ISSUE
06 Fall 2010
Biannually-Published Newsletter of the DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRICAL & COMPUTER ENGINEERING
U n i v e r s it y o f N i c o s ia
G e t T u ne d
Are you ready Message from the Head Dear students and friends of the Department, we are now in the fourth year as a part of the University of Nicosia. The programs offered by the Department have been recently evaluated successfully by the ECPU (Evaluation Committee of Private Universities) and the Department has been renamed to Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. The new name is more representative of the character of the Department as defined by the academic paths and faculty research fields. The academic paths have been re-engineered during the last two years and reflect the modern trend in Computer Engineering and Electrical Engineering curricula. The paths of the two Programs have been submitted to the Cyprus Scientific and Technical Chamber for evaluation and now our graduates can register with it. Concerning the development of the Department, the faculty members are working towards developing a Master’s program in Electrical and Computer Engineering. We expect to finalize the work by June 2011. We are very happy to announce that we have a new faculty member, Prof. John Sahalos. Prof. Sahalos who has been a Professor at the School of Science, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, is an IEEE fellow and Member of the Academy of Science of New York. His research interests are: Antennas, high frequency methods, communications, applied electromagnetics, microwaves, and biomedical engineering. Ms. Maria Vraka, a dedicated colleague and faculty member, who was with the Department for twenty years decided to leave the University of Nicosia as of 2010 and join the public high school system. We would like to thank her for her substantial contribution to the Department and to wish her good luck with her new duties. Finally, I would like students to know that I am always available to listen to them and help them; they can contact me either by email or phone in order to arrange a meeting. Best wishes, Marios Nestoros
for a fiber plug?
IN
THIS ISSUE ...
Are U ready for a Fiber Plug? LAN Security with UTM.
By Dr Antonis Hadjiantonis
RFID for Healthcare Applications. What’ s in a Name?
How much bandwidth do we really need? Is the current state-of-theart DSL of 4Mbps enough? While recent technological advances, like WDM technology, have increased the Internet backbone capacity to Tbps links (Terrabits, or trillions, of bits per second), access networks are incapable of allowing end-users realize this tremendous bandwidth. Intermediate solutions like ADSL or Cable Modems access (CM) are temporarily mitigating the capacity mismatch; however, the true solution is envisaged to be Fiber To The Home (FTTH). Under the FTTH scenario, over a Gbps (Gigabit, or billion, of bits per second ) can, and will, be flowing to and from the customer premises directly over the fiber. In other words the home will have a fiber plug connecting it to the Internet. Distribution inside the home over distances of few meters will be implemented using copper (coaxial or twisted pair). How much bandwidth are we talking about? Well, how does downloading a DVD-quality movie in less than 10 seconds sound?
S/C
Figure 1. A typical PON topology
Figure 2. Downstream Broadcast and Select
The leading FTTH technology is Passive Optical Networks (PON). It differs from most of the telecommunication networks in place today by featuring “passive” operation. DSL and cable technologies have active components in the network backbone equipment, in the central office (CO), in the neighborhood network infrastructure, and in the customer premises equipment (CPE). PONs have only passive light transmission components in the neighborhood infrastructure with active components only in the central office (called Optical Line Termination, or OLT) and the CPE (called Optical Networking Units, or ONUs). A long fiber trunk (~10-20 Km) connects the OLT to the passive Splitter/Combiner (S/C coupler) from where the signal is split to access 16 or 32 ONUs located about 1-2 Km from it (figure 1). The elimination of active components of this architecture produces the big advantage of low installation cost and virtually zero maintenance. … continued on page 6
DoS attack: a common network security issue A denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) is an attempt to make a computer resource unavailable to its intended users. Although the means to carry out, motives for, and targets of a DoS attack may vary, it generally consists of the concerted efforts of a person or people to prevent an Internet site or service from functioning efficiently or at all, temporarily or indefinitely. Perpetrators of DoS attacks typically target sites or services hosted on high-profile web servers such as banks, credit card payment gateways, and even root nameservers. The term is generally used with regards to computer networks, but is not limited to this field, for example, it is also used in reference to CPU resource management. One common method of attack involves saturating the target machine with external communications requests, such that it cannot respond to legitimate traffic, or responds so slowly as to be rendered effectively unavailable. In general terms, DoS attacks are implemented by either forcing the targeted computer(s) to reset, or consuming its resources so that it can no longer provide its intended service or obstructing the communication media between the intended users and the victim so that they can no longer communicate adequately. Denial-of-service attacks are considered violations of the IAB's Internet proper use policy, and also violate the acceptable use policies of virtually all Internet service providers. They also commonly constitute violations of the laws of individual nations. Source:
