In this paper, a detailed review of microcontroller unit (MCU)-based wireless sensor node platfor... more In this paper, a detailed review of microcontroller unit (MCU)-based wireless sensor node platforms from recently published research articles is presented. Despite numerous research efforts in the fast-growing field of wireless sensor devices, energy consumption remains a challenge that limits the lifetime of wireless sensor networks (WSNs). The Internet-of-Things (IoT) technology utilizes WSNs for providing an efficient sensing and communication infrastructure. Thus, a comparison of the existing wireless sensor nodes is crucial. Of particular interest are the advances in the recent MCU-based wireless sensor node platforms, which have become diverse and fairly advanced in relation to the currently available commercial WSN platforms. The recent wireless sensor nodes are compared with commercially available motes. The commercially available motes are selected based on a number of criteria including popularity, published results, interesting characteristics and features. Of particular ...
In Sub-Saharan Africa, where most irrigation systems are manually operated, water allocation and ... more In Sub-Saharan Africa, where most irrigation systems are manually operated, water allocation and irrigation scheduling are often based on uniform application irrespective of crop needs and growth stages, which results in nonoptimal water use. Recently, a lot of research has been carried out to improve irrigation water use efficiency through automation by employing wireless sensor-based monitoring systems. Further to the improvement of water use efficiency and yield, while reducing costs, a field trial was carried out at a farm in Harare, Zimbabwe, during the 2016, 2017, and 2018 winter seasons to test whether a new approach to the automated irrigation systems, one based on IoT and wirelessly connected soil sensors (called hereafter as WCSS), improves water use efficiency without reducing yield. WCSS method was compared with three widely used conventional irrigation methods, that is, manual scheduling, tensiometer-based scheduling, and weather-based scheduling. Impacts on water savin...
Cloud computing has been growing tremendously, as it has been accepted recently. Cloud computing ... more Cloud computing has been growing tremendously, as it has been accepted recently. Cloud computing has many unique strengths which can be utilized to facilitate workflow execution. This paper investigates the issue of dynamic scheduling in cloud computing with a special attention to the case of instance-intensive cost-constrained workflows. This paper seeks to address the following issues: A study of this ‘new’ technology taking its gradual migration from Grid computing, their similarities, differences, weaknesses and strengths. Also there will be a study on the metrics of comparing existing scheduling algorithms with a comparison on how they are fairing. Lastly this paper seeks to propose a dynamic scheduling algorithm that will be based on a simulation model. In this research the problem of workflow scheduling has been discussed. The efficiency of the proposed algorithm was tested in comparison with the fixed algorithm that come along with the simulator used (CloudSim 2.1).
Paresthesia is defined as an alteration in local sensibility, associated with numbness, tingling,... more Paresthesia is defined as an alteration in local sensibility, associated with numbness, tingling, or unpleasant sensations caused by nerve lesions or irritation. It can be temporary or permanent. The treatment protocol for facial paresthesia is primarily based on the use of drugs and implant removal, which may not be completely effective or may require other risk exposure when there is no spontaneous regression. However, other therapeutic modalities such as acupuncture can be used. The aim of this study is to report a case of a patient with paresthesia of the inferior alveolar nerve and pain caused by an implant surgery performed 2 years earlier. The patient received acupuncture treatment during 4 months of weekly sessions. Six points were used: Large Intestine (LI4), Large Intestine (LI11), Stomach (ST36), Liver (LR3), Extra Head and Neck (E-HN-18), and Stomach (ST5). The visual analog scale was used before and after each session for the analysis of paresthesia and pain, together with assessment of the paresthesia by delimitation of the desensitized region of the skin and presented discomfort. Pain remission and reduction in the size of the paresthesia area occurred after four sessions.
Spam is commonly defined as unsolicited (sent or received without being requested) automated emai... more Spam is commonly defined as unsolicited (sent or received without being requested) automated email messages. Spam used to be considered a mere nuisance, has progressed from being a nuisance to become a major problem. The goal of this project paper was to incorporate regular expressions in Bayesian statistical approach to distinguish between spam and legitimate email messages. This research paper had focused on the statistical approach (Bayesian method) of all the methods in spam filtering because it is easy, simple to implement and all Bayesian algorithms have the advantage of having a linear computational complexity. The objective of the paper was to find the best regular expression that produce best tokens suitable for providing good probability value in determining the category of the message. To have apt and sounding tokens Dimensionality Vector Reduction technique was applied in the filtering process. An algorithm was designed that implements the Dimensionality Vector Reduction...
