QoS measurement of workflow-based web service compositions using Colored Petri net.

PubMed

Nematzadeh, Hossein; Motameni, Homayun; Mohamad, Radziah; Nematzadeh, Zahra

2014-01-01

Workflow-based web service compositions (WB-WSCs) is one of the main composition categories in service oriented architecture (SOA). Eflow, polymorphic process model (PPM), and business process execution language (BPEL) are the main techniques of the category of WB-WSCs. Due to maturity of web services, measuring the quality of composite web services being developed by different techniques becomes one of the most important challenges in today's web environments. Business should try to provide good quality regarding the customers' requirements to a composed web service. Thus, quality of service (QoS) which refers to nonfunctional parameters is important to be measured since the quality degree of a certain web service composition could be achieved. This paper tried to find a deterministic analytical method for dependability and performance measurement using Colored Petri net (CPN) with explicit routing constructs and application of theory of probability. A computer tool called WSET was also developed for modeling and supporting QoS measurement through simulation.

End-to-End QoS for Differentiated Services and ATM Internetworking

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Su, Hongjun; Atiquzzaman, Mohammed

2001-01-01

The Internet was initially design for non real-time data communications and hence does not provide any Quality of Service (QoS). The next generation Internet will be characterized by high speed and QoS guarantee. The aim of this paper is to develop a prioritized early packet discard (PEPD) scheme for ATM switches to provide service differentiation and QoS guarantee to end applications running over next generation Internet. The proposed PEPD scheme differs from previous schemes by taking into account the priority of packets generated from different application. We develop a Markov chain model for the proposed scheme and verify the model with simulation. Numerical results show that the results from the model and computer simulation are in close agreement. Our PEPD scheme provides service differentiation to the end-to-end applications.

CCSDS Advanced Orbiting Systems Virtual Channel Access Service for QoS MACHETE Model

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Jennings, Esther H.; Segui, John S.

2011-01-01

To support various communications requirements imposed by different missions, interplanetary communication protocols need to be designed, validated, and evaluated carefully. Multimission Advanced Communications Hybrid Environment for Test and Evaluation (MACHETE), described in "Simulator of Space Communication Networks" (NPO-41373), NASA Tech Briefs, Vol. 29, No. 8 (August 2005), p. 44, combines various tools for simulation and performance analysis of space networks. The MACHETE environment supports orbital analysis, link budget analysis, communications network simulations, and hardware-in-the-loop testing. By building abstract behavioral models of network protocols, one can validate performance after identifying the appropriate metrics of interest. The innovators have extended the MACHETE model library to include a generic link-layer Virtual Channel (VC) model supporting quality-of-service (QoS) controls based on IP streams. The main purpose of this generic Virtual Channel model addition was to interface fine-grain flow-based QoS (quality of service) between the network and MAC layers of the QualNet simulator, a commercial component of MACHETE. This software model adds the capability of mapping IP streams, based on header fields, to virtual channel numbers, allowing extended QoS handling at link layer. This feature further refines the QoS v existing at the network layer. QoS at the network layer (e.g. diffserv) supports few QoS classes, so data from one class will be aggregated together; differentiating between flows internal to a class/priority is not supported. By adding QoS classification capability between network and MAC layers through VC, one maps multiple VCs onto the same physical link. Users then specify different VC weights, and different queuing and scheduling policies at the link layer. This VC model supports system performance analysis of various virtual channel link-layer QoS queuing schemes independent of the network-layer QoS systems.

QaaS (quality as a service) model for web services using big data technologies

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ahmad, Faisal; Sarkar, Anirban

2017-10-01

Quality of service (QoS) determines the service usability and utility and both of which influence the service selection process. The QoS varies from one service provider to other. Each web service has its own methodology for evaluating QoS. The lack of transparent QoS evaluation model makes the service selection challenging. Moreover, most QoS evaluation processes do not consider their historical data which not only helps in getting more accurate QoS but also helps for future prediction, recommendation and knowledge discovery. QoS driven service selection demands a model where QoS can be provided as a service to end users. This paper proposes a layered QaaS (quality as a service) model in the same line as PaaS and software as a service, where users can provide QoS attributes as inputs and the model returns services satisfying the user's QoS expectation. This paper covers all the key aspects in this context, like selection of data sources, its transformation, evaluation, classification and storage of QoS. The paper uses server log as the source for evaluating QoS values, common methodology for its evaluation and big data technologies for its transformation and analysis. This paper also establishes the fact that Spark outperforms the Pig with respect to evaluation of QoS from logs.

A Personalized QoS Prediction Approach for CPS Service Recommendation Based on Reputation and Location-Aware Collaborative Filtering.

PubMed

Kuang, Li; Yu, Long; Huang, Lan; Wang, Yin; Ma, Pengju; Li, Chuanbin; Zhu, Yujia

2018-05-14

With the rapid development of cyber-physical systems (CPS), building cyber-physical systems with high quality of service (QoS) has become an urgent requirement in both academia and industry. During the procedure of building Cyber-physical systems, it has been found that a large number of functionally equivalent services exist, so it becomes an urgent task to recommend suitable services from the large number of services available in CPS. However, since it is time-consuming, and even impractical, for a single user to invoke all of the services in CPS to experience their QoS, a robust QoS prediction method is needed to predict unknown QoS values. A commonly used method in QoS prediction is collaborative filtering, however, it is hard to deal with the data sparsity and cold start problem, and meanwhile most of the existing methods ignore the data credibility issue. Thence, in order to solve both of these challenging problems, in this paper, we design a framework of QoS prediction for CPS services, and propose a personalized QoS prediction approach based on reputation and location-aware collaborative filtering. Our approach first calculates the reputation of users by using the Dirichlet probability distribution, so as to identify untrusted users and process their unreliable data, and then it digs out the geographic neighborhood in three levels to improve the similarity calculation of users and services. Finally, the data from geographical neighbors of users and services are fused to predict the unknown QoS values. The experiments using real datasets show that our proposed approach outperforms other existing methods in terms of accuracy, efficiency, and robustness.

A Personalized QoS Prediction Approach for CPS Service Recommendation Based on Reputation and Location-Aware Collaborative Filtering

PubMed Central

Huang, Lan; Wang, Yin; Ma, Pengju; Li, Chuanbin; Zhu, Yujia

2018-01-01

With the rapid development of cyber-physical systems (CPS), building cyber-physical systems with high quality of service (QoS) has become an urgent requirement in both academia and industry. During the procedure of building Cyber-physical systems, it has been found that a large number of functionally equivalent services exist, so it becomes an urgent task to recommend suitable services from the large number of services available in CPS. However, since it is time-consuming, and even impractical, for a single user to invoke all of the services in CPS to experience their QoS, a robust QoS prediction method is needed to predict unknown QoS values. A commonly used method in QoS prediction is collaborative filtering, however, it is hard to deal with the data sparsity and cold start problem, and meanwhile most of the existing methods ignore the data credibility issue. Thence, in order to solve both of these challenging problems, in this paper, we design a framework of QoS prediction for CPS services, and propose a personalized QoS prediction approach based on reputation and location-aware collaborative filtering. Our approach first calculates the reputation of users by using the Dirichlet probability distribution, so as to identify untrusted users and process their unreliable data, and then it digs out the geographic neighborhood in three levels to improve the similarity calculation of users and services. Finally, the data from geographical neighbors of users and services are fused to predict the unknown QoS values. The experiments using real datasets show that our proposed approach outperforms other existing methods in terms of accuracy, efficiency, and robustness. PMID:29757995

Providing QoS guarantee in 3G wireless networks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chuah, MooiChoo; Huang, Min; Kumar, Suresh

2001-07-01

The third generation networks and services present opportunities to offer multimedia applications and services that meet end-to-end quality of service requirements. In this article, we present UMTS QoS architecture and its requirements. This includes the definition of QoS parameters, traffic classes, the end-to-end data delivery model, and the mapping of end-to-end services to the services provided by the network elements of the UMTS. End-to-end QoS of a user flow is achieved by the combination of the QoS control over UMTS Domain and the IP core Network. In the Third Generation Wireless network, UMTS bearer service manager is responsible to manage radio and transport resources to QoS-enabled applications. The UMTS bearer service consists of the Radio Access Bearer Service between Mobile Terminal and SGSN and Core Network bearer service between SGSN and GGSN. The Radio Access Bearer Service is further realized by the Radio Bearer Service (mostly air interface) and Iu bearer service. For the 3G air interface, one can provide differentiated QoS via intelligent burst allocation scheme, adaptive spreading factor control and weighted fair queueing scheduling algorithms. Next, we discuss the requirements for the transport technologies in the radio access network to provide differentiated QoS to multiple classes of traffic. We discuss both ATM based and IP based transport solutions. Last but not least, we discuss how QoS mechanism is provided in the core network to ensure e2e quality of service requirements. We discuss how mobile terminals that use RSVP as QoS signaling mechanisms can be are supported in the 3G network which may implement only IETF diffserv mechanism. . We discuss how one can map UMTS QoS classes with IETF diffserv code points. We also discuss 2G/3G handover scenarios and how the 2G/3G QoS parameters can be mapped.

Mission-Related Execution and Planning Through Quality of Service Methods

DTIC Science & Technology

2010-06-01

which maximizes a mission effectiveness functions is the ideal driver of QoS mechanisms. Service Quality Quality of Service may also exist in other...However, service quality is the originating concept of QoS and is the level of performance which one entity expects from another, including non-IT SoSs... Service quality may also be reflected in the context of a system’s purpose or an organization’s mission. Putting level of service values and

Unified study of Quality of Service (QoS) in OPS/OBS networks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hailu, Dawit Hadush; Lema, Gebrehiwet Gebrekrstos; Yekun, Ephrem Admasu; Kebede, Samrawit Haylu

2017-07-01

With the growth of Internet traffic, an inevitable use of optical networks provide a large bandwidth, fast data transmission rates and Quality of Service (QoS) support. Currently, Optical Burst Switched (OBS)/Optical Packet Switched (OPS) networks are under study as future solutions for addressing the increase demand of Internet traffic. However, due to their high blocking probability in the intermediate nodes they have been delayed in the industries. Packet loss in OBS/OPS networks is mainly occur due to contention. Hence, the contribution of this study is to analyze the file loss ratio (FLR), packet overhead and number of disjoint paths, and processing delay over Coded Packet Transport (CPT) scheme for OBS/OPS network using simulation. The simulations show that CPT scheme reduces the FLR in OBS/OPS network for the evaluated scenarios since the data packets are chopped off into blocks of the data packet for transmission over a network. Simulation results for secrecy and survivability are verified with the help of the analytical model to define the operational range of CPT scheme.

Resource Provisioning in SLA-Based Cluster Computing

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Xiong, Kaiqi; Suh, Sang

Cluster computing is excellent for parallel computation. It has become increasingly popular. In cluster computing, a service level agreement (SLA) is a set of quality of services (QoS) and a fee agreed between a customer and an application service provider. It plays an important role in an e-business application. An application service provider uses a set of cluster computing resources to support e-business applications subject to an SLA. In this paper, the QoS includes percentile response time and cluster utilization. We present an approach for resource provisioning in such an environment that minimizes the total cost of cluster computing resources used by an application service provider for an e-business application that often requires parallel computation for high service performance, availability, and reliability while satisfying a QoS and a fee negotiated between a customer and the application service provider. Simulation experiments demonstrate the applicability of the approach.

GEMSS: grid-infrastructure for medical service provision.

PubMed

Benkner, S; Berti, G; Engelbrecht, G; Fingberg, J; Kohring, G; Middleton, S E; Schmidt, R

2005-01-01

The European GEMSS Project is concerned with the creation of medical Grid service prototypes and their evaluation in a secure service-oriented infrastructure for distributed on demand/supercomputing. Key aspects of the GEMSS Grid middleware include negotiable QoS support for time-critical service provision, flexible support for business models, and security at all levels in order to ensure privacy of patient data as well as compliance to EU law. The GEMSS Grid infrastructure is based on a service-oriented architecture and is being built on top of existing standard Grid and Web technologies. The GEMSS infrastructure offers a generic Grid service provision framework that hides the complexity of transforming existing applications into Grid services. For the development of client-side applications or portals, a pluggable component framework has been developed, providing developers with full control over business processes, service discovery, QoS negotiation, and workflow, while keeping their underlying implementation hidden from view. A first version of the GEMSS Grid infrastructure is operational and has been used for the set-up of a Grid test-bed deploying six medical Grid service prototypes including maxillo-facial surgery simulation, neuro-surgery support, radio-surgery planning, inhaled drug-delivery simulation, cardiovascular simulation and advanced image reconstruction. The GEMSS Grid infrastructure is based on standard Web Services technology with an anticipated future transition path towards the OGSA standard proposed by the Global Grid Forum. GEMSS demonstrates that the Grid can be used to provide medical practitioners and researchers with access to advanced simulation and image processing services for improved preoperative planning and near real-time surgical support.

Quality of service management framework for dynamic chaining of geographic information services

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Onchaga, Richard

2006-06-01

Dynamic chaining of geographic information services (geo-services) is gaining popularity as a new paradigm for evolving flexible geo-information systems and for providing on-demand access to geo-information. In dynamic chaining, disparate geo-services are discovered and composed at run time to yield more elaborate functionality and create value-added geo-information. Common approaches to service chaining discover and compose disparate geo-services based on the functional capability of individual geo-services. The primary concern of common approaches is thus the emergent behavior of the resulting composite geo-service. However, as geo-services become mundane and take on a greater and more strategic role in mission critical processes, deliverable quality of service (QoS) becomes an important concern. QoS concerns operational characteristics of a service that determine its utility in an application context. To address pertinent QoS requirements, a new approach to service chaining becomes necessary. In this paper we propose a QoS-aware chaining approach in which geo-services are discovered, composed and executed considering both functional and QoS requirements. We prescribe a QoS management framework that defines fundamental principles, concepts and mechanisms which can be applied to evolve an effective distributed computing platform for QoS-aware chaining of geo-services - the so-called geo-service infrastructure. The paper also defines an extensible QoS model for services delivered by dynamic compositions of geo-services. The process of orthophoto generation is used to demonstrate the applicability of the prescribed framework to service-oriented geographic information processing.

On Designing Thermal-Aware Localized QoS Routing Protocol for in-vivo Sensor Nodes in Wireless Body Area Networks.

PubMed

Monowar, Muhammad Mostafa; Bajaber, Fuad

2015-06-15

In this paper, we address the thermal rise and Quality-of-Service (QoS) provisioning issue for an intra-body Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) having in-vivo sensor nodes. We propose a thermal-aware QoS routing protocol, called TLQoS, that facilitates the system in achieving desired QoS in terms of delay and reliability for diverse traffic types, as well as avoids the formation of highly heated nodes known as hotspot(s), and keeps the temperature rise along the network to an acceptable level. TLQoS exploits modular architecture wherein different modules perform integrated operations in providing multiple QoS service with lower temperature rise. To address the challenges of highly dynamic wireless environment inside the human body. TLQoS implements potential-based localized routing that requires only local neighborhood information. TLQoS avoids routing loop formation as well as reduces the number of hop traversal exploiting hybrid potential, and tuning a configurable parameter. We perform extensive simulations of TLQoS, and the results show that TLQoS has significant performance improvements over state-of-the-art approaches.

On Designing Thermal-Aware Localized QoS Routing Protocol for in-vivo Sensor Nodes in Wireless Body Area Networks

PubMed Central

Monowar, Muhammad Mostafa; Bajaber, Fuad

2015-01-01

In this paper, we address the thermal rise and Quality-of-Service (QoS) provisioning issue for an intra-body Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) having in-vivo sensor nodes. We propose a thermal-aware QoS routing protocol, called TLQoS, that facilitates the system in achieving desired QoS in terms of delay and reliability for diverse traffic types, as well as avoids the formation of highly heated nodes known as hotspot(s), and keeps the temperature rise along the network to an acceptable level. TLQoS exploits modular architecture wherein different modules perform integrated operations in providing multiple QoS service with lower temperature rise. To address the challenges of highly dynamic wireless environment inside the human body. TLQoS implements potential-based localized routing that requires only local neighborhood information. TLQoS avoids routing loop formation as well as reduces the number of hop traversal exploiting hybrid potential, and tuning a configurable parameter. We perform extensive simulations of TLQoS, and the results show that TLQoS has significant performance improvements over state-of-the-art approaches. PMID:26083228

An Automated End-To Multi-Agent Qos Based Architecture for Selection of Geospatial Web Services

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Shah, M.; Verma, Y.; Nandakumar, R.

2012-07-01

Over the past decade, Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Web services have gained wide popularity and acceptance from researchers and industries all over the world. SOA makes it easy to build business applications with common services, and it provides like: reduced integration expense, better asset reuse, higher business agility, and reduction of business risk. Building of framework for acquiring useful geospatial information for potential users is a crucial problem faced by the GIS domain. Geospatial Web services solve this problem. With the help of web service technology, geospatial web services can provide useful geospatial information to potential users in a better way than traditional geographic information system (GIS). A geospatial Web service is a modular application designed to enable the discovery, access, and chaining of geospatial information and services across the web that are often both computation and data-intensive that involve diverse sources of data and complex processing functions. With the proliferation of web services published over the internet, multiple web services may provide similar functionality, but with different non-functional properties. Thus, Quality of Service (QoS) offers a metric to differentiate the services and their service providers. In a quality-driven selection of web services, it is important to consider non-functional properties of the web service so as to satisfy the constraints or requirements of the end users. The main intent of this paper is to build an automated end-to-end multi-agent based solution to provide the best-fit web service to service requester based on QoS.

Interference Drop Scheme: Enhancing QoS Provision in Multi-Hop Ad Hoc Networks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Luo, Chang-Yi; Komuro, Nobuyoshi; Takahashi, Kiyoshi; Kasai, Hiroyuki; Ueda, Hiromi; Tsuboi, Toshinori

Ad hoc networking uses wireless technologies to construct networks with no physical infrastructure and so are expected to provide instant networking in areas such as disaster recovery sites and inter-vehicle communication. Unlike conventional wired networks services, services in ad hoc networks are easily disrupted by the frequent changes in traffic and topology. Therefore, solutions to assure the Quality of Services (QoS) in ad hoc networks are different from the conventional ones used in wired networks. In this paper, we propose a new queue management scheme, Interference Drop Scheme (IDS) for ad hoc networks. In the conventional queue management approaches such as FIFO (First-in First-out) and RED (Random Early Detection), a queue is usually managed by a queue length limit. FIFO discards packets according to the queue limit, and RED discards packets in an early and random fashion. IDS, on the other hand, manages the queue according to wireless interference time, which increases as the number of contentions in the MAC layer increases. When there are many MAC contentions, IDS discards TCP data packets. By observing the interference time and discarding TCP data packets, our simulation results show that IDS improves TCP performance and reduces QoS violations in UDP in ad hoc networks with chain, grid, and random topologies. Our simulation results also demonstrate that wireless interference time is a better metric than queue length limit for queue management in multi-hop ad hoc networks.

Adaptive Traffic Route Control in QoS Provisioning for Cognitive Radio Technology with Heterogeneous Wireless Systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yamamoto, Toshiaki; Ueda, Tetsuro; Obana, Sadao

As one of the dynamic spectrum access technologies, “cognitive radio technology,” which aims to improve the spectrum efficiency, has been studied. In cognitive radio networks, each node recognizes radio conditions, and according to them, optimizes its wireless communication routes. Cognitive radio systems integrate the heterogeneous wireless systems not only by switching over them but also aggregating and utilizing them simultaneously. The adaptive control of switchover use and concurrent use of various wireless systems will offer a stable and flexible wireless communication. In this paper, we propose the adaptive traffic route control scheme that provides high quality of service (QoS) for cognitive radio technology, and examine the performance of the proposed scheme through the field trials and computer simulations. The results of field trials show that the adaptive route control according to the radio conditions improves the user IP throughput by more than 20% and reduce the one-way delay to less than 1/6 with the concurrent use of IEEE802.16 and IEEE802.11 wireless media. Moreover, the simulation results assuming hundreds of mobile terminals reveal that the number of users receiving the required QoS of voice over IP (VoIP) service and the total network throughput of FTP users increase by more than twice at the same time with the proposed algorithm. The proposed adaptive traffic route control scheme can enhance the performances of the cognitive radio technologies by providing the appropriate communication routes for various applications to satisfy their required QoS.

MPEG-2 Over Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) Over Satellite Quality of Service (QoS) Experiments: Laboratory Tests

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Ivancic, William D.; Frantz, Brian D.; Spells, Marcus J.

1998-01-01

Asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) quality of service (QoS) experiments were performed using MPEG-2 (ATM application layer 5, AAL5) over ATM over an emulated satellite link. The purpose of these experiments was to determine the free-space link quality necessary to transmit high-quality multimedia information by using the ATM protocol. The detailed test plan and test configuration are described herein as are the test results. MPEG-2 transport streams were baselined in an errored environment, followed by a series of tests using, MPEG-2 over ATM. Errors were created both digitally as well as in an IF link by using a satellite modem and commercial gaussian noise test set for two different MPEG-2 decoder implementations. The results show that ITU-T Recommendation 1.356 Class 1, stringent ATM applications will require better link quality than currently specified; in particular, cell loss ratios of better than 1.0 x 10(exp -8) and cell error ratios of better than 1.0 x 10(exp -7) are needed. These tests were conducted at the NASA Lewis Research Center in support of satellite-ATM interoperability research.

Survey on Monitoring and Quality Controlling of the Mobile Biosignal Delivery.

PubMed

Pawar, Pravin A; Edla, Damodar R; Edoh, Thierry; Shinde, Vijay; van Beijnum, Bert-Jan

2017-10-31

A Mobile Patient Monitoring System (MPMS) acquires patient's biosignals and transmits them using wireless network connection to the decision-making module or healthcare professional for the assessment of patient's condition. A variety of wireless network technologies such as wireless personal area networks (e.g., Bluetooth), mobile ad-hoc networks (MANET), and infrastructure-based networks (e.g., WLAN and cellular networks) are in practice for biosignals delivery. The wireless network quality-of-service (QoS) requirements of biosignals delivery are mainly specified in terms of required bandwidth, acceptable delay, and tolerable error rate. An important research challenge in the MPMS is how to satisfy QoS requirements of biosignals delivery in the environment characterized by patient mobility, deployment of multiple wireless network technologies, and variable QoS characteristics of the wireless networks. QoS requirements are mainly application specific, while available QoS is largely dependent on QoS provided by wireless network in use. QoS provisioning refers to providing support for improving QoS experience of networked applications. In resource poor conditions, application adaptation may also be required to make maximum use of available wireless network QoS. This survey paper presents a survey of recent developments in the area of QoS provisioning for MPMS. In particular, our contributions are as follows: (1) overview of wireless networks and network QoS requirements of biosignals delivery; (2) survey of wireless networks' QoS performance evaluation for the transmission of biosignals; and (3) survey of QoS provisioning mechanisms for biosignals delivery in MPMS. We also propose integrating end-to-end QoS monitoring and QoS provisioning strategies in a mobile patient monitoring system infrastructure to support optimal delivery of biosignals to the healthcare professionals.

A Mobility-Aware QoS Signaling Protocol for Ambient Networks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jeong, Seong-Ho; Lee, Sung-Hyuck; Bang, Jongho

Mobility-aware quality of service (QoS) signaling is crucial to provide seamless multimedia services in the ambient environment where mobile nodes may move frequently between different wireless access networks. The mobility of an IP-based node in ambient networks affects routing paths, and as a result, can have a significant impact on the operation and state management of QoS signaling protocols. In this paper, we first analyze the impact of mobility on QoS signaling protocols and how the protocols operate in mobility scenarios. We then propose an efficient mobility-aware QoS signaling protocol which can operate adaptively in ambient networks. The key features of the protocol include the fast discovery of a crossover node where the old and new paths converge or diverge due to handover and the localized state management for seamless services. Our analytical and simulation/experimental results show that the proposed/implemented protocol works better than existing protocols in the IP-based mobile environment.

Distributed sensor architecture for intelligent control that supports quality of control and quality of service.

PubMed

Poza-Lujan, Jose-Luis; Posadas-Yagüe, Juan-Luis; Simó-Ten, José-Enrique; Simarro, Raúl; Benet, Ginés

2015-02-25

This paper is part of a study of intelligent architectures for distributed control and communications systems. The study focuses on optimizing control systems by evaluating the performance of middleware through quality of service (QoS) parameters and the optimization of control using Quality of Control (QoC) parameters. The main aim of this work is to study, design, develop, and evaluate a distributed control architecture based on the Data-Distribution Service for Real-Time Systems (DDS) communication standard as proposed by the Object Management Group (OMG). As a result of the study, an architecture called Frame-Sensor-Adapter to Control (FSACtrl) has been developed. FSACtrl provides a model to implement an intelligent distributed Event-Based Control (EBC) system with support to measure QoS and QoC parameters. The novelty consists of using, simultaneously, the measured QoS and QoC parameters to make decisions about the control action with a new method called Event Based Quality Integral Cycle. To validate the architecture, the first five Braitenberg vehicles have been implemented using the FSACtrl architecture. The experimental outcomes, demonstrate the convenience of using jointly QoS and QoC parameters in distributed control systems.

Distributed Sensor Architecture for Intelligent Control that Supports Quality of Control and Quality of Service

PubMed Central

Poza-Lujan, Jose-Luis; Posadas-Yagüe, Juan-Luis; Simó-Ten, José-Enrique; Simarro, Raúl; Benet, Ginés

2015-01-01

This paper is part of a study of intelligent architectures for distributed control and communications systems. The study focuses on optimizing control systems by evaluating the performance of middleware through quality of service (QoS) parameters and the optimization of control using Quality of Control (QoC) parameters. The main aim of this work is to study, design, develop, and evaluate a distributed control architecture based on the Data-Distribution Service for Real-Time Systems (DDS) communication standard as proposed by the Object Management Group (OMG). As a result of the study, an architecture called Frame-Sensor-Adapter to Control (FSACtrl) has been developed. FSACtrl provides a model to implement an intelligent distributed Event-Based Control (EBC) system with support to measure QoS and QoC parameters. The novelty consists of using, simultaneously, the measured QoS and QoC parameters to make decisions about the control action with a new method called Event Based Quality Integral Cycle. To validate the architecture, the first five Braitenberg vehicles have been implemented using the FSACtrl architecture. The experimental outcomes, demonstrate the convenience of using jointly QoS and QoC parameters in distributed control systems. PMID:25723145

How to measure the QoS of a web-based EHRs system: development of an instrument.

PubMed

de la Torre-Díez, Isabel; López-Coronado, Miguel; Rodrigues, Joel J P C

2012-12-01

The quality of service (QoS) can be treated as a set of concepts whose satisfaction/dissatisfaction generates a global positive/negative vision about the service provided by any application. The different nature of the services and its features require an analysis of the factors that have the greatest influence on the users' opinion and, therefore, measuring the quality of service in each application requires a specific instrument. This paper will introduce an instrument to measure the QoS offered to users by a general Web application for Electronic Health Records (EHRs). The collection of opinions from a pilot sample and the performance of an explanatory factor analysis will bring together the factors that best sum up the quality of an EHRs application. Subsequently, a confirmatory factor analysis will be performed to make the study reliable and, as its name suggests, to confirm that indeed the structure of the instrument developed measures the QoS in accordance with the requirements of the users.

Fairness of QoS supporting in optical burst switching

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Xuan, Xuelei; Liu, Hua; Chen, Chunfeng; Zhang, Zhizhong

2004-04-01

In this paper we investigate the fairness problem of offset-time-based quality of service (QoS) scheme proposed by Qiao and Dixit in optical burst switching (OBS) networks. In the proposed schemes, QoS relies on the fact that the requests for reservation further into the future, but for practical, benchmark offset-time of data bursts at the intermediate nodes is not equal to each other. Here, a new offset-time-based QoS scheme is introduced, where data bursts are classified according to their offset-time and isolated in the wavelength domain or time domain to achieve the parallel reservation. Through simulation, it is found that this scheme achieves fairness among data bursts with different priority.

Optimal route discovery for soft QOS provisioning in mobile ad hoc multimedia networks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Huang, Lei; Pan, Feng

2007-09-01

In this paper, we propose an optimal routing discovery algorithm for ad hoc multimedia networks whose resource keeps changing, First, we use stochastic models to measure the network resource availability, based on the information about the location and moving pattern of the nodes, as well as the link conditions between neighboring nodes. Then, for a certain multimedia packet flow to be transmitted from a source to a destination, we formulate the optimal soft-QoS provisioning problem as to find the best route that maximize the probability of satisfying its desired QoS requirements in terms of the maximum delay constraints. Based on the stochastic network resource model, we developed three approaches to solve the formulated problem: A centralized approach serving as the theoretical reference, a distributed approach that is more suitable to practical real-time deployment, and a distributed dynamic approach that utilizes the updated time information to optimize the routing for each individual packet. Examples of numerical results demonstrated that using the route discovered by our distributed algorithm in a changing network environment, multimedia applications could achieve better QoS statistically.

Evaluation of AL-FEC performance for IP television services QoS

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mammi, E.; Russo, G.; Neri, A.

2010-01-01

The IP television services quality is a critical issue because of the nature of transport infrastructure. Packet loss is the main cause of service degradation in such kind of network platforms. The use of forward error correction (FEC) techniques in the application layer (AL-FEC), between the source of TV service (video server) and the user terminal, seams to be an efficient strategy to counteract packet losses alternatively or in addiction to suitable traffic management policies (only feasible in "managed networks"). A number of AL-FEC techniques have been discussed in literature and proposed for inclusion in TV over IP international standards. In this paper a performance evaluation of the AL-FEC defined in SMPTE 2022-1 standard is presented. Different typical events occurring in IP networks causing different types (in terms of statistic distribution) of IP packet losses have been studied and AL-FEC performance to counteract these kind of losses have been evaluated. The performed analysis has been carried out in view of fulfilling the TV services QoS requirements that are usually very demanding. For managed networks, this paper envisages a strategy to combine the use of AL-FEC with the set-up of a transport quality based on FEC packets prioritization. Promising results regard this kind of strategy have been obtained.

A QoS Framework with Traffic Request in Wireless Mesh Network

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Fu, Bo; Huang, Hejiao

In this paper, we consider major issues in ensuring greater Quality-of-Service (QoS) in Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs), specifically with regard to reliability and delay. To this end, we use traffic request to record QoS requirements of data flows. In order to achieve required QoS for all data flows efficiently and with high portability, we develop Network State Update Algorithm. All assumptions, definitions, and algorithms are made exclusively with WMNs in mind, guaranteeing the portability of our framework to various environments in WMNs. The simulation results in proof that our framework is correct.

A QoS adaptive multimedia transport system: design, implementation and experiences

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Campbell, Andrew; Coulson, Geoff

1997-03-01

The long awaited `new environment' of high speed broadband networks and multimedia applications is fast becoming a reality. However, few systems in existence today, whether they be large scale pilots or small scale test-beds in research laboratories, offer a fully integrated and flexible environment where multimedia applications can maximally exploit the quality of service (QoS) capabilities of supporting networks and end-systems. In this paper we describe the implementation of an adaptive transport system that incorporates a QoS oriented API and a range of mechanisms to assist applications in exploiting QoS and adapting to fluctuations in QoS. The system, which is an instantiation of the Lancaster QoS Architecture, is implemented in a multi ATM switch network environment with Linux based PC end systems and continuous media file servers. A performance evaluation of the system configured to support video-on-demand application scenario is presented and discussed. Emphasis is placed on novel features of the system and on their integration into a complete prototype. The most prominent novelty of our design is a `distributed QoS adaptation' scheme which allows applications to delegate to the system responsibility for augmenting and reducing the perceptual quality of video and audio flows when resource availability increases or decreases.

