Engineering Seminar Topics and Seminar Topics

Download Full Article Intrusion Detection

In the last three years, the networking revolution has finally come of age. More than ever before, we see that the Internet is changing computing as we know it. The possibilities and opportunities are limitless; unfortunately, so too are the risks and chances of malicious intrusions.

It is very important that the security mechanisms of a system are designed so as to prevent unauthorized access to system resources and data. However, completely preventing breaches of security appear, at present, unrealistic. We can, however, try to detect these intrusion attempts so that action may be taken to repair the damage later. This field of research is called Intrusion Detection.

Anderson, while introducing the concept of intrusion detection in 1980, defined an intrusion attempt or a threat to be the potential possibility of a deliberate unauthorized attempt to

• access information,
• manipulate information, or
• render a system unreliable or unusable.

Since then, several techniques for detecting intrusions have been studied. This paper discusses why intrusion detection systems are needed, the main techniques, present research in the field, and possible future directions of research.

SECURITY POLICY

A Security Policy defines what is permitted and what is denied on a system. There are two basic philosophies behind any security policy:

1. Prohibitive where everything that is not expressly permitted is denied.
2. Permissive where everything that is not expressly denied is permitted.

Elements of a System’s Security

A computer system can be considered as a set of resources which are available for use by authorized users. A paper by Donn P outlines six elements of security that must be addressed by a security administrator. It is worth evaluting any tool by determining how it address these six elements.

1. Availability - the system must be available for use when the users need it. Similarly, critical data must be available at all times.
2. Utility - the system, and data on the system, must be useful for a purpose.
3. Integrity - the system and its data must be complete, whole, and in a readable condition.
4. Authenticity - the system must be able to verify the identity of users, and the users should be able to verify the identity of the system.
5. Confidentiality - private data should be known only to the owner of the data, or to a chosen chosen few with whom the owner shares the data.
6. Possession - the owners of the system must be able to control it. Losing control of a system to a malicious user affects the security of the system for all other users.

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Download Full Article HAAPS

Affordable bandwidth will be as essential to the Information Revolution in the21 st century as inexpensive power was to the Industrial Revolution in the 18 th and 19 th centuries. Today’s global communications infrastructures of landlines, cellular towers, and satellites are inadequately equipped to support the increasing worldwide demand for faster, better, and less expensive service. At a time when conventional ground and satellite systems are facing increasing obstacles and spiraling costs, a low cost solution is being advocated.

This paper focuses on airborne platforms- airships, planes, helicopters or some hybrid solutions which could operate at stratospheric altitudes for significant periods of time, be low cost and be capable of carrying sizable multipurpose communications payloads. This report briefly presents an overview about the internal architecture of a High Altitude Aeronautical Platform and the various HAAPS projects.

HAAPS

 High Altitude Aeronautical Platform Stations (HAAPS) is the name of a technology for providing wireless narrowband and broadband telecommunication services as well as broadcasting services with either airships or aircrafts. The HAAPS are operating at altitudes between 3 to 22 km. A HAPS shall be able to cover a service area of up to 1′000 km diameter, depending on the minimum elevation angle accepted from the user’s location. The platforms may be airplanes or airships (essentially balloons) and may be manned or un-manned with autonomous operation coupled with remote control from the ground. While the term HAP may not have a rigid definition, we take it to mean a solar-powered and unmanned airplane or airship, capable of long endurance on-station –possibly several years.

Various types of platform options exist: SkyStation™, the Japanese Stratospheric Platform Project, the European Space Agency (ESA) and others suggest the use of airships/blimps/dirigibles. These will be stationed at 21km and are expected to remain aloft for about 5 years. Angel Technologies (HALO™), AeroVironment/ NASA (Helios) and the European Union (Heliplat) propose the use of high altitude long endurance aircraft. The aircraft are either engine or solar powered and are stationed at 16km (HALO) or 21km (Helios). Helios is expected to stay aloft for a minimum of 6 months whereas HALO will have 3 aircraft flying in 8- hour shifts. Platforms Wireless International is implementing a tethered aerostat situated at ~6km.

A high altitude telecommunication system comprises an airborne platform – typically at high atmospheric or stratospheric altitudes – with a telecommunications payload, and associated ground station telecommunications equipment. The combination of altitude, payload capability, and power supply capability makes it ideal to serve new and metropolitan areas with advanced telecommunications services such as broadband access and regional broadcasting. The opportunities for applications are virtually unlimited. The possibilities range from narrowband services such as paging and mobile voice to interactive broadband services such as multimedia and video conferencing. For future telecommunications operators such a platform could provide blanket coverage from day one with the added advantage of not being limited to a single service. Where little or unreliable infrastructure exists, traffic could be switched through air via the HAPS platform. Technically, the concept offers a solution to the propagation and rollout problems of terrestrial infrastructure and capacity and cost problems of satellite networks. Recent developments in digital array antenna technology make it possible to construct 100+ cells from one platform. Linking and switching of traffic between multiple high altitude platforms, satellite networks and terrestrial gateways are also possible. Economically it provides the opportunity for developing countries to have satellite-like infrastructure without the funds flowing out of the country due to gateways and control stations located outside of these countries.