E-learning based platforms that support multimedia content to enhance interactive learning demand... more E-learning based platforms that support multimedia content to enhance interactive learning demands large disk space. Despite research ground covered under e-learning circles, less attention has been devoted to solicit the best methods to address the disk space challenges at minimal cost. This research focuses on advancing a best architecture that meet the need for storage space when developing interactive multimedia e-learning based portals. Simulation was used using the CloudSim toolkit. Findings show that to precisely test the performance of viable architectures, there has to be a robust platform for such experiments. The main conclusions drawn from this research were that, there is room to improve on existing architectures to scale down on development costs so attributed to e-learning portals that are interactive in stature. Storage can be built from exiting personal computers through harnessing the cloud computing functionality designed as most of the personal computers are not ...
A variety of water use efficiency methods have been proposed for greenhouse irrigation scheduling... more A variety of water use efficiency methods have been proposed for greenhouse irrigation scheduling but most of them have been found to be very expensive and complicated to use. In an effort to address the needs of the low income farmer, we developed a low cost irrigation controller which incorporates cheap and readily available electronic components, less expensive controller and sensor requiring minimal human interaction. We calculated the total cost of the controller inclusive of sensor to be about US$85. To come up with an automated irrigation system, there is need to know the time to irrigate and amount of water required by a plant at every point in time. This can be determined from environmental, soil or plant based factors. This paper presents a strategy to provide an irrigation control system, which uses a cheap 8 bit, small working memory and small storage capacity PIC Microcontroller which requires minimal human-computer interaction and consumes low electrical power. The sys...
A substantial percentage of farmers in Southern Africa, including Zimbabwe, rely on rain for most... more A substantial percentage of farmers in Southern Africa, including Zimbabwe, rely on rain for most of their farming activities but there are areas which are entirely dependent on irrigation water to produce viable crops. Water-saving agricultural practices and sound water management strategies are therefore required to ensure viability of the farming industry in those places that receive less rain. The study aimed at developing an automatic irrigation controller which is low cost and reliable for a low income farmer. The controller uses signals from the soil to schedule irrigation and was made from cheap and off the shelf components from our laboratory stores and local electronic retail shops. The heart of the controller circuit was the PIC Microcontroller 16F872 that uses only 35 instructions for programming in assembly language. Two dielectric capacitance sensors (0.20 m ECH 2 O probe, Decagon Devices, Inc. Pullman, WA USA.) connected to the controller circuit, were used to measure...
This paper looks at how to optimize data collection from the wireless sensor nodes and analysis o... more This paper looks at how to optimize data collection from the wireless sensor nodes and analysis of this data for an efficient irrigation scheduling in order to optimize water usage. In this research we design a model system which integrates op-timum node placement and data aggregation to see the combined effect on the efficiency of the wireless sensor network (WSN) that is in terms of latency, power consumption and utilization, network life span (i.e. node mortality). Issues looked into included the optimum placement of the sensor nodes, traffic aggregation and protocols for cooperative data forwarding. Models of different topologies were designed and evaluated through simulations to come up with the best model that achieves optimum placement to minimize the number of nodes without compromising on the readings as well as incorporating data forwarding and aggregation. The model was cost effective as it displayed significant improvement in efficiency, power utilization, consumption, n...
Mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) have become an integral part of the ubiquitous computing and comm... more Mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) have become an integral part of the ubiquitous computing and communication environment, providing new infrastructure for multimedia applications such as video phone, multimedia-on-demand, and others. In order to access multimedia information in a MANET, Quality of Service (QoS) needs to be considered, such as high success rate to access multimedia data, bounded end-to-end delay, security and others. Factors, like delay and jitter, bandwidth and throughput, are studied that affect quality of service in wireless mobile ad hoc networks. Various Quality of Service architectures on IEEE 802.11-based mobile ad hoc networks are discussed, concentrating on architectures that employ cross-layer interaction in the OSI protocol stack. Architectures discussed include IntServ, DiffServ, FQMM, CEQMM, INSIGNIA, SWAN and ASAP.