Multi-Agent Architecture with Support to Quality of Service and Quality of Control

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Poza-Luján, Jose-Luis; Posadas-Yagüe, Juan-Luis; Simó-Ten, Jose-Enrique

Multi Agent Systems (MAS) are one of the most suitable frameworks for the implementation of intelligent distributed control system. Agents provide suitable flexibility to give support to implied heterogeneity in cyber-physical systems. Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of Control (QoC) parameters are commonly utilized to evaluate the efficiency of the communications and the control loop. Agents can use the quality measures to take a wide range of decisions, like suitable placement on the control node or to change the workload to save energy. This article describes the architecture of a multi agent system that provides support to QoS and QoC parameters to optimize de system. The architecture uses a Publish-Subscriber model, based on Data Distribution Service (DDS) to send the control messages. Due to the nature of the Publish-Subscribe model, the architecture is suitable to implement event-based control (EBC) systems. The architecture has been called FSACtrl.

Intelligent call admission control for multi-class services in mobile cellular networks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ma, Yufeng; Hu, Xiulin; Zhang, Yunyu

2005-11-01

Scarcity of the spectrum resource and mobility of users make quality of service (QoS) provision a critical issue in mobile cellular networks. This paper presents a fuzzy call admission control scheme to meet the requirement of the QoS. A performance measure is formed as a weighted linear function of new call and handoff call blocking probabilities of each service class. Simulation compares the proposed fuzzy scheme with complete sharing and guard channel policies. Simulation results show that fuzzy scheme has a better robust performance in terms of average blocking criterion.

Agent-Based Framework for Personalized Service Provisioning in Converged IP Networks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Podobnik, Vedran; Matijasevic, Maja; Lovrek, Ignac; Skorin-Kapov, Lea; Desic, Sasa

In a global multi-service and multi-provider market, the Internet Service Providers will increasingly need to differentiate in the service quality they offer and base their operation on new, consumer-centric business models. In this paper, we propose an agent-based framework for the Business-to-Consumer (B2C) electronic market, comprising the Consumer Agents, Broker Agents and Content Agents, which enable Internet consumers to select a content provider in an automated manner. We also discuss how to dynamically allocate network resources to provide end-to-end Quality of Service (QoS) for a given consumer and content provider.

Do efforts to standardize, assess and improve the quality of health service provision to adolescents by government-run health services in low and middle income countries, lead to improvements in service-quality and service-utilization by adolescents?

PubMed

Chandra-Mouli, Venkatraman; Chatterjee, Subidita; Bose, Krishna

2016-02-06

Researchers and implementers working in adolescent health, and adolescents themselves question whether government-run health services in conservative and resource-constrained settings can be made adolescent friendly. This paper aims to find out what selected low and middle income country (LMIC) governments have set out to do to improve the quality of health service provision to adolescents; whether their efforts led to measurable improvements in quality and to increased health service-utilization by adolescents. We gathered normative guidance and reports from eight LMICs in Asia, Africa, Central and Eastern Europe and the Western Pacific. We analysed national quality standards for adolescent friendly health services, findings from the assessments of the quality of health service provision, and findings on the utilization of health services. Governments of LMICs have set out to improve the accessibility, acceptability, equity, appropriateness and effectiveness of health service provision to adolescents by defining standards and actions to achieve them. Their actions have led to measurable improvements in quality and to increases in health service utilisation by adolescents. With support, government-run health facilities in LMICs can improve the quality of health services and their utilization by adolescents.

Alleviating Bandwidth Constraints by Implementing Quality of Service on Teleport Site Connections

DTIC Science & Technology

2008-02-19

adequate 1 SkillSoft, "Implementing Quality of Service," DISA eLearning Portal, <https://hr.disa.mil...training/ elearning /index.html> (19 February 2008), QoS overview. Cited hereafter as Skillsoft. 4 bandwidth, the router’s QoS mechanism is passive...nation’s warfighter. Hence, he tasked DISA to create Net- Centric Implementation Documents (NCID) that relate Global

Trust-Enhanced Cloud Service Selection Model Based on QoS Analysis.

PubMed

Pan, Yuchen; Ding, Shuai; Fan, Wenjuan; Li, Jing; Yang, Shanlin

2015-01-01

Cloud computing technology plays a very important role in many areas, such as in the construction and development of the smart city. Meanwhile, numerous cloud services appear on the cloud-based platform. Therefore how to how to select trustworthy cloud services remains a significant problem in such platforms, and extensively investigated owing to the ever-growing needs of users. However, trust relationship in social network has not been taken into account in existing methods of cloud service selection and recommendation. In this paper, we propose a cloud service selection model based on the trust-enhanced similarity. Firstly, the direct, indirect, and hybrid trust degrees are measured based on the interaction frequencies among users. Secondly, we estimate the overall similarity by combining the experience usability measured based on Jaccard's Coefficient and the numerical distance computed by Pearson Correlation Coefficient. Then through using the trust degree to modify the basic similarity, we obtain a trust-enhanced similarity. Finally, we utilize the trust-enhanced similarity to find similar trusted neighbors and predict the missing QoS values as the basis of cloud service selection and recommendation. The experimental results show that our approach is able to obtain optimal results via adjusting parameters and exhibits high effectiveness. The cloud services ranking by our model also have better QoS properties than other methods in the comparison experiments.

Trust-Enhanced Cloud Service Selection Model Based on QoS Analysis

PubMed Central

Pan, Yuchen; Ding, Shuai; Fan, Wenjuan; Li, Jing; Yang, Shanlin

2015-01-01

Cloud computing technology plays a very important role in many areas, such as in the construction and development of the smart city. Meanwhile, numerous cloud services appear on the cloud-based platform. Therefore how to how to select trustworthy cloud services remains a significant problem in such platforms, and extensively investigated owing to the ever-growing needs of users. However, trust relationship in social network has not been taken into account in existing methods of cloud service selection and recommendation. In this paper, we propose a cloud service selection model based on the trust-enhanced similarity. Firstly, the direct, indirect, and hybrid trust degrees are measured based on the interaction frequencies among users. Secondly, we estimate the overall similarity by combining the experience usability measured based on Jaccard’s Coefficient and the numerical distance computed by Pearson Correlation Coefficient. Then through using the trust degree to modify the basic similarity, we obtain a trust-enhanced similarity. Finally, we utilize the trust-enhanced similarity to find similar trusted neighbors and predict the missing QoS values as the basis of cloud service selection and recommendation. The experimental results show that our approach is able to obtain optimal results via adjusting parameters and exhibits high effectiveness. The cloud services ranking by our model also have better QoS properties than other methods in the comparison experiments. PMID:26606388

RACOON: a multiuser QoS design for mobile wireless body area networks.

PubMed

Cheng, Shihheng; Huang, Chingyao; Tu, Chun Chen

2011-10-01

In this study, Random Contention-based Resource Allocation (RACOON) medium access control (MAC) protocol is proposed to support the quality of service (QoS) for multi-user mobile wireless body area networks (WBANs). Different from existing QoS designs that focus on a single WBAN, a multiuser WBAN QoS should further consider both inter-WBAN interference and inter-WBAN priorities. Similar problems have been studied in both overlapped wireless local area networks (WLANs) and Bluetooth piconets that need QoS supports. However, these solutions are designed for non-medical transmissions that do not consider any priority scheme for medical applications. Most importantly, these studies focus on only static or low mobility networks. Network mobility of WBANs will introduce unnecessary inter-network collisions and energy waste, which are not considered by these solutions. The proposed multiuser-QoS protocol, RACOON, simultaneously satisfies the inter WBAN QoS requirements and overcomes the performance degradation caused by WBAN mobility. Simulation results verify that RACOON provides better latency and energy control, as compared with WBAN QoS protocols without considering the inter-WBAN requirements.

A QoS Management Technique of Urgent Information Provision in ITS Services Using DSRC for Autonomous Base Stations

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Shimura, Akitoshi; Aizono, Takeiki; Hiraiwa, Masashi; Sugano, Shigeki

A QoS management technique based on an autonomous decentralized mobility system, which is an autonomous decentralized system enhanced to provide mobile stations with information about urgent roadway situations, is proposed in this paper. This technique enables urgent messages to be flexibly and quickly transmitted to mobile stations by multiple decentralized base stations using dedicated short range communication. It also supports the easy addition of additional base stations. Each station autonomously creates information-delivery communities based on the urgency of the messages it receives through the roadside network and the distances between the senders and receivers. Each station dynamically determines the urgency of messages according to the message content and the speed of the mobile stations. Evaluation of this technique applied to the Smart Gateway system, which provides driving-assistance services to mobile stations through dedicated short-range communication, demonstrated its effectiveness and that it is suitable for actual systems.

Device Centric Throughput and QoS Optimization for IoTsin a Smart Building Using CRN-Techniques

PubMed Central

Aslam, Saleem; Hasan, Najam Ul; Shahid, Adnan; Jang, Ju Wook; Lee, Kyung-Geun

2016-01-01

The Internet of Things (IoT) has gained an incredible importance in the communication and networking industry due to its innovative solutions and advantages in diverse domains. The IoT’ network is a network of smart physical objects: devices, vehicles, buildings, etc. The IoT has a number of applications ranging from smart home, smart surveillance to smart healthcare systems. Since IoT consists of various heterogeneous devices that exhibit different traffic patterns and expect different quality of service (QoS) in terms of data rate, bit error rate and the stability index of the channel, therefore, in this paper, we formulated an optimization problem to assign channels to heterogeneous IoT devices within a smart building for the provisioning of their desired QoS. To solve this problem, a novel particle swarm optimization-based algorithm is proposed. Then, exhaustive simulations are carried out to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm. Simulation results demonstrate the supremacy of our proposed algorithm over the existing ones in terms of throughput, bit error rate and the stability index of the channel. PMID:27782057

QoS for Real Time Applications over Next Generation Data Networks

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Ivancic, William; Atiquzzaman, Mohammed; Bai, Haowei; Su, Hongjun; Chitri, Jyotsna; Ahamed, Faruque

2001-01-01

Viewgraphs on Qualtity of Service (QOS) for real time applications over next generation data networks are presented. The progress to date include: Task 1: QoS in Integrated Services over DiffServ networks (UD); Task 2: Interconnecting ATN with the next generation Internet (UD); Task 3: QoS in DiffServ over ATM (UD); Task 4: Improving Explicit Congestion Notification with the Mark-Front Strategy (OSU); Task 5: Multiplexing VBR over VBR (OSU); and Task 6: Achieving QoS for TCP traffic in Satellite Networks with Differentiated Services (OSU).

An initial approach towards quality of service based Spectrum Trading

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bastidas, Carlos E. Caicedo; Vanhoy, Garret; Volos, Haris I.; Bose, Tamal

Spectrum scarcity has become an important issue as demands for higher data rates increase in diverse wireless applications and aerospace communication scenarios. To address this problem, it becomes necessary to manage radio spectrum assignment in a way that optimizes the distribution of spectrum resources among several users while taking into account the quality of service (QoS) characteristics desired by the users of spectrum. In this paper, a novel approach to managing spectrum assignment based on Spectrum Trading (ST) will be presented. Market based spectrum assignment mechanisms such as spectrum trading are of growing interest to many spectrum management agencies that are planning to increase the use of these mechanisms for spectrum management and reduce their emphasis on command and control methods. This paper presents some of our initial work into incorporating quality of service information into the mechanisms that determine how spectrum should be traded when using a spectrum exchange. Through simulations and a testbed implementation of a QoS aware spectrum exchange our results show the viability of using QoS based mechanisms in spectrum trading and in the enhancement of dynamic spectrum assignment systems.

A QoS scheme for a congestion core network based on dissimilar QoS structures in smart-phone environments.

PubMed

Hong, Sung-Ryong; Na, Wonshik; Kang, Jang-Mook

2010-01-01

This study suggests an approach to effective transmission of multimedia content in a rapidly changing Internet environment including smart-phones. Guaranteeing QoS in networks is currently an important research topic. When transmitting Assured Forwarding (AF) packets in a Multi-DiffServ network environment, network A may assign priority in an order AF1, AF2, AF3 and AF4; on the other hand, network B may reverse the order to a priority AF4, AF3, AF2 and AF1. In this case, the AF1 packets that received the best quality of service in network A will receive the lowest in network B, which may result in dropping of packets in network B and vice versa. This study suggests a way to guarantee QoS between hosts by minimizing the loss of AF packet class when one network transmits AF class packets to another network with differing principles. It is expected that QoS guarantees and their experimental value may be utilized as principles which can be applied to various mobile-web environments based on smart-phones.

A QoS Scheme for a Congestion Core Network Based on Dissimilar QoS Structures in Smart-Phone Environments

PubMed Central

Hong, Sung-Ryong; Na, Wonshik; Kang, Jang-Mook

2010-01-01

This study suggests an approach to effective transmission of multimedia content in a rapidly changing Internet environment including smart-phones. Guaranteeing QoS in networks is currently an important research topic. When transmitting Assured Forwarding (AF) packets in a Multi-DiffServ network environment, network A may assign priority in an order AF1, AF2, AF3 and AF4; on the other hand, network B may reverse the order to a priority AF4, AF3, AF2 and AF1. In this case, the AF1 packets that received the best quality of service in network A will receive the lowest in network B, which may result in dropping of packets in network B and vice versa. This study suggests a way to guarantee QoS between hosts by minimizing the loss of AF packet class when one network transmits AF class packets to another network with differing principles. It is expected that QoS guarantees and their experimental value may be utilized as principles which can be applied to various mobile-web environments based on smart-phones. PMID:22163453

Mitigating Provider Uncertainty in Service Provision Contracts

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Smith, Chris; van Moorsel, Aad

Uncertainty is an inherent property of open, distributed and multiparty systems. The viability of the mutually beneficial relationships which motivate these systems relies on rational decision-making by each constituent party under uncertainty. Service provision in distributed systems is one such relationship. Uncertainty is experienced by the service provider in his ability to deliver a service with selected quality level guarantees due to inherent non-determinism, such as load fluctuations and hardware failures. Statistical estimators utilized to model this non-determinism introduce additional uncertainty through sampling error. Inability of the provider to accurately model and analyze uncertainty in the quality level guarantees can result in the formation of sub-optimal service provision contracts. Emblematic consequences include loss of revenue, inefficient resource utilization and erosion of reputation and consumer trust. We propose a utility model for contract-based service provision to provide a systematic approach to optimal service provision contract formation under uncertainty. Performance prediction methods to enable the derivation of statistical estimators for quality level are introduced, with analysis of their resultant accuracy and cost.

Impact of the codec and various QoS methods on the final quality of the transferred voice in an IP network

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Slavata, Oldřich; Holub, Jan

2015-02-01

This paper deals with an analysis of the relation between the codec that is used, the QoS method, and the final voice transmission quality. The Cisco 2811 router is used for adjusting QoS. VoIP client Linphone is used for adjusting the codec. The criterion for transmission quality is the MOS parameter investigated with the ITU-T P.862 PESQ and P.863 POLQA algorithms.

An Efficient and QoS Supported Multichannel MAC Protocol for Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks

PubMed Central

Tan, Guozhen; Yu, Chao

2017-01-01

Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) employ multichannel to provide a variety of safety and non-safety (transport efficiency and infotainment) applications, based on the IEEE 802.11p and IEEE 1609.4 protocols. Different types of applications require different levels Quality-of-Service (QoS) support. Recently, transport efficiency and infotainment applications (e.g., electronic map download and Internet access) have received more and more attention, and this kind of applications is expected to become a big market driver in a near future. In this paper, we propose an Efficient and QoS supported Multichannel Medium Access Control (EQM-MAC) protocol for VANETs in a highway environment. The EQM-MAC protocol utilizes the service channel resources for non-safety message transmissions during the whole synchronization interval, and it dynamically adjusts minimum contention window size for different non-safety services according to the traffic conditions. Theoretical model analysis and extensive simulation results show that the EQM-MAC protocol can support QoS services, while ensuring the high saturation throughput and low transmission delay for non-safety applications. PMID:28991217

Quality of Service in Networks Supporting Cultural Multimedia Applications

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kanellopoulos, Dimitris N.

2011-01-01

Purpose: This paper aims to provide an overview of representative multimedia applications in the cultural heritage sector, as well as research results on quality of service (QoS) mechanisms in internet protocol (IP) networks that support such applications. Design/methodology/approach: The paper's approach is a literature review. Findings: Cultural…

Quality of service and customer satisfaction on arterial streets : final report

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

2003-06-13

This report presents the results of a qualitative study of driver perception of quality of service (QOS) on urban arterial streets. The purpose of the study was to identify the factors that are important to drivers of personal automobiles (non-commer...

Fuzzy Logic Control Based QoS Management in Wireless Sensor/Actuator Networks

PubMed Central

Xia, Feng; Zhao, Wenhong; Sun, Youxian; Tian, Yu-Chu

2007-01-01

Wireless sensor/actuator networks (WSANs) are emerging rapidly as a new generation of sensor networks. Despite intensive research in wireless sensor networks (WSNs), limited work has been found in the open literature in the field of WSANs. In particular, quality-of-service (QoS) management in WSANs remains an important issue yet to be investigated. As an attempt in this direction, this paper develops a fuzzy logic control based QoS management (FLC-QM) scheme for WSANs with constrained resources and in dynamic and unpredictable environments. Taking advantage of the feedback control technology, this scheme deals with the impact of unpredictable changes in traffic load on the QoS of WSANs. It utilizes a fuzzy logic controller inside each source sensor node to adapt sampling period to the deadline miss ratio associated with data transmission from the sensor to the actuator. The deadline miss ratio is maintained at a pre-determined desired level so that the required QoS can be achieved. The FLC-QM has the advantages of generality, scalability, and simplicity. Simulation results show that the FLC-QM can provide WSANs with QoS support. PMID:28903288

Providing QoS through machine-learning-driven adaptive multimedia applications.

PubMed

Ruiz, Pedro M; Botía, Juan A; Gómez-Skarmeta, Antonio

2004-06-01

We investigate the optimization of the quality of service (QoS) offered by real-time multimedia adaptive applications through machine learning algorithms. These applications are able to adapt in real time their internal settings (i.e., video sizes, audio and video codecs, among others) to the unpredictably changing capacity of the network. Traditional adaptive applications just select a set of settings to consume less than the available bandwidth. We propose a novel approach in which the selected set of settings is the one which offers a better user-perceived QoS among all those combinations which satisfy the bandwidth restrictions. We use a genetic algorithm to decide when to trigger the adaptation process depending on the network conditions (i.e., loss-rate, jitter, etc.). Additionally, the selection of the new set of settings is done according to a set of rules which model the user-perceived QoS. These rules are learned using the SLIPPER rule induction algorithm over a set of examples extracted from scores provided by real users. We will demonstrate that the proposed approach guarantees a good user-perceived QoS even when the network conditions are constantly changing.

Quality and Business Offer Driven Selection of Web Services for Compositions

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

D'Mello, Demian Antony; Ananthanarayana, V. S.

The service composition makes use of the existing services to produce a new value added service to execute the complex business process. The service discovery finds the suitable services (candidates) for the various tasks of the composition based on the functionality. The service selection in composition assigns the best candidate for each tasks of the pre-structured composition plan based on the non-functional properties. In this paper, we propose the broker based architecture for the QoS and business offer aware Web service compositions. The broker architecture facilitates the registration of a new composite service into three different registries. The broker publishes service information into the service registry and QoS into the QoS registry. The business offers of the composite Web service are published into a separate repository called business offer (BO) registry. The broker employs the mechanism for the optimal assignment of the Web services to the individual tasks of the composition. The assignment is based on the composite service providers’s (CSP) variety of requirements defined on the QoS and business offers. The broker also computes the QoS of resulting composition and provides the useful information for the CSP to publish thier business offers.

Joint Cross-Layer Design for Wireless QoS Content Delivery

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chen, Jie; Lv, Tiejun; Zheng, Haitao

2005-12-01

In this paper, we propose a joint cross-layer design for wireless quality-of-service (QoS) content delivery. Central to our proposed cross-layer design is the concept of adaptation. Adaptation represents the ability to adjust protocol stacks and applications to respond to channel variations. We focus our cross-layer design especially on the application, media access control (MAC), and physical layers. The network is designed based on our proposed fast frequency-hopping orthogonal frequency division multiplex (OFDM) technique. We also propose a QoS-awareness scheduler and a power adaptation transmission scheme operating at both the base station and mobile sides. The proposed MAC scheduler coordinates the transmissions of an IP base station and mobile nodes. The scheduler also selects appropriate transmission formats and packet priorities for individual users based on current channel conditions and the users' QoS requirements. The test results show that our cross-layer design provides an excellent framework for wireless QoS content delivery.

A Study of Quality of Service Communication for High-Speed Packet-Switching Computer Sub-Networks

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Cui, Zhenqian

1999-01-01

In this thesis, we analyze various factors that affect quality of service (QoS) communication in high-speed, packet-switching sub-networks. We hypothesize that sub-network-wide bandwidth reservation and guaranteed CPU processing power at endpoint systems for handling data traffic are indispensable to achieving hard end-to-end quality of service. Different bandwidth reservation strategies, traffic characterization schemes, and scheduling algorithms affect the network resources and CPU usage as well as the extent that QoS can be achieved. In order to analyze those factors, we design and implement a communication layer. Our experimental analysis supports our research hypothesis. The Resource ReSerVation Protocol (RSVP) is designed to realize resource reservation. Our analysis of RSVP shows that using RSVP solely is insufficient to provide hard end-to-end quality of service in a high-speed sub-network. Analysis of the IEEE 802.lp protocol also supports the research hypothesis.

IP access networks with QoS support

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sargento, Susana; Valadas, Rui J. M. T.; Goncalves, Jorge; Sousa, Henrique

2001-07-01

The increasing demand of new services and applications is pushing for drastic changes on the design of access networks targeted mainly for residential and SOHO users. Future access networks will provide full service integration (including multimedia), resource sharing at the packet level and QoS support. It is expected that using IP as the base technology, the ideal plug-and-play scenario, where the management actions of the access network operator are kept to a minimum, will be achieved easily. This paper proposes an architecture for access networks based on layer 2 or layer 3 multiplexers that allows a number of simplifications in the network elements and protocols (e.g. in the routing and addressing functions). We discuss two possible steps in the evolution of access networks towards a more efficient support of IP based services. The first one still provides no QoS support and was designed with the goal of reusing as much as possible current technologies; it is based on tunneling to transport PPP sessions. The second one introduces QoS support through the use of emerging technologies and protocols. We illustrate the different phases of a multimedia Internet access session, when using SIP for session initiation, COPS for the management of QoS policies including the AAA functions and RSVP for resource reservation.

QOS-aware error recovery in wireless body sensor networks using adaptive network coding.

PubMed

Razzaque, Mohammad Abdur; Javadi, Saeideh S; Coulibaly, Yahaya; Hira, Muta Tah

2014-12-29

Wireless body sensor networks (WBSNs) for healthcare and medical applications are real-time and life-critical infrastructures, which require a strict guarantee of quality of service (QoS), in terms of latency, error rate and reliability. Considering the criticality of healthcare and medical applications, WBSNs need to fulfill users/applications and the corresponding network's QoS requirements. For instance, for a real-time application to support on-time data delivery, a WBSN needs to guarantee a constrained delay at the network level. A network coding-based error recovery mechanism is an emerging mechanism that can be used in these systems to support QoS at very low energy, memory and hardware cost. However, in dynamic network environments and user requirements, the original non-adaptive version of network coding fails to support some of the network and user QoS requirements. This work explores the QoS requirements of WBSNs in both perspectives of QoS. Based on these requirements, this paper proposes an adaptive network coding-based, QoS-aware error recovery mechanism for WBSNs. It utilizes network-level and user-/application-level information to make it adaptive in both contexts. Thus, it provides improved QoS support adaptively in terms of reliability, energy efficiency and delay. Simulation results show the potential of the proposed mechanism in terms of adaptability, reliability, real-time data delivery and network lifetime compared to its counterparts.

Adaptation of Collaborative Applications for Network Quality Variation

DTIC Science & Technology

2004-06-01

collaborative application. 1.1 Quality of Service Quality of Service (QoS) is generally regarded as an end-to-end network application...using the Cloud WAN Emulator [14]. We used qtcp1 to measure end-to-end network service quality between the signal sender and the signal receiver. The...application must be aware of current resource 1 Qtcp measures end-to-end network integrity and service quality for QoS verification. Qtcp sends a

A quality of service negotiation procedure for distributed multimedia presentational applications

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Hafid, A.; Bochmann, G.V.; Kerherve, B.

Most of current approaches in designing and implementing distributed multimedia (MM) presentational applications, e.g. news-on-demand, have concentrated on the performance of the continuous media file servers in terms of seek time overhead, and real-time disk scheduling; particularly the QoS negotiation mechanisms they provide are used in a rather static manner that is, these mechanisms are restricted to the evaluation of the capacity of certain system components, e.g. file server a priori known to support a specific quality of service (QoS). In contrast to those approaches, we propose a general QoS negotiation framework that supports the dynamic choice of a configurationmore » of system components to support the QoS requirements of the user of a specific application: we consider different possible system configurations and select an optimal one to provide the appropriate QoS support. In this paper we document the design and implementation of a QoS negotiation procedure for distributed MM presentational applications, such as news-on-demand. The negotiation procedure described here is an instantiation of the general framework for QoS negotiation which was developed earlier Our proposal differs in many respect with the negotiation functions provided by existing approaches: (1) the negotiation process uses an optimization approach to find a configuration of system components which supports the user requirements, (2) the negotiation process supports the negotiation of a MM document and not only a single monomedia object, (3) the QoS negotiation takes into account the cost to the user, and (4) the negotiation process may be used to support automatic adaptation to react to QoS degradations, without intervention by the user/application.« less

Mapping of multiple parameter m-health scenarios to mobile WiMAX QoS variables.

PubMed

Alinejad, Ali; Philip, N; Istepanian, R S H

2011-01-01

Multiparameter m-health scenarios with bandwidth demanding requirements will be one of key applications in future 4 G mobile communication systems. These applications will potentially require specific spectrum allocations with higher quality of service requirements. Furthermore, one of the key 4 G technologies targeting m-health will be medical applications based on WiMAX systems. Hence, it is timely to evaluate such multiple parametric m-health scenarios over mobile WiMAX networks. In this paper, we address the preliminary performance analysis of mobile WiMAX network for multiparametric telemedical scenarios. In particular, we map the medical QoS to typical WiMAX QoS parameters to optimise the performance of these parameters in typical m-health scenario. Preliminary performance analyses of the proposed multiparametric scenarios are evaluated to provide essential information for future medical QoS requirements and constraints in these telemedical network environments.

Dynamic quality of service model for improving performance of multimedia real-time transmission in industrial networks.

PubMed

Gopalakrishnan, Ravichandran C; Karunakaran, Manivannan

2014-01-01

Nowadays, quality of service (QoS) is very popular in various research areas like distributed systems, multimedia real-time applications and networking. The requirements of these systems are to satisfy reliability, uptime, security constraints and throughput as well as application specific requirements. The real-time multimedia applications are commonly distributed over the network and meet various time constraints across networks without creating any intervention over control flows. In particular, video compressors make variable bit-rate streams that mismatch the constant-bit-rate channels typically provided by classical real-time protocols, severely reducing the efficiency of network utilization. Thus, it is necessary to enlarge the communication bandwidth to transfer the compressed multimedia streams using Flexible Time Triggered- Enhanced Switched Ethernet (FTT-ESE) protocol. FTT-ESE provides automation to calculate the compression level and change the bandwidth of the stream. This paper focuses on low-latency multimedia transmission over Ethernet with dynamic quality-of-service (QoS) management. This proposed framework deals with a dynamic QoS for multimedia transmission over Ethernet with FTT-ESE protocol. This paper also presents distinct QoS metrics based both on the image quality and network features. Some experiments with recorded and live video streams show the advantages of the proposed framework. To validate the solution we have designed and implemented a simulator based on the Matlab/Simulink, which is a tool to evaluate different network architecture using Simulink blocks.

Dynamic quality of service differentiation using fixed code weight in optical CDMA networks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kakaee, Majid H.; Essa, Shawnim I.; Abd, Thanaa H.; Seyedzadeh, Saleh

2015-11-01

The emergence of network-driven applications, such as internet, video conferencing, and online gaming, brings in the need for a network the environments with capability of providing diverse Quality of Services (QoS). In this paper, a new code family of novel spreading sequences, called a Multi-Service (MS) code, has been constructed to support multiple services in Optical- Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) system. The proposed method uses fixed weight for all services, however reducing the interfering codewords for the users requiring higher QoS. The performance of the proposed code is demonstrated using mathematical analysis. It shown that the total number of served users with satisfactory BER of 10-9 using NB=2 is 82, while they are only 36 and 10 when NB=3 and 4 respectively. The developed MS code is compared with variable-weight codes such as Variable Weight-Khazani Syed (VW-KS) and Multi-Weight-Random Diagonal (MW-RD). Different numbers of basic users (NB) are used to support triple-play services (audio, data and video) with different QoS requirements. Furthermore, reference to the BER of 10-12, 10-9, and 10-3 for video, data and audio, respectively, the system can support up to 45 total users. Hence, results show that the technique can clearly provide a relative QoS differentiation with lower value of basic users can support larger number of subscribers as well as better performance in terms of acceptable BER of 10-9 at fixed code weight.

A Near-Optimal Distributed QoS Constrained Routing Algorithm for Multichannel Wireless Sensor Networks

PubMed Central

Lin, Frank Yeong-Sung; Hsiao, Chiu-Han; Yen, Hong-Hsu; Hsieh, Yu-Jen

2013-01-01

One of the important applications in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) is video surveillance that includes the tasks of video data processing and transmission. Processing and transmission of image and video data in WSNs has attracted a lot of attention in recent years. This is known as Wireless Visual Sensor Networks (WVSNs). WVSNs are distributed intelligent systems for collecting image or video data with unique performance, complexity, and quality of service challenges. WVSNs consist of a large number of battery-powered and resource constrained camera nodes. End-to-end delay is a very important Quality of Service (QoS) metric for video surveillance application in WVSNs. How to meet the stringent delay QoS in resource constrained WVSNs is a challenging issue that requires novel distributed and collaborative routing strategies. This paper proposes a Near-Optimal Distributed QoS Constrained (NODQC) routing algorithm to achieve an end-to-end route with lower delay and higher throughput. A Lagrangian Relaxation (LR)-based routing metric that considers the “system perspective” and “user perspective” is proposed to determine the near-optimal routing paths that satisfy end-to-end delay constraints with high system throughput. The empirical results show that the NODQC routing algorithm outperforms others in terms of higher system throughput with lower average end-to-end delay and delay jitter. In this paper, for the first time, the algorithm shows how to meet the delay QoS and at the same time how to achieve higher system throughput in stringently resource constrained WVSNs.