http://www.wikipedia.org
LAN Security with Unified Threat Management (UTM) By Ms Monaliz Amirkhanpour * Large and small enterprises are facing Internet threats not just from the external world, but from within too. Faced with such a rapidly evolving threat environment, enterprises require multiple security features to ensure comprehensive network protection. The complexity involved in managing multiple security solutions has led to unified security with multiple security features over a single platform which is called the UTM platform. With the increase in targeted external attacks and internal threats, UTM solutions have proven to be most effective when they extend security to encompass user identity in order to identify any threat whether it comes from inside or outside. The main objectives of my senior year project were to set-up a small-scale LAN and secure it via the Unified Threat Management (UTM) security appliance. In simpler terms, the overall security mechanisms such as firewall rules, policy management issues, anti-virus and anti-spam protection were fully satisfied by the presence of the UTM security appliance. Consequently, there is no need to install various security software packages on each of the computers in the network because UTM has done it already! The UTM security appliances manufactured by Cyberoam© (CR25i to CR1500i models) fulfill the security requirements of small, medium, and large enterprises including remote and branch offices with 10 to 5,000 users. Figure 1 illustrates the front panel of the CR25i model which was exclusively used in this senior year project. Multiple UTM appliances can be centrally managed through a Central Console (CC) which provides centralized control and visibility, minimized administrative efforts, and enhanced security control. The utilization of UTM security appliances offers several technical and financial benefits to small, medium, and large enterprises. Some of the most prominent technical benefits include the following:
Real-time protection against all types of Internet threats Rapid deployment Minimum network configuration Low capital and operating expenses as well as high Return on Investment (ROI) are among the financial benefits.
All the Cyberoam© UTM appliances have the following features that can be configured and administered through the Central Console (CC):
Inspection Firewall Virtual Private Network (VPN) Gateway Anti-Virus & Anti-Spam Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) Content & Application Filtering Bandwidth Management Multiple Link Management
It is important to mention that throughout this senior year project, network traffic discovery mechanisms were used to monitor the detailed network traffic in terms of ap- Q This Issue’s plications used and LAN IP addresses. The total amount of data transfers (uploads/downloads) were clearly monitored and captured. If you are interested to know more about network security through UTM, then visit. Sources
http://www.elitecore.com/index.html
* Ms Monaliz Amirkhanpour holds a Computer Engineering and a Computer Science degree from the University of Nicosia.
What’s in a Name?
The development of fMRI in the
By Dr George Gregoriou The two engineering programs have undergone great improvements in the last couple of years. That was the result of the re-engineering of the curricula in light of the implementation of the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS). A number of new major and elective courses have been introduced, the Math and the Language requirements have been changed, and the General Education component has been reduced. Furthermore, all engineering courses have been coded using a new more representative and efficient scheme. Both programs have a graduation requirement of 240 ECTS credits, half of which are in the major requirements category. In addition, students have to take 30 ECTS credits, corresponding to five courses, from the engineering electives category of courses. Engineering elective courses have been grouped into a number of areas. More specifically, the Computer Engineering program has two areas of electives: (a) Computer Systems & Networks and (b) Software Engineering & Applications. The Electrical Engineering program has three areas of electives: (a) Communications & Signal Processing, (b) Microwaves, Antennas & Optics and (c) Power and automation Systems. More importantly, the two programs have been greatly differentiated; that is, the overlapping of courses which has been present in the past has been reduced to a minimum. The change in the name of the Electronics Engineering program to Electrical Engineering was necessary in order to allow students graduating from the program to seek professional registration with the Scientific .