Electronic payment systems are proliferating in banking, retail in government and everywhere mone... more Electronic payment systems are proliferating in banking, retail in government and everywhere money needs to be exchanged. Electronic payment systems are the everyday technology under use, they are the relevant systems which go hand in hand with technology and they are also high in demand. All these issues enlighten a need to design and implement an electronic payment system that addresses the specific requirements for the Zimbabwean market. An effective and universal electronic payment system in Zimbabwe can solve some problems which are currently encountered in e- commerce, thus we designed a light weight electronic payment model, universal and offering better integration to banks, all merchants and Small and Medium Enterprises. It is comprised of attributes which any electronic payment system is expected to have. It has its own security features especially the offline authentication method and other security aspects which are currently in use by banks. The integrated architectural...
intrusion detection system; network-layer-security; security-enhanced routing protocol; mobile ad... more intrusion detection system; network-layer-security; security-enhanced routing protocol; mobile ad hoc network
Conference paper,Quality of Service (QoS) in mobile ad hoc networks is a very important issue, es... more Conference paper,Quality of Service (QoS) in mobile ad hoc networks is a very important issue, especially these days as multimedia traffic finds its way on the network. Bandwidth is a very scarce commodity on wireless networks so bandwidth management is a very important component of QoS in ad hoc networks. In this paper a bandwidth management framework for mobile ad hoc networks is presented. Traffic is grouped into classes according to their priority. When a flow is using more bandwidth than its required minimum, it can release some bandwidth to a new flow which requires the bandwidth. So when a new flow requests for admission, the framework should check the bandwidth allocation of the on-going flows. When the available bandwidth is less than the required minimum of the flow, then bandwidth has to be released by the on-going flows starting with the least priority flow. When the highest priority flow releases its extra bandwidth and the bandwidth remains inadequate then the system g...
In this paper, a detailed review of microcontroller unit (MCU)-based wireless sensor node platfor... more In this paper, a detailed review of microcontroller unit (MCU)-based wireless sensor node platforms from recently published research articles is presented. Despite numerous research efforts in the fast-growing field of wireless sensor devices, energy consumption remains a challenge that limits the lifetime of wireless sensor networks (WSNs). The Internet-of-Things (IoT) technology utilizes WSNs for providing an efficient sensing and communication infrastructure. Thus, a comparison of the existing wireless sensor nodes is crucial. Of particular interest are the advances in the recent MCU-based wireless sensor node platforms, which have become diverse and fairly advanced in relation to the currently available commercial WSN platforms. The recent wireless sensor nodes are compared with commercially available motes. The commercially available motes are selected based on a number of criteria including popularity, published results, interesting characteristics and features. Of particular ...
In Sub-Saharan Africa, where most irrigation systems are manually operated, water allocation and ... more In Sub-Saharan Africa, where most irrigation systems are manually operated, water allocation and irrigation scheduling are often based on uniform application irrespective of crop needs and growth stages, which results in nonoptimal water use. Recently, a lot of research has been carried out to improve irrigation water use efficiency through automation by employing wireless sensor-based monitoring systems. Further to the improvement of water use efficiency and yield, while reducing costs, a field trial was carried out at a farm in Harare, Zimbabwe, during the 2016, 2017, and 2018 winter seasons to test whether a new approach to the automated irrigation systems, one based on IoT and wirelessly connected soil sensors (called hereafter as WCSS), improves water use efficiency without reducing yield. WCSS method was compared with three widely used conventional irrigation methods, that is, manual scheduling, tensiometer-based scheduling, and weather-based scheduling. Impacts on water savin...