QoS Challenges and Opportunities in Wireless Sensor/Actuator Networks

PubMed Central

Xia, Feng

2008-01-01

A wireless sensor/actuator network (WSAN) is a group of sensors and actuators that are geographically distributed and interconnected by wireless networks. Sensors gather information about the state of physical world. Actuators react to this information by performing appropriate actions. WSANs thus enable cyber systems to monitor and manipulate the behavior of the physical world. WSANs are growing at a tremendous pace, just like the exploding evolution of Internet. Supporting quality of service (QoS) will be of critical importance for pervasive WSANs that serve as the network infrastructure of diverse applications. To spark new research and development interests in this field, this paper examines and discusses the requirements, critical challenges, and open research issues on QoS management in WSANs. A brief overview of recent progress is given. PMID:27879755

Controlling QoS in a collaborative multimedia environment

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Alfano, M.; Sigle, R.

1996-12-31

A collaborative multimedia environment allows users to work remotely on common projects by sharing applications (e.g., CAD tools, text editors, white boards) and simultaneously communicate audiovisually. Several dedicated applications (e.g., MBone tools) exist for transmitting video, audio and data between users. Due to the fact that they have been developed for the Internet which does not provide any Quality of Service (QoS) guarantee, these applications do not or only partially support specification of QoS requirements by the user. In addition, they all come with different user interfaces. In this paper we first discuss the problems that we experienced both atmore » the host and network levels when executing a multimedia application and varying its resource requirements. We then present the architectural details of a collaborative multimedia environment (CME) that we have been developing in order to help a user to set up and control a collaborative multimedia session.« less

Quality of Service for Real-Time Applications Over Next Generation Data Networks

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Ivancic, William; Atiquzzaman, Mohammed; Bai, Haowei; Su, Hongjun; Jain, Raj; Duresi, Arjan; Goyal, Mukyl; Bharani, Venkata; Liu, Chunlei; Kota, Sastri

2001-01-01

This project, which started on January 1, 2000, was funded by NASA Glenn Research Center for duration of one year. The deliverables of the project included the following tasks: Study of QoS mapping between the edge and core networks envisioned in the Next Generation networks will provide us with the QoS guarantees that can be obtained from next generation networks. Buffer management techniques to provide strict guarantees to real-time end-to-end applications through preferential treatment to packets belonging to real-time applications. In particular, use of ECN to help reduce the loss on high bandwidth-delay product satellite networks needs to be studied. Effect of Prioritized Packet Discard to increase goodput of the network and reduce the buffering requirements in the ATM switches. Provision of new IP circuit emulation services over Satellite IP backbones using MPLS will be studied. Determine the architecture and requirements for internetworking ATN and the Next Generation Internet for real-time applications.

Real-Time QoS Routing Protocols in Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks: Study and Analysis.

PubMed

Alanazi, Adwan; Elleithy, Khaled

2015-09-02

Many routing protocols have been proposed for wireless sensor networks. These routing protocols are almost always based on energy efficiency. However, recent advances in complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) cameras and small microphones have led to the development of Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks (WMSN) as a class of wireless sensor networks which pose additional challenges. The transmission of imaging and video data needs routing protocols with both energy efficiency and Quality of Service (QoS) characteristics in order to guarantee the efficient use of the sensor nodes and effective access to the collected data. Also, with integration of real time applications in Wireless Senor Networks (WSNs), the use of QoS routing protocols is not only becoming a significant topic, but is also gaining the attention of researchers. In designing an efficient QoS routing protocol, the reliability and guarantee of end-to-end delay are critical events while conserving energy. Thus, considerable research has been focused on designing energy efficient and robust QoS routing protocols. In this paper, we present a state of the art research work based on real-time QoS routing protocols for WMSNs that have already been proposed. This paper categorizes the real-time QoS routing protocols into probabilistic and deterministic protocols. In addition, both categories are classified into soft and hard real time protocols by highlighting the QoS issues including the limitations and features of each protocol. Furthermore, we have compared the performance of mobility-aware query based real-time QoS routing protocols from each category using Network Simulator-2 (NS2). This paper also focuses on the design challenges and future research directions as well as highlights the characteristics of each QoS routing protocol.

Real-Time QoS Routing Protocols in Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks: Study and Analysis

PubMed Central

Alanazi, Adwan; Elleithy, Khaled

2015-01-01

Many routing protocols have been proposed for wireless sensor networks. These routing protocols are almost always based on energy efficiency. However, recent advances in complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) cameras and small microphones have led to the development of Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks (WMSN) as a class of wireless sensor networks which pose additional challenges. The transmission of imaging and video data needs routing protocols with both energy efficiency and Quality of Service (QoS) characteristics in order to guarantee the efficient use of the sensor nodes and effective access to the collected data. Also, with integration of real time applications in Wireless Senor Networks (WSNs), the use of QoS routing protocols is not only becoming a significant topic, but is also gaining the attention of researchers. In designing an efficient QoS routing protocol, the reliability and guarantee of end-to-end delay are critical events while conserving energy. Thus, considerable research has been focused on designing energy efficient and robust QoS routing protocols. In this paper, we present a state of the art research work based on real-time QoS routing protocols for WMSNs that have already been proposed. This paper categorizes the real-time QoS routing protocols into probabilistic and deterministic protocols. In addition, both categories are classified into soft and hard real time protocols by highlighting the QoS issues including the limitations and features of each protocol. Furthermore, we have compared the performance of mobility-aware query based real-time QoS routing protocols from each category using Network Simulator-2 (NS2). This paper also focuses on the design challenges and future research directions as well as highlights the characteristics of each QoS routing protocol. PMID:26364639

Evaluation of QoS supported in Network Mobility NEMO environments

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hussien, L. F.; Abdalla, A. H.; Habaebi, M. H.; Khalifa, O. O.; Hassan, W. H.

2013-12-01

Network mobility basic support (NEMO BS) protocol is an entire network, roaming as a unit which changes its point of attachment to the Internet and consequently its reachability in the network topology. NEMO BS doesn't provide QoS guarantees to its users same as traditional Internet IP and Mobile IPv6 as well. Typically, all the users will have same level of services without considering about their application requirements. This poses a problem to real-time applications that required QoS guarantees. To gain more effective control of the network, incorporated QoS is needed. Within QoS-enabled network the traffic flow can be distributed to various priorities. Also, the network bandwidth and resources can be allocated to different applications and users. Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) working group has proposed several QoS solutions for static network such as IntServ, DiffServ and MPLS. These QoS solutions are designed in the context of a static environment (i.e. fixed hosts and networks). However, they are not fully adapted to mobile environments. They essentially demands to be extended and adjusted to meet up various challenges involved in mobile environments. With existing QoS mechanisms many proposals have been developed to provide QoS for individual mobile nodes (i.e. host mobility). In contrary, research based on the movement of the whole mobile network in IPv6 is still undertaking by the IETF working groups (i.e. network mobility). Few researches have been done in the area of providing QoS for roaming networks. Therefore, this paper aims to review and investigate (previous /and current) related works that have been developed to provide QoS in mobile network. Consequently, a new proposed scheme will be introduced to enhance QoS within NEMO environment, achieving by which seamless mobility to users of mobile network node (MNN).

ATM QoS Experiments Using TCP Applications: Performance of TCP/IP Over ATM in a Variety of Errored Links

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Frantz, Brian D.; Ivancic, William D.

2001-01-01

Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) Quality of Service (QoS) experiments using the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) were performed for various link delays. The link delay was set to emulate a Wide Area Network (WAN) and a Satellite Link. The purpose of these experiments was to evaluate the ATM QoS requirements for applications that utilize advance TCP/IP protocols implemented with large windows and Selective ACKnowledgements (SACK). The effects of cell error, cell loss, and random bit errors on throughput were reported. The detailed test plan and test results are presented herein.

Modeling and Negotiating Service Quality

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Benbernou, Salima; Brandic, Ivona; Cappiello, Cinzia; Carro, Manuel; Comuzzi, Marco; Kertész, Attila; Kritikos, Kyriakos; Parkin, Michael; Pernici, Barbara; Plebani, Pierluigi

In this chapter the research problems of specifying and negotiating QoS and its corresponding quality documents are analyzed. For this reason, this chapter is separated into two main sections, Section 6.1 and 6.2, with each dedicated to one of the two problems, i.e., QoS specification and negotiation, respectively. Each section has a similar structure: they first introduce the problem and then, in the remaining subsections, review related work. Finally, the chapter ends with Section 6.3, which identifies research gaps and presents potential research challenges in QoS modelling, specification and negotiation.

Service differentiated and adaptive CSMA/CA over IEEE 802.15.4 for Cyber-Physical Systems.

PubMed

Xia, Feng; Li, Jie; Hao, Ruonan; Kong, Xiangjie; Gao, Ruixia

2013-01-01

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) that collect, exchange, manage information, and coordinate actions are an integral part of the Smart Grid. In addition, Quality of Service (QoS) provisioning in CPS, especially in the wireless sensor/actuator networks, plays an essential role in Smart Grid applications. IEEE 802.15.4, which is one of the most widely used communication protocols in this area, still needs to be improved to meet multiple QoS requirements. This is because IEEE 802.15.4 slotted Carrier Sense Multiple Access/Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA) employs static parameter configuration without supporting differentiated services and network self-adaptivity. To address this issue, this paper proposes a priority-based Service Differentiated and Adaptive CSMA/CA (SDA-CSMA/CA) algorithm to provide differentiated QoS for various Smart Grid applications as well as dynamically initialize backoff exponent according to traffic conditions. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed SDA-CSMA/CA scheme significantly outperforms the IEEE 802.15.4 slotted CSMA/CA in terms of effective data rate, packet loss rate, and average delay.

Service Differentiated and Adaptive CSMA/CA over IEEE 802.15.4 for Cyber-Physical Systems

PubMed Central

Gao, Ruixia

2013-01-01

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) that collect, exchange, manage information, and coordinate actions are an integral part of the Smart Grid. In addition, Quality of Service (QoS) provisioning in CPS, especially in the wireless sensor/actuator networks, plays an essential role in Smart Grid applications. IEEE 802.15.4, which is one of the most widely used communication protocols in this area, still needs to be improved to meet multiple QoS requirements. This is because IEEE 802.15.4 slotted Carrier Sense Multiple Access/Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA) employs static parameter configuration without supporting differentiated services and network self-adaptivity. To address this issue, this paper proposes a priority-based Service Differentiated and Adaptive CSMA/CA (SDA-CSMA/CA) algorithm to provide differentiated QoS for various Smart Grid applications as well as dynamically initialize backoff exponent according to traffic conditions. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed SDA-CSMA/CA scheme significantly outperforms the IEEE 802.15.4 slotted CSMA/CA in terms of effective data rate, packet loss rate, and average delay. PMID:24260021

TD-LTE Wireless Private Network QoS Transmission Protection

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhang, Jianming; Cheng, Chao; Wu, Zanhong

With the commencement of construction of the smart grid, the demand power business for reliability and security continues to improve, the reliability transmission of power TD-LTE Wireless Private Network are more and more attention. For TD-LTE power private network, it can provide different QoS services according to the user's business type, to protect the reliable transmission of business. This article describes in detail the AF module of PCC in the EPC network, specifically introduces set up AF module station and QoS mechanisms in the EPS load, fully considers the business characteristics of the special power network, establishing a suitable architecture for mapping QoS parameters, ensuring the implementation of each QoS business. Through using radio bearer management, we can achieve the reliable transmission of each business on physical channel.

Multiantenna Relay Beamforming Design for QoS Discrimination in Two-Way Relay Networks

PubMed Central

Xiong, Ke; Zhang, Yu; Li, Dandan; Zhong, Zhangdui

2013-01-01

This paper investigates the relay beamforming design for quality of service (QoS) discrimination in two-way relay networks. The purpose is to keep legitimate two-way relay users exchange their information via a helping multiantenna relay with QoS guarantee while avoiding the exchanged information overhearing by unauthorized receiver. To this end, we propose a physical layer method, where the relay beamforming is jointly designed with artificial noise (AN) which is used to interfere in the unauthorized user's reception. We formulate the joint beamforming and AN (BFA) design into an optimization problem such that the received signal-to-interference-ratio (SINR) at the two legitimate users is over a predefined QoS threshold while limiting the received SINR at the unauthorized user which is under a certain secure threshold. The objective of the optimization problem is to seek the optimal AN and beamforming vectors to minimize the total power consumed by the relay node. Since the optimization problem is nonconvex, we solve it by using semidefinite program (SDP) relaxation. For comparison, we also study the optimal relay beamforming without using AN (BFO) under the same QoS discrimination constraints. Simulation results show that both the proposed BFA and BFO can achieve the QoS discrimination of the two-way transmission. However, the proposed BFA yields significant power savings and lower infeasible rates compared with the BFO method. PMID:24391459

Antenatal care and opportunities for quality improvement of service provision in resource limited settings: A mixed methods study

PubMed Central

van der Eem, Lisette; Nyanza, Elias C.; van Pelt, Sandra; Ndaki, Pendo; Basinda, Namanya; Sundby, Johanne

2017-01-01

Antenatal care is essential to improve maternal and newborn health and wellbeing. The majority of pregnant women in Tanzania attend at least one visit. Since implementation of the focused antenatal care model, quality of care assessments have mostly focused on utilization and coverage of routine interventions for antenatal care. This study aims to assess the quality of antenatal care provision from a holistic perspective in a rural district in Tanzania. Structure, process and outcome components of quality are explored. This paper reports on data collected over several periods from 2012 to 2015 through facility audits of supplies and services, ANC observations and exit interviews with pregnant women. Additional qualitative methods were used such as interviews, focus group observations and participant observations. Findings indicate variable performance of routine ANC services, partly explained by insufficient resources. Poor performance was also observed for appropriate history taking, attention for client’s wellbeing, basic physical examination and adequate counseling and education. Achieving quality improvement for ANC requires increased attention for the process of care provision beyond coverage, including attention for response-based services, which should be assessed based on locally determined criteria. PMID:29236699

Bio-Inspired Distributed Transmission Power Control Considering QoS Fairness in Wireless Body Area Sensor Networks

PubMed Central

2017-01-01

Recently, the development of wireless body area sensor network (WBASN) has accelerated due to the rapid development of wireless technology. In the WBASN environment, many WBASNs coexist where communication ranges overlap with each other, resulting in the possibility of interference. Although nodes in a WBASN typically operate at a low power level, to avoid adversely affecting the human body, high transmission rates may be required to support some applications. In addition to this, since many varieties of applications exist in the WBASN environment, each prospective user may have different quality of service (QoS) requirements. Hence, the following issues should be considered in the WBASN environment: (1) interference between adjacent WBASNs, which influences the performance of a specific system, and (2) the degree of satisfaction on the QoS of each user, i.e., the required QoS such as user throughput should be considered to ensure that all users in the network are provided with a fair QoS satisfaction. Thus, in this paper, we propose a transmission power adjustment algorithm that addresses interference problems and guarantees QoS fairness between users. First, we use a new utility function to measure the degree of the satisfaction on the QoS for each user. Then, the transmission power of each sensor node is calculated using the Cucker–Smale model, and the QoS satisfaction of each user is synchronized dispersively. The results of simulations show that the proposed algorithm performs better than existing algorithms, with respect to QoS fairness and energy efficiency. PMID:29036924

Bio-Inspired Distributed Transmission Power Control Considering QoS Fairness in Wireless Body Area Sensor Networks.

PubMed

Lee, Chan-Jae; Jung, Ji-Young; Lee, Jung-Ryun

2017-10-14

Recently, the development of wireless body area sensor network (WBASN) has accelerated due to the rapid development of wireless technology. In the WBASN environment, many WBASNs coexist where communication ranges overlap with each other, resulting in the possibility of interference. Although nodes in a WBASN typically operate at a low power level, to avoid adversely affecting the human body, high transmission rates may be required to support some applications. In addition to this, since many varieties of applications exist in the WBASN environment, each prospective user may have different quality of service (QoS) requirements. Hence, the following issues should be considered in the WBASN environment: (1) interference between adjacent WBASNs, which influences the performance of a specific system, and (2) the degree of satisfaction on the QoS of each user, i.e., the required QoS such as user throughput should be considered to ensure that all users in the network are provided with a fair QoS satisfaction. Thus, in this paper, we propose a transmission power adjustment algorithm that addresses interference problems and guarantees QoS fairness between users. First, we use a new utility function to measure the degree of the satisfaction on the QoS for each user. Then, the transmission power of each sensor node is calculated using the Cucker-Smale model, and the QoS satisfaction of each user is synchronized dispersively. The results of simulations show that the proposed algorithm performs better than existing algorithms, with respect to QoS fairness and energy efficiency.

Bidirectional QoS support for novelty detection applications based on hierarchical wireless sensor network model

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Edwards, Mark; Hu, Fei; Kumar, Sunil

2004-10-01

The research on the Novelty Detection System (NDS) (called as VENUS) at the authors' universities has generated exciting results. For example, we can detect an abnormal behavior (such as cars thefts from the parking lot) from a series of video frames based on the cognitively motivated theory of habituation. In this paper, we would like to describe the implementation strategies of lower layer protocols for using large-scale Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) to NDS with Quality-of-Service (QoS) support. Wireless data collection framework, consisting of small and low-power sensor nodes, provides an alternative mechanism to observe the physical world, by using various types of sensing capabilities that include images (and even videos using Panoptos), sound and basic physical measurements such as temperature. We do not want to lose any 'data query command' packets (in the downstream direction: sink-to-sensors) or have any bit-errors in them since they are so important to the whole sensor network. In the upstream direction (sensors-to-sink), we may tolerate the loss of some sensing data packets. But the 'interested' sensing flow should be assigned a higher priority in terms of multi-hop path choice, network bandwidth allocation, and sensing data packet generation frequency (we hope to generate more sensing data packet for that novel event in the specified network area). The focus of this paper is to investigate MAC-level Quality of Service (QoS) issue in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) for Novelty Detection applications. Although QoS has been widely studied in other types of networks including wired Internet, general ad hoc networks and mobile cellular networks, we argue that QoS in WSN has its own characteristics. In wired Internet, the main QoS parameters include delay, jitter and bandwidth. In mobile cellular networks, two most common QoS metrics are: handoff call dropping probability and new call blocking probability. Since the main task of WSN is to detect and report

An MBS-Assisted Femtocell Transmit Power Control Scheme with Mobile User QoS Guarantee in 2-Tier Heterogeneous Femtocell Networks

PubMed Central

Yang, Chih-Cheng; Sheu, Shiann-Tsong

2013-01-01

This study investigates how to adjust the transmit power of femto base station (FBS) to mitigate interference problems between the FBSs and mobile users (MUs) in the 2-tier heterogeneous femtocell networks. A common baseline of deploying the FBS to increase the indoor access bandwidth requires that the FBS operation will not affect outdoor MUs operation with their quality-of-service (QoS) requirements. To tackle this technical problem, an FBS transmit power adjustment (FTPA) algorithm is proposed to adjust the FBS transmit power (FTP) to avoid unwanted cochannel interference (CCI) with the neighboring MUs in downlink transmission. FTPA reduces the FTP to serve its femto users (FUs) according to the QoS requirements of the nearest neighboring MUs to the FBS so that the MU QoS requirement is guaranteed. Simulation results demonstrate that FTPA can achieve a low MU outage probability as well as serve FUs without violating the MU QoS requirements. Simulation results also reveal that FTPA has better performance on voice and video services which are the major trend of future multimedia communication in the NGN. PMID:24391461

An MBS-assisted femtocell transmit power control scheme with mobile user QoS guarantee in 2-tier heterogeneous femtocell networks.

PubMed

Chen, Jenhui; Yang, Chih-Cheng; Sheu, Shiann-Tsong

2013-01-01

This study investigates how to adjust the transmit power of femto base station (FBS) to mitigate interference problems between the FBSs and mobile users (MUs) in the 2-tier heterogeneous femtocell networks. A common baseline of deploying the FBS to increase the indoor access bandwidth requires that the FBS operation will not affect outdoor MUs operation with their quality-of-service (QoS) requirements. To tackle this technical problem, an FBS transmit power adjustment (FTPA) algorithm is proposed to adjust the FBS transmit power (FTP) to avoid unwanted cochannel interference (CCI) with the neighboring MUs in downlink transmission. FTPA reduces the FTP to serve its femto users (FUs) according to the QoS requirements of the nearest neighboring MUs to the FBS so that the MU QoS requirement is guaranteed. Simulation results demonstrate that FTPA can achieve a low MU outage probability as well as serve FUs without violating the MU QoS requirements. Simulation results also reveal that FTPA has better performance on voice and video services which are the major trend of future multimedia communication in the NGN.

Does human resource management improve family planning service quality? Analysis from the Kenya Service Provision Assessment 2010.

PubMed

Thatte, Nandita; Choi, Yoonjoung

2015-04-01

Human resource (HR) management is a priority for health systems strengthening in developing countries, yet few studies have empirically examined associations with service quality. The purpose of this study was to assess the relationship between HR management and family planning (FP) service quality. Data came from the 2010 Kenya Service Provision Assessment, a nationally representative health facility assessment. In total, 912 FP consultations from 301 facilities were analysed. Four indices were created to measure quality on reproductive history taking, physical examination, sexually transmitted infections prevention and pill/injectable specific counselling. HR management variables included training in the past year, any and supportive (i.e. with feedback, technical updates and discussion) in-person supervision in the past 6 months and having a written job description. Multivariate linear regression analyses were conducted to estimate coefficients of HR management variables on each of the four quality indices, adjusting for background characteristics of clients, provider and facilities. The level of service quality ranged from 16 to 53 out of a maximum score of 100 across the indices. Fifty-two per cent of consultations were done by providers who received supportive in-person supervision in the previous 6 months. In 23% and 38% of consultations, the provider was trained in the past year and had a written job description, respectively. Multivariate analyses indicated that having a written job description was associated with higher service quality in history taking, physical examination and the pill/injectable specific counselling. Other HR management variables were not significantly associated with service quality. Having a written job description was significantly associated with higher service quality and may be a useful tool for strengthening management practices. The details of such job descriptions and the quality of other management indicators should be

An Adaptive Failure Detector Based on Quality of Service in Peer-to-Peer Networks

PubMed Central

Dong, Jian; Ren, Xiao; Zuo, Decheng; Liu, Hongwei

2014-01-01

The failure detector is one of the fundamental components that maintain high availability of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks. Under different network conditions, the adaptive failure detector based on quality of service (QoS) can achieve the detection time and accuracy required by upper applications with lower detection overhead. In P2P systems, complexity of network and high churn lead to high message loss rate. To reduce the impact on detection accuracy, baseline detection strategy based on retransmission mechanism has been employed widely in many P2P applications; however, Chen's classic adaptive model cannot describe this kind of detection strategy. In order to provide an efficient service of failure detection in P2P systems, this paper establishes a novel QoS evaluation model for the baseline detection strategy. The relationship between the detection period and the QoS is discussed and on this basis, an adaptive failure detector (B-AFD) is proposed, which can meet the quantitative QoS metrics under changing network environment. Meanwhile, it is observed from the experimental analysis that B-AFD achieves better detection accuracy and time with lower detection overhead compared to the traditional baseline strategy and the adaptive detectors based on Chen's model. Moreover, B-AFD has better adaptability to P2P network. PMID:25198005

Quality of service policy control in virtual private networks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yu, Yiqing; Wang, Hongbin; Zhou, Zhi; Zhou, Dongru

2004-04-01

This paper studies the QoS of VPN in an environment where the public network prices connection-oriented services based on source, destination and grade of service, and advertises these prices to its VPN customers (users). As different QoS technologies can produce different QoS, there are according different traffic classification rules and priority rules. The internet service provider (ISP) may need to build complex mechanisms separately for each node. In order to reduce the burden of network configuration, we need to design policy control technologies. We considers mainly directory server, policy server, policy manager and policy enforcers. Policy decision point (PDP) decide its control according to policy rules. In network, policy enforce point (PEP) decide its network controlled unit. For InterServ and DiffServ, we will adopt different policy control methods as following: (1) In InterServ, traffic uses resource reservation protocol (RSVP) to guarantee the network resource. (2) In DiffServ, policy server controls the DiffServ code points and per hop behavior (PHB), its PDP distributes information to each network node. Policy server will function as following: information searching; decision mechanism; decision delivering; auto-configuration. In order to prove the effectiveness of QoS policy control, we make the corrective simulation.

A dynamic access control method based on QoS requirement

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Li, Chunquan; Wang, Yanwei; Yang, Baoye; Hu, Chunyang

2013-03-01

A dynamic access control method is put forward to ensure the security of the sharing service in Cloud Manufacturing, according to the application characteristics of cloud manufacturing collaborative task. The role-based access control (RBAC) model is extended according to the characteristics of cloud manufacturing in this method. The constraints are considered, which are from QoS requirement of the task context to access control, based on the traditional static authorization. The fuzzy policy rules are established about the weighted interval value of permissions. The access control authorities of executable service by users are dynamically adjusted through the fuzzy reasoning based on the QoS requirement of task. The main elements of the model are described. The fuzzy reasoning algorithm of weighted interval value based QoS requirement is studied. An effective method is provided to resolve the access control of cloud manufacturing.

Cross-layer protocol design for QoS optimization in real-time wireless sensor networks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hortos, William S.

2010-04-01

The metrics of quality of service (QoS) for each sensor type in a wireless sensor network can be associated with metrics for multimedia that describe the quality of fused information, e.g., throughput, delay, jitter, packet error rate, information correlation, etc. These QoS metrics are typically set at the highest, or application, layer of the protocol stack to ensure that performance requirements for each type of sensor data are satisfied. Application-layer metrics, in turn, depend on the support of the lower protocol layers: session, transport, network, data link (MAC), and physical. The dependencies of the QoS metrics on the performance of the higher layers of the Open System Interconnection (OSI) reference model of the WSN protocol, together with that of the lower three layers, are the basis for a comprehensive approach to QoS optimization for multiple sensor types in a general WSN model. The cross-layer design accounts for the distributed power consumption along energy-constrained routes and their constituent nodes. Following the author's previous work, the cross-layer interactions in the WSN protocol are represented by a set of concatenated protocol parameters and enabling resource levels. The "best" cross-layer designs to achieve optimal QoS are established by applying the general theory of martingale representations to the parameterized multivariate point processes (MVPPs) for discrete random events occurring in the WSN. Adaptive control of network behavior through the cross-layer design is realized through the parametric factorization of the stochastic conditional rates of the MVPPs. The cross-layer protocol parameters for optimal QoS are determined in terms of solutions to stochastic dynamic programming conditions derived from models of transient flows for heterogeneous sensor data and aggregate information over a finite time horizon. Markov state processes, embedded within the complex combinatorial history of WSN events, are more computationally

Design of QoS-Aware Multi-Level MAC-Layer for Wireless Body Area Network.

PubMed

Hu, Long; Zhang, Yin; Feng, Dakui; Hassan, Mohammad Mehedi; Alelaiwi, Abdulhameed; Alamri, Atif

2015-12-01

With the advances in wearable computing and various wireless technologies, there is an increasing trend to outsource body signals from wireless body area network (WBAN) to outside world including cyber space, healthcare big data clouds, etc. Since the environmental and physiological data collected by multimodal sensors have different importance, the provisioning of quality of service (QoS) for the sensory data in WBAN is a critical issue. This paper proposes multiple level-based QoS design at WBAN media access control layer in terms of user level, data level and time level. In the proposed QoS provisioning scheme, different users have different priorities, various sensory data collected by different sensor nodes have different importance, while data priority for the same sensor node varies over time. The experimental results show that the proposed multi-level based QoS provisioning solution in WBAN yields better performance for meeting QoS requirements of personalized healthcare applications while achieving energy saving.

Towards Integrating Soil Quality Monitoring Targets as Measures of Soil Natural Capital Stocks with the Provision of Ecosystem Services

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Taylor, M. D.; Mackay, A. D.; Dominati, E.; Hill, R. B.

2012-04-01

This paper presents the process used to review soil quality monitoring in New Zealand to better align indicators and indicator target ranges with critical values of change in soil function. Since its inception in New Zealand 15 year ago, soil quality monitoring has become an important state of the environment reporting tool for Regional Councils. This tool assists councils to track the condition of soils resources, assess the impact of different land management practices, and provide timely warning of emerging issues to allow early intervention and avoid irreversible loss of natural capital stocks. Critical to the effectiveness of soil quality monitoring is setting relevant, validated thresholds or target ranges. Provisional Target Ranges were set in 2003 using expert knowledge available and data on production responses. Little information was available at that time for setting targets for soil natural capital stocks other than those for food production. The intention was to revise these provisional ranges as further information became available and extend target ranges to cover the regulating and cultural services provided by soils. A recently developed ecosystems service framework was used to explore the feasibility of linking soil natural capital stocks measured by the current suite of soil quality indicators to the provision of ecosystem services by soils. Importantly the new approach builds on and utilises the time series data sets collected by current suite of soil quality indicators, adding value to the current effort, and has the potential to set targets ranges based on the economic and environmental outcomes required for a given farm, catchment or region. It is now timely to develop a further group of environmental indicators for measuring specific soil issues. As with the soil quality indicators, these environmental indicators would be aligned with the provision of ecosystem services. The toolbox envisaged is a set of indicators for specific soil issues

QoS support for end users of I/O-intensive applications using shared storage systems

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Davis, Marion Kei; Zhang, Xuechen; Jiang, Song

2011-01-19

I/O-intensive applications are becoming increasingly common on today's high-performance computing systems. While performance of compute-bound applications can be effectively guaranteed with techniques such as space sharing or QoS-aware process scheduling, it remains a challenge to meet QoS requirements for end users of I/O-intensive applications using shared storage systems because it is difficult to differentiate I/O services for different applications with individual quality requirements. Furthermore, it is difficult for end users to accurately specify performance goals to the storage system using I/O-related metrics such as request latency or throughput. As access patterns, request rates, and the system workload change in time,more » a fixed I/O performance goal, such as bounds on throughput or latency, can be expensive to achieve and may not lead to a meaningful performance guarantees such as bounded program execution time. We propose a scheme supporting end-users QoS goals, specified in terms of program execution time, in shared storage environments. We automatically translate the users performance goals into instantaneous I/O throughput bounds using a machine learning technique, and use dynamically determined service time windows to efficiently meet the throughput bounds. We have implemented this scheme in the PVFS2 parallel file system and have conducted an extensive evaluation. Our results show that this scheme can satisfy realistic end-user QoS requirements by making highly efficient use of the I/O resources. The scheme seeks to balance programs attainment of QoS requirements, and saves as much of the remaining I/O capacity as possible for best-effort programs.« less

Instant provisioning of wavelength service using quasi-circuit optical burst switching

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Xie, Hongyi; Li, Yanhe; Zheng, Xiaoping; Zhang, Hanyi

2006-09-01

Due to the recent outstanding advancement of optical networking technology, pervasive Grid computing will be a feasible option in the near future. As Grid infrastructure, optical networks must be able to handle different Grid traffic patterns with various traffic characteristics as well as different QoS requirements. With current optical switching technology, optical circuit switching is suitable for data-intensive Grid applications while optical burst switching is suitable to submit small Grid jobs. However, there would be high bandwidth short-lived traffic in some emerging Grid applications such as multimedia editing. This kind of traffic couldn't be well supported by both OCS and conventional OBS because of considerable path setup delay and bandwidth waste in OCS and inherent loss in OBS. Quasi-Circuit OBS (QCOBS) is proposed in this paper to address this challenge, providing one-way reserved, nearly lossless, instant provisioned wavelength service in OBS networks. Simulation results show that QCOBS achieves lossless transmission at low and moderate loads, and very low loss probability at high loads with proper guard time configuration.