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Download Full Article Augmented reality (AR)

Augmented reality (AR) refers to computer displays that add virtual information to a user’s sensory perceptions. Most AR research focuses on see-through devices, usually worn on the head that overlay graphics and text on the user’s view of his or her surroundings. In general it superimposes graphics over a real world environment in real time.

                Getting the right information at the right time and the right place is key in all these applications. Personal digital assistants such as the Palm and the Pocket PC can provide timely information using wireless networking and Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers that constantly track the handheld devices. But what makes augmented reality different is how the information is presented: not on a separate display but integrated with the user’s perceptions. This kind of interface minimizes the extra mental effort that a user has to expend when switching his or her attention back and forth between real-world tasks and a computer screen. In augmented reality, the user’s view of the world and the computer interface literally become one.

Between the extremes of real life and Virtual Reality lies the spectrum of Mixed Reality, in which views of the real world are combined in some proportion with views of a virtual environment. Combining direct view, stereoscopic video, and stereoscopic graphics, Augmented Reality describes that class of displays that consists primarily of a real environment, with graphic enhancements or augmentations.

                In Augmented Virtuality, real objects are added to a virtual environment. In Augmented reality, virtual objects are added to real world. 

                An AR system supplements the real world with virtual (computer generated) objects that appear to co-exist in the same space as the real world. Virtual Reality is a synthetic environment

1.1 Comparison between AR and virtual environments

                                The overall requirements of AR can be summarized by comparing them against the requirements for Virtual Environments, for the three basic subsystems that they require.

1) Scene generator: Rendering is not currently one of the major problems in AR. VE systems have much higher requirements for realistic images because they completely replace the real world with the virtual environment. In AR, the virtual images only supplement the real world. Therefore, fewer virtual objects need to be drawn, and they do not necessarily have to be realistically rendered in order to serve the purposes of the application.

2) Display device: The display devices used in AR may have less stringent requirements than VE systems demand, again because AR does not replace the real world. For example, monochrome displays may be adequate for some AR applications, while virtually all VE systems today use full color. Optical see-through HMDs with a small field-of-view may be satisfactory because the user can still see the real world with his peripheral vision; the see-through HMD does not shut off the user’s normal field-of-view. Furthermore, the resolution of the monitor in an optical see-through HMD might be lower than what a user would tolerate in a VE application, since the optical see-through HMD does not reduce the resolution of the real environment.

3) Tracking and sensing: While in the previous two cases AR had lower requirements than VE, that is not the case for tracking and sensing. In this area, the requirements for AR are much stricter than those for VE systems. A major reason for this is the registration problem.

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Download Full Article ATM

Nowadays, most us are surrounded by powerful computer systems with graphics oriented input and output.

These computers include the entire spectrum of PCs, through professional workstations upto super-computers.  As the performance of computers has increased, so too has the demand for communication between all systems for exchanging data, or between central servers and the associated host computer system.

The replacement of copper with fiber and the advancement sin digital communication and encoding are at the heart of several developments that will change the communication infrastructure.  The former development has provided us with huge amount of transmission bandwidth.  While the latter has made the transmission of all information including voice and video through a packet switched network possible.

                With continuously work sharing over large distances, including international communication, the systems must be interconnected via wide area networks with increasing demands for higher bit rates.

                For the first time, a single communications technology meets LAN and WAN requirements and handles a wide variety of current and emerging applications.  ATM is the first technology to provide a common format for bursts of high speed data and the ebb and flow of the typical voice phone call.  Seamless ATM networks provide desktop-to-desktop multimedia networking over single technology, high bandwidth, low latency network, removing the boundary between LAN WAN.

                ATM is simply a Data Link Layer protocol.  It is asynchronous in the sense that the recurrence of the cells containing information from an individual user is not necessarily periodic.  It is the technology of choice for evolving B-ISDN (Board Integrated Services Digital Network), for next generation LANs and WANs.  ATM supports transmission speeds of 155Mbits / sec.  In the future.  Photonic approaches have made the advent of ATM switches feasible, and an evolution towards an all packetized, unified, broadband telecommunications and data communication world based on ATM is taking place.

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Download Full Article Artificial Eye

The retina is a thin layer of neural tissue that lines the back wall inside the eye. Some of these cells act to receive light, while others interpret the information and send messages to the brain through the optic nerve. This is part of the process that enables us to see. In damaged or dysfunctional retina, the photoreceptors stop working, causing blindness. By some estimates, there are more than 10 million people worldwide affected by retinal diseases that lead to loss of vision.

The absence of effective therapeutic remedies for retinitis pigmentosa (RP) and age-related macular degeneration (AMD) has motivated the development of experimental strategies to restore some degree of visual function to affected patients. Because the remaining retinal layers are anatomically spared, several approaches have been designed to artificially activate this residual retina and thereby the visual system.

At present, two general strategies have been pursued. The “Epiretinal” approach involves a semiconductor-based device placed above the retina, close to or in contact with the nerve fiber layer retinal ganglion cells. The information in this approach must be captured by a camera system before transmitting data and energy to the implant. The “Sub retinal” approach involves the electrical stimulation of the inner retina from the sub retinal space by implantation of a semiconductor-based micro photodiode array (MPA) into this location. The concept of the sub retinal approach is that electrical charge generated by the MPA in response to a light stimulus may be used to artificially alter the membrane potential of neurons in the remaining retinal layers in a manner to produce formed images.

Download Full Article Artificial Eye