Perimeter

PERIMETER features in the latest edition of the Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT) research publication; Research Matters.

The PERIMETER article entitled "PERIMETER: A User-Centric Approach to surfing the Web on your Mobile" provides a high level view of the concept of the PERIMETER project and some of its potential real-world uses. This article can be found in Issue 11, page s 16 & 17 of the Spring 2010 edition of the magazine.

Research Matters is produced twice annually and hard copies of the magazine are circulated to more than 3000 readers comprising WIT staff, all second level schools in the South East Region of Ireland, all national funding agencies, national and international academic institutions, government departments, public bodies and industry in the South East of Ireland. The magazine is also made available through the WIT website.

Eileen Dillon and Frances Cleary-Grant represented TSSG-WIT at the PERIMETER project's sixth plenary meeting, held in snowy Dornbirn Austria , 8-9 February 2010. The meeting was hosted by PERIMETER partner, Fachhochschule Vorarlberg GMBH.

Day One of the meeting was mostly devoted to technical and integration issues as the consortium strives to integrate, verify and validate the PERIMETER system code-base and demonstrates its capabilities across the project’s two federated testbeds (one in Telecommunications Software & Systems Group (TSSG), Waterford and the other in Technische Universitaet Berlin). Significant progress has been accomplished in this area thus far, especially with regard to the progress being made with the installation of the Google Android operating system on a variety of devices, including the Advent 4211-B Netbook and on the Samsung NC10.

Day 2 of the meeting consisted of a Workshop for cross-impact analysis for the project in order to identify the expected and achievable outputs and impact of this research both from an academic and industrial perspective. The consortium has been very active in the area of dissemination and a substantial amount of dissemination activities (papers, conferences, etc.) have been completed, with 34 activities recorded to date and with many more in the pipeline, the latest of which is the TSSG-WIT led paper entitled QoE Testbed Infrastructure and Services: Enriching the End User’s Experience for the upcoming TridentCom conference in Berlin, Germany in May 2010.

Phase 1 of the PERIMETER project is almost complete. Part of this work involved the usability testing of the Graphical User Interface (GUI) for the system and an analysis of the findings.

The PERIMETER system aims to provide the user with the best possible QoE and connection when they are using applications on their mobile device. The PERIMETER middleware is designed and implemented for use on devices which run the Google Android operating system. The user can upload the PERIMETER to their Android device and access the system via the PERIMETER GUI. Some sample of the various screens of the GUI are shown here.

This testing phase was conducted for a number of reasons such as ensuring the system worked, that it was intuitive and understandable, that it achieved its intended purpose and to assess users reaction to it and they perceived to be the benefits of the product.

Several test users participated in this testing session across four of the PERIMETER consortium partners, namely:
• Waterford Institute of Technology, Ireland;
• Fachhochschule Vorarlberg GmbH, Austria;
• Turkcell Iletisim Hizmetleri A.S. Turkey;
• Technische Universität Berlin, Germany.

The execution of these tests and the results derived from an analysis of the feedback has provided the PERIMETER consortium with important information from the aspect of potential users of the system going forward. These results will influence the design and functionality of the system as a whole.
Aspects of the system that were not considered in this first phase now need to be addressed whilst others can be discounted thus saving valuable development time. Also, the perceived benefits to the user of using such a system differed slightly from those of the consortium. These benefits will be analysed and may lead the consortium to explore different potential markets and business models for the finished system going forward.

An account of the full procedure and results of this testing session can be found on the PERIMETER website www.ict-perimeter.eu in the Technical Reports section.

PERIMETER will be featuring at the upcoming Irish Future Internet Forum (IFIF) in Dublin on 3rd December 2009.

This event will examine the implications of the Future Internet on the protection of critical information and the enablement of SECURITY, TRUST, and DEPENDABILITY in the Future Internet.

France Cleary-Grant, TSSG-WIT will be representing the PERIMETER consortium at the event, presenting a poster of PERIMETER as well as participating in the various sessions and discussions.

