Computer Sciences Commons^™

In Need Of A Domain-Specific Language Modeling Notation For Smartphone Applications With Portable Capability, Hamza Ghandorh, Luiz Fernando Capretz Dr., Ali Bou Nassif Dr.

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

The rapid growth of the smartphone market and its increasing revenue has motivated developers to target multiple platforms. Market leaders, such as Apple, Google, and Microsoft, develop their smartphone applications complying with their platform specifications. The specification of each platform makes a platform-dedicated application incompatible with other platforms due to the diversity of operating systems, programming languages, and design patterns. Conventional development methodologies are applied to smartphone applications, yet they perform less well. Smartphone applications have unique hardware and software requirements. All previous factors push smartphone developers to build less sophisticated and low-quality products when targeting multiple smartphone platforms. Model-driven …

Enabling Real Time In-Situ Context Based Experimentation To Observe User Behaviour, Kartik Muralidaran

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Today’s mobile phones represent a rich and powerful computing platform, given their sensing, processing and communication capabilities. These devices are also part of the everyday life of millions of people, and coupled with the unprecedented access to personal context, make them the ideal tool for conducting behavioural experiments in an unobtrusive way. Transforming the mobile device from a mere observer of human context to an enabler of behavioural experiments however, requires not only providing experimenters access to the deep, near-real time human context (e.g., location, activity, group dynamics) but also exposing a disciplined scientific experimentation service that frees them from …

Towards A Robust Sparse Data Representation In Wireless Sensor Networks, Abu Alsheik Mohammad, Shaowei Lin, Hwee-Pink Tan, Dusit Niyato

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Compressive sensing has been successfully used for optimized operations in wireless sensor networks. However, raw data collected by sensors may be neither originally sparse nor easily transformed into a sparse data representation. This paper addresses the problem of transforming source data collected by sensor nodes into sparse representation with a few nonzero elements. Our contributions that address three major issues include: 1) an effective method that extracts population sparsity of the data, 2) a sparsity ratio guarantee scheme, and 3) a customized leaerning algorithm of the sparsifying dictionary. We introduce an unsupervised neural network to extract an intrinsic sparse coding …

Cooperation In Delay-Tolerant Networks With Wireless Energy Transfer: Performance Analysis And Optimization, Dusit Niyato, Ping Wang, Hwee-Pink Tan, Walid Saad, Dong In Kim

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We consider a delay-tolerant network (DTN) whose mobile nodes are assigned to collect packets from data sources and deliver them to a sink (i.e., a gateway). Each mobile node operates by using energy transferred wirelessly from the gateway. For such a network, two main issues are studied. First, when a mobile node is at the data source, this node must decide on whether to accept the packet received from the data source or not. In contrast, whenever a mobile node is at the gateway, it has to decide on whether to transmit the packets collected from the data sources or …

Memes As Building Blocks: A Case Study On Evolutionary Optimization + Transfer Learning For Routing Problems, Liang Feng, Yew-Soon Ong, Ah-Hwee Tan, Ivor W. Tsang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

A significantly under-explored area of evolutionary optimization in the literature is the study of optimization methodologies that can evolve along with the problems solved. Particularly, present evolutionary optimization approaches generally start their search from scratch or the ground-zero state of knowledge, independent of how similar the given new problem of interest is to those optimized previously. There has thus been the apparent lack of automated knowledge transfers and reuse across problems. Taking this cue, this paper presents a Memetic Computational Paradigm based on Evolutionary Optimization + Transfer Learning for search, one that models how human solves problems, and embarks on …

Apparatus And Method For Determining The Location Of A Mobile Device Using Multiple Wireless Access Points, Kyle Jamieson, Jie Xiong

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

A method and apparatus are provided for determining the location of a mobile device using multiple wireless access points, each wireless access point comprising multiple antennas. The method comprises receiving a communication signal from the mobile device at said multiple antennas of said multiple wireless access points. For each wireless access point, angle-of-arrival information of the received communication signal at the wireless access point is determined, based on a difference in phase of the received signal between different antennas. The determined angle-of-arrival information for the received communication signal from the mobile device is then collected from each of the multiple …

Deep Learning For Just-In-Time Defect Prediction, Xinli Yang, David Lo, Xin Xia, Yun Zhang, Jianling Sun

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Defect prediction is a very meaningful topic, particularly at change-level. Change-level defect prediction, which is also referred as just-in-time defect prediction, could not only ensure software quality in the development process, but also make the developers check and fix the defects in time. Nowadays, deep learning is a hot topic in the machine learning literature. Whether deep learning can be used to improve the performance of just-in-time defect prediction is still uninvestigated. In this paper, to bridge this research gap, we propose an approach Deeper which leverages deep learning techniques to predict defect-prone changes. We first build a set of …

