CPU)to jointly serve the users,causes huge burden to the fronthaul network.To deal with this problem,in this paper,we first combine thoughts in user-centric(UC)network where users are served by selected subset of APs.Then,we propose a successful transmission probability(STP)based AP clustering scheme to reduce the fronthaul capacity requirement(FCR).By using stochastic geometry and proper approximation methods,the approximated STP calculation expression is derived.Numerical simulations demonstrate that the obtained STP expression can provide a tight approximation compared to Monte Carlo simulation results under different system parameters while keeping the computation tractable.Furthermore,the relationship between the FCR and the STP threshold is formulated as a clustering optimization problem,which gives insights on clustering design in UC-CF network systems.We show by simulation results that the proposed scheme requires less fronthaul capacity than the original CF approach while ensuring the STP performance.

A Proactive Selection Method for Dynamic Access Points Grouping in User-centric UDN

Network densification is a promising solution to fulfill network capacity requirement and transmission rate for beyond 5G and 6G wireless communications.Ultra-dense network(UDN)integrates heterogeneous network resources and coordinates technologies on quality of service controlling,to provide users with flexible service.However,dense deployment reduces coverage radius of the cell,resulting in an increase on handover frequency,which makes a serious impact on service continuity.In this paper,we propose a proactive selection method for dynamic access points grouping(DAPGing)in accordance with“user-centric”philosophy,which selects target Access Points(AP)and reduces handover times to ensure communication continuity.This method includes two criteria:1)the user’s sojourn time,which is determined by analyzing the AP coverage area;2)neighbor relationship between APs,which is determined by coverage area and signal strength characteristics between neighboring APs.Therefore,candidate APs become the proactive selected ones to update the AP group.Stochastic geometry is used to build system model and performance metrics are analyzed,including AP group coverage probability and average update frequency.Experimental analysis shows that the proposed proactive selection method brings similar coverage probability to traditional handover method,while average update frequency is reduced more than 20%selection criteria.

A survey on user-centric cell-free massive MIMO systems

The mobile data traffic has been exponentially growing during the last several decades.This was enabled by the densification of the network infrastructure in terms of increased cell density(i.e.,Ultra-Dense Network(UDN))and/or the increased number of active antennas per Access Point(AP)(i.e.,massive Multiple-Input Multiple-Output(mMIMO)).However,neither UDN nor mMIMO will meet the increasing demand for the data rate of the Sixth Generation(6G)wireless communications due to the inter-cell interference and large quality-of-service variations.Cell-Free(CF)mMIMO,which combines the best aspects of UDN and mMIMO,is viewed as a key solution to this issue.In such systems,each User Equipment(UE)is served by a preferred set of surrounding APs cooperatively.In this paper,we provide a survey of the state-of-the-art literature on CF mMIMO.As a starting point,the significance and the basic properties of CF mMIMO are highlighted.We then present the canonical framework to discuss the essential details(i.e.,transmission procedure and mathematical system model).Next,we provide a deep look at the resource allocation and signal processing problems related to CF mMIMO and survey the up-to-date schemes and algorithms.After that,we discuss the practical issues in implementing CF mMIMO and point out the potential future directions.Finally,we conclude this paper with a summary of the key lessons learned in this field.

An Architecture Supporting Intelligent Mobile Healthcare Using Human-Computer Interaction HCI Principles

Recent advancements in the Internet of Things IoT and cloud computing have paved the way for mobile Healthcare(mHealthcare)services.A patient within the hospital is monitored by several devices.Moreover,upon leaving the hospital,the patient can be remotely monitored whether directly using body wearable sensors or using a smartphone equipped with sensors to monitor different user-health parameters.This raises potential challenges for intelligent monitoring of patient's health.In this paper,an improved architecture for smart mHealthcare is proposed that is supported by HCI design principles.The HCI also provides the support for the User-Centric Design(UCD)for smart mHealthcare models.Furthermore,the HCI along with IoT's(Internet of Things)5-layered architecture has the potential of improving User Experience(UX)in mHealthcare design and help saving lives.The intelligent mHealthcare system is supported by the IoT sensing and communication layers and health care providers are supported by the application layer for the medical,behavioral,and health-related information.Health care providers and users are further supported by an intelligent layer performing critical situation assessment and performing a multi-modal communication using an intelligent assistant.The HCI design focuses on the ease-of-use,including user experience and safety,alarms,and error-resistant displays of the end-user,and improves user's experience and user satisfaction.

An effective communication and computation model based on a hybridgraph-deeplearning approach for SIoT

Social Edge Service(SES)is an emerging mechanism in the Social Internet of Things(SIoT)orchestration for effective user-centric reliable communication and computation.The services are affected by active and/or passive attacks such as replay attacks,message tampering because of sharing the same spectrum,as well as inadequate trust measurement methods among intelligent devices(roadside units,mobile edge devices,servers)during computing and content-sharing.These issues lead to computation and communication overhead of servers and computation nodes.To address this issue,we propose the HybridgrAph-Deep-learning(HAD)approach in two stages for secure communication and computation.First,the Adaptive Trust Weight(ATW)model with relation-based feedback fusion analysis to estimate the fitness-priority of every node based on directed graph theory to detect malicious nodes and reduce computation and communication overhead.Second,a Quotient User-centric Coeval-Learning(QUCL)mechanism to formulate secure channel selection,and Nash equilibrium method for optimizing the communication to share data over edge devices.The simulation results confirm that our proposed approach has achieved effective communication and computation performance,and enhanced Social Edge Services(SES)reliability than state-of-the-art approaches.