Research Challenges in Managing and Using Service Level Agreements

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rana, Omer; Ziegler, Wolfgang

A Service Level Agreement (SLA) represents an agreement between a service user and a provider in the context of a particular service provision. SLAs contain Quality of Service properties that must be maintained by a provider, and as agreed between a provider and a user/client. These are generally defined as a set of Service Level Objectives (SLOs). These properties need to be measurable and must be monitored during the provision of the service that has been agreed in the SLA. The SLA must also contain a set of penalty clauses specifying what happens when service providers fail to deliver the pre-agreed quality. Hence, an SLA may be used by both a user and a provider - from a user perspective, an SLA defines what is required - often defined using non-functional attributes of service provision. From a providers perspective, an SLA may be used to support capacity planning - especially if a provider is making it's capability available to multiple users. An SLA may be used by a client and provider to manage their behaviour over time - for instance, to optimise their long running revenue (cost) or QoS attributes (such as execution time), for instance. The lifecycle of an SLA is outlined, along with various uses of SLAs to support infrastructure management. A discussion about WS-Agreement - the emerging standard for specifying SLAs - is also provided.

Fundholders' referral patterns and perceptions of service quality in hospital provision of elective general surgery.

PubMed Central

Whynes, D K; Reed, G

1994-01-01

BACKGROUND. The introduction of fundholding established an internal market in public sector health care, involving purchasers and providers contracting for the supply of health care. AIM. This study set out to examine fundholders' hospital referral patterns, and to evaluate the quality of the service provided to patients undergoing elective general surgery, as perceived by fundholding general practitioners. METHOD. A questionnaire was posted to the senior partners of all fundholding practices in the Trent Regional Health Authority area. This questionnaire requested assessments of the importance of 13 specified aspects of service quality and the quality of provision by general practitioners' most frequently-used hospitals. Five-point scales were employed in each case. Respondents were asked to provide additional details about their practice. RESULTS. A 67% response rate was achieved. Confidence in the consultant's ability, short waiting times and informative feedback from the providers emerged as the most important elements in referral decisions, while the cost of treatment and patient convenience received lower importance ratings. In terms of how well their providers were seen to perform, fundholders ranked confidence in the consultant and patient convenience highest, and style of hospital management lowest. The majority of referrals seemed to be local. CONCLUSION. Judged in terms of fundholders' perceptions, sizeable variations in service quality between hospital providers of general surgery are evident. PMID:7748666

Seamless interworking architecture for WBAN in heterogeneous wireless networks with QoS guarantees.

PubMed

Khan, Pervez; Ullah, Niamat; Ullah, Sana; Kwak, Kyung Sup

2011-10-01

The IEEE 802.15.6 standard is a communication standard optimized for low-power and short-range in-body/on-body nodes to serve a variety of medical, consumer electronics and entertainment applications. Providing high mobility with guaranteed Quality of Service (QoS) to a WBAN user in heterogeneous wireless networks is a challenging task. A WBAN uses a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) to gather data from body sensors and forwards it to a remote server through wide range wireless networks. In this paper, we present a coexistence study of WBAN with Wireless Local Area Networks (WLAN) and Wireless Wide Area Networks (WWANs). The main issue is interworking of WBAN in heterogenous wireless networks including seamless handover, QoS, emergency services, cooperation and security. We propose a Seamless Interworking Architecture (SIA) for WBAN in heterogenous wireless networks based on a cost function. The cost function is based on power consumption and data throughput costs. Our simulation results show that the proposed scheme outperforms typical approaches in terms of throughput, delay and packet loss rate.

Improving the provision of language services at an academic medical center: ensuring high-quality health communication for limited-English-proficient patients.

PubMed

Standiford, Connie J; Nolan, Elizabeth; Harris, Michelle; Bernstein, Steven J

2009-12-01

To evaluate and improve the provision of language services at an academic medicine center caring for a diverse population including many limited-English-proficient (LEP) patients. The authors performed a prospective observational study between November 2006 and December 2008 evaluating the provision of language services at the University of Michigan Health System. The primary performance measures were (1) screening patients for their preferred language for health care, (2) assessing the proportion of LEP patients receiving language services from a qualified language services provider, and (3) assessing whether there were any disparities in diabetes care for LEP patients compared with English-speaking patients. The proportion of patients screened for preferred language increased from 59% to 96% with targeted inventions, such as training staff to capture preferred language for health care and correcting prior inaccurate primary language data entry. The proportion of LEP outpatients with a qualified language services provider increased from 19% to 83% through the use of staff and contract interpreters, over-the-phone interpreting and bilingual providers. There were no systematic differences in diabetes quality performance measures between LEP and English-proficient patients. Academic medical centers should measure their provision of language services and compare quality and safety data (e.g., performance measures and adverse events) between LEP and English-speaking patients to identify disparities in care. Leadership support and ongoing training are needed to ensure language-specific services are embedded into clinical care to meet the needs of our diverse patient populations.

Enhancing the Quality of Service for Real Time Traffic over Optical Burst Switching (OBS) Networks with Ensuring the Fairness for Other Traffics.

PubMed

Al-Shargabi, Mohammed A; Shaikh, Asadullah; Ismail, Abdulsamad S

2016-01-01

Optical burst switching (OBS) networks have been attracting much consideration as a promising approach to build the next generation optical Internet. A solution for enhancing the Quality of Service (QoS) for high priority real time traffic over OBS with the fairness among the traffic types is absent in current OBS' QoS schemes. In this paper we present a novel Real Time Quality of Service with Fairness Ratio (RT-QoSFR) scheme that can adapt the burst assembly parameters according to the traffic QoS needs in order to enhance the real time traffic QoS requirements and to ensure the fairness for other traffic. The results show that RT-QoSFR scheme is able to fulfill the real time traffic requirements (end to end delay, and loss rate) ensuring the fairness for other traffics under various conditions such as the type of real time traffic and traffic load. RT-QoSFR can guarantee that the delay of the real time traffic packets does not exceed the maximum packets transfer delay value. Furthermore, it can reduce the real time traffic packets loss, at the same time guarantee the fairness for non real time traffic packets by determining the ratio of real time traffic inside the burst to be 50-60%, 30-40%, and 10-20% for high, normal, and low traffic loads respectively.

Enhancing the Quality of Service for Real Time Traffic over Optical Burst Switching (OBS) Networks with Ensuring the Fairness for Other Traffics

PubMed Central

Al-Shargabi, Mohammed A.; Ismail, Abdulsamad S.

2016-01-01

Optical burst switching (OBS) networks have been attracting much consideration as a promising approach to build the next generation optical Internet. A solution for enhancing the Quality of Service (QoS) for high priority real time traffic over OBS with the fairness among the traffic types is absent in current OBS’ QoS schemes. In this paper we present a novel Real Time Quality of Service with Fairness Ratio (RT-QoSFR) scheme that can adapt the burst assembly parameters according to the traffic QoS needs in order to enhance the real time traffic QoS requirements and to ensure the fairness for other traffic. The results show that RT-QoSFR scheme is able to fulfill the real time traffic requirements (end to end delay, and loss rate) ensuring the fairness for other traffics under various conditions such as the type of real time traffic and traffic load. RT-QoSFR can guarantee that the delay of the real time traffic packets does not exceed the maximum packets transfer delay value. Furthermore, it can reduce the real time traffic packets loss, at the same time guarantee the fairness for non real time traffic packets by determining the ratio of real time traffic inside the burst to be 50–60%, 30–40%, and 10–20% for high, normal, and low traffic loads respectively. PMID:27583557

Healthcare professionals' perceptions related to the provision of clinical pharmacy services in the public health sector of Mexico: a case study.

PubMed

Díaz de León-Castañeda, Christian; Gutiérrez-Godínez, Jéssica; Colado-Velázquez, Juventino Iii; Toledano-Jaimes, Cairo

2018-04-22

In Mexico, the Modelo Nacional de Farmacia Hospitalaria (MNFH, or National Hospital Pharmacy Model), published in 2009, mainly aims to promote the provision of clinical pharmacy services in private and public hospitals. However, there is little scientific documentation about the quality of these services. To explore healthcare professionals' perceptions related to the quality of clinical pharmacy services provision. A case-study based on a qualitative approach was performed at the pharmaceutical services unit at a public hospital located in Mexico City, which operates under the administrative control of the Ministry of Health. Donabedian's conceptual model was adapted to explore health care professionals' perceptions of the quality of clinical pharmacy services provision. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with pharmacists, physicians and nurses and then transcribed and analyzed via discourse analysis and codification techniques, using the software package Atlas. ti. Limitations in pharmaceutical human resources were identified as the main factor affecting coverage and quality in clinical pharmacy services provision. However, the development in pharmacy staff of technical competences and skills for clinical pharmacy service provision were recognized. Significant improvements in the rational use of medicines were associated with clinical pharmacy services provision. The perception analysis performed in this study suggested that it is necessary to increase pharmacy staff in order to improve interprofessional relationships and the quality of clinical pharmacy services provision. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

A modify ant colony optimization for the grid jobs scheduling problem with QoS requirements

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Pu, Xun; Lu, XianLiang

2011-10-01

Job scheduling with customers' quality of service (QoS) requirement is challenging in grid environment. In this paper, we present a modify Ant colony optimization (MACO) for the Job scheduling problem in grid. Instead of using the conventional construction approach to construct feasible schedules, the proposed algorithm employs a decomposition method to satisfy the customer's deadline and cost requirements. Besides, a new mechanism of service instances state updating is embedded to improve the convergence of MACO. Experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

QoS prediction for web services based on user-trust propagation model

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Thinh, Le-Van; Tu, Truong-Dinh

2017-10-01

There is an important online role for Web service providers and users; however, the rapidly growing number of service providers and users, it can create some similar functions among web services. This is an exciting area for research, and researchers seek to to propose solutions for the best service to users. Collaborative filtering (CF) algorithms are widely used in recommendation systems, although these are less effective for cold-start users. Recently, some recommender systems have been developed based on social network models, and the results show that social network models have better performance in terms of CF, especially for cold-start users. However, most social network-based recommendations do not consider the user's mood. This is a hidden source of information, and is very useful in improving prediction efficiency. In this paper, we introduce a new model called User-Trust Propagation (UTP). The model uses a combination of trust and the mood of users to predict the QoS value and matrix factorisation (MF), which is used to train the model. The experimental results show that the proposed model gives better accuracy than other models, especially for the cold-start problem.

Implementing the optimal provision of ecosystem services

PubMed Central

Polasky, Stephen; Lewis, David J.; Plantinga, Andrew J.; Nelson, Erik

2014-01-01

Many ecosystem services are public goods whose provision depends on the spatial pattern of land use. The pattern of land use is often determined by the decisions of multiple private landowners. Increasing the provision of ecosystem services, though beneficial for society as a whole, may be costly to private landowners. A regulator interested in providing incentives to landowners for increased provision of ecosystem services often lacks complete information on landowners’ costs. The combination of spatially dependent benefits and asymmetric cost information means that the optimal provision of ecosystem services cannot be achieved using standard regulatory or payment for ecosystem services approaches. Here we show that an auction that sets payments between landowners and the regulator for the increased value of ecosystem services with conservation provides incentives for landowners to truthfully reveal cost information, and allows the regulator to implement the optimal provision of ecosystem services, even in the case with spatially dependent benefits and asymmetric information. PMID:24722635

Implementing the optimal provision of ecosystem services.

PubMed

Polasky, Stephen; Lewis, David J; Plantinga, Andrew J; Nelson, Erik

2014-04-29

Many ecosystem services are public goods whose provision depends on the spatial pattern of land use. The pattern of land use is often determined by the decisions of multiple private landowners. Increasing the provision of ecosystem services, though beneficial for society as a whole, may be costly to private landowners. A regulator interested in providing incentives to landowners for increased provision of ecosystem services often lacks complete information on landowners' costs. The combination of spatially dependent benefits and asymmetric cost information means that the optimal provision of ecosystem services cannot be achieved using standard regulatory or payment for ecosystem services approaches. Here we show that an auction that sets payments between landowners and the regulator for the increased value of ecosystem services with conservation provides incentives for landowners to truthfully reveal cost information, and allows the regulator to implement the optimal provision of ecosystem services, even in the case with spatially dependent benefits and asymmetric information.

RESNA Wheelchair Service Provision Guide

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Arledge, Stan; Armstrong, William; Babinec, Mike; Dicianno, Brad E.; Digiovine, Carmen; Dyson-Hudson, Trevor; Pederson, Jessica; Piriano, Julie; Plummer, Teresa; Rosen, Lauren; Schmeler, Mark; Shea, Mary; Stogner, Jody

2011-01-01

The purpose of the Wheelchair Service Provision Guide is to provide an appropriate framework for identifying the essential steps in the provision of a wheelchair. It is designed for use by all participants in the provision process including consumers, family members, caregivers, social service and health care professionals, suppliers,…

Chip-set for quality of service support in passive optical networks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ringoot, Edwin; Hoebeke, Rudy; Slabbinck, B. Hans; Verhaert, Michel

1998-10-01

In this paper the design of a chip-set for QoS provisioning in ATM-based Passive Optical Networks is discussed. The implementation of a general-purpose switch chip on the Optical Network Unit is presented, with focus on the design of the cell scheduling and buffer management logic. The cell scheduling logic supports `colored' grants, priority jumping and weighted round-robin scheduling. The switch chip offers powerful buffer management capabilities enabling the efficient support of GFR and UBR services. Multicast forwarding is also supported. In addition, the architecture of a MAC controller chip developed for a SuperPON access network is introduced. In particular, the permit scheduling logic and its implementation on the Optical Line Termination will be discussed. The chip-set enables the efficient support of services with different service requirements on the SuperPON. The permit scheduling logic built into the MAC controller chip in combination with the cell scheduling and buffer management capabilities of the switch chip can be used by network operators to offer guaranteed service performance to delay sensitive services, and to efficiently and fairly distribute any spare capacity to delay insensitive services.

The Provision of Interventional Radiology Services in Europe: CIRSE Recommendations

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Tsetis, Dimitrios, E-mail: tsetis@med.uoc.gr; Uberoi, Raman, E-mail: raman.uberoi@orh.nhs.uk; Fanelli, Fabrizio, E-mail: fabrizio.fanelli@uniroma1.it

2016-04-15

Interventional Radiology (IR) is an essential part of modern medicine, delivering minimally invasive patient-focused care, which has been proven to be safe and effective in both elective and emergency settings. The aim of this document is to outline the core requirements and standards for the provision of Interventional Radiological services, including training, certification, manpower, and accreditation. The ultimate challenge will be the adoption of these recommendations by different countries and health economies around the world, in turn ensuring equal access to IR treatments for all patients, the appropriate distribution of resources for IR service provision as well as the continuedmore » development of safe and high-quality IR services in Europe and beyond.« less

The Provision of Interventional Radiology Services in Europe: CIRSE Recommendations.

PubMed

Tsetis, Dimitrios; Uberoi, Raman; Fanelli, Fabrizio; Roberston, Iain; Krokidis, Miltiadis; van Delden, Otto; Radeleff, Boris; Müller-Hülsbeck, Stefan; Szerbo-Trojanowska, Malgorzata; Lee, Michael; Morgan, Robert; Brountzos, Elias; Belli, Anna Maria

2016-04-01

Interventional Radiology (IR) is an essential part of modern medicine, delivering minimally invasive patient-focused care, which has been proven to be safe and effective in both elective and emergency settings. The aim of this document is to outline the core requirements and standards for the provision of Interventional Radiological services, including training, certification, manpower, and accreditation. The ultimate challenge will be the adoption of these recommendations by different countries and health economies around the world, in turn ensuring equal access to IR treatments for all patients, the appropriate distribution of resources for IR service provision as well as the continued development of safe and high-quality IR services in Europe and beyond.

Using heuristic algorithms for capacity leasing and task allocation issues in telecommunication networks under fuzzy quality of service constraints

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Huseyin Turan, Hasan; Kasap, Nihat; Savran, Huseyin

2014-03-01

Nowadays, every firm uses telecommunication networks in different amounts and ways in order to complete their daily operations. In this article, we investigate an optimisation problem that a firm faces when acquiring network capacity from a market in which there exist several network providers offering different pricing and quality of service (QoS) schemes. The QoS level guaranteed by network providers and the minimum quality level of service, which is needed for accomplishing the operations are denoted as fuzzy numbers in order to handle the non-deterministic nature of the telecommunication network environment. Interestingly, the mathematical formulation of the aforementioned problem leads to the special case of a well-known two-dimensional bin packing problem, which is famous for its computational complexity. We propose two different heuristic solution procedures that have the capability of solving the resulting nonlinear mixed integer programming model with fuzzy constraints. In conclusion, the efficiency of each algorithm is tested in several test instances to demonstrate the applicability of the methodology.

TinyOS-based quality of service management in wireless sensor networks

USGS Publications Warehouse

Peterson, N.; Anusuya-Rangappa, L.; Shirazi, B.A.; Huang, R.; Song, W.-Z.; Miceli, M.; McBride, D.; Hurson, A.; LaHusen, R.

2009-01-01

Previously the cost and extremely limited capabilities of sensors prohibited Quality of Service (QoS) implementations in wireless sensor networks. With advances in technology, sensors are becoming significantly less expensive and the increases in computational and storage capabilities are opening the door for new, sophisticated algorithms to be implemented. Newer sensor network applications require higher data rates with more stringent priority requirements. We introduce a dynamic scheduling algorithm to improve bandwidth for high priority data in sensor networks, called Tiny-DWFQ. Our Tiny-Dynamic Weighted Fair Queuing scheduling algorithm allows for dynamic QoS for prioritized communications by continually adjusting the treatment of communication packages according to their priorities and the current level of network congestion. For performance evaluation, we tested Tiny-DWFQ, Tiny-WFQ (traditional WFQ algorithm implemented in TinyOS), and FIFO queues on an Imote2-based wireless sensor network and report their throughput and packet loss. Our results show that Tiny-DWFQ performs better in all test cases. ?? 2009 IEEE.

Efficiently Selecting the Best Web Services

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Goncalves, Marlene; Vidal, Maria-Esther; Regalado, Alfredo; Yacoubi Ayadi, Nadia

Emerging technologies and linking data initiatives have motivated the publication of a large number of datasets, and provide the basis for publishing Web services and tools to manage the available data. This wealth of resources opens a world of possibilities to satisfy user requests. However, Web services may have similar functionality and assess different performance; therefore, it is required to identify among the Web services that satisfy a user request, the ones with the best quality. In this paper we propose a hybrid approach that combines reasoning tasks with ranking techniques to aim at the selection of the Web services that best implement a user request. Web service functionalities are described in terms of input and output attributes annotated with existing ontologies, non-functionality is represented as Quality of Services (QoS) parameters, and user requests correspond to conjunctive queries whose sub-goals impose restrictions on the functionality and quality of the services to be selected. The ontology annotations are used in different reasoning tasks to infer service implicit properties and to augment the size of the service search space. Furthermore, QoS parameters are considered by a ranking metric to classify the services according to how well they meet a user non-functional condition. We assume that all the QoS parameters of the non-functional condition are equally important, and apply the Top-k Skyline approach to select the k services that best meet this condition. Our proposal relies on a two-fold solution which fires a deductive-based engine that performs different reasoning tasks to discover the services that satisfy the requested functionality, and an efficient implementation of the Top-k Skyline approach to compute the top-k services that meet the majority of the QoS constraints. Our Top-k Skyline solution exploits the properties of the Skyline Frequency metric and identifies the top-k services by just analyzing a subset of the services that

Modeling and performance analysis of QoS data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Strzeciwilk, Dariusz; Zuberek, Włodzimierz M.

2016-09-01

The article presents the results of modeling and analysis of data transmission performance on systems that support quality of service. Models are designed and tested, taking into account multiservice network architecture, i.e. supporting the transmission of data related to different classes of traffic. Studied were mechanisms of traffic shaping systems, which are based on the Priority Queuing with an integrated source of data and the various sources of data that is generated. Discussed were the basic problems of the architecture supporting QoS and queuing systems. Designed and built were models based on Petri nets, supported by temporal logics. The use of simulation tools was to verify the mechanisms of shaping traffic with the applied queuing algorithms. It is shown that temporal models of Petri nets can be effectively used in the modeling and analysis of the performance of computer networks.

Wheelchair service provision education in academia.

PubMed

Fung, Karen H; Rushton, Paula W; Gartz, Rachel; Goldberg, Mary; Toro, Maria L; Seymour, Nicky; Pearlman, Jonathan

2017-01-01

An estimated 70 million people with disabilities need wheelchairs. To address this global crisis, the World Health Organization (WHO) proposed an eight-step wheelchair service provision model to ensure service quality regardless of resource setting. The International Society of Wheelchair Professionals (ISWP) aims to facilitate the integration of the WHO eight-step model into professional rehabilitation programmes. To develop an enhanced understanding of the current wheelchair service provision education provided in professional rehabilitation programmes worldwide. In a cross-sectional design, an online survey was distributed to ISWP contacts of educational institutions. Quantitative responses were analysed through summary statistics and qualitative answers were analysed by content analyses. When relevant, educational institutions were stratified into resource settings. Seventy-two representatives of educational institutions in 21 countries completed the survey. Wheelchair content was taught in 79% of represented institutions, of which 75% of respondents reported using original course material, 10% of respondents used WHO Wheelchair Service Training Packages and 15% of respondents used other available resources. The majority of educational institutions teaching with their own wheelchair-related course material taught ≤ 20 hours. Fourteen of the 15 respondents without wheelchair education, expressed an interest in integrating wheelchair education into their academic curricula. The majority of the educational institutions teach wheelchair education; however, there is great variability in what and how it is taught and evaluated. The results demonstrate the need for more in-depth investigation regarding the integration process of wheelchair education in educational institutions, with the ultimate goal of improving wheelchair service provision worldwide.

Quality of Service for Real-Time Applications Over Next Generation Data Networks

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Atiquzzaman, Mohammed; Jain, Raj

2001-01-01

This project, which started on January 1, 2000, was funded by the NASA Glenn Research Center for duration of one year. The deliverables of the project included the following tasks: (1) Study of QoS mapping between the edge and core networks envisioned in the Next Generation networks will provide us with the QoS guarantees that can be obtained from next generation networks; (2) Buffer management techniques to provide strict guarantees to real-time end-to-end applications through preferential treatment to packets belonging to real-time applications. In particular, use of ECN to help reduce the loss on high bandwidth-delay product satellite networks needs to be studied; (3) Effect of Prioritized Packet Discard to increase goodput of the network and reduce the buffering requirements in the ATM switches; (4) Provision of new IP circuit emulation services over Satellite IP backbones using MPLS will be studied; and (5) Determine the architecture and requirements for internetworking ATN and the Next Generation Internet for real-time applications. The project has been completed on time. All the objectives and deliverables of the project have been completed. Research results obtained from this project have been published in a number of papers in journals, conferences, and technical reports, included in this document.

A Control-Theoretic Approach for the Combined Management of Quality-of-Service and Energy in Service Centers

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Poussot-Vassal, Charles; Tanelli, Mara; Lovera, Marco

The complexity of Information Technology (IT) systems is steadily increasing and system complexity has been recognised as the main obstacle to further advancements of IT. This fact has recently raised energy management issues. Control techniques have been proposed and successfully applied to design Autonomic Computing systems, trading-off system performance with energy saving goals. As users behaviour is highly time varying and workload conditions can change substantially within the same business day, the Linear Parametrically Varying (LPV) framework is particularly promising for modeling such systems. In this chapter, a control-theoretic method to investigate the trade-off between Quality of Service (QoS) requirements and energy saving objectives in the case of admission control in Web service systems is proposed, considering as control variables the server CPU frequency and the admission probability. To quantitatively evaluate the trade-off, a dynamic model of the admission control dynamics is estimated via LPV identification techniques. Based on this model, an optimisation problem within the Model Predictive Control (MPC) framework is setup, by means of which it is possible to investigate the optimal trade-off policy to manage QoS and energy saving objectives at design time and taking into explicit account the system dynamics.

Service models and realization of differentiated services networks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Elizondo, Antonio J.; Garcia Osma, Maria L.; Einsiedler, Hans J.; Roth, Rudolf; Smirnov, Michael I.; Bartoli, Maurizio; Castelli, Paolo; Varga, Balazs; Krampell, Magnus

2001-07-01

Internet Service Providers need to offer Quality of Service (QoS) to fulfil the requirements of applications of their customers. Moreover, in a competitive market environment costs must be low. The selected service model must be effective and low in complexity, but it should still provide high quality and service differentiation, that the current Internet is not yet capable to support. The Differentiated Services (DiffServ) Architecture has been proposed for enabling a range of different Classes of Service (CoS). In the EURESCOM project P1006 several European service providers co-operated to examine various aspects involved in the introduction of service differentiation using the DiffServ approach. The project explored a set of service models for Expedited Forwarding (EF) and Assured Forwarding (AF) and identified requirements for network nodes. Besides, we addressed also measurement issues, charging and accounting issues. Special attention has been devoted to requirements of elastic traffic that adapts its sending rate to congestion state and available bandwidth. QoS mechanisms must prove Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) friendliness. TCP performance degrades under multiple losses. Since RED based queue management may still cause multiple discards, a modified marking scheme called Capped Leaky Bucket is proposed to improve the performance of elastic applications.

Negotiation and Monitoring of Service Level Agreements

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Quillinan, Thomas B.; Clark, Kassidy P.; Warnier, Martijn; Brazier, Frances M. T.; Rana, Omer

Service level agreements (SLAs) provide a means to define specific Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees between providers and consumers of services. Negotiation and definition of these QoS characteristics is an area of significant research. However, defining the actions that take place when an agreement is violated is a topic of more recent focus. This paper discusses recent advances in this field and propose some additional features that can help both consumers and producers during the enactment of services. These features include the ability to (re)negotiate penalties in an agreement, and specifically focuses on the renegotiation of penalties during enactment to reflect ongoing violations.

Integrating QoS and security functions in an IP-VPN gateway

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Fan, Kuo-Pao; Chang, Shu-Hsin; Lin, Kuan-Ming; Pen, Mau-Jy

2001-10-01

IP-based Virtual Private Network becomes more and more popular. It can not only reduce the enterprise communication cost but also increase the revenue of the service provider. The common IP-VPN application types include Intranet VPN, Extranet VPN, and remote access VPN. For the large IP-VPN market, some vendors develop dedicated IP-VPN devices; while some vendors add the VPN functions into their existing network equipment such as router, access gateway, etc. The functions in the IP-VPN device include security, QoS, and management. The common security functions supported are IPSec (IP Security), IKE (Internet Key Exchange), and Firewall. The QoS functions include bandwidth control and packet scheduling. In the management component, policy-based network management is under standardization in IETF. In this paper, we discuss issues on how to integrate the QoS and security functions in an IP-VPN Gateway. We propose three approaches to do this. They are (1) perform Qos first (2) perform IPSec first and (3) reserve fixed bandwidth for IPSec. We also compare the advantages and disadvantages of the three proposed approaches.

A fuzzy multi-objective model for capacity allocation and pricing policy of provider in data communication service with different QoS levels

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Pan, Wei; Wang, Xianjia; Zhong, Yong-guang; Yu, Lean; Jie, Cao; Ran, Lun; Qiao, Han; Wang, Shouyang; Xu, Xianhao

2012-06-01

Data communication service has an important influence on e-commerce. The key challenge for the users is, ultimately, to select a suitable provider. However, in this article, we do not focus on this aspect but the viewpoint and decision-making of providers for order allocation and pricing policy when orders exceed service capacity. It is a multiple criteria decision-making problem such as profit and cancellation ratio. Meanwhile, we know realistic situations in which much of the input information is uncertain. Thus, it becomes very complex in a real-life environment. In this situation, fuzzy sets theory is the best tool for solving this problem. Our fuzzy model is formulated in such a way as to simultaneously consider the imprecision of information, price sensitive demand, stochastic variables, cancellation fee and the general membership function. For solving the problem, a new fuzzy programming is developed. Finally, a numerical example is presented to illustrate the proposed method. The results show that it is effective for determining the suitable order set and pricing policy of provider in data communication service with different quality of service (QoS) levels.

14 CFR 1214.114 - Provision of services.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-01-01

... Provisions Regarding Space Shuttle Flights of Payloads for Non-U.S. Government, Reimbursable Customers § 1214.114 Provision of services. NASA will provide, solely at its discretion, services to the extent...

14 CFR 1214.114 - Provision of services.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-01-01

... Provisions Regarding Space Shuttle Flights of Payloads for Non-U.S. Government, Reimbursable Customers § 1214.114 Provision of services. NASA will provide, solely at its discretion, services to the extent...

14 CFR 1214.114 - Provision of services.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-01-01

... Provisions Regarding Space Shuttle Flights of Payloads for Non-U.S. Government, Reimbursable Customers § 1214.114 Provision of services. NASA will provide, solely at its discretion, services to the extent...

14 CFR 1214.114 - Provision of services.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-01-01

... Provisions Regarding Space Shuttle Flights of Payloads for Non-U.S. Government, Reimbursable Customers § 1214.114 Provision of services. NASA will provide, solely at its discretion, services to the extent...

A study on strategic provisioning of cloud computing services.

PubMed

Whaiduzzaman, Md; Haque, Mohammad Nazmul; Rejaul Karim Chowdhury, Md; Gani, Abdullah

2014-01-01

Cloud computing is currently emerging as an ever-changing, growing paradigm that models "everything-as-a-service." Virtualised physical resources, infrastructure, and applications are supplied by service provisioning in the cloud. The evolution in the adoption of cloud computing is driven by clear and distinct promising features for both cloud users and cloud providers. However, the increasing number of cloud providers and the variety of service offerings have made it difficult for the customers to choose the best services. By employing successful service provisioning, the essential services required by customers, such as agility and availability, pricing, security and trust, and user metrics can be guaranteed by service provisioning. Hence, continuous service provisioning that satisfies the user requirements is a mandatory feature for the cloud user and vitally important in cloud computing service offerings. Therefore, we aim to review the state-of-the-art service provisioning objectives, essential services, topologies, user requirements, necessary metrics, and pricing mechanisms. We synthesize and summarize different provision techniques, approaches, and models through a comprehensive literature review. A thematic taxonomy of cloud service provisioning is presented after the systematic review. Finally, future research directions and open research issues are identified.

A Study on Strategic Provisioning of Cloud Computing Services

PubMed Central

Rejaul Karim Chowdhury, Md

2014-01-01

Cloud computing is currently emerging as an ever-changing, growing paradigm that models “everything-as-a-service.” Virtualised physical resources, infrastructure, and applications are supplied by service provisioning in the cloud. The evolution in the adoption of cloud computing is driven by clear and distinct promising features for both cloud users and cloud providers. However, the increasing number of cloud providers and the variety of service offerings have made it difficult for the customers to choose the best services. By employing successful service provisioning, the essential services required by customers, such as agility and availability, pricing, security and trust, and user metrics can be guaranteed by service provisioning. Hence, continuous service provisioning that satisfies the user requirements is a mandatory feature for the cloud user and vitally important in cloud computing service offerings. Therefore, we aim to review the state-of-the-art service provisioning objectives, essential services, topologies, user requirements, necessary metrics, and pricing mechanisms. We synthesize and summarize different provision techniques, approaches, and models through a comprehensive literature review. A thematic taxonomy of cloud service provisioning is presented after the systematic review. Finally, future research directions and open research issues are identified. PMID:25032243

Exploring Issues of Quality of Service in a Next Generation Internet Testbed: A Case Study Using PathMaster

PubMed Central

Shifman, Mark A.; Sayward, Frederick G.; Mattie, Mark E.; Miller, Perry L.