Technical Chamber of Cyprus (locally known as ETEK) either as Electrical Engineers or as Electronics Engineers, depending on the selected engineering elective courses. According to the policy of ETEK, graduates of Electrical Engineering programs may register as either Electrical Engineers or Electronic Engineers based on the courses taken. However, graduates of Electronics Engineering programs may only register as Electronics Engineers no matter what courses they took during their studies. The revised curricula have been successfully accredited by the visiting teams of experts who visited our campus last spring in order to reevaluate our programs. These visits were necessary in order to follow up on our progress regarding our programs which have been running under the umbrella of the University of Nicosia since the Fall 2007 semester. As of this semester, all entering (freshmen) students follow the new revised paths. Existing students are given the choice of either staying and graduating on the old program pathways or adopting the new revised pathways. Following the earlier change of the title of the Electronics Engineering program to Electrical Engineering, the Senate has recently approved our proposal to change the name of the department as well from Department of Engineering to Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) which reflects more accurately the type of programs offered. With all these positive new developments, the new academic year has set off to a good start and is already underway. My best wishes for a productive and rewarding new academic year!
Department’s Seminar
On Wednesday, November 3rd 2010 the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering organized a seminar with title “Discrete Linear Constrained Multivariate Optimization for Power Sources of Mobile Systems”. The seminar was presented by Dr. Stelios Ioannou, a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Energy, Environment, and Water Resources Center (EEWRC) of the Cyprus Institute where he is involved with the design and development of Autonomous Flying Platforms for Atmospheric and Earth Surface Observations. The seminar presented an optimization algorithm for determining the optimal configuration of a power system for mobile applications under constraints relating to capacity/runtime, weight, volume, cost, and system complexity. The configuration presented is based on commercially available batteries, and fuel cells to significantly reduce cost and delivery time. As Dr. Ioannou noted, one of the immediate applications for this work is the power supply systems of unmanned flights used in weather sensing applications, which is the main topic of a locally funded project that he and his team currently work on at the Cyprus Institute
RFID in Sports The American Football Example You never know when a life threatening heatstroke could strike your loved ones in the middle of a rigorous physical activity such as sports and take away their life. Hotbed Technologies has come up with RFID Football Helmet which prevents athletes from falling prey to deadly heatstroke. In this RFID football helmet, lightweight and shock resistant transponder attached to it takes note of body temperature of the player wearing it. The body temperature is tracked by the transponder and the information is transmitted in real time to a handheld computer.