A Study On The Geographical Distribution Of Brazil’S Prestigious Software Developers, Fernando Figueira Filho, Marcelo Gattermann Perin, Christoph Treude, Sabrina Marczak, Leandro De Almeida Melo, Igor Marques Da Silva, Lucas Bibiano Dos Santos

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Brazil is an emerging economy with many IT initiatives from public and private sectors. To evaluate the progress of such initiatives, we study the geographical distribution of software developers in Brazil, in particular which of the Brazilian states succeed the most in attracting and nurturing them. We compare the prestige of developers with socio-economic data and find that (i) prestigious developers tend to be located in the most economically developed regions of Brazil, (ii) they are likely to follow others in the same state they are located in, (iii) they are likely to follow other prestigious developers, and (iv) they …

Formal Specification Driven Development, Titus Fofung

Dissertations, Theses and Capstone Projects (Full IR Collection)

This paper researches a quantitative metric of investigating Formal Specification-Driven Development (FSDD). Formal specification is needed at the beginning of the development process to prevent ambiguity and to improve the quality through corrections of errors found in the late phases of a traditional design process, Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). The research is conducted with capstone students using both the FSDD and the SDLC (traditional) models and a quantitative analysis is presented to evaluate the internal quality of the software. The tool used to measure the internal quality is the .NET 2013 analysis tool. Formal Specification-Driven Development (FSDD) is a …

Discovery Over Application: A Case Study Of Misaligned Incentives In Software Engineering, Eric F. Rizzi

School of Computing: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

In this thesis, we present evidence that there is an under-emphasis on the application of software systems in Software Engineering research, affecting the advancement of the field as a whole. Specifically, we perform a case-study on KLEE, a tool with over 1000 citations. We made improvements that consisted of fixing performance bugs and implementing optimizations that have become common practice, increasing KLEE's performance by 2-11X. To understand how techniques proposed in the literature would be affected by these improvements, we analyzed 100 papers that cited the original KLEE paper. From this analysis we found two things. First, it is clear …

Detection And Classification Of Malicious Javascript Via Attack Behavior Modelling, Yinxing Xue, Junjie Wang, Yang Liu, Hao Xiao, Jun Sun, Mahinthan Chandramohan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Existing malicious JavaScript (JS) detection tools and commercial anti-virus tools mostly use feature-based or signature-based approaches to detect JS malware. These tools are weak in resistance to obfuscation and JS malware variants, not mentioning about providing detailed information of attack behaviors. Such limitations root in the incapability of capturing attack behaviors in these approches. In this paper, we propose to use Deterministic Finite Automaton (DFA) to abstract and summarize common behaviors of malicious JS of the same attack type. We propose an automatic behavior learning framework, named JS∗ , to learn DFA from dynamic execution traces of JS malware, where …

On Multipath Link Characterization And Adaptation For Device-Free Human Detection, Zimu Zhou, Zheng Yang, Chenshu Wu, Yunhao Liu, Lionel M. Ni

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

No abstract provided.

Reliability Assessment For Distributed Systems Via Communication Abstraction And Refinement, Lin Gui, Jun Sun, Yang Liu, Jin Song Dong

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Distributed systems like cloud-based services are ever more popular. Assessing the reliability of distributed systems is highly non-trivial. Particularly, the order of executions among distributed components adds a dimension of non-determinism, which invalidates existing reliability assessment methods based on Markov chains. Probabilistic model checking based on models like Markov decision processes is designed to deal with scenarios involving both probabilistic behavior (e.g., reliabilities of system components) and non-determinism. However, its application is currently limited by state space explosion, which makes reliability assessment of distributed system particularly difficult. In this work, we improve the probabilistic model checking through a method of …

Automatic Video Self Modeling For Voice Disorder, Ju Shen, Changpeng Ti, Anusha Raghunathan, Sen-Ching S. Cheung, Rita Patel

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Video self modeling (VSM) is a behavioral intervention technique in which a learner models a target behavior by watching a video of him- or herself. In the field of speech language pathology, the approach of VSM has been successfully used for treatment of language in children with Autism and in individuals with fluency disorder of stuttering. Technical challenges remain in creating VSM contents that depict previously unseen behaviors. In this paper, we propose a novel system that synthesizes new video sequences for VSM treatment of patients with voice disorders. Starting with a video recording of a voice-disorder patient, the proposed …

An Automatic Approach To Detect Unusual Events In Software Repositories, Larissa Leite, Christoph Treude, Fernando Figueira Filho

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This work presents an automatic approach to detect unusual events in software repositories. The approach collects data from source code repositories and analyzes new commits based on historical data in order to detect unusual events that are displayed to developers and managers in an awareness tool.