2002-01-01

This case study describes a project that explores issues of quality of service (QoS) relevant to the next-generation Internet (NGI), using the PathMaster application in a testbed environment. PathMaster is a prototype computer system that analyzes digitized cell images from cytology specimens and compares those images against an image database, returning a ranked set of “similar” cell images from the database. To perform NGI testbed evaluations, we used a cluster of nine parallel computation workstations configured as three subclusters using Cisco routers. This architecture provides a local “simulated Internet” in which we explored the following QoS strategies: (1) first-in-first-out queuing, (2) priority queuing, (3) weighted fair queuing, (4) weighted random early detection, and (5) traffic shaping. The study describes the results of using these strategies with a distributed version of the PathMaster system in the presence of different amounts of competing network traffic and discusses certain of the issues that arise. The goal of the study is to help introduce NGI QoS issues to the Medical Informatics community and to use the PathMaster NGI testbed to illustrate concretely certain of the QoS issues that arise. PMID:12223501

Provision of Prosthetic Services Following Lower Limb Amputation in Malaysia

PubMed Central

Arifin, Nooranida; Hasbollah, Hasif Rafidee; Hanafi, Muhammad Hafiz; Ibrahim, Al Hafiz; Rahman, Wan Afezah Wan Abdul; Aziz, Roslizawati Che

2017-01-01

The incidence of lower limb amputation is high across the globe and continues to be a major threat to morbidity and mortality. Consequently, the provision of high quality and effective prosthetics services have been known as an essential component for a successful rehabilitation outcome. In Malaysia, amputation prevalence has been increasing in which several main components of service delivering aspects (such as service intervention, prosthetic personnel) should be anticipated to accommodate for the increasing demand. This article highlights the hurdles experienced in providing prosthetic services in Malaysia from multiple aspects such as financial burden to acquire the prosthesis and lack of expertise to produce quality prosthesis. This paramount issues consequently justify for the urgency to carry out national level survey on the current statistics of lower limb amputation and to ascertain the available workforce to provide a quality prosthetics services. Only with accurate and current information from the national survey, strategies and policies aimed at enhancing the outcome from prosthetics services can be achieved. PMID:29386978

Provision of Prosthetic Services Following Lower Limb Amputation in Malaysia.

PubMed

Arifin, Nooranida; Hasbollah, Hasif Rafidee; Hanafi, Muhammad Hafiz; Ibrahim, Al Hafiz; Rahman, Wan Afezah Wan Abdul; Aziz, Roslizawati Che

2017-10-01

The incidence of lower limb amputation is high across the globe and continues to be a major threat to morbidity and mortality. Consequently, the provision of high quality and effective prosthetics services have been known as an essential component for a successful rehabilitation outcome. In Malaysia, amputation prevalence has been increasing in which several main components of service delivering aspects (such as service intervention, prosthetic personnel) should be anticipated to accommodate for the increasing demand. This article highlights the hurdles experienced in providing prosthetic services in Malaysia from multiple aspects such as financial burden to acquire the prosthesis and lack of expertise to produce quality prosthesis. This paramount issues consequently justify for the urgency to carry out national level survey on the current statistics of lower limb amputation and to ascertain the available workforce to provide a quality prosthetics services. Only with accurate and current information from the national survey, strategies and policies aimed at enhancing the outcome from prosthetics services can be achieved.

Fuzzy Logic-based Intelligent Scheme for Enhancing QoS of Vertical Handover Decision in Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Azzali, F.; Ghazali, O.; Omar, M. H.

2017-08-01

The design of next generation networks in various technologies under the “Anywhere, Anytime” paradigm offers seamless connectivity across different coverage. A conventional algorithm such as RSSThreshold algorithm, that only uses the received strength signal (RSS) as a metric, will decrease handover performance regarding handover latency, delay, packet loss, and handover failure probability. Moreover, the RSS-based algorithm is only suitable for horizontal handover decision to examine the quality of service (QoS) compared to the vertical handover decision in advanced technologies. In the next generation network, vertical handover can be started based on the user’s convenience or choice rather than connectivity reasons. This study proposes a vertical handover decision algorithm that uses a Fuzzy Logic (FL) algorithm, to increase QoS performance in heterogeneous vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANET). The study uses network simulator 2.29 (NS 2.29) along with the mobility traffic network and generator to implement simulation scenarios and topologies. This helps the simulation to achieve a realistic VANET mobility scenario. The required analysis on the performance of QoS in the vertical handover can thus be conducted. The proposed Fuzzy Logic algorithm shows improvement over the conventional algorithm (RSSThreshold) in the average percentage of handover QoS whereby it achieves 20%, 21% and 13% improvement on handover latency, delay, and packet loss respectively. This is achieved through triggering a process in layer two and three that enhances the handover performance.

QoS Differential Scheduling in Cognitive-Radio-Based Smart Grid Networks: An Adaptive Dynamic Programming Approach.

PubMed

Yu, Rong; Zhong, Weifeng; Xie, Shengli; Zhang, Yan; Zhang, Yun

2016-02-01

As the next-generation power grid, smart grid will be integrated with a variety of novel communication technologies to support the explosive data traffic and the diverse requirements of quality of service (QoS). Cognitive radio (CR), which has the favorable ability to improve the spectrum utilization, provides an efficient and reliable solution for smart grid communications networks. In this paper, we study the QoS differential scheduling problem in the CR-based smart grid communications networks. The scheduler is responsible for managing the spectrum resources and arranging the data transmissions of smart grid users (SGUs). To guarantee the differential QoS, the SGUs are assigned to have different priorities according to their roles and their current situations in the smart grid. Based on the QoS-aware priority policy, the scheduler adjusts the channels allocation to minimize the transmission delay of SGUs. The entire transmission scheduling problem is formulated as a semi-Markov decision process and solved by the methodology of adaptive dynamic programming. A heuristic dynamic programming (HDP) architecture is established for the scheduling problem. By the online network training, the HDP can learn from the activities of primary users and SGUs, and adjust the scheduling decision to achieve the purpose of transmission delay minimization. Simulation results illustrate that the proposed priority policy ensures the low transmission delay of high priority SGUs. In addition, the emergency data transmission delay is also reduced to a significantly low level, guaranteeing the differential QoS in smart grid.

Cross-sector Service Provision in Health and Social Care: An Umbrella Review.

PubMed

Winters, Shannon; Magalhaes, Lilian; Anne Kinsella, Elizabeth; Kothari, Anita

2016-04-08

Meeting the complex health needs of people often requires interaction among numerous different sectors. No one service can adequately respond to the diverse care needs of consumers. Providers working more effectively together is frequently touted as the solution. Cross-sector service provision is defined as independent, yet interconnected sectors working together to better meet the needs of consumers and improve the quality and effectiveness of service provision. Cross-sector service provision is expected, yet much remains unknown about how it is conceptualised or its impact on health status. This umbrella review aims to clarify the critical attributes that shape cross-sector service provision by presenting the current state of the literature and building on the findings of the 2004 review by Sloper. Literature related to cross-sector service provision is immense, which poses a challenge for decision makers wishing to make evidence-informed decisions. An umbrella review was conducted to articulate the overall state of cross-sector service provision literature and examine the evidence to allow for the discovery of consistencies and discrepancies across the published knowledge base. Sixteen reviews met the inclusion criteria. Seven themes emerged: Focusing on the consumer, developing a shared vision of care, leadership involvement, service provision across the boundaries, adequately resourcing the arrangement, developing novel arrangements or aligning with existing relationships, and strengthening connections between sectors. Future research from a cross-organisational, rather than individual provider, perspective is needed to better understand what shapes cross-sector service provision at the boundaries. Findings aligned closely with the work done by Sloper and raise red flags related to reinventing what is already known. Future researchers should look to explore novel areas rather than looking into areas that have been explored at length. Evaluations of out

31 CFR 598.406 - Provision of services.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-07-01

... 31 Money and Finance:Treasury 3 2012-07-01 2012-07-01 false Provision of services. 598.406 Section 598.406 Money and Finance: Treasury Regulations Relating to Money and Finance (Continued) OFFICE OF... Interpretations § 598.406 Provision of services. (a) The prohibitions contained in § 598.203 apply to services...

31 CFR 598.406 - Provision of services.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-07-01

... 31 Money and Finance:Treasury 3 2011-07-01 2011-07-01 false Provision of services. 598.406 Section 598.406 Money and Finance: Treasury Regulations Relating to Money and Finance (Continued) OFFICE OF... Interpretations § 598.406 Provision of services. (a) The prohibitions contained in § 598.203 apply to services...

31 CFR 598.406 - Provision of services.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-07-01

... 31 Money and Finance:Treasury 3 2013-07-01 2013-07-01 false Provision of services. 598.406 Section 598.406 Money and Finance: Treasury Regulations Relating to Money and Finance (Continued) OFFICE OF... Interpretations § 598.406 Provision of services. (a) The prohibitions contained in § 598.203 apply to services...

31 CFR 598.406 - Provision of services.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-07-01

... 31 Money and Finance:Treasury 3 2014-07-01 2014-07-01 false Provision of services. 598.406 Section 598.406 Money and Finance: Treasury Regulations Relating to Money and Finance (Continued) OFFICE OF... Interpretations § 598.406 Provision of services. (a) The prohibitions contained in § 598.203 apply to services...

The extended TRIP supporting VoIP routing reservation with distributed QoS

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wang, Furong; Wu, Ye

2004-04-01

In this paper, an existing protocol, i.e. TRIP (Telephony Routing over IP) is developed to provide distributed QoS when making resource reservations for VoIP services such as H.323, SIP. Enhanced LSs (location servers) are deployed in ITADs (IP Telephony Administrative Domains) to take in charge of intra-domain routing policy because of small propagation price. It is an easy way to find an IP telephone route for intra-domain VoIP media association and simultaneously possess intra-domain load balancing features. For those routing reservations bridging domains, inter-domain routing policy is responsible for finding the shortest inter-domain route with enough resources. I propose the routing preference policy based on QoS price when the session traffic is shaped by a token bucket, related QoS messages, and message cooperation.

Providing end-to-end QoS for multimedia applications in 3G wireless networks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Guo, Katherine; Rangarajan, Samapth; Siddiqui, M. A.; Paul, Sanjoy

2003-11-01

As the usage of wireless packet data services increases, wireless carriers today are faced with the challenge of offering multimedia applications with QoS requirements within current 3G data networks. End-to-end QoS requires support at the application, network, link and medium access control (MAC) layers. We discuss existing CDMA2000 network architecture and show its shortcomings that prevent supporting multiple classes of traffic at the Radio Access Network (RAN). We then propose changes in RAN within the standards framework that enable support for multiple traffic classes. In addition, we discuss how Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) can be augmented with QoS signaling for supporting end-to-end QoS. We also review state of the art scheduling algorithms at the base station and provide possible extensions to these algorithms to support different classes of traffic as well as different classes of users.

An Automatic Web Service Composition Framework Using QoS-Based Web Service Ranking Algorithm.

PubMed

Mallayya, Deivamani; Ramachandran, Baskaran; Viswanathan, Suganya

2015-01-01

Web service has become the technology of choice for service oriented computing to meet the interoperability demands in web applications. In the Internet era, the exponential addition of web services nominates the "quality of service" as essential parameter in discriminating the web services. In this paper, a user preference based web service ranking (UPWSR) algorithm is proposed to rank web services based on user preferences and QoS aspect of the web service. When the user's request cannot be fulfilled by a single atomic service, several existing services should be composed and delivered as a composition. The proposed framework allows the user to specify the local and global constraints for composite web services which improves flexibility. UPWSR algorithm identifies best fit services for each task in the user request and, by choosing the number of candidate services for each task, reduces the time to generate the composition plans. To tackle the problem of web service composition, QoS aware automatic web service composition (QAWSC) algorithm proposed in this paper is based on the QoS aspects of the web services and user preferences. The proposed framework allows user to provide feedback about the composite service which improves the reputation of the services.

An Automatic Web Service Composition Framework Using QoS-Based Web Service Ranking Algorithm

PubMed Central

Mallayya, Deivamani; Ramachandran, Baskaran; Viswanathan, Suganya

2015-01-01

Web service has become the technology of choice for service oriented computing to meet the interoperability demands in web applications. In the Internet era, the exponential addition of web services nominates the “quality of service” as essential parameter in discriminating the web services. In this paper, a user preference based web service ranking (UPWSR) algorithm is proposed to rank web services based on user preferences and QoS aspect of the web service. When the user's request cannot be fulfilled by a single atomic service, several existing services should be composed and delivered as a composition. The proposed framework allows the user to specify the local and global constraints for composite web services which improves flexibility. UPWSR algorithm identifies best fit services for each task in the user request and, by choosing the number of candidate services for each task, reduces the time to generate the composition plans. To tackle the problem of web service composition, QoS aware automatic web service composition (QAWSC) algorithm proposed in this paper is based on the QoS aspects of the web services and user preferences. The proposed framework allows user to provide feedback about the composite service which improves the reputation of the services. PMID:26504894

Service provision and quality outcomes in home health for rural Medicare beneficiaries at high risk for unplanned care.

PubMed

Mroz, Tracy M; Andrilla, C Holly A; Garberson, Lisa A; Skillman, Susan M; Patterson, Davis G; Larson, Eric H

2018-06-11

Multiple barriers exist to providing home health care in rural areas. This study examined relationships between service provision and quality outcomes among rural, fee-for-service Medicare beneficiaries who received home health care between 2011 and 2013 for conditions associated with high-risk for unplanned care. More skilled nursing visits, visits by more types of providers, more timely care, and shorter lengths of stay were associated with significantly higher odds of hospital readmission and emergency department use and significantly lower odds of community discharge. Results may indicate unmeasured clinical severity and care needs among this population. Additional research regarding the accuracy of current severity measures and adequacy of case-mix adjustment for quality metrics is warranted, especially given the continued focus on value-based payment policies.

26 CFR 1.42-11 - Provision of services.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-04-01

... 26 Internal Revenue 1 2011-04-01 2009-04-01 true Provision of services. 1.42-11 Section 1.42-11 Internal Revenue INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE, DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY INCOME TAX INCOME TAXES Credits Against Tax § 1.42-11 Provision of services. (a) General rule. The furnishing to tenants of services other than housing (whether or not the services...

26 CFR 1.42-11 - Provision of services.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-04-01

... 26 Internal Revenue 1 2014-04-01 2013-04-01 true Provision of services. 1.42-11 Section 1.42-11 Internal Revenue INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE, DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY INCOME TAX INCOME TAXES Credits Against Tax § 1.42-11 Provision of services. (a) General rule. The furnishing to tenants of services other than housing (whether or not the services...

26 CFR 1.42-11 - Provision of services.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-04-01

... 26 Internal Revenue 1 2012-04-01 2012-04-01 false Provision of services. 1.42-11 Section 1.42-11 Internal Revenue INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE, DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY INCOME TAX INCOME TAXES Credits Against Tax § 1.42-11 Provision of services. (a) General rule. The furnishing to tenants of services other than housing (whether or not the services...

Quality of antenatal care service provision in health facilities across sub-Saharan Africa: Evidence from nationally representative health facility assessments.

PubMed

Kanyangarara, Mufaro; Munos, Melinda K; Walker, Neff

2017-12-01

Utilization of antenatal care (ANC) services has increased over the past two decades. Continued gains in maternal and newborn health will require an understanding of both access and quality of ANC services. We linked health facility and household survey data to examine the quality of service provision for five ANC interventions across health facilities in sub-Saharan Africa. Using data from 20 nationally representative health facility assessments - the Service Provision Assessment (SPA) and the Service Availability and Readiness Assessment (SARA), we estimated facility level readiness to deliver five ANC interventions: tetanus toxoid vaccine for pregnant women, intermittent preventive treatment for malaria in pregnancy (IPTp), syphilis detection and treatment in pregnancy, iron supplementation and hypertensive disease case management. Facility level indicators were stratified by health facility type, managing authority and location, then linked to estimates of ANC utilization in that stratum from the corresponding Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) to generate population level estimates of the 'likelihood of appropriate care'. Finally, the association between estimates of the 'likelihood of appropriate care' from the linking approach and estimates of coverage levels from the DHS were assessed. A total of 10 534 health facilities were surveyed in the 20 health facility assessments, of which 8742 reported offering ANC services and were included in the analysis. Health facility readiness to deliver IPTp, iron supplementation, and tetanus toxoid vaccination was higher (median: 84.1%, 84.9% and 82.8% respectively) than readiness to deliver hypertensive disease case management and syphilis detection and treatment (median: 23.0% and 19.9% respectively). Coverage of at least 4 ANC visits ranged from 24.8% to 75.8%. Estimates of the likelihood of appropriate care derived from linking health facility and household survey data showed marked gaps for all interventions

Cross-sector Service Provision in Health and Social Care: An Umbrella Review

PubMed Central

Magalhaes, Lilian; Anne Kinsella, Elizabeth; Kothari, Anita

2016-01-01

Introduction: Meeting the complex health needs of people often requires interaction among numerous different sectors. No one service can adequately respond to the diverse care needs of consumers. Providers working more effectively together is frequently touted as the solution. Cross-sector service provision is defined as independent, yet interconnected sectors working together to better meet the needs of consumers and improve the quality and effectiveness of service provision. Cross-sector service provision is expected, yet much remains unknown about how it is conceptualised or its impact on health status. This umbrella review aims to clarify the critical attributes that shape cross-sector service provision by presenting the current state of the literature and building on the findings of the 2004 review by Sloper. Methods: Literature related to cross-sector service provision is immense, which poses a challenge for decision makers wishing to make evidence-informed decisions. An umbrella review was conducted to articulate the overall state of cross-sector service provision literature and examine the evidence to allow for the discovery of consistencies and discrepancies across the published knowledge base. Findings: Sixteen reviews met the inclusion criteria. Seven themes emerged: Focusing on the consumer, developing a shared vision of care, leadership involvement, service provision across the boundaries, adequately resourcing the arrangement, developing novel arrangements or aligning with existing relationships, and strengthening connections between sectors. Future research from a cross-organisational, rather than individual provider, perspective is needed to better understand what shapes cross-sector service provision at the boundaries. Conclusion: Findings aligned closely with the work done by Sloper and raise red flags related to reinventing what is already known. Future researchers should look to explore novel areas rather than looking into areas that have been

On service differentiation in mobile Ad Hoc networks.

PubMed

Zhang, Shun-liang; Ye, Cheng-qing

2004-09-01

A network model is proposed to support service differentiation for mobile Ad Hoc networks by combining a fully distributed admission control approach and the DIFS based differentiation mechanism of IEEE802.11. It can provide different kinds of QoS (Quality of Service) for various applications. Admission controllers determine a committed bandwidth based on the reserved bandwidth of flows and the source utilization of networks. Packets are marked when entering into networks by markers according to the committed rate. By the mark in the packet header, intermediate nodes handle the received packets in different manners to provide applications with the QoS corresponding to the pre-negotiated profile. Extensive simulation experiments showed that the proposed mechanism can provide QoS guarantee to assured service traffic and increase the channel utilization of networks.

14 CFR § 1214.114 - Provision of services.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-01-01

... Provisions Regarding Space Shuttle Flights of Payloads for Non-U.S. Government, Reimbursable Customers § 1214.114 Provision of services. NASA will provide, solely at its discretion, services to the extent...

Dynamic Policy-Driven Quality of Service in Service-Oriented Information Management Systems

DTIC Science & Technology

2011-01-01

both DiffServ and IntServ net- work QoS mechanisms. Wang et al [48] provide middleware APIs to shield applications from directly interacting with...complex network QoS mechanism APIs . Middleware frameworks transparently converted the specified application QoS requirements into low- er-level network...QoS mechanism APIs and provided network QoS assurances. Deployment-time resource allocation. Other prior work has focused on deploying ap- plications

[About economic aspects of provision of medical services].

PubMed

Gerasimov, P A

2014-01-01

The contradiction between economic and social components of medical services is present in any state. Initially, the state undertakes the commitment no provide citizen with equal access to medical services. However, this means to provide social equity between all members of society which not always is effective from economic point of view. The article analyzes the problems originated in public system of provision of medical services. These problems are determined by service specificity itself model of provision of medical services and public priorities in social sector.

The provision of assistive technology products and services for people with dementia in the United Kingdom.

PubMed

Gibson, Grant; Newton, Lisa; Pritchard, Gary; Finch, Tracy; Brittain, Katie; Robinson, Louise

2016-07-01

In this review we explore the provision of assistive technology products and services currently available for people with dementia within the United Kingdom. A scoping review of assistive technology products and services currently available highlighted 171 products or product types and 331 services. In addition, we assimilated data on the amount and quality of information provided by assistive technology services alongside assistive technology costs. We identify a range of products available across three areas: assistive technology used 'by', 'with' and 'on' people with dementia. Assistive technology provision is dominated by 'telecare' provided by local authorities, with services being subject to major variations in pricing and information provision; few currently used available resources for assistive technology in dementia. We argue that greater attention should be paid to information provision about assistive technology services across an increasingly mixed economy of dementia care providers, including primary care, local authorities, private companies and local/national assistive technology resources. © The Author(s) 2014.

FSO and quality of service software prediction

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bouchet, O.; Marquis, T.; Chabane, M.; Alnaboulsi, M.; Sizun, H.

2005-08-01

Free-space optical (FSO) communication links constitute an alternative option to radio relay links and to optical cables facing growth needs in high-speed telecommunications (abundance of unregulated bandwidth, rapid installation, availability of low-cost optical components offering a high data rate, etc). Their operationalisation requires a good knowledge of the atmospheric effects which can negatively affect role propagation and the availability of the link, and thus to the quality of service (QoS). Better control of these phenomena will allow for the evaluation of system performance and thus assist with improving reliability. The aim of this paper is to compare the behavior of a FSO link located in south of France (Toulouse: with the following parameters: around 270 meters (0.2 mile) long, 34 Mbps data rate, 850 nm wavelength and PDH frame) with airport meteorological data. The second aim of the paper is to assess in-house FSO quality of service prediction software, through comparing simulations with the optical link data and the weather data. The analysis uses in-house software FSO quality of service prediction software ("FSO Prediction") developed by France Telecom Research & Development, which integrates news fog fading equations (compare to Kim & al.) and includes multiple effects (geometrical attenuation, atmospheric fading, rain, snow, scintillation and refraction attenuation due to atmospheric turbulence, optical mispointing attenuation). The FSO link field trial, intended to enable the demonstration and evaluation of these different effects, is described; and preliminary results of the field trial, from December 2004 to May 2005, are then presented.

Time-Aware Service Ranking Prediction in the Internet of Things Environment

PubMed Central

Huang, Yuze; Huang, Jiwei; Cheng, Bo; He, Shuqing; Chen, Junliang

2017-01-01

With the rapid development of the Internet of things (IoT), building IoT systems with high quality of service (QoS) has become an urgent requirement in both academia and industry. During the procedures of building IoT systems, QoS-aware service selection is an important concern, which requires the ranking of a set of functionally similar services according to their QoS values. In reality, however, it is quite expensive and even impractical to evaluate all geographically-dispersed IoT services at a single client to obtain such a ranking. Nevertheless, distributed measurement and ranking aggregation have to deal with the high dynamics of QoS values and the inconsistency of partial rankings. To address these challenges, we propose a time-aware service ranking prediction approach named TSRPred for obtaining the global ranking from the collection of partial rankings. Specifically, a pairwise comparison model is constructed to describe the relationships between different services, where the partial rankings are obtained by time series forecasting on QoS values. The comparisons of IoT services are formulated by random walks, and thus, the global ranking can be obtained by sorting the steady-state probabilities of the underlying Markov chain. Finally, the efficacy of TSRPred is validated by simulation experiments based on large-scale real-world datasets. PMID:28448451

Time-Aware Service Ranking Prediction in the Internet of Things Environment.

PubMed

Huang, Yuze; Huang, Jiwei; Cheng, Bo; He, Shuqing; Chen, Junliang

2017-04-27

With the rapid development of the Internet of things (IoT), building IoT systems with high quality of service (QoS) has become an urgent requirement in both academia and industry. During the procedures of building IoT systems, QoS-aware service selection is an important concern, which requires the ranking of a set of functionally similar services according to their QoS values. In reality, however, it is quite expensive and even impractical to evaluate all geographically-dispersed IoT services at a single client to obtain such a ranking. Nevertheless, distributed measurement and ranking aggregation have to deal with the high dynamics of QoS values and the inconsistency of partial rankings. To address these challenges, we propose a time-aware service ranking prediction approach named TSRPred for obtaining the global ranking from the collection of partial rankings. Specifically, a pairwise comparison model is constructed to describe the relationships between different services, where the partial rankings are obtained by time series forecasting on QoS values. The comparisons of IoT services are formulated by random walks, and thus, the global ranking can be obtained by sorting the steady-state probabilities of the underlying Markov chain. Finally, the efficacy of TSRPred is validated by simulation experiments based on large-scale real-world datasets.

Two-dimensional priority-based dynamic resource allocation algorithm for QoS in WDM/TDM PON networks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sun, Yixin; Liu, Bo; Zhang, Lijia; Xin, Xiangjun; Zhang, Qi; Rao, Lan

2018-01-01

Wavelength division multiplexing/time division multiplexing (WDM/TDM) passive optical networks (PON) is being viewed as a promising solution for delivering multiple services and applications. The hybrid WDM / TDM PON uses the wavelength and bandwidth allocation strategy to control the distribution of the wavelength channels in the uplink direction, so that it can ensure the high bandwidth requirements of multiple Optical Network Units (ONUs) while improving the wavelength resource utilization. Through the investigation of the presented dynamic bandwidth allocation algorithms, these algorithms can't satisfy the requirements of different levels of service very well while adapting to the structural characteristics of mixed WDM / TDM PON system. This paper introduces a novel wavelength and bandwidth allocation algorithm to efficiently utilize the bandwidth and support QoS (Quality of Service) guarantees in WDM/TDM PON. Two priority based polling subcycles are introduced in order to increase system efficiency and improve system performance. The fixed priority polling subcycle and dynamic priority polling subcycle follow different principles to implement wavelength and bandwidth allocation according to the priority of different levels of service. A simulation was conducted to study the performance of the priority based polling in dynamic resource allocation algorithm in WDM/TDM PON. The results show that the performance of delay-sensitive services is greatly improved without degrading QoS guarantees for other services. Compared with the traditional dynamic bandwidth allocation algorithms, this algorithm can meet bandwidth needs of different priority traffic class, achieve low loss rate performance, and ensure real-time of high priority traffic class in terms of overall traffic on the network.

45 CFR 400.147 - Priority in provision of services.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-10-01

... 45 Public Welfare 2 2013-10-01 2012-10-01 true Priority in provision of services. 400.147 Section 400.147 Public Welfare Regulations Relating to Public Welfare OFFICE OF REFUGEE RESETTLEMENT... Refugee Social Services Funding and Service Priorities § 400.147 Priority in provision of services. A...

45 CFR 400.147 - Priority in provision of services.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-10-01

... 45 Public Welfare 2 2010-10-01 2010-10-01 false Priority in provision of services. 400.147 Section 400.147 Public Welfare Regulations Relating to Public Welfare OFFICE OF REFUGEE RESETTLEMENT... Refugee Social Services Funding and Service Priorities § 400.147 Priority in provision of services. A...

45 CFR 400.147 - Priority in provision of services.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-10-01

... 45 Public Welfare 2 2014-10-01 2012-10-01 true Priority in provision of services. 400.147 Section 400.147 Public Welfare Regulations Relating to Public Welfare OFFICE OF REFUGEE RESETTLEMENT... Refugee Social Services Funding and Service Priorities § 400.147 Priority in provision of services. A...

45 CFR 400.147 - Priority in provision of services.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-10-01

... 45 Public Welfare 2 2012-10-01 2012-10-01 false Priority in provision of services. 400.147 Section 400.147 Public Welfare Regulations Relating to Public Welfare OFFICE OF REFUGEE RESETTLEMENT... Refugee Social Services Funding and Service Priorities § 400.147 Priority in provision of services. A...

45 CFR 400.147 - Priority in provision of services.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-10-01

... 45 Public Welfare 2 2011-10-01 2011-10-01 false Priority in provision of services. 400.147 Section 400.147 Public Welfare Regulations Relating to Public Welfare OFFICE OF REFUGEE RESETTLEMENT... Refugee Social Services Funding and Service Priorities § 400.147 Priority in provision of services. A...

Quality of antenatal care service provision in health facilities across sub–Saharan Africa: Evidence from nationally representative health facility assessments

PubMed Central

Kanyangarara, Mufaro; Munos, Melinda K; Walker, Neff

2017-01-01

Background Utilization of antenatal care (ANC) services has increased over the past two decades. Continued gains in maternal and newborn health will require an understanding of both access and quality of ANC services. We linked health facility and household survey data to examine the quality of service provision for five ANC interventions across health facilities in sub–Saharan Africa. Methods Using data from 20 nationally representative health facility assessments – the Service Provision Assessment (SPA) and the Service Availability and Readiness Assessment (SARA), we estimated facility level readiness to deliver five ANC interventions: tetanus toxoid vaccine for pregnant women, intermittent preventive treatment for malaria in pregnancy (IPTp), syphilis detection and treatment in pregnancy, iron supplementation and hypertensive disease case management. Facility level indicators were stratified by health facility type, managing authority and location, then linked to estimates of ANC utilization in that stratum from the corresponding Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) to generate population level estimates of the ‘likelihood of appropriate care’. Finally, the association between estimates of the ‘likelihood of appropriate care’ from the linking approach and estimates of coverage levels from the DHS were assessed. Findings A total of 10 534 health facilities were surveyed in the 20 health facility assessments, of which 8742 reported offering ANC services and were included in the analysis. Health facility readiness to deliver IPTp, iron supplementation, and tetanus toxoid vaccination was higher (median: 84.1%, 84.9% and 82.8% respectively) than readiness to deliver hypertensive disease case management and syphilis detection and treatment (median: 23.0% and 19.9% respectively). Coverage of at least 4 ANC visits ranged from 24.8% to 75.8%. Estimates of the likelihood of appropriate care derived from linking health facility and household survey data

Joint terminals and relay optimization for two-way power line information exchange systems with QoS constraints

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wu, Xiaolin; Rong, Yue

2015-12-01

The quality-of-service (QoS) criteria (measured in terms of the minimum capacity requirement in this paper) are very important to practical indoor power line communication (PLC) applications as they greatly affect the user experience. With a two-way multicarrier relay configuration, in this paper we investigate the joint terminals and relay power optimization for the indoor broadband PLC environment, where the relay node works in the amplify-and-forward (AF) mode. As the QoS-constrained power allocation problem is highly non-convex, the globally optimal solution is computationally intractable to obtain. To overcome this challenge, we propose an alternating optimization (AO) method to decompose this problem into three convex/quasi-convex sub-problems. Simulation results demonstrate the fast convergence of the proposed algorithm under practical PLC channel conditions. Compared with the conventional bidirectional direct transmission (BDT) system, the relay-assisted two-way information exchange (R2WX) scheme can meet the same QoS requirement with less total power consumption.

[Evaluation of ecosystem provisioning service and its economic value].