PERIMETER and TSSG will be featuring at the upcoming Future Internet Assembly (FIA) in Stockholm Sweden 23-24 November 2009.

TSSG will be hosting a stand at the event and will be featuring a number of national and EU Future Internet projects in which we are involved. Amongst these is the PERIMETER project, which will also be demoed at the stand.

In conjunction with this, PERIMETER will be showcasing our poster entitled "Providing an User Centric Always Best Connection" in the posters area.

Gemma Power (TSSG-WIT), Eileen Dillon (TSSG-WIT), Markus Fiedler (BTH) and Jean-Marc Seigneur (UoG) will be present at the event from the PERIMETER consortium.

We hope to see you there!

Eileen Dillon and Gemma Power represented TSSG-WIT at the PERIMETER project's fifth plenary meeting, held in Istanbul, Turkey 24-25 September 2009. The meeting was hosted by PERIMETER partner, Turkcell.

This was an important meeting for the consortium as we strive to integrate, verify and validate the Perimeter system code-base, to meet the first milestone of the project: Phase 1 Integration & testbed testing complete. This milestone is responsible for the set-up, configuration and federation of the WIT and TUB testbeds, and for the successful integration and testing of the project's first scenario entitled ‘user-centric agnostic ubiquitous communication’. This scenario, described in the flash movie available at the project website, considers an always best connected user that roams between different technologies and operators.

The PERIMETER consortium was represented at the 2009 Future Internet Symposium by Gemma Power (TSSG-WIT). The conference was held in Berlin, Germany from 1-3 September.

Gemma presented PERIMETER's paper entitled "PERIMETER: A Quality of Experience Framework" at the event, which provided details of the Quality of Experience model and concept that is employed in the PERIMETER project.

The PERIMETER team have uploaded a flash demonstration of a scenario that the final system could be used for. This scenario tries to describe an hypothetical use-case of the PERIMETER system from the user point of view.

This and other scenarios were derived using following a top-down methodology: after a brainstorming phase, where each partner provided a description of a use case, or usage scenario, for the PERIMETER infrastructure, seen as the optimal output of the entire project. The scenarios were then analyzed and their main elements integrated into three different overall scenarios.

The first scenario entitled ‘user-centric agnostic ubiquitous communication’ considers an always best connected user that roams between different technologies and operators. This is now available from the official PERIMETER website.

The other scenarios are involved in areas such as Emergency Situation / Health care
Community Networks and Collaborative WiFi Coverage Detection and Optimisation. A visualisation of these further scenarios will be made available soon.

Following on from the successful completion of the PERIMETER project's first year EU review, the evaluated and approved public deliverables have now been made available at the official PERIMETER website from the Documents section.
The website has also been updated to include the current list of Publications by the PERIMERTER consortium, and to include a new News section, so be sure to check it out!

The PERIMETER consortium hard at work at the project's first year review in Lulea, Sweden

As part of the FIRE initiative, representatives from the PERIMETER consortium attended FIREweek 2009. This FIRE and Living Labs conference took place from 1-2 July, in Luleå, Sweden. 330 participants attended this event, and PERIMETER was among the 70 people presenting over the two days.

The PERIMETER consortium was responsible for a 90 minute slot at the FIREweek workshop. This slot entitled “Sustainability of testbeds and user involvement” began with an introduction to PERIMETER from Christian Hämmerle (FHV), followed by four presentations by the PERIMETER consortium. These presentations, available from the PERIMETER website, were:

• Testbeds in the long term, Eileen Dillon (WIT).
• From Usability testing to Living Labs, Prof. Dr. Jens Schumacher (FHV).
• User involvement in the research/development cycle, Ahmet C. Toker (TUB).
• Socio Economic Factors – do they matter and can they be assessed, Markus Fiedler (BTH).

A Q&A session was held after each presentation where the interest level for the presentations was very high. After the end of all the presentations, the ensuing discussions continued well into the coffee break time!

Later in the afternoon, Prof. Dr. Jens Schumacher (FHV) represented the PERIMETER consortium in a panel discussion in the FIRE Facilities Track of the FIRE workshop programme.