Optimizing Selection Of Competing Features Via Feedback-Directed Evolutionary Algorithms, Tian Huat Tan, Yinxing Xue, Manman Chen, Jun Sun, Yang Liu, Jin Song Dong Dong

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Software that support various groups of customers usually require complicated configurations to attain different functionalities. To model the configuration options, feature model is proposed to capture the commonalities and competing variabilities of the product variants in software family or Software Product Line (SPL). A key challenge for deriving a new product is to find a set of features that do not have inconsistencies or conflicts, yet optimize multiple objectives (e.g., minimizing cost and maximizing number of features), which are often competing with each other. Existing works have attempted to make use of evolutionary algorithms (EAs) to address this problem. In …

Active Semi-Supervised Approach For Checking App Behavior Against Its Description, Ma Siqi, Shaowei Wang, David Lo, Deng, Robert H., Cong Sun

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Mobile applications are popular in recent years. They are often allowed to access and modify users' sensitive data. However, many mobile applications are malwares that inappropriately use these sensitive data. To detect these malwares, Gorla et al. Propose CHABADA which compares app behaviors against its descriptions. Data about known malwares are not used in their work, which limits its effectiveness. In this work, we extend the work by Gorla et al. By proposing an active and semi-supervised approach for detecting malwares. Different from CHABADA, our approach will make use of both known benign and malicious apps to predict other malicious …

An Empirical Study Of Classifier Combination On Cross-Project Defect Prediction, Yun Zhang, David Lo, Xin Xia, Jianling Sun

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

To help developers better allocate testing and debugging efforts, many software defect prediction techniques have been proposed in the literature. These techniques can be used to predict classes that are more likely to be buggy based on past history of buggy classes. These techniques work well as long as a sufficient amount of data is available to train a prediction model. However, there is rarely enough training data for new software projects. To deal with this problem, cross-project defect prediction, which transfers a prediction model trained using data from one project to another, has been proposed and is regarded as …

S-Looper: Automatic Summarization For Multipath String Loops, Xiaofei Xie, Yang Liu, Wei Le, Xiaohong Li, Hongxu Chen

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Loops are important yet most challenging program constructs to analyze for various program analysis tasks. Existing loop analysis techniques mainly handle well loops that contain only integer variables with a single path in the loop body. The key challenge in summarizing a multiple-path loop is that a loop traversal can yield a large number of possibilities due to the different execution orders of these paths located in the loop; when a loop contains a conditional branch related to string content, we potentially need to track every character in the string for loop summarization, which is expensive. In this paper, we …

Nat Traversal Techniques And Udp Keep-Alive Interval Optimization, Christopher Daniel Widmer

Theses and Dissertations

NAT traversal presents a challenge to Peer to Peer (P2P) applications, as in many instances a third party is needed to help initiate communication between two hosts when one is behind one or more NAT devices. Much work has gone into facilitating communication across NATs using various protocols, and several standards have been developed to this end. This thesis explores the advantages and disadvantages of several of these standards, including protocols for interacting with the NAT device itself (NAT Port Mapping Protocol (NATPMP), Port Control Protocol (PCP), and Universal Plug and Play (UPnP)), and those using an external server to …

Post-Silicon Functional Validation With Virtual Prototypes, Kai Cong

Dissertations and Theses

Post-silicon validation has become a critical stage in the system-on-chip (SoC) development cycle, driven by increasing design complexity, higher level of integration and decreasing time-to-market. According to recent reports, post-silicon validation effort comprises more than 50% of the overall development effort of an 65nm SoC. Though post-silicon validation covers many aspects ranging from electronic properties of hardware to performance and power consumption of whole systems, a central task remains validating functional correctness of both hardware and its integration with software. There are several key challenges to achieving accelerated and low-cost post-silicon functional validation. First, there is only limited silicon observability …

Hardware/Software Interface Assurance With Conformance Checking, Li Lei

Dissertations and Theses

Hardware/Software (HW/SW) interfaces are pervasive in modern computer systems. Most of HW/SW interfaces are implemented by devices and their device drivers. Unfortunately, HW/SW interfaces are unreliable and insecure due to their intrinsic complexity and error-prone nature. Moreover, assuring HW/SW interface reliability and security is challenging. First, at the post-silicon validation stage, HW/SW integration validation is largely an ad-hoc and time-consuming process. Second, at the system deployment stage, transient hardware failures and malicious attacks make HW/SW interfaces vulnerable even after intensive testing and validation. In this dissertation, we present a comprehensive solution for HW/SW interface assurance over the system life cycle. …