PubMed

Wu, Nan; Gao, Ji-Xi; Sudebilige; Ricketts, Taylor H; Olwero, Nasser; Luo, Zun-Lan

2010-02-01

Aiming at the fact that the current approaches of evaluating the efficacy of ecosystem provisioning service were lack of spatial information and did not take the accessibility of products into account, this paper established an evaluation model to simulate the spatial distribution of ecosystem provisioning service and its economic value, based on ArcGIS 9. 2 and taking the supply and demand factors of ecosystem products into account. The provision of timber product in Laojunshan in 2000 was analyzed with the model. In 2000, the total physical quantity of the timber' s provisioning service in Laojunshan was 11.12 x 10(4) m3 x a(-1), occupying 3.2% of the total increment of timber stock volume. The total provisioning service value of timber was 6669.27 x 10(4) yuan, among which, coniferous forest contributed most (90.41%). Due to the denser distribution of populations and roads in the eastern area of Laojunshan, some parts of the area being located outside of conservancy district, and forests being in scattered distribution, the spatial distribution pattern of the physical quantity of timber's provisioning service was higher in the eastern than in the western area.

Modeling and Analysis of Hybrid Cellular/WLAN Systems with Integrated Service-Based Vertical Handoff Schemes

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Xia, Weiwei; Shen, Lianfeng

We propose two vertical handoff schemes for cellular network and wireless local area network (WLAN) integration: integrated service-based handoff (ISH) and integrated service-based handoff with queue capabilities (ISHQ). Compared with existing handoff schemes in integrated cellular/WLAN networks, the proposed schemes consider a more comprehensive set of system characteristics such as different features of voice and data services, dynamic information about the admitted calls, user mobility and vertical handoffs in two directions. The code division multiple access (CDMA) cellular network and IEEE 802.11e WLAN are taken into account in the proposed schemes. We model the integrated networks by using multi-dimensional Markov chains and the major performance measures are derived for voice and data services. The important system parameters such as thresholds to prioritize handoff voice calls and queue sizes are optimized. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed ISHQ scheme can maximize the utilization of overall bandwidth resources with the best quality of service (QoS) provisioning for voice and data services.

Designing area optimized application-specific network-on-chip architectures while providing hard QoS guarantees.

PubMed

Khawaja, Sajid Gul; Mushtaq, Mian Hamza; Khan, Shoab A; Akram, M Usman; Jamal, Habib Ullah

2015-01-01

With the increase of transistors' density, popularity of System on Chip (SoC) has increased exponentially. As a communication module for SoC, Network on Chip (NoC) framework has been adapted as its backbone. In this paper, we propose a methodology for designing area-optimized application specific NoC while providing hard Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees for real time flows. The novelty of the proposed system lies in derivation of a Mixed Integer Linear Programming model which is then used to generate a resource optimal Network on Chip (NoC) topology and architecture while considering traffic and QoS requirements. We also present the micro-architectural design features used for enabling traffic and latency guarantees and discuss how the solution adapts for dynamic variations in the application traffic. The paper highlights the effectiveness of proposed method by generating resource efficient NoC solutions for both industrial and benchmark applications. The area-optimized results are generated in few seconds by proposed technique, without resorting to heuristics, even for an application with 48 traffic flows.

Designing Area Optimized Application-Specific Network-On-Chip Architectures while Providing Hard QoS Guarantees

PubMed Central

Khawaja, Sajid Gul; Mushtaq, Mian Hamza; Khan, Shoab A.; Akram, M. Usman; Jamal, Habib ullah

2015-01-01

With the increase of transistors' density, popularity of System on Chip (SoC) has increased exponentially. As a communication module for SoC, Network on Chip (NoC) framework has been adapted as its backbone. In this paper, we propose a methodology for designing area-optimized application specific NoC while providing hard Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees for real time flows. The novelty of the proposed system lies in derivation of a Mixed Integer Linear Programming model which is then used to generate a resource optimal Network on Chip (NoC) topology and architecture while considering traffic and QoS requirements. We also present the micro-architectural design features used for enabling traffic and latency guarantees and discuss how the solution adapts for dynamic variations in the application traffic. The paper highlights the effectiveness of proposed method by generating resource efficient NoC solutions for both industrial and benchmark applications. The area-optimized results are generated in few seconds by proposed technique, without resorting to heuristics, even for an application with 48 traffic flows. PMID:25898016

You Can Make Your Facilities Services Provider Part of the College Community.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ledbetter, Randy

2002-01-01

Discusses five attributes that, when well implemented, form the framework for successful relationships between college administration and services companies: reporting relationships, Quality of Service (QoS) measures, formal reports and reviews, employee relations, and subcontractor relations. (EV)

CCSDS Time-Critical Onboard Networking Service

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Parkes, Steve; Schnurr, Rick; Marquart, Jane; Menke, Greg; Ciccone, Massimiliano

2006-01-01

The Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) is developing recommendations for communication services onboard spacecraft. Today many different communication buses are used on spacecraft requiring software with the same basic functionality to be rewritten for each type of bus. This impacts on the application software resulting in custom software for almost every new mission. The Spacecraft Onboard Interface Services (SOIS) working group aims to provide a consistent interface to various onboard buses and sub-networks, enabling a common interface to the application software. The eventual goal is reusable software that can be easily ported to new missions and run on a range of onboard buses without substantial modification. The system engineer will then be able to select a bus based on its performance, power, etc and be confident that a particular choice of bus will not place excessive demands on software development. This paper describes the SOIS Intra-Networking Service which is designed to enable data transfer and multiplexing of a variety of internetworking protocols with a range of quality of service support, over underlying heterogeneous data links. The Intra-network service interface provides users with a common Quality of Service interface when transporting data across a variety of underlying data links. Supported Quality of Service (QoS) elements include: Priority, Resource Reservation and Retry/Redundancy. These three QoS elements combine and map into four TCONS services for onboard data communications: Best Effort, Assured, Reserved, and Guaranteed. Data to be transported is passed to the Intra-network service with a requested QoS. The requested QoS includes the type of service, priority and where appropriate, a channel identifier. The data is de-multiplexed, prioritized, and the required resources for transport are allocated. The data is then passed to the appropriate data link for transfer across the bus. The SOIS supported data links may

Asynchronous Object Storage with QoS for Scientific and Commercial Big Data

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Brim, Michael J; Dillow, David A; Oral, H Sarp

2013-01-01

This paper presents our design for an asynchronous object storage system intended for use in scientific and commercial big data workloads. Use cases from the target workload do- mains are used to motivate the key abstractions used in the application programming interface (API). The architecture of the Scalable Object Store (SOS), a prototype object stor- age system that supports the API s facilities, is presented. The SOS serves as a vehicle for future research into scalable and resilient big data object storage. We briefly review our research into providing efficient storage servers capable of providing quality of service (QoS) contractsmore » relevant for big data use cases.« less

10 CFR 35.80 - Provision of mobile medical service.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-01-01

... 10 Energy 1 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Provision of mobile medical service. 35.80 Section 35.80... § 35.80 Provision of mobile medical service. (a) A licensee providing mobile medical service shall— (1... to ensure compliance with the requirements in Part 20 of this chapter. (b) A mobile medical service...

Evaluation of Drought Implications on Ecosystem Services: Freshwater Provisioning and Food Provisioning in the Upper Mississippi River Basin

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Li, Ping; Omani, Nina; Chaubey, Indrajeet

Drought is one of the most widespread extreme climate events with a potential to alter freshwater availability and related ecosystem services. Given the interconnectedness between freshwater availability and many ecosystem services, including food provisioning, it is important to evaluate the drought implications on freshwater provisioning and food provisioning services. Studies about drought implications on streamflow, nutrient loads, and crop yields have been increased and these variables are all process-based model outputs that could represent ecosystem functions that contribute to the ecosystem services. However, few studies evaluate drought effects on ecosystem services such as freshwater and food provisioning and quantify thesemore » services using an index-based ecosystem service approach. In this study, the drought implications on freshwater and food provisioning services were evaluated for 14 four-digit HUC (Hydrological Unit Codes) subbasins in the Upper Mississippi River Basin (UMRB), using three drought indices: standardized precipitation index (SPI), standardized soil water content index (SSWI), and standardized streamflow index (SSI). The results showed that the seasonal freshwater provisioning was highly affected by the precipitation deficits and/or surpluses in summer and autumn. A greater importance of hydrological drought than meteorological drought implications on freshwater provisioning was evident for the majority of the subbasins, as evidenced by higher correlations between freshwater provisioning and SSI12 than SPI12. Food provisioning was substantially affected by the precipitation and soil water deficits during summer and early autumn, with relatively less effect observed in winter. A greater importance of agricultural drought effects on food provisioning was evident for most of the subbasins during crop reproductive stages. Results from this study may provide insights to help make effective land management decisions in responding to

Evaluation of Drought Implications on Ecosystem Services: Freshwater Provisioning and Food Provisioning in the Upper Mississippi River Basin.

PubMed

Li, Ping; Omani, Nina; Chaubey, Indrajeet; Wei, Xiaomei

2017-05-08

Drought is one of the most widespread extreme climate events with a potential to alter freshwater availability and related ecosystem services. Given the interconnectedness between freshwater availability and many ecosystem services, including food provisioning, it is important to evaluate the drought implications on freshwater provisioning and food provisioning services. Studies about drought implications on streamflow, nutrient loads, and crop yields have been increased and these variables are all process-based model outputs that could represent ecosystem functions that contribute to the ecosystem services. However, few studies evaluate drought effects on ecosystem services such as freshwater and food provisioning and quantify these services using an index-based ecosystem service approach. In this study, the drought implications on freshwater and food provisioning services were evaluated for 14 four-digit HUC (Hydrological Unit Codes) subbasins in the Upper Mississippi River Basin (UMRB), using three drought indices: standardized precipitation index ( SPI ), standardized soil water content index ( SSWI ), and standardized streamflow index ( SSI ). The results showed that the seasonal freshwater provisioning was highly affected by the precipitation deficits and/or surpluses in summer and autumn. A greater importance of hydrological drought than meteorological drought implications on freshwater provisioning was evident for the majority of the subbasins, as evidenced by higher correlations between freshwater provisioning and SSI 12 than SPI 12. Food provisioning was substantially affected by the precipitation and soil water deficits during summer and early autumn, with relatively less effect observed in winter. A greater importance of agricultural drought effects on food provisioning was evident for most of the subbasins during crop reproductive stages. Results from this study may provide insights to help make effective land management decisions in responding to

Evaluation of Drought Implications on Ecosystem Services: Freshwater Provisioning and Food Provisioning in the Upper Mississippi River Basin

PubMed Central

Li, Ping; Omani, Nina; Chaubey, Indrajeet; Wei, Xiaomei

2017-01-01

Drought is one of the most widespread extreme climate events with a potential to alter freshwater availability and related ecosystem services. Given the interconnectedness between freshwater availability and many ecosystem services, including food provisioning, it is important to evaluate the drought implications on freshwater provisioning and food provisioning services. Studies about drought implications on streamflow, nutrient loads, and crop yields have been increased and these variables are all process-based model outputs that could represent ecosystem functions that contribute to the ecosystem services. However, few studies evaluate drought effects on ecosystem services such as freshwater and food provisioning and quantify these services using an index-based ecosystem service approach. In this study, the drought implications on freshwater and food provisioning services were evaluated for 14 four-digit HUC (Hydrological Unit Codes) subbasins in the Upper Mississippi River Basin (UMRB), using three drought indices: standardized precipitation index (SPI), standardized soil water content index (SSWI), and standardized streamflow index (SSI). The results showed that the seasonal freshwater provisioning was highly affected by the precipitation deficits and/or surpluses in summer and autumn. A greater importance of hydrological drought than meteorological drought implications on freshwater provisioning was evident for the majority of the subbasins, as evidenced by higher correlations between freshwater provisioning and SSI12 than SPI12. Food provisioning was substantially affected by the precipitation and soil water deficits during summer and early autumn, with relatively less effect observed in winter. A greater importance of agricultural drought effects on food provisioning was evident for most of the subbasins during crop reproductive stages. Results from this study may provide insights to help make effective land management decisions in responding to extreme

Evaluation of Drought Implications on Ecosystem Services: Freshwater Provisioning and Food Provisioning in the Upper Mississippi River Basin

DOE PAGES

Li, Ping; Omani, Nina; Chaubey, Indrajeet; ...

2017-05-08

Drought is one of the most widespread extreme climate events with a potential to alter freshwater availability and related ecosystem services. Given the interconnectedness between freshwater availability and many ecosystem services, including food provisioning, it is important to evaluate the drought implications on freshwater provisioning and food provisioning services. Studies about drought implications on streamflow, nutrient loads, and crop yields have been increased and these variables are all process-based model outputs that could represent ecosystem functions that contribute to the ecosystem services. However, few studies evaluate drought effects on ecosystem services such as freshwater and food provisioning and quantify thesemore » services using an index-based ecosystem service approach. In this study, the drought implications on freshwater and food provisioning services were evaluated for 14 four-digit HUC (Hydrological Unit Codes) subbasins in the Upper Mississippi River Basin (UMRB), using three drought indices: standardized precipitation index (SPI), standardized soil water content index (SSWI), and standardized streamflow index (SSI). The results showed that the seasonal freshwater provisioning was highly affected by the precipitation deficits and/or surpluses in summer and autumn. A greater importance of hydrological drought than meteorological drought implications on freshwater provisioning was evident for the majority of the subbasins, as evidenced by higher correlations between freshwater provisioning and SSI12 than SPI12. Food provisioning was substantially affected by the precipitation and soil water deficits during summer and early autumn, with relatively less effect observed in winter. A greater importance of agricultural drought effects on food provisioning was evident for most of the subbasins during crop reproductive stages. Results from this study may provide insights to help make effective land management decisions in responding to

Reinforcement Learning Based Web Service Compositions for Mobile Business

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhou, Juan; Chen, Shouming

In this paper, we propose a new solution to Reactive Web Service Composition, via molding with Reinforcement Learning, and introducing modified (alterable) QoS variables into the model as elements in the Markov Decision Process tuple. Moreover, we give an example of Reactive-WSC-based mobile banking, to demonstrate the intrinsic capability of the solution in question of obtaining the optimized service composition, characterized by (alterable) target QoS variable sets with optimized values. Consequently, we come to the conclusion that the solution has decent potentials in boosting customer experiences and qualities of services in Web Services, and those in applications in the whole electronic commerce and business sector.

45 CFR 400.117 - Provision of care and services.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-10-01

... 45 Public Welfare 2 2010-10-01 2010-10-01 false Provision of care and services. 400.117 Section... Child Welfare Services § 400.117 Provision of care and services. (a) A State may provide care and... agency approved or licensed under State law. (b) If a State arranges for the care and services through a...

The provision of ecosystem services in response to global change: Evidences and applications.

PubMed

Lafortezza, Raffaele; Chen, Jiquan

2016-05-01

As a consequence of the global increase in economic and societal prosperity, ecosystems and natural resources have been substantially exploited, degraded, or even destroyed in the last century. To prevent further deprivation of the quality of ecosystems, the ecosystem services concept has become a central issue in environmental studies. A growing number of environmental agencies and organizations worldwide are now embracing integrated approaches to plan and manage ecosystems, sharing a goal to maintain the long-term provision of ecosystem services for sustainability. A daunting challenge in this process is to move from general pronouncements about the tremendous benefits that ecosystems provide to society to defensible assessments of their services. In other words, we must move beyond the scientific evidences of the ecosystem services concept to its practical applications. In this work, we discuss the theoretical foundations and applications of ecosystem services with a focus on the assessment of ecosystem service trade-offs and synergies at various spatial and temporal scales. Here, we offer examples of the main factors related to land use management that may affect the provision of ecosystem services and provide direction for future research on ecosystem services and related nature-based solutions. We also provide a briefing on the major topics covered in this Special Issue, which focuses on the provision of ecosystem services in the context of global change. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Service provision and use of anticoagulants in atrial fibrillation.

PubMed Central

Sudlow, C. M.; Rodgers, H.; Kenny, R. A.; Thomson, R. G.

1995-01-01

Several large trials have shown that the risk of stroke in patients with non-valvar atrial fibrillation is reduced by treatment with warfarin. Implementing this research evidence requires not only an understanding of the trials' results and of the changes that they imply for clinicians' treatment decisions but also an appreciation of the organisation, quantity, and quality of services required to support these changes. Understanding of these implications is crucial for developing services that allow changes in practice to produce reductions in stroke incidence while minimising the risks of treatment. This article considers the developments in service provision that will probably be required to support the changes in clinical practice suggested by the trials' results. These services will be provided largely by doctors, and their development has implications for doctors in both primary and secondary care. Images FIG 1 PMID:7663216

Soil management shapes ecosystem service provision and trade-offs in agricultural landscapes.

PubMed

Tamburini, Giovanni; De Simone, Serena; Sigura, Maurizia; Boscutti, Francesco; Marini, Lorenzo

2016-08-31

Agroecosystems are principally managed to maximize food provisioning even if they receive a large array of supporting and regulating ecosystem services (ESs). Hence, comprehensive studies investigating the effects of local management and landscape composition on the provision of and trade-offs between multiple ESs are urgently needed. We explored the effects of conservation tillage, nitrogen fertilization and landscape composition on six ESs (crop production, disease control, soil fertility, water quality regulation, weed and pest control) in winter cereals. Conservation tillage enhanced soil fertility and pest control, decreased water quality regulation and weed control, without affecting crop production and disease control. Fertilization only influenced crop production by increasing grain yield. Landscape intensification reduced the provision of disease and pest control. We also found tillage and landscape composition to interactively affect water quality regulation and weed control. Under N fertilization, conventional tillage resulted in more trade-offs between ESs than conservation tillage. Our results demonstrate that soil management and landscape composition affect the provision of several ESs and that soil management potentially shapes the trade-offs between them. © 2016 The Author(s).

A novel client service quality measuring model and an eHealthcare mitigating approach.

PubMed

Cheng, L M; Choi, Wai Ping Choi; Wong, Anita Yiu Ming

2016-07-01

Facing population ageing in Hong Kong, the demand of long-term elderly health care services is increasing. The challenge is to support a good quality service under the constraints faced by recent shortage of nursing and care services professionals without redesigning the work flow operated in the existing elderly health care industries. the existing elderly health care industries. The Total QoS measure based on Finite Capacity Queuing Model is a reliable method and an effective measurement for Quality of services. The value is good for measuring the staffing level and offers a measurement for efficiency enhancement when incorporate new technologies like ICT. The implemented system has improved the Quality of Service by more than 14% and the extra released manpower resource will allow clinical care provider to offer further value added services without actually increasing head count. We have developed a novel Quality of Service measurement for Clinical Care services based on multi-queue using finite capacity queue model M/M/c/K/n and the measurement is useful for estimating the shortage of staff resource in a caring institution. It is essential for future integration with the existing widely used assessment model to develop reliable measuring limits which allow an effective measurement of public fund used in health care industries. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Framework for analysis of guaranteed QOS systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chaudhry, Shailender; Choudhary, Alok

1997-01-01

Multimedia data is isochronous in nature and entails managing and delivering high volumes of data. Multiprocessors with their large processing power, vast memory, and fast interconnects, are an ideal candidate for the implementation of multimedia applications. Initially, multiprocessors were designed to execute scientific programs and thus their architecture was optimized to provide low message latency and efficiently support regular communication patterns. Hence, they have a regular network topology and most use wormhole routing. The design offers the benefits of a simple router, small buffer size, and network latency that is almost independent of path length. Among the various multimedia applications, video on demand (VOD) server is well-suited for implementation using parallel multiprocessors. Logical models for VOD servers are presently mapped onto multiprocessors. Our paper provides a framework for calculating bounds on utilization of system resources with which QoS parameters for each isochronous stream can be guaranteed. Effects of the architecture of multiprocessors, and efficiency of various local models and mapping on particular architectures can be investigated within our framework. Our framework is based on rigorous proofs and provides tight bounds. The results obtained may be used as the basis for admission control tests. To illustrate the versatility of our framework, we provide bounds on utilization for various logical models applied to mesh connected architectures for a video on demand server. Our results show that worm hole routing can lead to packets waiting for transmission of other packets that apparently share no common resources. This situation is analogous to head-of-the-line blocking. We find that the provision of multiple VCs per link and multiple flit buffers improves utilization (even under guaranteed QoS parameters). This analogous to parallel iterative matching.

Enabling Broadband as Commodity within Access Networks: A QoS Recipe

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Areizaga, Enrique; Foglar, Andreas; Elizondo, Antonio J.; Geilhardt, Frank

This paper describes the QoS features that will transform the access networks landscape in order to bring “Broadband” as a commodity while setting up the pillars of the “Future Media Internet”. Quality of Experience is obviously key for emerging and future services. Broadcasting services will first need to equal the QoE of their counterparts in the Open-air market (for IP-TV examples would be artifact-free, no picture freezing, fast zapping times) and offer new features often using interactivity (Time-shifted TV, access to more content, 3DTV with feeling of presence). The huge variety of communications alternatives will lead to different requirements per customer, whose needs will also be dependent on parameters like where the connection is made, the time of the day/day of the week/period of the year or even his/her mood. Today’s networks, designed for providing just Broadband connectivity, will not be enough to satisfy customer’s needs and will necessarily support the introduction of new and innovative services. The Networks of the future should learn from the way the users are communicating, what services they are using, where, when, and how, and adapt accordingly.

42 CFR 456.6 - Review by State medical agency of appropriateness and quality of services.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-10-01

... and quality of services. 456.6 Section 456.6 Public Health CENTERS FOR MEDICARE & MEDICAID SERVICES... Provisions § 456.6 Review by State medical agency of appropriateness and quality of services. (a) The... professional health personnel of the appropriateness and quality of Medicaid services. (b) The purpose of this...

Clinical and perceived quality of care for maternal, neonatal and antenatal care in Kenya and Namibia: the service provision assessment.

PubMed

Diamond-Smith, Nadia; Sudhinaraset, May; Montagu, Dominic

2016-08-11

The majority of women in sub-Saharan Africa now deliver in a facility, however, little is known about the quality of services for maternal and newborn basic and emergency care, nor how this is associated with patient's perception of their experiences. Using data from the Service Provision Assessment (SPA) survey from Kenya 2010 and Namibia 2009, we explore whether facilities have the necessary signal functions for providing emergency and basic maternal (EmOC) and newborn care (EmNC), and antenatal care (ANC) using descriptives and multivariate regression. We explore differences by type of facility (hospital, center or other) and by private and public facilities. Finally, we see if patient satisfaction (taken from exit surveys at antenatal care) is associated with the quality of services (specific services provided). We find that most facilities do not have all of the signal functions, with 46 and 27 % in Kenya and 18 and 5 % in Namibia of facilities have high/basic scores in routine and emergency obstetric care, respectively. We found that hospitals preform better than centers in general and few differences emerged between public and private facilities. Patient perceptions were not consistently associated with services provided; however, patients had fewer complaints in private compared to public facilities in Kenya (-0.46 fewer complaints in private) and smaller facilities compared to larger in Namibia (-0.26 fewer complaints in smaller facilities). Service quality itself (measured in scores), however, was only significantly better in Kenya for EmOC and EmNC. This analysis sheds light on the inadequate levels of care for saving maternal and newborn lives in most facilities in two countries of Africa. It also highlights the disconnect between patients' perceptions and clinical quality of services. More effort is needed to ensure that high quality supply of services is present to meet growing demand as an increasing number of women deliver in facilities.

A Study of Quality of Service Communication for High-Speed Packet-Switching Computer Sub-Networks

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Cui, Zhenqian

1999-01-01

With the development of high-speed networking technology, computer networks, including local-area networks (LANs), wide-area networks (WANs) and the Internet, are extending their traditional roles of carrying computer data. They are being used for Internet telephony, multimedia applications such as conferencing and video on demand, distributed simulations, and other real-time applications. LANs are even used for distributed real-time process control and computing as a cost-effective approach. Differing from traditional data transfer, these new classes of high-speed network applications (video, audio, real-time process control, and others) are delay sensitive. The usefulness of data depends not only on the correctness of received data, but also the time that data are received. In other words, these new classes of applications require networks to provide guaranteed services or quality of service (QoS). Quality of service can be defined by a set of parameters and reflects a user's expectation about the underlying network's behavior. Traditionally, distinct services are provided by different kinds of networks. Voice services are provided by telephone networks, video services are provided by cable networks, and data transfer services are provided by computer networks. A single network providing different services is called an integrated-services network.

Policy-Based Middleware for QoS Management and Signaling in the Evolved Packet System

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Good, Richard; Gouveia, Fabricio; Magedanz, Thomas; Ventura, Neco

The 3GPP are currently finalizing their Evolved Packet System (EPS) with the Evolved Packet Core (EPC) central to this framework. The EPC is a simplified, flat, all IP-based architecture that supports mobility between heterogeneous access networks and incorporates an evolved QoS concept based on the 3GPP Policy Control and Charging (PCC) framework. The IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) is an IP service element within the EPS, introduced for the rapid provisioning of innovative multimedia services. The evolved PCC framework extends the scope of operation and defines new interactions - in particular the S9 reference point is introduced to facilitate inter-domain PCC communication. This paper proposes an enhancement to the IMS/PCC framework that uses SIP routing information to discover signaling and media paths. This mechanism uses standardized IMS/PCC operations and allows applications to effectively issue resource requests from their home domain enabling QoS-connectivity across multiple domains. Because the mechanism operates at the service control layer it does not require any significant transport layer modifications or the sharing of potentially sensitive internal topology information. The evolved PCC architecture and inter-domain route discovery mechanisms were implemented in an evaluation testbed and performed favorably without adversely effecting end user experience.

Provision of oncology services in remote rural areas: a Scottish perspective.

PubMed

Smith, S M; Campbell, N C

2004-05-01

There is a paucity of research into rural health care services. In particular little is known about the provision of specialist cancer services for patients who live in remote rural areas of the UK. This study set out to investigate current models of medical and clinical oncology care in Scotland. A national survey with key health professionals was conducted to identify rural oncology schemes currently in operation. Detailed quantitative data about the schemes together with qualitative data on how health professionals view current models of care were collected by a computer-assisted telephone survey. Schemes that currently provide outpatient and chemotherapy oncology services for remote rural patients fell into three categories: central clinics (5); shared care outreach clinics with chemotherapy provision (11); and shared care outreach clinics without chemotherapy provision (7). All radiotherapy was conducted at central clinics (5). Widely varying practices in delivery of cancer care were found across the country. The main issues for professionals about current models of care involved expertise, travelling and accessibility (for patients), communication and expansion of the rural service. Nation-wide consistency in cancer care has still to be achieved. Travelling for treatment was seen to take its toll on all patients but particularly for the very remote, elderly and poor. Most professionals believe that an expansion of rural services would be of benefit to these patients. It is clear, however, that the proper infrastructure needs to be in place in terms of local expertise, ensured quality of care, and good communication links with cancer centres before this could happen.

An Approach for Quality of Service Management

DTIC Science & Technology

1998-10-01

architecture enables us to quantitatively measure QoS, and to analytically plan and allocate resource. This work was supported in part by the Defense...in their requirements for the rate of services and resources available to them at the time of use of the application systems. Therefore there is an...system should be able to reconcile these different demands to maximize the user’s preference and to make the most effective use of the system. So it

Development of a Hybrid Course on Wheelchair Service Provision for clinicians in international contexts.

PubMed

Burrola-Mendez, Yohali; Goldberg, Mary; Gartz, Rachel; Pearlman, Jon

2018-01-01

Wheelchair users worldwide are at high risk of developing secondary health conditions and premature death due to inappropriate wheelchair provision by untrained providers. The International Society of Wheelchair Professionals (ISWP) has developed a Hybrid Course based on the World Health Organization's Wheelchair Service Training Package-Basic Level. The Hybrid Course leverages online modules designed for low-bandwidth internet access that reduces the in-person training exposure from five to three and a half days, making it less expensive and more convenient for both trainees and trainers. The Hybrid Course was designed using a systematic approach guided by an international group of stakeholders. The development followed the Quality Matters Higher Educational Rubric, web design guidelines for low bandwidth, experts' opinions, and the best practices for blended course design. A quasi-experimental approach was used to evaluate the effectiveness of the Hybrid Course taken by six graduate students in Rehabilitation Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh by measuring pre- and post knowledge using the validated ISWP Wheelchair Service Provision-Basic Test. The outcome measure was assessed using a paired sample t-test between pretest and posttest scores. The quality of the Hybrid Course was evaluated by three external reviewers using the Quality Matters Higher Educational Rubric who were blind to each others' evaluation and the results of the training intervention. Hybrid Course participants reported significant increases in scores on the ISWP Wheelchair Service Provision-Basic Test after participating in the training, with an average increase of 10.84±5.42, p = 0.004, Cohen's d = 1.99. In addition, the Hybrid Course met the Quality Matters Standards in two out of three evaluations and reported a percentage of agreement between evaluators of 84%. The Hybrid Course met quality standards and proved to be effective in increasing basic level wheelchair knowledge in a group

Resource optimization scheme for multimedia-enabled wireless mesh networks.

PubMed

Ali, Amjad; Ahmed, Muhammad Ejaz; Piran, Md Jalil; Suh, Doug Young

2014-08-08

Wireless mesh networking is a promising technology that can support numerous multimedia applications. Multimedia applications have stringent quality of service (QoS) requirements, i.e., bandwidth, delay, jitter, and packet loss ratio. Enabling such QoS-demanding applications over wireless mesh networks (WMNs) require QoS provisioning routing protocols that lead to the network resource underutilization problem. Moreover, random topology deployment leads to have some unused network resources. Therefore, resource optimization is one of the most critical design issues in multi-hop, multi-radio WMNs enabled with multimedia applications. Resource optimization has been studied extensively in the literature for wireless Ad Hoc and sensor networks, but existing studies have not considered resource underutilization issues caused by QoS provisioning routing and random topology deployment. Finding a QoS-provisioned path in wireless mesh networks is an NP complete problem. In this paper, we propose a novel Integer Linear Programming (ILP) optimization model to reconstruct the optimal connected mesh backbone topology with a minimum number of links and relay nodes which satisfies the given end-to-end QoS demands for multimedia traffic and identification of extra resources, while maintaining redundancy. We further propose a polynomial time heuristic algorithm called Link and Node Removal Considering Residual Capacity and Traffic Demands (LNR-RCTD). Simulation studies prove that our heuristic algorithm provides near-optimal results and saves about 20% of resources from being wasted by QoS provisioning routing and random topology deployment.