Cloud computing has been growing tremendously, as it has been accepted recently. Cloud computing ... more Cloud computing has been growing tremendously, as it has been accepted recently. Cloud computing has many unique strengths which can be utilized to facilitate workflow execution. This paper investigates the issue of dynamic scheduling in cloud computing with a special attention to the case of instance-intensive cost-constrained workflows. This paper seeks to address the following issues: A study of this ‘new’ technology taking its gradual migration from Grid computing, their similarities, differences, weaknesses and strengths. Also there will be a study on the metrics of comparing existing scheduling algorithms with a comparison on how they are fairing. Lastly this paper seeks to propose a dynamic scheduling algorithm that will be based on a simulation model. In this research the problem of workflow scheduling has been discussed. The efficiency of the proposed algorithm was tested in comparison with the fixed algorithm that come along with the simulator used (CloudSim 2.1).
Paresthesia is defined as an alteration in local sensibility, associated with numbness, tingling,... more Paresthesia is defined as an alteration in local sensibility, associated with numbness, tingling, or unpleasant sensations caused by nerve lesions or irritation. It can be temporary or permanent. The treatment protocol for facial paresthesia is primarily based on the use of drugs and implant removal, which may not be completely effective or may require other risk exposure when there is no spontaneous regression. However, other therapeutic modalities such as acupuncture can be used. The aim of this study is to report a case of a patient with paresthesia of the inferior alveolar nerve and pain caused by an implant surgery performed 2 years earlier. The patient received acupuncture treatment during 4 months of weekly sessions. Six points were used: Large Intestine (LI4), Large Intestine (LI11), Stomach (ST36), Liver (LR3), Extra Head and Neck (E-HN-18), and Stomach (ST5). The visual analog scale was used before and after each session for the analysis of paresthesia and pain, together with assessment of the paresthesia by delimitation of the desensitized region of the skin and presented discomfort. Pain remission and reduction in the size of the paresthesia area occurred after four sessions.
Spam is commonly defined as unsolicited (sent or received without being requested) automated emai... more Spam is commonly defined as unsolicited (sent or received without being requested) automated email messages. Spam used to be considered a mere nuisance, has progressed from being a nuisance to become a major problem. The goal of this project paper was to incorporate regular expressions in Bayesian statistical approach to distinguish between spam and legitimate email messages. This research paper had focused on the statistical approach (Bayesian method) of all the methods in spam filtering because it is easy, simple to implement and all Bayesian algorithms have the advantage of having a linear computational complexity. The objective of the paper was to find the best regular expression that produce best tokens suitable for providing good probability value in determining the category of the message. To have apt and sounding tokens Dimensionality Vector Reduction technique was applied in the filtering process. An algorithm was designed that implements the Dimensionality Vector Reduction...
E-learning based platforms that support multimedia content to enhance interactive learning demand... more E-learning based platforms that support multimedia content to enhance interactive learning demands large disk space. Despite research ground covered under e-learning circles, less attention has been devoted to solicit the best methods to address the disk space challenges at minimal cost. This research focuses on advancing a best architecture that meet the need for storage space when developing interactive multimedia e-learning based portals. Simulation was used using the CloudSim toolkit. Findings show that to precisely test the performance of viable architectures, there has to be a robust platform for such experiments. The main conclusions drawn from this research were that, there is room to improve on existing architectures to scale down on development costs so attributed to e-learning portals that are interactive in stature. Storage can be built from exiting personal computers through harnessing the cloud computing functionality designed as most of the personal computers are not ...
A variety of water use efficiency methods have been proposed for greenhouse irrigation scheduling... more A variety of water use efficiency methods have been proposed for greenhouse irrigation scheduling but most of them have been found to be very expensive and complicated to use. In an effort to address the needs of the low income farmer, we developed a low cost irrigation controller which incorporates cheap and readily available electronic components, less expensive controller and sensor requiring minimal human interaction. We calculated the total cost of the controller inclusive of sensor to be about US$85. To come up with an automated irrigation system, there is need to know the time to irrigate and amount of water required by a plant at every point in time. This can be determined from environmental, soil or plant based factors. This paper presents a strategy to provide an irrigation control system, which uses a cheap 8 bit, small working memory and small storage capacity PIC Microcontroller which requires minimal human-computer interaction and consumes low electrical power. The sys...