Simple Macro: Addon For World Of Warcraft, Yemane Gebreyesus

Computer Engineering

This senior project was started to try and solve a problem within World of Warcraft. That particular problem is the underdeveloped default macro interface, which Simple Macro aims to remedy by creating a more user-friendly interface that is accessible by a wider audience. It employs a click through method of accessing and editing data to reduce the amount of typing necessary. The addon also has a feature to specifically help players that want to change a target in certain groups of macros all at once. The project was developed in both Lua and XML.

Resound.Fm, Matthew Bleifer

Computer Science and Software Engineering

The goal of this senior project was to create a social platform for people to share and discover the music they love. Current music streaming technologies lack an effective tool for helping users find new music. The personal element of music that used to exist in the days that people gathered around record players or shared mixtapes has been lost online and Resound.fm seeks to bring it back. Resound.fm is a Ruby on Rails web application, which uses some of the latest web technologies and design patterns to create a powerful new music discovery experience online. The project was completed …

'Fo Fighter: 2d Real-Time Game, Cary Dobeck

Computer Engineering

‘FO Fighter is a 2D real-time game for Android and iOS mobile devices. The game utilizes the motion sensors and touch screens built within these devices to give the player a great amount of control over their character’s position and firing direction. This control allows for a reactive environment set in outer space, where gravity is determined by the device’s orientation, while the player must dodge, fight and destroy multiple enemy fighters on each planet in the solar system. ‘FO Fighter has been tested throughout its development cycle on numerous devices on both the Android and iOS platforms, with testers …

Geospatial Data Modeling To Support Energy Pipeline Integrity Management, Austin Wylie

Master's Theses

Several hundred thousand miles of energy pipelines span the whole of North America -- responsible for carrying the natural gas and liquid petroleum that power the continent's homes and economies. These pipelines, so crucial to everyday goings-on, are closely monitored by various operating companies to ensure they perform safely and smoothly.

Happenings like earthquakes, erosion, and extreme weather, however -- and human factors like vehicle traffic and construction -- all pose threats to pipeline integrity. As such, there is a tremendous need to measure and indicate useful, actionable data for each region of interest, and operators often use computer-based decision …

Drill Design Suite, Neil Nordhof

Computer Science and Software Engineering

Drill Design Suite is a lightweight tool for creating drill for marching band programs.

California State University San Bernardino Win Gps, Francisco A. Ron

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The objective of this masters project is to develop a working application for Android devices. This is an application intended to be used by CSUSB. It has its own database, which has information about most of the facilities on campus. There are many GPS applications on the market, however I chose to design and implement WiN GPS, short for Walking GPS, because it will allow the possibility of a personalized GPS for the school and for users should they choose to use it.

In order to develop Win GPS it was necessary to research the available tools and to become …

Wifi-Based Indoor Line-Of-Sight Identification, Zimu Zhou, Zheng Yang, Chenshu Wu, Longfei Shangguan, Haibin Cai, Yunhao Liu, Lionel M. Ni

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Wireless LANs, particularly WiFi, have been pervasively deployed and have fostered myriad wireless communication services and ubiquitous computing applications. A primary concern in designing these applications is to combat harsh indoor propagation environments, particularly Non-Line-Of-Sight (NLOS) propagation. The ability to identify the existence of the Line-Of-Sight (LOS) path acts as a key enabler for adaptive communication, cognitive radios, and robust localization. Enabling such capability on commodity WiFi infrastructure, however, is prohibitive due to the coarse multipath resolution with MAC-layer received signal strength. In this paper, we propose two PHY-layer channel-statistics-based features from both the time and frequency domains. To further …

Verifying Parameterized Timed Security Protocols, Li Li, Jun Sun, Yang Liu, Jin Song Dong

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Quantitative timing is often explicitly used in systems for better security, e.g., the credentials for automatic website logon often has limited lifetime. Verifying timing relevant security protocols in these systems is very challenging as timing adds another dimension of complexity compared with the untimed protocol verification. In our previous work, we proposed an approach to check the correctness of the timed authentication in security protocols with fixed timing constraints. However, a more difficult question persists, i.e., given a particular protocol design, whether the protocol has security flaws in its design or it can be configured secure with proper parameter values? …