Resource Optimization Scheme for Multimedia-Enabled Wireless Mesh Networks

PubMed Central

Ali, Amjad; Ahmed, Muhammad Ejaz; Piran, Md. Jalil; Suh, Doug Young

2014-01-01

Wireless mesh networking is a promising technology that can support numerous multimedia applications. Multimedia applications have stringent quality of service (QoS) requirements, i.e., bandwidth, delay, jitter, and packet loss ratio. Enabling such QoS-demanding applications over wireless mesh networks (WMNs) require QoS provisioning routing protocols that lead to the network resource underutilization problem. Moreover, random topology deployment leads to have some unused network resources. Therefore, resource optimization is one of the most critical design issues in multi-hop, multi-radio WMNs enabled with multimedia applications. Resource optimization has been studied extensively in the literature for wireless Ad Hoc and sensor networks, but existing studies have not considered resource underutilization issues caused by QoS provisioning routing and random topology deployment. Finding a QoS-provisioned path in wireless mesh networks is an NP complete problem. In this paper, we propose a novel Integer Linear Programming (ILP) optimization model to reconstruct the optimal connected mesh backbone topology with a minimum number of links and relay nodes which satisfies the given end-to-end QoS demands for multimedia traffic and identification of extra resources, while maintaining redundancy. We further propose a polynomial time heuristic algorithm called Link and Node Removal Considering Residual Capacity and Traffic Demands (LNR-RCTD). Simulation studies prove that our heuristic algorithm provides near-optimal results and saves about 20% of resources from being wasted by QoS provisioning routing and random topology deployment. PMID:25111241

A fuzzy call admission control scheme in wireless networks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ma, Yufeng; Gong, Shenguang; Hu, Xiulin; Zhang, Yunyu

2007-11-01

Scarcity of the spectrum resource and mobility of users make quality of service (QoS) provision a critical issue in wireless networks. This paper presents a fuzzy call admission control scheme to meet the requirement of the QoS. A performance measure is formed as a weighted linear function of new call and handoff call blocking probabilities. Simulation compares the proposed fuzzy scheme with an adaptive channel reservation scheme. Simulation results show that fuzzy scheme has a better robust performance in terms of average blocking criterion.

Place and provision: mapping mental health advocacy services in London.

PubMed

Foley, Ronan; Platzer, Hazel

2007-02-01

The National Health Service (NHS) Executive for London carried out an investigation in 2002 as part of their wider mental health strategy to establish whether existing mental health advocacy provision in the city was meeting need. The project took a two-part approach, with an emphasis on, (a) mapping the provision of advocacy services and, (b) cartographic mapping of service location and catchments. Data were collected through a detailed questionnaire with service providers in collaboration with the Greater London Mental Health Advocacy Network (GLMHAN) and additional health and government sources. The service mapping identified some key statistics on funding, caseloads and models of service provision with an additional emphasis on coverage, capacity, and funding stability. The questionnaire was augmented by interviews and focus groups with commissioners, service providers and service users and identified differing perspectives and problems, which informed the different perspectives of each of these groups. The cartographic mapping exercise demonstrated a spatially-even provision of mental health advocacy services across the city with each borough being served by at least one local service as well as by London wide specialist schemes. However, at local level, no one borough had the full range of specialist provision to match local demographic need. Ultimately the research assisted the Advisory Group in providing commissioning agencies with clear information on the current status of city-wide mental health advocacy services, and on gaps in existing advocacy provision alongside previously unconsidered geographical and service dimensions of that provision.

Pricing the Services in Dynamic Environment: Agent Pricing Model

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Žagar, Drago; Rupčić, Slavko; Rimac-Drlje, Snježana

New Internet applications and services as well as new user demands open many new issues concerning dynamic management of quality of service and price for received service, respectively. The main goals of Internet service providers are to maximize profit and maintain a negotiated quality of service. From the users' perspective the main goal is to maximize ratio of received QoS and costs of service. However, achieving these objectives could become very complex if we know that Internet service users might during the session become highly dynamic and proactive. This connotes changes in user profile or network provider/s profile caused by high level of user mobility or variable level of user demands. This paper proposes a new agent based pricing architecture for serving the highly dynamic customers in context of dynamic user/network environment. The proposed architecture comprises main aspects and basic parameters that will enable objective and transparent assessment of the costs for the service those Internet users receive while dynamically change QoS demands and cost profile.

75 FR 62429 - Notice of Intent to Award-Grant Awards for the Provision of Civil Legal Services to Eligible Low...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2010-10-08

... LEGAL SERVICES CORPORATION Notice of Intent to Award--Grant Awards for the Provision of Civil Legal Services to Eligible Low-Income Clients Beginning January 1, 2011 AGENCY: Legal Services... economical and effective delivery of high quality civil legal services to eligible low-income clients...

Global Mapping of Provisioning Ecosystem Services

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bingham, Lisa; Straatsma, Menno; Karssenberg, Derek

2016-04-01

Attributing monetary value to ecosystem services for decision-making has become more relevant as a basis for decision-making. There are a number of problematic aspects of the calculations, including consistency of economy represented (e.g., purchasing price, production price) and determining which ecosystem subservices to include in a valuation. While several authors have proposed methods for calculating ecosystem services and calculations are presented for global and regional studies, the calculations are mostly broken down into biomes and regions without showing spatially explicit results. The key to decision-making for governments is to be able to make spatial-based decisions because a large spatial variation may exist within a biome or region. Our objective was to compute the spatial distribution of global ecosystem services based on 89 subservices. Initially, only the provisioning ecosystem service category is presented. The provisioning ecosystem service category was calculated using 6 ecosystem services (food, water, raw materials, genetic resources, medical resources, and ornaments) divided into 41 subservices. Global data sets were obtained from a variety of governmental and research agencies for the year 2005 because this is the most data complete and recent year available. All data originated either in tabular or grid formats and were disaggregated to 10 km cell length grids. A lookup table with production values by subservice by country were disaggregated over the economic zone (either marine, land, or combination) based on the spatial existence of the subservice (e.g. forest cover, crop land, non-arable land). Values express the production price in international dollars per hectare. The ecosystem services and the ecosystem service category(ies) maps may be used to show spatial variation of a service within and between countries as well as to specifically show the values within specific regions (e.g. countries, continents), biomes (e.g. coastal, forest

Optimal Resource Allocation under Fair QoS in Multi-tier Server Systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Akai, Hirokazu; Ushio, Toshimitsu; Hayashi, Naoki

Recent development of network technology realizes multi-tier server systems, where several tiers perform functionally different processing requested by clients. It is an important issue to allocate resources of the systems to clients dynamically based on their current requests. On the other hand, Q-RAM has been proposed for resource allocation in real-time systems. In the server systems, it is important that execution results of all applications requested by clients are the same QoS(quality of service) level. In this paper, we extend Q-RAM to multi-tier server systems and propose a method for optimal resource allocation with fairness of the QoS levels of clients’ requests. We also consider an assignment problem of physical machines to be sleep in each tier sothat the energy consumption is minimized.

Childhood bereavement services: a survey of UK provision.

PubMed

Rolls, L; Payne, S

2003-07-01

The purpose of the study was to identify the location, range and type of childhood bereavement service provision in the UK. A questionnaire was mailed to 127 services who were either solely dedicated to childhood bereavement or who offered a service within the range of work of a host organization and for which there was a supporting organizational structure. Responses were received from 108 services (a response rate of 85%). The findings identified that 85% of childhood bereavement services are located in the voluntary sector; 14% are dedicated childhood bereavement services, while 86% are offered as part of a host organization. Forty-four per cent of host organizations are hospices. The majority of services (73%) relied on both paid and unpaid staff, with 11% relying entirely on paid staff and 14% of services relying entirely on unpaid staff. The interventions offered ranged from individual family work (86%), individual child work (62%), groupwork with families (53%) and groupwork with children (45%). In addition, services offered prebereavement support (64%), a 'drop-in' service (17%), information and advice (95%), training (32%) and the provision of resources (88%). As well as offering a service to children and their families, 74% of childhood bereavement services provided a service to 'secondary users', such as schools (66%), the emergency services (28%) and other professionals (63%). In terms of funding, 12% of services relied solely on external sources of funding, including donations, legacies, revenue from the host organization or grants, while 12% of services relied solely on internal sources of funding, including fundraising and training. The majority of services (73%), however, gained income from a range of sources. The study identifies the diversity of provision that has implications for the evaluation of childhood bereavement services.

Capacity allocation mechanism based on differentiated QoS in 60 GHz radio-over-fiber local access network

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kou, Yanbin; Liu, Siming; Zhang, Weiheng; Shen, Guansheng; Tian, Huiping

2017-03-01

We present a dynamic capacity allocation mechanism based on the Quality of Service (QoS) for different mobile users (MU) in 60 GHz radio-over-fiber (RoF) local access networks. The proposed mechanism is capable for collecting the request information of MUs to build a full list of MU capacity demands and service types at the Central Office (CO). A hybrid algorithm is introduced to implement the capacity allocation which can satisfy the requirements of different MUs at different network traffic loads. Compared with the weight dynamic frames assignment (WDFA) scheme, the Hybrid scheme can keep high priority MUs in low delay and maintain the packet loss rate less than 1% simultaneously. At the same time, low priority MUs have a relatively better performance.

Renewing focus on family planning service quality globally.

PubMed

Hancock, Nancy L; Stuart, Gretchen S; Tang, Jennifer H; Chibwesha, Carla J; Stringer, Jeffrey S A; Chi, Benjamin H

2016-01-01

Reducing the global unmet need for contraception is currently a priority for many governments, multi-lateral initiatives, non-governmental organizations, and donors. Evidence strongly suggests that the provision of quality family planning services can increase uptake, prevalence, and continuation of contraception. While an accepted framework to define the components of family planning service quality exists, translating this framework into assessment tools that are accessible, easily utilized, and valid for service providers has remained a challenge. We propose new approaches to improve the standardization and accessibility of family planning service quality assessment tools to simplify family planning service quality evaluation. With easier approaches to program evaluation, quality improvements can be performed more swiftly to help increase uptake and continuation of contraception to improve the health of women and their families.

Ephedrine QoS: An Antidote to Slow, Congested, Bufferless NoCs

PubMed Central

Fang, Juan; Yao, Zhicheng; Sui, Xiufeng; Bao, Yungang

2014-01-01

Datacenters consolidate diverse applications to improve utilization. However when multiple applications are colocated on such platforms, contention for shared resources like networks-on-chip (NoCs) can degrade the performance of latency-critical online services (high-priority applications). Recently proposed bufferless NoCs (Nychis et al.) have the advantages of requiring less area and power, but they pose challenges in quality-of-service (QoS) support, which usually relies on buffer-based virtual channels (VCs). We propose QBLESS, a QoS-aware bufferless NoC scheme for datacenters. QBLESS consists of two components: a routing mechanism (QBLESS-R) that can substantially reduce flit deflection for high-priority applications and a congestion-control mechanism (QBLESS-CC) that guarantees performance for high-priority applications and improves overall system throughput. We use trace-driven simulation to model a 64-core system, finding that, when compared to BLESS, a previous state-of-the-art bufferless NoC design, QBLESS, improves performance of high-priority applications by an average of 33.2% and reduces network-hops by an average of 42.8%. PMID:25250386

Nursing Unit Environment Associated with Provision of Language Services in Pediatric Hospices.

PubMed

Lindley, Lisa C; Held, Mary L; Henley, Kristen M; Miller, Kathryn A; Pedziwol, Katherine E; Rumley, Laurie E

2017-04-01

Provision of language services in pediatric hospice enables nurses to communicate effectively with patients who have limited English proficiency. Language barriers contribute to ethnic disparities in health care. While language service use corresponds with improved patient comprehension of illness and care options, we lack an understanding of how the nurse work environment affects the provision of these services. Data were obtained from the 2007 National Home and Hospice Care Survey and included a study sample of 1251 pediatric hospice agencies. Variable selection was guided by structural contingency theory, which posits that organizational effectiveness is dependent upon how well an organization's structure relates to its context. Using multivariate logistic regression, we analyzed the extent to which nursing unit environment predicted provision of translation services and interpreter services. The majority of hospices provided translation services (74.9 %) and interpreter services (87.1 %). Four variables predicted translation services: registered nurse (RN) unit size, RN leadership, RN medical expertise, and for-profit status. RN medical expertise and having a safety climate within the hospice corresponded with provision of interpreter services. Findings indicate that nursing unit environment predicts provision of language services. Hospices with more specialized RNs and a stronger safety climate might include staffs who are dedicated to best care provision, including language services. This study provides valuable data on the nurse work environment as a predictor of language services provision, which can better serve patients with limited English proficiency and ultimately reduce ethnic disparities in end-of-life care for children and their families.

Nursing unit environment associated with provision of language services in pediatric hospices

PubMed Central

Lindley, Lisa C.; Held, Mary L.; Henley, Kristen M.; Miller, Kathryn A.; Pedziwol, Katherine E.; Rumley, Laurie E.

2016-01-01

Background Provision of language services in pediatric hospice enables nurses to communicate effectively with patients who have limited English proficiency. Language barriers contribute to ethnic disparities in health care. While language service use corresponds with improved patient comprehension of illness and care options, we lack an understanding of how the nurse work environment affects the provision of these services. Methods Data were obtained from the 2007 National Home and Hospice Care Survey and included a study sample of 1,251 pediatric hospice agencies. Variable selection was guided by Structural Contingency Theory, which posits that organizational effectiveness is dependent upon how well an organization’s structure relates to its context. Using multivariate logistic regression, we analyzed the extent to which nursing unit environment predicted provision of translation services and interpreter services. Results The majority of hospices provided translation services (74.9%) and interpreter services (87.1%). Four variables predicted translation services: registered nurse (RN) unit size, RN leadership, RN medical expertise, and for-profit status. RN medical expertise and having a safety climate within the hospice corresponded with provision of interpreter services. Conclusions Findings indicate that nursing unit environment predict provision of language services. Hospices with more specialized RNs and a stronger safety climate might include staff who are dedicated to best care provision, including language services. This study provides valuable data on the nurse work environment as a predictor of language services provision, which can better serve patients with limited English proficiency, and ultimately reduce ethnic disparities in end-of-life care for children and their families. PMID:27059050

31 CFR 588.405 - Provision of services.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-07-01

... 31 Money and Finance: Treasury 3 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Provision of services. 588.405 Section 588.405 Money and Finance: Treasury Regulations Relating to Money and Finance (Continued) OFFICE..., accounting, financial, brokering, freight forwarding, transportation, public relations, or other services to...

Power-efficient distributed resource allocation under goodput QoS constraints for heterogeneous networks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Andreotti, Riccardo; Del Fiorentino, Paolo; Giannetti, Filippo; Lottici, Vincenzo

2016-12-01

This work proposes a distributed resource allocation (RA) algorithm for packet bit-interleaved coded OFDM transmissions in the uplink of heterogeneous networks (HetNets), characterized by small cells deployed over a macrocell area and sharing the same band. Every user allocates its transmission resources, i.e., bits per active subcarrier, coding rate, and power per subcarrier, to minimize the power consumption while both guaranteeing a target quality of service (QoS) and accounting for the interference inflicted by other users transmitting over the same band. The QoS consists of the number of information bits delivered in error-free packets per unit of time, or goodput (GP), estimated at the transmitter by resorting to an efficient effective SNR mapping technique. First, the RA problem is solved in the point-to-point case, thus deriving an approximate yet accurate closed-form expression for the power allocation (PA). Then, the interference-limited HetNet case is examined, where the RA problem is described as a non-cooperative game, providing a solution in terms of generalized Nash equilibrium. Thanks to the closed-form of the PA, the solution analysis is based on the best response concept. Hence, sufficient conditions for existence and uniqueness of the solution are analytically derived, along with a distributed algorithm capable of reaching the game equilibrium.

45 CFR 1306.30 - Provisions of comprehensive child development services.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-10-01

... 45 Public Welfare 4 2011-10-01 2011-10-01 false Provisions of comprehensive child development... Start Program Options § 1306.30 Provisions of comprehensive child development services. (a) All Head Start grantees must provide comprehensive child development services, as defined in the Head Start...

45 CFR 1306.30 - Provisions of comprehensive child development services.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-10-01

... 45 Public Welfare 4 2014-10-01 2014-10-01 false Provisions of comprehensive child development... Start Program Options § 1306.30 Provisions of comprehensive child development services. (a) All Head Start grantees must provide comprehensive child development services, as defined in the Head Start...

45 CFR 1306.30 - Provisions of comprehensive child development services.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-10-01

... 45 Public Welfare 4 2013-10-01 2013-10-01 false Provisions of comprehensive child development... Start Program Options § 1306.30 Provisions of comprehensive child development services. (a) All Head Start grantees must provide comprehensive child development services, as defined in the Head Start...

45 CFR 1306.30 - Provisions of comprehensive child development services.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-10-01

... 45 Public Welfare 4 2012-10-01 2012-10-01 false Provisions of comprehensive child development... Start Program Options § 1306.30 Provisions of comprehensive child development services. (a) All Head Start grantees must provide comprehensive child development services, as defined in the Head Start...

Perceptions of retired professional soccer players about the provision of support services before and after retirement.

PubMed

Drawer, S; Fuller, C W

2002-02-01

To determine the views of retired players about the provision of support services in English professional soccer before and after retirement and to assess the impact of career ending injury on these views. An anonymous self administered questionnaire was distributed to 500 former players registered with the English Professional Footballers' Association. The questions asked about personal details, current medical status, reasons for retirement, perceptions of the provision and quality of support services, and use of prophylactic treatments while injured. Of the 500 questionnaires distributed, 185 (37%) were returned. The Professional Footballers' Association provided significantly (p<0.001) more help and advice to retired players on medical, financial, career, and educational matters than any other organisation. Although respondents showed some satisfaction with the provision of medical support, they were significantly (p<0.001) less satisfied with the provision of sports science (23%) and education/welfare (19%) support. Respondents who had retired through injury, however, were more dissatisfied with the provision of all services. Significantly (p<0.001) more respondents agreed with the view that injuries would reduce income earning potential, contribute to medical problems, and restrict the duration of their playing career. Respondents who had been medically diagnosed with osteoarthritis were significantly more likely, at some time, to have regularly received steroid injections while injured. The results presented are consistent with other evidence that the provision of injury prevention and socioeconomic services at professional soccer clubs is inadequate. The soccer industry should therefore develop a long term strategy for managing the needs of players who are forced to retire through injury.

Reliable Execution Based on CPN and Skyline Optimization for Web Service Composition

PubMed Central

Ha, Weitao; Zhang, Guojun

2013-01-01

With development of SOA, the complex problem can be solved by combining available individual services and ordering them to best suit user's requirements. Web services composition is widely used in business environment. With the features of inherent autonomy and heterogeneity for component web services, it is difficult to predict the behavior of the overall composite service. Therefore, transactional properties and nonfunctional quality of service (QoS) properties are crucial for selecting the web services to take part in the composition. Transactional properties ensure reliability of composite Web service, and QoS properties can identify the best candidate web services from a set of functionally equivalent services. In this paper we define a Colored Petri Net (CPN) model which involves transactional properties of web services in the composition process. To ensure reliable and correct execution, unfolding processes of the CPN are followed. The execution of transactional composition Web service (TCWS) is formalized by CPN properties. To identify the best services of QoS properties from candidate service sets formed in the TCSW-CPN, we use skyline computation to retrieve dominant Web service. It can overcome that the reduction of individual scores to an overall similarity leads to significant information loss. We evaluate our approach experimentally using both real and synthetically generated datasets. PMID:23935431

Reliable execution based on CPN and skyline optimization for Web service composition.

PubMed

Chen, Liping; Ha, Weitao; Zhang, Guojun

2013-01-01

With development of SOA, the complex problem can be solved by combining available individual services and ordering them to best suit user's requirements. Web services composition is widely used in business environment. With the features of inherent autonomy and heterogeneity for component web services, it is difficult to predict the behavior of the overall composite service. Therefore, transactional properties and nonfunctional quality of service (QoS) properties are crucial for selecting the web services to take part in the composition. Transactional properties ensure reliability of composite Web service, and QoS properties can identify the best candidate web services from a set of functionally equivalent services. In this paper we define a Colored Petri Net (CPN) model which involves transactional properties of web services in the composition process. To ensure reliable and correct execution, unfolding processes of the CPN are followed. The execution of transactional composition Web service (TCWS) is formalized by CPN properties. To identify the best services of QoS properties from candidate service sets formed in the TCSW-CPN, we use skyline computation to retrieve dominant Web service. It can overcome that the reduction of individual scores to an overall similarity leads to significant information loss. We evaluate our approach experimentally using both real and synthetically generated datasets.

Arrangements for Assuring and Improving the Quality of Provision and Services in Scotland's Colleges

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Education Scotland, 2016

2016-01-01

The Scottish Funding Council (SFC) with Education Scotland is introducing new arrangements for assuring and improving the quality of provision delivered by Scotland's colleges commencing in AY 2016-17. The arrangements have been developed by Education Scotland and SFC at the end of a four-year cycle of external arrangements for review of colleges.…

25 CFR 23.49 - Fair and uniform provision of services.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-04-01

... 25 Indians 1 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false Fair and uniform provision of services. 23.49 Section 23.49 Indians BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS, DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR HUMAN SERVICES INDIAN CHILD WELFARE ACT General and Uniform Grant Administration Provisions and Requirements § 23.49 Fair and uniform...

Using plant traits to evaluate the resistance and resilience of ecosystem service provision

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kohler, Marina; Devaux, Caroline; Fontana, Veronika; Grigulis, Karl; Lavorel, Sandra; Leitinger, Georg; Schirpke, Uta; Tasser, Erich; Tappeiner, Ulrike

2015-04-01

Mountain grassland ecosystems are a hotspot of biodiversity and deliver a multiplicity of ecosystem services. Due to a long history of well adapted agricultural use and specific environmental conditions (e.g. slope, altitude, or climate), various types of grassland ecosystems have developed. Each of them shows specific attributes in forms of plant communities and abiotic characteristics, which lead to particular ranges of ecosystem service provision. However, ongoing climate and societal changes thread plant community composition and may lead to changes in plant traits, and therefore, the provision of ecosystem services. Currently it is not clear how vulnerable these ecosystems are to disturbances, or whether they have developed a high resilience over time. Thus, it is essential to know the ranges of resistance and resilience of an ecosystem service. We, therefore, developed a static approach based on community weighted mean plant traits and abiotic parameters to measure the boundaries of resistance and resilience of each ecosystem service separately. By calculating actual minimum and maximum amounts of ecosystem services, we define the range of resistance of an ecosystem service. We then calculate the potential amount of an ecosystem services (via simulated plant communities) by assuming that no species is lost or added to the system. By comparing actual and potential values, we can estimate whether an ecosystem service is in danger to lose its resilience. We selected different ecosystem services related to mountain grassland ecosystems, e.g. carbon storage, forage quality, forage quantity, and soil fertility. We analysed each ecosystem service for different grassland management types, covering meadows and pastures of very low land-use intensity through to grasslands of high land-use intensity. Results indicate that certain ecosystem services have a higher resilience than others (e.g. carbon storage) for all management types. The ecosystem may provide steady

Steering healthcare service delivery: a regulatory perspective.

PubMed

Prakash, Gyan

2015-01-01

The purpose of this paper is to explore regulation in India's healthcare sector and makes recommendations needed for enhancing the healthcare service. The literature was reviewed to understand healthcare's regulatory context. To understand the current healthcare system, qualitative data were collected from state-level officials, public and private hospital staff. A patient survey was performed to assess service quality (QoS). Regulation plays a central role in driving healthcare QoS. India needs to strengthen market and institutional co-production based approaches for steering its healthcare in which delivery processes are complex and pose different challenges. This study assesses current healthcare regulation in an Indian state and presents a framework for studying and strengthening regulation. Agile regulation should be based on service delivery issues (pull approach) rather than monitoring and sanctions based regulatory environment (push approach). Healthcare pitfalls across the world seem to follow similar follies. India's complexity and experience is useful for emerging and developed economies. The author reviewed around 70 publications and synthesised them in healthcare regulatory contexts. Patient's perception of private providers could be a key input towards steering regulation. Identifying gaps across QoS dimensions would be useful in taking corrective measures.

Probabilistic QoS Analysis In Wireless Sensor Networks

DTIC Science & Technology

2012-04-01

and A.O. Fapojuwo. TDMA scheduling with optimized energy efficiency and minimum delay in clustered wireless sensor networks . IEEE Trans. on Mobile...Research Computer Science and Engineering, Department of 5-1-2012 Probabilistic QoS Analysis in Wireless Sensor Networks Yunbo Wang University of...Wang, Yunbo, "Probabilistic QoS Analysis in Wireless Sensor Networks " (2012). Computer Science and Engineering: Theses, Dissertations, and Student

Provider perceptions of reproductive health service quality in jordanian public community health centers.

PubMed

Al-Qutob, Raeda; Nasir, Laeth S

2008-05-01

Enhancing the quality of reproductive health care delivery in developing countries is a key prerequisite to increased utilization and sustainability of these services in the target population. Our objective was to assess the perception of quality of reproductive health (RH) care services provided by Jordanian Ministry of Health community-based centers from the perspective of service providers in these settings. A purposeful nationwide sample of 50 primary health care providers took part in five focus group discussions with the purpose of exploring their perceptions of the quality of care provided by their centers and perceived barriers to the provision of quality RH care. Health care providers felt that the quality of RH care provided by their centers was suboptimal. Focus group participants reported numerous barriers to the provision of high quality-care in the clinical setting. These included issues related to patient overload, patient and physician characteristics, as well as problems inherent to supervisory and administrative functions. Exploring and aligning goals and expectations of RH care providers and administrators may result in improvements in the quality of RH care service delivery and morale in public health settings in Jordan, which is a requirement for public sector reform.

Implementation of QoSS (Quality-of-Security Service) for NoC-Based SoC Protection

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sepúlveda, Johanna; Pires, Ricardo; Strum, Marius; Chau, Wang Jiang

Many of the current electronic systems embedded in a SoC (System-on-Chip) are used to capture, store, manipulate and access critical data, as well as to perform other key functions. In such a scenario, security is considered as an important issue. The Network-on-chip (NoC), as the foreseen communication structure of next-generation SoC devices, can be used to efficiently incorporate security. Our work proposes the implementation of QoSS (Quality of Security Service) to overcome present SoC vulnerabilities. QoSS is a novel concept for data protection that introduces security as a dimension of QoS. In this paper, we present the implementation of two security services (access control and authentication), that may be configured to assume one from several possible levels, the implementation of a technique to avoid denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, evaluate their effectiveness and estimate their impact on NoC performance.

Perceptions of retired professional soccer players about the provision of support services before and after retirement

PubMed Central

Drawer, S; Fuller, C.; Waddington, I

2002-01-01

Objective: To determine the views of retired players about the provision of support services in English professional soccer before and after retirement and to assess the impact of career ending injury on these views. Method: An anonymous self administered questionnaire was distributed to 500 former players registered with the English Professional Footballers' Association. The questions asked about personal details, current medical status, reasons for retirement, perceptions of the provision and quality of support services, and use of prophylactic treatments while injured. Results: Of the 500 questionnaires distributed, 185 (37%) were returned. The Professional Footballers' Association provided significantly (p<0.001) more help and advice to retired players on medical, financial, career, and educational matters than any other organisation. Although respondents showed some satisfaction with the provision of medical support, they were significantly (p<0.001) less satisfied with the provision of sports science (23%) and education/welfare (19%) support. Respondents who had retired through injury, however, were more dissatisfied with the provision of all services. Significantly (p<0.001) more respondents agreed with the view that injuries would reduce income earning potential, contribute to medical problems, and restrict the duration of their playing career. Respondents who had been medically diagnosed with osteoarthritis were significantly more likely, at some time, to have regularly received steroid injections while injured. Conclusion: The results presented are consistent with other evidence that the provision of injury prevention and socioeconomic services at professional soccer clubs is inadequate. The soccer industry should therefore develop a long term strategy for managing the needs of players who are forced to retire through injury. PMID:11867490

Strong and nonlinear effects of fragmentation on ecosystem service provision at multiple scales

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mitchell, Matthew G. E.; Bennett, Elena M.; Gonzalez, Andrew

2015-09-01

Human actions, such as converting natural land cover to agricultural or urban land, result in the loss and fragmentation of natural habitat, with important consequences for the provision of ecosystem services. Such habitat loss is especially important for services that are supplied by fragments of natural land cover and that depend on flows of organisms, matter, or people across the landscape to produce benefits, such as pollination, pest regulation, recreation and cultural services. However, our quantitative knowledge about precisely how different patterns of landscape fragmentation might affect the provision of these types of services is limited. We used a simple, spatially explicit model to evaluate the potential impact of natural land cover loss and fragmentation on the provision of hypothetical ecosystem services. Based on current literature, we assumed that fragments of natural land cover provide ecosystem services to the area surrounding them in a distance-dependent manner such that ecosystem service flow depended on proximity to fragments. We modeled seven different patterns of natural land cover loss across landscapes that varied in the overall level of landscape fragmentation. Our model predicts that natural land cover loss will have strong and unimodal effects on ecosystem service provision, with clear thresholds indicating rapid loss of service provision beyond critical levels of natural land cover loss. It also predicts the presence of a tradeoff between maximizing ecosystem service provision and conserving natural land cover, and a mismatch between ecosystem service provision at landscape versus finer spatial scales. Importantly, the pattern of landscape fragmentation mitigated or intensified these tradeoffs and mismatches. Our model suggests that managing patterns of natural land cover loss and fragmentation could help influence the provision of multiple ecosystem services and manage tradeoffs and synergies between services across different human

Quantifying the contribution of riparian soils to the provision of ecosystem services.

PubMed

de Sosa, Laura L; Glanville, Helen C; Marshall, Miles R; Prysor Williams, A; Jones, Davey L

2018-05-15

Riparian areas, the interface between land and freshwater ecosystems, are considered to play a pivotal role in the supply of regulating, provisioning, cultural and supporting services. Most previous studies, however, have tended to focus on intensive agricultural systems and only on a single ecosystem function. Here, we present the first study which attempts to assess a wide range of ecological processes involved in the provision of the ecosystem service of water quality regulation across a diverse range of riparian typologies. Specifically, we focus on 1) evaluating the spatial variation in riparian soils properties with respect to distance with the river and soil depth in contrasting habitat types; 2) gaining further insights into the underlying mechanisms of pollutant removal (i.e. pesticide sorption/degradation, denitrification, etc.) by riparian soils; and 3) quantify and evaluate how riparian vegetation across different habitat types contribute to the provision of watercourse shading. All the habitats were present within a single large catchment and included: (i) improved grassland, (ii) unimproved (semi-natural) grassland, (iii) broadleaf woodland, (iv) coniferous woodland, and (iv) mountain, heath and bog. Taking all the data together, the riparian soils could be statistically separated by habitat type, providing evidence that they deliver ecosystem services to differing extents. Overall, however, our findings seem to contradict the general assumption that soils in riparian area are different from neighbouring (non-riparian) areas and that they possess extra functionality in terms of ecosystem service provision. Watercourse shading was highly habitat specific and was maximal in forests (ca. 52% shade cover) in comparison to the other habitat types (7-17%). Our data suggest that the functioning of riparian areas in less intensive agricultural areas, such as those studied here, may be broadly predicted from the surrounding land use, however, further research

22 CFR 92.92 - Service of legal process under provisions of State law.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-04-01

... 22 Foreign Relations 1 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false Service of legal process under provisions of... AND RELATED SERVICES Quasi-Legal Services § 92.92 Service of legal process under provisions of State law. It may be found that a State statue purporting to regulate the service of process in foreign...

A Framework for Analyzing and Testing the Performance of Software Services

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bertolino, Antonia; de Angelis, Guglielmo; di Marco, Antinisca; Inverardi, Paola; Sabetta, Antonino; Tivoli, Massimo

Networks "Beyond the 3rd Generation" (B3G) are characterized by mobile and resource-limited devices that communicate through different kinds of network interfaces. Software services deployed in such networks shall adapt themselves according to possible execution contexts and requirement changes. At the same time, software services have to be competitive in terms of the Quality of Service (QoS) provided, or perceived by the end user.

Rehabilitation therapies for older clients of the Ontario home care system: regional variation and client-level predictors of service provision.

