Feng Xia

Bio: Feng Xia is an academic researcher from Federation University Australia. The author has contributed to research in topics: Wireless sensor network & Scheduling (computing). The author has an hindex of 54, co-authored 489 publications receiving 11094 citations. Previous affiliations of Feng Xia include Queensland University of Technology & Kyung Hee University.

A Cooperative Partial Computation Offloading Scheme for Mobile Edge Computing Enabled Internet of Things

Abstract: With the evolutionary development of latency sensitive applications, delay restriction is becoming an obstacle to run sophisticated applications on mobile devices. Partial computation offloading is promising to enable these applications to execute on mobile user equipments with low latency. However, most of the existing researches focus on either cloud computing or mobile edge computing (MEC) to offload tasks. In this paper, we comprehensively consider both of them and it is an early effort to study the cooperation of cloud computing and MEC in Internet of Things. We start from the single user computation offloading problem, where the MEC resources are not constrained. It can be solved by the branch and bound algorithm. Later on, the multiuser computation offloading problem is formulated as a mixed integer linear programming problem by considering resource competition among mobile users, which is NP-hard. Due to the computation complexity of the formulated problem, we design an iterative heuristic MEC resource allocation algorithm to make the offloading decision dynamically. Simulation results demonstrate that our algorithm outperforms the existing schemes in terms of execution latency and offloading efficiency.

Introduction to: Special Issue on Smartphone-Based Interactive Technologies, Systems, and Applications

Abstract: Smartphones (or smart mobile devices) have now truly become a ubiquitous computing device, a computer that the late Mark Weiser envisioned in his ubiquitous computing manifesto. Many applications that could only have been dreamed of have now become a reality due to the powerful computing resources, display, sensing, and networking capabilities of smartphones. With applications ranging from productivity, entertainment, enterprise, social networking, communications, and mixed reality, the smartphone is the “swiss army knife” of it all. However, there are still many untapped elements and unlimited possibilities: Smartphones can provide next-generation interactive systems with more intuitive and intelligent technologies and applications that have not been explored much in detail, especially through the use of mobile computing, sensing, and networking capabilities. Making uses of cyber and physical data accessible by smartphones at a location, new cyber-physical interactive technologies and systems can be designed and integrated to create novel functionalities, methods, and intelligences to interact with humans and environments for better social experiences, as well as more intelligent services and creative applications, such as recommendation systems, advertising platforms, and gaming applications that are interactive to the user smartphones on the spot in a physical environment and situation. This special issue of ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications and Applications (TOMM) provides an opportunity to attract and bring together mobile computing, cyber-physical systems, ubiquitous computing, social computing, wireless networking, and multimedia communications researchers along with user interface designers and practitioners with diverse backgrounds to contribute articles on theoretical, practical, and methodological issues for next-generation interactive technologies, systems, and applications using smartphones. There were a record number of submissions (38 in total) for this special issue of ACM TOMM. Twelve high-quality, creative, and interesting articles were selected and accepted, which discuss various challenges and emerging directions of smartphone-based interactive technologies, systems, and applications. This special issue starts off with 5 articles concerning the technologies and applications for better uses and creations of visual/3D images and augmented reality (AR) in the smartphones The first article by Zhu et al. is titled “ShotVis: Smartphone-Based Visualization of OCR Information from Images” and it presents an approach to help smartphone users to easily read and organize text-based data captured by the smartphone’s camera. The captured images with textual data are first processed by optical character recognition, and the recognized information is readable through various intuitive visualization techniques selected and refined by smartphone users through on-screen interactions.

Vehicular Social Networks: Enabling Smart Mobility

Abstract: Vehicular transportation is an essential part of modern cities. However, the ever increasing number of road accidents, traffic congestion, and other such issues become obstacles for the realization of smart cities. As the integration of the Internet of Vehicles and social networks, vehicular social networks (VSNs) are promising to solve the above-mentioned problems by enabling smart mobility in modern cities, which are likely to pave the way for sustainable development by promoting transportation efficiency. In this article, the definition of and a brief introduction to VSNs are presented first. Existing supporting communication technologies are then summarized. Furthermore, we introduce an application scenario on trajectory data-analysis-based traffic anomaly detection for VSNs. Finally, several research challenges and open issues are highlighted and discussed.

Localization Technologies for Indoor Human Tracking

Abstract: The proliferation of wireless localization technologies provides a promising future for serving human beings in indoor scenarios. Their applications include real-time tracking, activity recognition, health care, navigation, emergence detection, and target-of-interest monitoring, among others. Additionally, indoor localization technologies address the inefficiency of GPS (Global Positioning System) inside buildings. Since people spend most of their time in indoor environments, indoor tracking service is in great public demand. Based on this observation, this paper aims to provide a better understanding of state-of-the-art technologies and stimulate new research efforts in this field. For these purposes, existing localization technologies that can be used for tracking individuals in indoor environments are reviewed, along with some further discussions.

Internet of Things in Industries: A Survey

Abstract: Internet of Things (IoT) has provided a promising opportunity to build powerful industrial systems and applications by leveraging the growing ubiquity of radio-frequency identification (RFID), and wireless, mobile, and sensor devices. A wide range of industrial IoT applications have been developed and deployed in recent years. In an effort to understand the development of IoT in industries, this paper reviews the current research of IoT, key enabling technologies, major IoT applications in industries, and identifies research trends and challenges. A main contribution of this review paper is that it summarizes the current state-of-the-art IoT in industries systematically.