Semantics-oriented approach for information interoperability and governance:towards user-centric enterprise architecture management

Enterprise architecture (EA) efforts focus on business, technology, data, and application architecture, and their integration. However, less attention has been given to one of the most critical EA elements, i.e., users (EA audiences). As a result, existing EA management systems (EAMS) have become old, large, content-centric document-repositories that are unable to provide meaningful information of use to the enterprise users and aligned with their needs and functional scope. We argue that a semantic technology based mechanism focusing on enterprise information and user-centricity has the potential to solve this problem. In this context, we present a novel ontology-based strategy named the user-centric semantics-oriented EA (U-SEA) model. Based on this model, we have developed a user-centric semantics-oriented enterprise architecture management (U-SEAM) system. Our approach is generic enough to be used in a wide variety of user-centric EAM applications. The results obtained show computational feasibility to integrate and govern enterprise information and to reduce complexity with respect to interoperability between enterprise information and users.

Joint association and beamforming optimization in reconfigurable intelligent surface-enhanced user-centric networks

Fully coordinated Cell-Free(CF)networks can alleviate the Inter-Cell Interference(ICI)for the cell-edge users in cellular networks.Due to the complex topology of the association between the Access Points(APs)and the users in CF networks,it is challenging to deploy CF networks in practical scenarios.In order to make CF networks feasible,we introduce User-Centric(UC)networks enabling each user served by a limited number of APs.As a low-cost and energy-efficient technology,Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface(RIS)can be embedded in UC networks to further improve the system performance.First,we provide a brief survey on the prior works in UC networks for clear comprehension.Then,we formulate a Spectral Efficiency(SE)maximization problem for RIS-enhanced UC networks.For solving the non-convex problem,we divide it into three subproblems and propose a joint optimization framework for optimizing AP-user association,active beamforming of multiple antennas at the APs,and the passive beamforming of the RIS.Besides,a channel gain based association method coupled with the design of RIS is proposed to construct a dynamic and efficient association.The subproblems about optimizing active and passive beamforming are solved with the fractional programming.Simulation results show that the proposed joint optimization framework for RIS-enhanced UC networks can obtain good SE compared with other benchmark schemes.

An intelligent wireless transmission toward 6G

With the deployment and commercial application of 5G,researchers start to think of 6G,which could meet more diversified and deeper intelligent communication requirements.In this paper,a four physical elements,i.e.,man,machine,object,and genie,featured 6G concept is introduced.Genie is explained as a new element toward 6G.This paper focuses on the genie realization as an intelligent wireless transmission toward 6G,including sematic information theory,end-to-end artificial intelligence(AI)joint transceiver design,intelligent wireless transmission block design,and user-centric intelligent access.A comprehensive state-of-the-art of each key technology is presented and main questions as well as some novel suggestions are given.Genie will work comprehensively in 6G wireless communication and other major industrial vertical,while its realization is concrete and step by step.It is realized that genie-based wireless communication link works with high intelligence and performs better than that controlled manually.

Personal Information Self-Management:A Survey of Technologies Supporting Administrative Services

This paper presents a survey of technologies for personal data self-management interfacing with administrative and territorial public service providers.It classifies a selection of scientific technologies into four categories of solutions:Personal Data Store(PDS),Identity Manager(IdM),Anonymous Certificate System and Access Control Delegation Architecture.Each category,along with its technological approach,is analyzed thanks to 18 identified functional criteria that encompass architectural and communication aspects,as well as user data lifecycle considerations.The originality of the survey is multifold.First,as far as we know,there is no such thorough survey covering such a panel of a dozen of existing solutions.Second,it is the first survey addressing Personally Identifiable Information(PII)management for both administrative and private service providers.Third,this paper achieves a functional comparison of solutions of very different technical natures.The outcome of this paper is the clear identification of functional gaps of each solution.As a result,this paper establishes the research directions to follow in order to fill these functional gaps.

Cell-Free Massive MIMO for 6G Wireless Communication Networks

The recently commercialized fifth-generation(5G)wireless networks have achieved many improvements,including air interface enhancement,spectrum expansion,and network intensification by several key technologies,such as massive multiple-input multipleoutput(MIMO),millimeter-wave communications,and ultra-dense networking.Despite the deployment of 5G commercial systems,wireless communications is still facing many challenges to enable connected intelligence and a myriad of applications such as industrial Internet-ofthings,autonomous systems,brain-computer interfaces,digital twin,tactile Internet,etc.Therefore,it is urgent to start research on the sixth-generation(6G)wireless communication systems.Among the candidate technologies for 6G,cell-free massive MIMO,which combines the advantages of distributed systems and massive MIMO,is a promising solution to enhance the wireless transmission efficiency and provide better coverage.In this paper,we present a comprehensive study on cell-free massive MIMO for 6G wireless communication networks with a special focus on the signal processing perspective.Specifically,we introduce enabling physical layer technologies for cell-free massive MIMO,such as user association,pilot assignment,transmitter,and receiver design,as well as power control and allocation.Furthermore,some current and future research problems are described.