In case the body temperature exceeds the limit an alert is sounded so that paramedics can react in a timely manner. Not just sports this RFID football helmet could be deployed for firefighters and military personnel's who have to work in some of the most inhuman conditions where survival rates tends to drop to bare minimum. Probably had such system hit the earlier before we would not have lost several athletes like Minnesota Vikings star Korey Stringer in 2001. Source: http://www.rfid-weblog.com/
Introduction and Background to Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) By Dr Anastasis Polycarpou Today RFID is finding its ways into industrial sectors ranging from retail for tracking inventory, to manufacturing for tracking goods at the production line, to airlines for locating lost baggage, or to libraries for monitoring book inventory. While RFID technology has been around for decades, it is only in the last few years that a rapid reduction in prices of readers and tags, coupled with the advancement in enterprise I.T. systems, along with demand from marquee customers such as Wal-Mart has spurred the awareness, business value and deployment of RFID. By tracking assets, supplies and personnel, enterprises are now beginning to experiment with new business models to integrate RFID within their enterprise. While the first generation of RFID technology involved reading one or a small number of ID-only tags at a time with basic reader configurations with the majority of the applications being for tracking inventory, now, the next generation of applications are resulting in a far greater set of sophisticated requirements on tags, readers, middleware, infrastructure and I.T. Examples of this new generation of applications include, retailers starting to use RFID to automate shelf replacement to prevent dissatisfied customers, or, hospitals using RFID to track critical devices that save patients' lives and improve healthcare quality and process flow. In a related discipline, pharmaceutical firms are using RFID to help prevent counterfeit drugs from reaching pharmacies. Grocers are using intelligent sensor-laden RFID tags to prevent food from spoiling. Such leading-edge innovations in the applications of RFID are continually pushing the borders of RFID capability and inducing research, innovation and scaled adoption, undergoing specialization even within individual vertical industries and applications. In response to a demand for such vertical applications of RFID within each industry, standards, technologies, protocols, and middleware are being inno-
In response to a demand for such vertical applications of RFID within each industry, standards, technologies, protocols, and middleware are being innovated on appropriately. For example, while retail industry's supply chain application has adopted EPC Gen 2 at ultra high frequency (~900 MHz) with passive tags, healthcare industry's asset tracking application has refined active RFID operating at several different frequencies including 433 MHz and 2.4 GHz for finding patients. Increasingly specialized industry specific frequencies, protocols and hardware are rapidly appearing in the marketplace, thereby creating the impetus for research and the next generation of applications causing a virtuous cycle of innovations and applications.
While innovations continue to advance the field, the marketplace in combination with the physical realities of RFreading capability, eliminate the unviable options, while furthering the viable ones. The need for a special issue is therefore to bring together the research community with the engineering and business community to form a picture of the state-of-the-art in the field in terms of the current progress on research and innovations in RFID, innovative applications, innovative methods of adoption and absorption of RFID by the enterprises, innovative business and case studies, and a view into what the future holds for this field.
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) for Healthcare Applications
RFID Project Presentation A Press Conference took
Funded by Cyprus RPF
place at the premises of
Project Summary
CARI (Cyprus Academic
Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) is an emerging technology that uses radio frequency signals to communicate between the RFID tag and the RFID reader. The RFID tags are similar to barcodes which are encoded with a unique identification number; however, RFID tags require no direct contact or line-of-sight between the reader and the tag in order to read the encrypted information. The aim of this proposal is to introduce RFID technology, together with Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), in the healthcare sector in order to improve quality of service to patients and reduce operational costs. The basic objectives of the project include use of RFID technology for a) inventory control and monitoring; b) tracking and locating of valuable medical equipment; c) identification and tracking of blood, specimen, organs, etc.; d) automatic identification of inhospital patients through the use of RFID wristbands; e) real-time access/update of patient's profile and medication records by medical staff. The direct benefits of adopting this technology in the healthcare sector include a) reduction of errors and patient mix-ups due to traditional paperbound processes; b) real-time access and update of patient's medical profile; c) increased productivity and efficiency at workplace; d) better healthcare service to patients; e) fast and error-free identification of specimen and blood samples during laboratory work; f) item and equipment loss prevention; g) labor savings; h) automatic and accurate record of inventory.
Research
A well-defined subsection (Ward A) of the Bank of Cyprus Oncology Center was equipped with a set of static (immobile) as well as mobile RFID readers, interconnected through a wireless network that serves as bridge to the hospital database system and backhaul Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure. Patients wear low-cost, wristband RFID tags and medical personnel will be equipped with simple-to-use handheld
Institute)
November
26,
on
2010,
where the project was presented to an interested audience of more than 30 people. Present at the conference was the
involved
research
team including Prof. SaTechnology (ICT) infrastructure. Patients wear low-cost, wristband RFID tags and medical personnel will be equipped with simple-to-use handheld terminals able to rapidly receive and decode patient’s unique ID, wirelessly communicate with the medical record database, and quickly, securely and reliably retrieve patient’s information. In that way, medical staff is able to avoid mistakes, perform the appropriate medical treatment and update accordingly each patient’s profile. Furthermore, the proposed network of RFID tags and readers, in combination with the rest of the wired and wireless infrastructure, is able to provide real-time location service (RTLS) for pre-tagged patients and valuable medical equipment. Finally, the project will experiment with tagging of selected sensitive healthcare material (e.g. blood specimen). The latter will be instructive in future expansions of the project, especially when medication tagging at the drug bottle or even pill level will be desired.