A substantial percentage of farmers in Southern Africa, including Zimbabwe, rely on rain for most... more A substantial percentage of farmers in Southern Africa, including Zimbabwe, rely on rain for most of their farming activities but there are areas which are entirely dependent on irrigation water to produce viable crops. Water-saving agricultural practices and sound water management strategies are therefore required to ensure viability of the farming industry in those places that receive less rain. The study aimed at developing an automatic irrigation controller which is low cost and reliable for a low income farmer. The controller uses signals from the soil to schedule irrigation and was made from cheap and off the shelf components from our laboratory stores and local electronic retail shops. The heart of the controller circuit was the PIC Microcontroller 16F872 that uses only 35 instructions for programming in assembly language. Two dielectric capacitance sensors (0.20 m ECH 2 O probe, Decagon Devices, Inc. Pullman, WA USA.) connected to the controller circuit, were used to measure...
This paper looks at how to optimize data collection from the wireless sensor nodes and analysis o... more This paper looks at how to optimize data collection from the wireless sensor nodes and analysis of this data for an efficient irrigation scheduling in order to optimize water usage. In this research we design a model system which integrates op-timum node placement and data aggregation to see the combined effect on the efficiency of the wireless sensor network (WSN) that is in terms of latency, power consumption and utilization, network life span (i.e. node mortality). Issues looked into included the optimum placement of the sensor nodes, traffic aggregation and protocols for cooperative data forwarding. Models of different topologies were designed and evaluated through simulations to come up with the best model that achieves optimum placement to minimize the number of nodes without compromising on the readings as well as incorporating data forwarding and aggregation. The model was cost effective as it displayed significant improvement in efficiency, power utilization, consumption, n...
Mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) have become an integral part of the ubiquitous computing and comm... more Mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) have become an integral part of the ubiquitous computing and communication environment, providing new infrastructure for multimedia applications such as video phone, multimedia-on-demand, and others. In order to access multimedia information in a MANET, Quality of Service (QoS) needs to be considered, such as high success rate to access multimedia data, bounded end-to-end delay, security and others. Factors, like delay and jitter, bandwidth and throughput, are studied that affect quality of service in wireless mobile ad hoc networks. Various Quality of Service architectures on IEEE 802.11-based mobile ad hoc networks are discussed, concentrating on architectures that employ cross-layer interaction in the OSI protocol stack. Architectures discussed include IntServ, DiffServ, FQMM, CEQMM, INSIGNIA, SWAN and ASAP.
Electronic payment systems are proliferating in banking, retail in government and everywhere mone... more Electronic payment systems are proliferating in banking, retail in government and everywhere money needs to be exchanged. Electronic payment systems are the everyday technology under use, they are the relevant systems which go hand in hand with technology and they are also high in demand. All these issues enlighten a need to design and implement an electronic payment system that addresses the specific requirements for the Zimbabwean market. An effective and universal electronic payment system in Zimbabwe can solve some problems which are currently encountered in e- commerce, thus we designed a light weight electronic payment model, universal and offering better integration to banks, all merchants and Small and Medium Enterprises. It is comprised of attributes which any electronic payment system is expected to have. It has its own security features especially the offline authentication method and other security aspects which are currently in use by banks. The integrated architectural...
intrusion detection system; network-layer-security; security-enhanced routing protocol; mobile ad... more intrusion detection system; network-layer-security; security-enhanced routing protocol; mobile ad hoc network
Conference paper,Quality of Service (QoS) in mobile ad hoc networks is a very important issue, es... more Conference paper,Quality of Service (QoS) in mobile ad hoc networks is a very important issue, especially these days as multimedia traffic finds its way on the network. Bandwidth is a very scarce commodity on wireless networks so bandwidth management is a very important component of QoS in ad hoc networks. In this paper a bandwidth management framework for mobile ad hoc networks is presented. Traffic is grouped into classes according to their priority. When a flow is using more bandwidth than its required minimum, it can release some bandwidth to a new flow which requires the bandwidth. So when a new flow requests for admission, the framework should check the bandwidth allocation of the on-going flows. When the available bandwidth is less than the required minimum of the flow, then bandwidth has to be released by the on-going flows starting with the least priority flow. When the highest priority flow releases its extra bandwidth and the bandwidth remains inadequate then the system g...
Uploads
Papers by Benny Nyambo