PubMed

Armstrong, Joshua J; Zhu, Mu; Hirdes, John P; Stolee, Paul

2015-01-01

To examine regional variation in service provision and identify the client characteristics associated with occupational therapy (OT) and physiotherapy (PT) services for older adults in the Ontario Home Care System. Secondary analyses of a provincial database containing comprehensive assessments (RAI-HC) linked with service utilization data from every older long-stay home care client in the system between 2005 and 2010 (n = 299 262). Hierarchical logistic regression models were used to model the dependent variables of OT and PT service use within 90 d of the initial assessment. Regional differences accounted for 9% of the variation in PT service provision and 20% of OT service provision. After controlling for the differences across regions, the most powerful predictors of service provision were identified for both OT and PT. The most highly associated client characteristics related to PT service provision were hip fracture, impairments in activities of daily living/instrumental activities of daily living, cerebrovascular accidents, and cognitive impairment. For OT, hazards in the home environment was the most powerful predictor of future service provision. Where a client lived was an important determinant of service provision in Ontario, raising the possibility of inequities in access to rehabilitation services. Health care planners and policy makers should review current practices and make adjustments to meet the increasing and changing needs for rehabilitation therapies of the aging population. Implications for Rehabilitation For older adults in home care, the goal of rehabilitation therapy services is to allow individuals to maintain or improve physical functioning, quality of life and overall independence while living within their community. Previous research has demonstrated that a large proportion of home care clients specifically identified as having rehabilitation potential do not receive it. This article used clinical assessment data to identify the

Factors Affecting Quality of Laboratory Services in Public and Private Health Facilities in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

PubMed

Mesfin, Eyob Abera; Taye, Binyam; Belay, Getachew; Ashenafi, Aytenew; Girma, Veronica

2017-10-01

Quality laboratory service is an essential component of health care system but in Sub-Saharan Africa such as Ethiopia, laboratories quality system remains weak due to several factors and it needs more attention to strengthen its capacity and quality system. A cross sectional study was conducted using a questionnaire to assess factors affecting the quality of laboratory service at private and public health institutions in Addis Ababa. A total of 213 laboratory professionals participated in the study and 131 (61.5%) participants had bachelor degree. Majority, 133 (62.4%), of the professionals did not attend any work related training. Seventy five (35.2%) respondents believed that their laboratories did not provide quality laboratory services and the major reported factors affecting provision of quality services were shortage of resources (64.3%), poor management support (57.3%), poor equipment quality (53.4%), high workload (41.1%), lack of equipment calibration (38.3%) and lack of knowledge (23.3%). Moreover logistic regression analysis showed that provision of quality laboratory service was significantly associated with result verification (AOR=9.21, 95% CI=2.26, 37.48), internal quality control (AOR= 6.11, 95% CI=2.11, 17.70), turnaround time (AOR=5.11, 95% CI=1.94, 13.46), shortage of equipment (AOR=7.76, 95% CI=2.55, 23.66), communication with clinicians (AOR=3.24, 95% CI=1.25, 8.41) and lack of job description (AOR=3.67, 95% CI=1.319, 10.22). In conclusion, the major factors that affecting the quality of laboratory service were associated with poor human resource management, poor resources provision, poor management commitment, ineffective communication system and lack of well-established quality management system.

20 CFR 653.101 - Provision of services to migrant and seasonal farmworkers (MSFWs).

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-04-01

... 20 Employees' Benefits 3 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false Provision of services to migrant and seasonal..., DEPARTMENT OF LABOR SERVICES OF THE EMPLOYMENT SERVICE SYSTEM Services for Migrant and Seasonal Farmworkers (MSFWs) § 653.101 Provision of services to migrant and seasonal farmworkers (MSFWs). (a) Each State...

Assessment of economic viability of solid waste service provision in small settlements in developing countries: case study Rosetta, Egypt.

PubMed

Abdrabo, Mohamed Abdel-Karim

2008-12-01

Problems associated with solid waste management (SWM) service provision in developing countries are reaching an ever increasing magnitude, leading to considerable adverse impacts on the environment and quality of life of the inhabitants. Such problems are usually associated with limited managerial, technical and financial capabilities of municipal authorities. Municipal authorities in Egypt that are responsible for SWM services have always been accused of providing a less than satisfactory service, leading to huge quantities of solid waste being uncollected. This study assesses the potential for the provision of an effective and sustainable service, by estimating willingness of the residents to pay for such a service and the cost involved in its provision. The study covered the Rosetta urban centre and its adjacent areas, which are located in the northwestern part of the Nile Delta. It was found that, from an economic perspective, a viable SWM service could be provided in the study area using local funds. In order to increase the likelihood of success of such a service, it may be provided by a local firm or a cooperative to be established for that purpose.

Service Provision for Autism in Mainland China: A Service Providers' Perspective

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sun, Xiang; Allison, Carrie; Auyeung, Bonnie; Matthews, Fiona E.; Murray, Stuart; Baron-Cohen, Simon; Brayne, Carol

2013-01-01

Qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted with service providers regarding the current healthcare provision and education services for children with Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC) and their families in mainland China. 10 service providers described the current policy and identified unmet needs within current practice. Providers…

Cross-Layer Algorithms for QoS Enhancement in Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Saxena, Navrati; Roy, Abhishek; Shin, Jitae

A lot of emerging applications like advanced telemedicine and surveillance systems, demand sensors to deliver multimedia content with precise level of QoS enhancement. Minimizing energy in sensor networks has been a much explored research area but guaranteeing QoS over sensor networks still remains an open issue. In this letter we propose a cross-layer approach combining Network and MAC layers, for QoS enhancement in wireless multimedia sensor networks. In the network layer a statistical estimate of sensory QoS parameters is performed and a nearoptimal genetic algorithmic solution is proposed to solve the NP-complete QoS-routing problem. On the other hand the objective of the proposed MAC algorithm is to perform the QoS-based packet classification and automatic adaptation of the contention window. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed protocol is capable of providing lower delay and better throughput, at the cost of reasonable energy consumption, in comparison with other existing sensory QoS protocols.

[Provision of building maintenance services in healthcare facilities].

PubMed

Amorim, Gláucia Maria; Quintão, Eliana Cardoso Vieira; Martelli Júnior, Hercílio; Bonan, Paulo Rogério Ferreti

2013-01-01

The scope of this paper was to evaluate the provision of building maintenance services in health units, by means of a descriptive, quantitative and cross-sectional study, considering the five types of facilities (Primary Health, Emergency, Specialty, Hospital and Mental Health Units). The research was approved by the Research Ethics Comittee of FHEMIG with the Terms of Agreement signed with the Unified Health System of Betim. Comparative analysis was conducted by checking the requirements of "Physical-Functional Structure Management" of the "Brazilian Hospital Accreditation Manual" of the National Accreditation Organization. Nonconformities were noted in the physical-functional management of the health centers, especially the primary health units. The assessment was important, considering that compliance with formal, technical and structural requirements, welfare activities, according to the service organization and appropriate to the profile and complexity, can collaborate to minimize the risks of users. To improve the quality of health care establishments, it is essential that managers, backed by "top management," prioritize financial, human and material resources in planning to ensure compliance with security requirements of users in buildings.

Provision of Personal Healthcare Services by Local Health Departments: 2008-2013.

PubMed

Luo, Huabin; Sotnikov, Sergey; Winterbauer, Nancy

2015-09-01

The scope of local health department (LHD) involvement in providing personal healthcare services versus population-based services has been debated for decades. A 2012 IOM report suggests that LHDs should gradually withdraw from providing personal healthcare services. The purpose of this study is to assess the level of LHD involvement in provision of personal healthcare services during 2008-2013 and examine the association between provision of personal healthcare services and per capita public health expenditures. Data are from the 2013 survey of LHDs and Area Health Resource Files. The number, ratio, and share of revenue from personal healthcare services were estimated. Both linear and panel fixed effects models were used to examine the association between provision of personal healthcare services and per capita public health expenditures. Data were analyzed in 2014. The mean number of personal healthcare services provided by LHDs did not change significantly in 2008-2013. Overall, personal services constituted 28% of total service items. The share of revenue from personal services increased from 16.8% in 2008 to 20.3% in 2013. Results from the fixed effect panel models show a positive association between personal healthcare services' share of revenue and per capita expenditures (b=0.57, p<0.001). A lower share of revenue from personal healthcare services is associated with lower per capita expenditures. LHDs, especially those serving <25,000 people, are highly dependent on personal healthcare revenue to sustain per capita expenditures. LHDs may need to consider strategies to replace lost revenue from discontinuing provision of personal healthcare services. Copyright © 2015 American Journal of Preventive Medicine. All rights reserved.

Quality Services Management: A Consumer-Oriented Model for Systems Audit and Strategic Intervention.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Baker, Pamela C.

The paper describes Quality Service Management (QSM) as applied to the provision of services to disabled and other special needs persons. QSM is defined as a systems approach to consumer relations based on the belief that quality care may be achieved only within the context of overall services management. Differences among "quality…

Maximization of the Supportable Number of Sensors in QoS-Aware Cluster-Based Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks

PubMed Central

Nguyen, Thi-Tham; Van Le, Duc; Yoon, Seokhoon

2014-01-01

This paper proposes a practical low-complexity MAC (medium access control) scheme for quality of service (QoS)-aware and cluster-based underwater acoustic sensor networks (UASN), in which the provision of differentiated QoS is required. In such a network, underwater sensors (U-sensor) in a cluster are divided into several classes, each of which has a different QoS requirement. The major problem considered in this paper is the maximization of the number of nodes that a cluster can accommodate while still providing the required QoS for each class in terms of the PDR (packet delivery ratio). In order to address the problem, we first estimate the packet delivery probability (PDP) and use it to formulate an optimization problem to determine the optimal value of the maximum packet retransmissions for each QoS class. The custom greedy and interior-point algorithms are used to find the optimal solutions, which are verified by extensive simulations. The simulation results show that, by solving the proposed optimization problem, the supportable number of underwater sensor nodes can be maximized while satisfying the QoS requirements for each class. PMID:24608009

Maximization of the supportable number of sensors in QoS-aware cluster-based underwater acoustic sensor networks.

PubMed

Nguyen, Thi-Tham; Le, Duc Van; Yoon, Seokhoon

2014-03-07

This paper proposes a practical low-complexity MAC (medium access control) scheme for quality of service (QoS)-aware and cluster-based underwater acoustic sensor networks (UASN), in which the provision of differentiated QoS is required. In such a network, underwater sensors (U-sensor) in a cluster are divided into several classes, each of which has a different QoS requirement. The major problem considered in this paper is the maximization of the number of nodes that a cluster can accommodate while still providing the required QoS for each class in terms of the PDR (packet delivery ratio). In order to address the problem, we first estimate the packet delivery probability (PDP) and use it to formulate an optimization problem to determine the optimal value of the maximum packet retransmissions for each QoS class. The custom greedy and interior-point algorithms are used to find the optimal solutions, which are verified by extensive simulations. The simulation results show that, by solving the proposed optimization problem, the supportable number of underwater sensor nodes can be maximized while satisfying the QoS requirements for each class.

A novel PON based UMTS broadband wireless access network architecture with an algorithm to guarantee end to end QoS

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sana, Ajaz; Hussain, Shahab; Ali, Mohammed A.; Ahmed, Samir

2007-09-01

In this paper we proposes a novel Passive Optical Network (PON) based broadband wireless access network architecture to provide multimedia services (video telephony, video streaming, mobile TV, mobile emails etc) to mobile users. In the conventional wireless access networks, the base stations (Node B) and Radio Network Controllers (RNC) are connected by point to point T1/E1 lines (Iub interface). The T1/E1 lines are expensive and add up to operating costs. Also the resources (transceivers and T1/E1) are designed for peak hours traffic, so most of the time the dedicated resources are idle and wasted. Further more the T1/E1 lines are not capable of supporting bandwidth (BW) required by next generation wireless multimedia services proposed by High Speed Packet Access (HSPA, Rel.5) for Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) and Evolution Data only (EV-DO) for Code Division Multiple Access 2000 (CDMA2000). The proposed PON based back haul can provide Giga bit data rates and Iub interface can be dynamically shared by Node Bs. The BW is dynamically allocated and the unused BW from lightly loaded Node Bs is assigned to heavily loaded Node Bs. We also propose a novel algorithm to provide end to end Quality of Service (QoS) (between RNC and user equipment).The algorithm provides QoS bounds in the wired domain as well as in wireless domain with compensation for wireless link errors. Because of the air interface there can be certain times when the user equipment (UE) is unable to communicate with Node B (usually referred to as link error). Since the link errors are bursty and location dependent. For a proposed approach, the scheduler at the Node B maps priorities and weights for QoS into wireless MAC. The compensations for errored links is provided by the swapping of services between the active users and the user data is divided into flows, with flows allowed to lag or lead. The algorithm guarantees (1)delay and throughput for error-free flows,(2)short term fairness

The Massification of Higher Education in the UK: Aspects of Service Quality

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Giannakis, Mihalis; Bullivant, Nicola

2016-01-01

This article explores several aspects of service quality for the provision of higher education. Alongside the trend of the massification of higher education over the past two decades, higher education institutions are required to review quality across a range of outputs, besides teaching and learning. The study was undertaken within the…

Provider and service-user perspectives of volunteer health-worker service provision in Ayeyarwady Region, Myanmar: a qualitative study.

PubMed

Watt, Nicola; Yupar, Aye; Sender, Paul; Campbell, Fiona; Legido-Quigley, Helena; Howard, Natasha

2016-12-09

To explore perspectives and reported experiences of service users, community providers and policymakers related to volunteer health-worker services provision in a rural area of Myanmar. A qualitative interview study was conducted in rural communities with 54 service users and 17 community providers in Ayeyarwady Region, Myanmar, and with 14 national managers and policymakers in Yangon Myanmar. Topics included reasons for seeking health services, views and experiences, and comparison with experiences of other services. Data were analysed thematically using deductive and inductive coding. Accessibility and affordability were important to all participants. Service users described the particular relevance of trust, familiarity and acceptability in choosing a provider. Perceived quality and effectiveness were necessary for trust to develop. Perceived value of volunteers was a cross-cutting dimension, which was interpreted differently by different participants. Results suggest that volunteers are appropriate and valued, and support 'availability', 'accessibility' and 'acceptability' as dimensions of health services access in this setting. However, social complexities should be considered to ensure effective service delivery. Further research into trust-building, developing quality perceptions and resulting service-user choices would be useful to inform effective policy and planning. Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://www.bmj.com/company/products-services/rights-and-licensing/.

The research of service provision based on service-oriented architecture for NGN

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jie, Yin; Nian, Zhou; Qian, Mao

2007-11-01

Service convergence is an important characteristic of NGN(Next Generation Networking). How to integrate the service capabilities of telecommunication network and Internet. At first, this article puts forward the concepts and characteristics of SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture) and Web Service, then discusses relationship between them. Secondly, combined with five kinds of Service Provision in NGN, A service platform architecture design of NGN and a service development mode based on SOA are brought up. At last, a specific example is analyzed with BPEL (Business Process Execution Language) in order to describe service development flow based on SOA for NGN.

Factors Affecting Quality of Laboratory Services in Public and Private Health Facilities in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

PubMed Central

Taye, Binyam; Belay, Getachew; Ashenafi, Aytenew; Girma, Veronica

2017-01-01

Background Quality laboratory service is an essential component of health care system but in Sub-Saharan Africa such as Ethiopia, laboratories quality system remains weak due to several factors and it needs more attention to strengthen its capacity and quality system. Methodology A cross sectional study was conducted using a questionnaire to assess factors affecting the quality of laboratory service at private and public health institutions in Addis Ababa. Results A total of 213 laboratory professionals participated in the study and 131 (61.5%) participants had bachelor degree. Majority, 133 (62.4%), of the professionals did not attend any work related training. Seventy five (35.2%) respondents believed that their laboratories did not provide quality laboratory services and the major reported factors affecting provision of quality services were shortage of resources (64.3%), poor management support (57.3%), poor equipment quality (53.4%), high workload (41.1%), lack of equipment calibration (38.3%) and lack of knowledge (23.3%). Moreover logistic regression analysis showed that provision of quality laboratory service was significantly associated with result verification (AOR=9.21, 95% CI=2.26, 37.48), internal quality control (AOR= 6.11, 95% CI=2.11, 17.70), turnaround time (AOR=5.11, 95% CI=1.94, 13.46), shortage of equipment (AOR=7.76, 95% CI=2.55, 23.66), communication with clinicians (AOR=3.24, 95% CI=1.25, 8.41) and lack of job description (AOR=3.67, 95% CI=1.319, 10.22). Conclusion In conclusion, the major factors that affecting the quality of laboratory service were associated with poor human resource management, poor resources provision, poor management commitment, ineffective communication system and lack of well-established quality management system. PMID:29075171

Research of three level match method about semantic web service based on ontology

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Xiao, Jie; Cai, Fang

2011-10-01

An important step of Web service Application is the discovery of useful services. Keywords are used in service discovery in traditional technology like UDDI and WSDL, with the disadvantage of user intervention, lack of semantic description and low accuracy. To cope with these problems, OWL-S is introduced and extended with QoS attributes to describe the attribute and functions of Web Services. A three-level service matching algorithm based on ontology and QOS in proposed in this paper. Our algorithm can match web service by utilizing the service profile, QoS parameters together with input and output of the service. Simulation results shows that it greatly enhanced the speed of service matching while high accuracy is also guaranteed.

Hospital Financial Conditions and the Provision of Unprofitable Services

PubMed Central

Bazzoli, Gloria J.; Hsieh, Hui-Min

2011-01-01

Increases in hospital financial pressure resulting from public and private payment policy may substantially reduce a hospital’s ability to provide certain services that are not well compensated or are frequently used by the uninsured. The objective of this study is to examine the impact of hospital financial condition on the provision of these unprofitable services for the insured and uninsured. Economic theory provides the conceptual underpinnings for the analysis, and a longitudinal empirical analysis is conducted for an eight-year study period. The results indicate that not-for-profit hospitals with strong financial performance provide more unprofitable services for the insured and uninsured than do not-for-profit hospitals with weaker condition. For-profit hospital provision of these services is not influenced by their financial condition and instead may reflect actions to meet community expectations or to offer a sufficiently broad service array to maintain the business of insured patients. PMID:21625342

What factors influence physiotherapy service provision in rural communities? A pilot study.

PubMed

Adams, Robyn; Sheppard, Lorraine; Jones, Anne; Lefmann, Sophie

2014-06-01

To obtain stakeholder perspectives on factors influencing rural physiotherapy service provision and insights into decision making about service provision. Purposive sampling, open-ended survey questions and semi-structured interviews were used in this exploratory, qualitative study. A rural centre and its regional referral centre formed the pilot sites. Nine participant perspectives were obtained on rural physiotherapy services. Stakeholder perspectives on factors influencing rural physiotherapy service provision and service level decision making. Workforce capacity and capability, decision maker's knowledge of the role and scope of physiotherapy, consideration of physiotherapy within resource allocation decisions and proof of practice emerged as key issues. The latter three were particularly reflected in public sector participant comments. Business models and market size were identified factors in influencing private practice. Influencing factors described by participants both align and extend our understanding of issues described in the rural physiotherapy literature. Participant insights add depth and meaning to quantitative data by revealing impacts on local service provision. Available funding and facility priorities were key determinants of public sector physiotherapy service provision, with market size and business model appearing more influential in private practice. The level of self direction or choice about which services to provide, emerged as a point of difference between public and private providers. Decisions by public sector physiotherapists about service provision appear constrained by existing capacity and workload. Further research into service level decision making might provide valuable insights into rural health service delivery. © 2014 National Rural Health Alliance Inc.

The role of veterinary research laboratories in the provision of veterinary services.

PubMed

Verwoerd, D W

1998-08-01

Veterinary research laboratories play an essential role in the provision of veterinary services in most countries. These laboratories are the source of new knowledge, innovative ideas and improved technology for the surveillance, prevention and control of animal diseases. In addition, many laboratories provide diagnostic and other services. To ensure the optimal integration of various veterinary activities, administrators must understand the functions and constraints of research laboratories. Therefore, a brief discussion is presented of the following: organisational structures methods for developing research programmes outputs of research scientists and how these are measured the management of quality assurance funding of research. Optimal collaboration can only be attained by understanding the environment in which a research scientist functions and the motivational issues at stake.

31 CFR 546.405 - Provision of services.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-07-01

... 31 Money and Finance: Treasury 3 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Provision of services. 546.405 Section 546.405 Money and Finance: Treasury Regulations Relating to Money and Finance (Continued) OFFICE OF FOREIGN ASSETS CONTROL, DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY DARFUR SANCTIONS REGULATIONS Interpretations...

Provision of NHS generalist and specialist services to care homes in England: review of surveys.

PubMed

Iliffe, Steve; Davies, Susan L; Gordon, Adam L; Schneider, Justine; Dening, Tom; Bowman, Clive; Gage, Heather; Martin, Finbarr C; Gladman, John R F; Victor, Christina; Meyer, Julienne; Goodman, Claire

2016-03-01

The number of beds in care homes (with and without nurses) in the United Kingdom is three times greater than the number of beds in National Health Service (NHS) hospitals. Care homes are predominantly owned by a range of commercial, not-for-profit or charitable providers and their residents have high levels of disability, frailty and co-morbidity. NHS support for care home residents is very variable, and it is unclear what models of clinical support work and are cost-effective. To critically evaluate how the NHS works with care homes. A review of surveys of NHS services provided to care homes that had been completed since 2008. It included published national surveys, local surveys commissioned by Primary Care organisations, studies from charities and academic centres, grey literature identified across the nine government regions, and information from care home, primary care and other research networks. Data extraction captured forms of NHS service provision for care homes in England in terms of frequency, location, focus and purpose. Five surveys focused primarily on general practitioner services, and 10 on specialist services to care home. Working relationships between the NHS and care homes lack structure and purpose and have generally evolved locally. There are wide variations in provision of both generalist and specialist healthcare services to care homes. Larger care home chains may take a systematic approach to both organising access to NHS generalist and specialist services, and to supplementing gaps with in-house provision. Access to dental care for care home residents appears to be particularly deficient. Historical differences in innovation and provision of NHS services, the complexities of collaborating across different sectors (private and public, health and social care, general and mental health), and variable levels of organisation of care homes, all lead to persistent and embedded inequity in the distribution of NHS resources to this population

Congestion Prediction Modeling for Quality of Service Improvement in Wireless Sensor Networks

PubMed Central

Lee, Ga-Won; Lee, Sung-Young; Huh, Eui-Nam

2014-01-01

Information technology (IT) is pushing ahead with drastic reforms of modern life for improvement of human welfare. Objects constitute “Information Networks” through smart, self-regulated information gathering that also recognizes and controls current information states in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). Information observed from sensor networks in real-time is used to increase quality of life (QoL) in various industries and daily life. One of the key challenges of the WSNs is how to achieve lossless data transmission. Although nowadays sensor nodes have enhanced capacities, it is hard to assure lossless and reliable end-to-end data transmission in WSNs due to the unstable wireless links and low hard ware resources to satisfy high quality of service (QoS) requirements. We propose a node and path traffic prediction model to predict and minimize the congestion. This solution includes prediction of packet generation due to network congestion from both periodic and event data generation. Simulation using NS-2 and Matlab is used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed solution. PMID:24784035

Quality of service routing in wireless ad hoc networks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sane, Sachin J.; Patcha, Animesh; Mishra, Amitabh

2003-08-01

An efficient routing protocol is essential to guarantee application level quality of service running on wireless ad hoc networks. In this paper we propose a novel routing algorithm that computes a path between a source and a destination by considering several important constraints such as path-life, availability of sufficient energy as well as buffer space in each of the nodes on the path between the source and destination. The algorithm chooses the best path from among the multiples paths that it computes between two endpoints. We consider the use of control packets that run at a priority higher than the data packets in determining the multiple paths. The paper also examines the impact of different schedulers such as weighted fair queuing, and weighted random early detection among others in preserving the QoS level guarantees. Our extensive simulation results indicate that the algorithm improves the overall lifetime of a network, reduces the number of dropped packets, and decreases the end-to-end delay for real-time voice application.

Data on the key performance indicators for quality of service of GSM networks in Nigeria.

PubMed

Popoola, Segun I; Atayero, Aderemi A; Faruk, Nasir; Badejo, Joke A

2018-02-01

In this data article, the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for Quality of Service (QoS) of Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) networks in Nigeria are provided and analyzed. The data provided in this paper contain the Call Setup Success Rate (CSSR), Drop Call Rate (DCR), Stand-alone Dedicated Channel (SDCCH) congestion, and Traffic Channel (TCH) congestion for the four GSM network operators in Nigeria (Airtel, Etisalat, Glo, and MTN). These comprehensive data were obtained from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC). Significant differences in each of the KPIs for the four quarters of each year were presented based on Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). The values of the KPIs were plotted against the months of the year for better visualization and understanding of data trends across the four quarters. Multiple comparisons of the mean-quarterly differences of the KPIs were also presented using Tukey's Post Hoc test. Public availability and further interpretation and discussion of these useful information will assist the network providers, Nigerian government, local and international regulatory bodies, policy makers, and other stakeholders in ensuring access of people, machines, and things to high quality telecommunications services.

31 CFR 594.406 - Provision of services.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-07-01

... 31 Money and Finance: Treasury 3 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Provision of services. 594.406 Section 594.406 Money and Finance: Treasury Regulations Relating to Money and Finance (Continued) OFFICE... to this part, provide legal, accounting, financial, brokering, freight forwarding, transportation...

31 CFR 598.406 - Provision of services.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-07-01

... 31 Money and Finance: Treasury 3 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Provision of services. 598.406 Section 598.406 Money and Finance: Treasury Regulations Relating to Money and Finance (Continued) OFFICE... legal, accounting, financial, brokering, freight forwarding, transportation, public relations, or other...

31 CFR 544.405 - Provision of services.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-07-01

... 31 Money and Finance: Treasury 3 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Provision of services. 544.405 Section 544.405 Money and Finance: Treasury Regulations Relating to Money and Finance (Continued) OFFICE..., provide legal, accounting, financial, brokering, freight forwarding, transportation, public relations, or...

Safeguarding the provision of ecosystem services in catchment systems.

PubMed

Everard, Mark

2013-04-01

A narrow technocentric focus on a few favored ecosystem services (generally provisioning services) has led to ecosystem degradation globally, including catchment systems and their capacities to support human well-being. Increasing recognition of the multiple benefits provided by ecosystems is slowly being translated into policy and some areas of practice, although there remains a significant shortfall in the incorporation of a systemic perspective into operation management and decision-making tools. Nevertheless, a range of ecosystem-based solutions to issues as diverse as flooding and green space provision in the urban environment offers hope for improving habitat and optimization of beneficial services. The value of catchment ecosystem processes and their associated services is also being increasingly recognized and internalized by the water industry, improving water quality and quantity through catchment land management rather than at greater expense in the treatment costs of contaminated water abstracted lower in catchments. Parallel recognition of the value of working with natural processes, rather than "defending" built assets when catchment hydrology is adversely affected by unsympathetic upstream development, is being progressively incorporated into flood risk management policy. This focus on wider catchment processes also yields a range of cobenefits for fishery, wildlife, amenity, flood risk, and other interests, which may be optimized if multiple stakeholders and their diverse value systems are included in decision-making processes. Ecosystem services, particularly implemented as a central element of the ecosystem approach, provide an integrated framework for building in these different perspectives and values, many of them formerly excluded, into commercial and resource management decision-making processes, thereby making tractable the integrative aspirations of sustainable development. This can help redress deeply entrenched inherited assumptions

Characteristics of good quality pharmaceutical services common to community pharmacies and dispensing general practices.

PubMed

Grey, Elisabeth; Harris, Michael; Rodham, Karen; Weiss, Marjorie C

2016-10-01

In the United Kingdom, pharmaceutical services can be delivered by both community pharmacies (CPs) and dispensing doctor practices (DPs). Both must adhere to minimum standards set out in NHS regulations; however, no common framework exists to guide quality improvement. Previous phases of this research had developed a set of characteristics indicative of good pharmaceutical service provision. To ask key stakeholders to confirm, and rank the importance of, a set of characteristics of good pharmaceutical service provision. A two-round Delphi-type survey was conducted in south-west England and was sent to participants representing three stakeholder groups: DPs, CPs and patients/lay members. Participants were asked to confirm, and rank, the importance of these characteristics as representing good quality pharmaceutical services. Thirty people were sent the first round survey; 22 participants completed both rounds. Median ratings for the 23 characteristics showed that all were seen to represent important aspects of pharmaceutical service provision. Participants' comments highlighted potential problems with the practicality of the characteristics. Characteristics relating to patient safety were deemed to be the most important and those relating to public health the least important. A set of 23 characteristics for providing good pharmaceutical services in CPs and DPs was developed and attained approval from a sample of stakeholders. With further testing and wider discussion, it is hoped that the characteristics will form the basis of a quality improvement tool for CPs and DPs. © 2016 Royal Pharmaceutical Society.

Real-time services in IP network architectures

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gilardi, Antonella

1996-12-01

The worldwide internet system seems to be the success key for the provision of real time multimedia services to both residential and business users and someone says that in such a way broadband networks will have a reason to exist. This new class of applications that use multiple media (voice, video and data) impose constraints to the global network nowadays consisting of subnets with various data links. The attention will be focused on the interconnection of IP non ATM and ATM networks. IETF and ATM forum are currently involved in the developing specifications suited to adapt the connectionless IP protocol to the connection oriented ATM protocol. First of all the link between the ATM and the IP service model has to be set in order to match the QoS and traffic requirements defined in the relative environment. A further significant topic is represented by the mapping of IP resource reservation model onto the ATM signalling and in the end it is necessary to define how the routing works when there are QoS parameters associated. This paper, considering only unicast applications, will examine the above issues taking as a starting point the situation where an host launches as call set up request with the relevant QoS and traffic descriptor and at some point a router at the edge of the ATM network has to decide how forwarding and request in order to establish an end to end link with the right capabilities. The aim is to compare the proposals emerging from different standard bodies to point out convergency or incompatibility.

Service provision in the wake of a new funding model for community pharmacy.

PubMed

Smith, Alesha J; Scahill, Shane L; Harrison, Jeff; Carroll, Tilley; Medlicott, Natalie J

2018-05-02

Recently, New Zealand has taken a system wide approach providing the biggest reform to New Zealand community pharmacy for 70 years with the aim of providing more clinically orientated patient centred services through a new funding model. The aim of this study was to understand the types of services offered in New Zealand community pharmacies since introduction of the new funding model, what the barriers are to providing these services. A survey of all community pharmacies were undertaken between August, 2014 and February, 2015. Basic descriptive statistics were completed and group comparisons were made using the chi squared test with significance set at p < 0.05. 528 responses were received. Education and advice on prescription and non-prescription medicines were the two top listed services provided. There were no significant differences in service provision between rural and metro based pharmacies. Many pharmacies were considering introducing new patient centred services. Four of the top ten frequently provided services have no public funding attached. Costs and staff availability are the most common barriers to undertake services, more predominantly in patient centred services. This study was the first to provide an evaluation of service provision in response to a new funding model for New Zealand Community Pharmacies. A broad range of services are being undertaken in New Zealand community pharmacies including patient-centred services. A number of barriers to service provision were identified. This study provides a baseline for the current levels of service provision upon which future studies can compare to and evaluate any changes in service provision with differing funding models going forward.