halos, Prof. Polycarpou (Coordinator project), and
Dr
Dr
of
the
Gregoriou
Andreopoulos
who is the medical doctor responsible for the installation of the RFID system at the BoC Oncology Center. The Press Conference
was
quite
successful as many of the people present in the audience
commented
positively on what has been
achieved
during
the past two years in regards to the project and, also,
expressed
their
wishes for a successful continuation
of
similar
ideas in future RFID applications. A picture taken during the Press Conference is shown below.
Murphy's Laws of Computing Do you want to become a successful Computer Engineer? Well, before you enter university you have to know the important rules of computing, also known as Murphy’s Laws of Computing. 1. When computing, whatever happens, behave as though you meant it to happen.
Are you ready for a fiber plug ? Based on what protocol that the PON is running, various names have been attached to it; for example APON (=BPON) uses ATM, EPON or GEPON is based on Ethernet, and GPON
‌ continued from page 1 Figure 3. Upstream Arbitration for PON data. Each ONU transmits at a given time and for a given duration so as to avoid any collisions on the long fiber trunk
2. When you get to the point where you really understand your computer, it's probably obsolete. 3. The first place to look for information is in the section of the manual where you least expect to find it. 4. When the going gets tough, upgrade. 5. For every action, there is an equal and opposite malfunction. 6. To err is human . . . to blame your computer for your mistakes is even more human, it is downright natural. 7. He who laughs last probably made a back-up. 8. If at first you do not succeed, blame your computer. 9. A complex system that does not work is invariably found to have evolved from a simpler system that worked just fine. 10. The number one cause of computer problems is computer solutions.
11. A computer program will
always do what you tell it to do, but rarely what you want to do.
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering UNIVERSITY OF NICOSIA 46 Makedonitissas Avenue P.O. Box 24005 1700 Nicosia CYPRUS (+357) 22841500 phone (+357) 22357481 fax ece@unic.ac.cy www.ece.unic.ac.cy
One of the intrinsic characteristics of the above PON topology is the need for arbitration in the upstream traffic (from the ONUs to the OLT). While downstream traffic is broadcast to all ONUs, and selection of destination is done via some layer 2 addressing (figure 2), upstream traffic from different users is combined at the S/C and if no time arbitration is in place, collisions of data will occur. Another reason for time arbitration is the variable bandwidth each ONU might require, which is represented by the size of the time-slot each ONU is granted (figure 3). The above is a heavily researched topic over the last years.
can support a variety of protocols. The following table gives an overview of current PON standards (in place or under development) with the relevant speeds and geographical area of deployment. PON technology is currently being deployed in the USA where fibers reach the homes for about $99 a month. Of course, current implementation allows for only a fraction of the fiber bandwidth to reach homes, typically 4Mbps, which is presently enough to compete with DSL or CM. Recently in Cyprus, CYTA has also started its pilot FTTH deployment.
TECHNOLOGY ATTRIBUTES
BPON (APON)
GE-PON (EPON)
GPON
155/622 Mbps
1.0/1.0 Gbps
1.25/2.5 Gbps
Native Protocol
ATM
Ethernet
GEM
Complexity
High
Low
High
Cost
High
Low
Undetermined
Standards Body
ITU-T
IEEE
ITU-T
Speed - Upstream/Downstream
Standard Complete
Yes, 1995
Yes, 2004
No
Volume Deployment
Yes, in 100,000s
Yes, in 1,000,000s
No
North America
Asia
Not applicable
Primary Deployment Area