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Browsing by Author "Hasan, Shaddi Husein"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Supporting Digital Conservation through Mediated Communication on the Appalachian Trail
    Patel, Jaitun Vijaybhai (Virginia Tech, 2023-09-14)
    Spanning 14 states in the northeast United States, the Appalachian Trail (AT) is a popular destination for outdoor recreation, with thousands of individuals attempting to thru-hike the AT every year. For its scenic views and accessibility from the cities, the AT is experiencing a record number of visitors raising concerns about the sustainability of the trail. Many trail organizations manage the AT to reduce the visitor impact on the outdoors. In this research, I study the role of information and communication technologies in promoting collaboration between these trail agencies and visitors. I identify the need for a formal communication channel between the stakeholders by examining the existing information-sharing practices of hikers and trail managers through social media analysis, interviews, and a design workshop. I present the design of an online discussion platform, the SmarTrail board, and conduct a field usability study with two AT trail clubs to evaluate the platform. Findings from the study reveal that centralized direct communication and streamlined information can support trail management on the AT by promoting collaboration within the trail community. The research paves the path for future research into the design of ICTs for driving nature conservation goals.
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    Wireless Network Dimensioning and Provisioning for Ultra-reliable Communication: Modeling and Analysis
    Gomes Santos Goncalves, Andre Vinicius (Virginia Tech, 2023-11-28)
    A key distinction between today's and tomorrow's wireless networks is the appetite for reliability to enable emerging mission-critical services such as ultra-reliable low-latency communication (URLLC) and hyper-reliable low-latency communication (HRLLC), the staple mission-critical services in IMT-2020 (5G) and IMT-2023 (6G), for which reliable and resilient communication is a must. However, achieving ultra-reliable communication is challenging because of these services' stringent reliability and latency requirements and the stochastic nature of wireless networks. A natural way of increasing reliability and reducing latency is to provision additional network resources to compensate for uncertainty in wireless networks caused by fading, interference, mobility, and time-varying network load, among others. Thus, an important step to enable mission-critical services is to identify and quantify what it takes to support ultra-reliable communication in mobile networks -- a process often referred to as dimensioning. This dissertation focuses on resource dimensioning, notably spectrum, for ultra-reliable wireless communication. This dissertation proposes a set of methods for spectrum dimensioning based on concepts from risk analysis, extreme value theory, and meta distributions. These methods reveal that each ``nine'' in reliability (e.g., five-nines in 99.999%) roughly translates into an order of magnitude increase in the required bandwidth. In ultra-reliability regimes, the required bandwidth can be in the order of tens of gigahertz, far beyond what is typically available in today's networks, making it challenging to provision resources for ultra-reliable communication. Accordingly, this dissertation also investigates alternative approaches to provide resources to enable ultra-reliable communication services in mobile networks. Particularly, this dissertation considers multi-operator network sharing and multi-connectivity as alternatives to make additional network resources available to enhance network reliability and proposes multi-operator connectivity sharing, which combines multi-operator network sharing with multi-connectivity. Our studies, based on simulations, real-world data analysis, and mathematical models, suggest that multi-operator connectivity sharing -- in which mobiles multi-connect to base stations of operators in a sharing arrangement -- can reduce the required bandwidth significantly because underlying operators tend to exhibit characteristics attractive to reliability, such as complementary coverage during periods of impaired connectivity, facilitating the support for ultra-reliable communication in future mobile networks.