November 10th, 2015: Leading international authority on mobile technology, Dr. Hossam Hassanein, has been speaking to engineering students at Canadian University Dubai (CUD) about the future potential of mobile sensor technology.
In a guest lecture entitled ‘Utilizing Mobile Ubiquitous Resources’, Dr. Hassanein revealed some of the latest research surrounding the application of increasingly sophisticated sensor technology found in everyday consumer devices, for the purposes of public sensing systems and solutions.
Dr. Hassanein provided an overview on the type of devices – from mobile telephones to smart vehicles – that could be utilized to generate data for use by authorities, consumers, or the population at large.
Talking specifically about one major area of research – the potential of Vehicles as a Resource (VaaR) – Dr. Hassanein revealed how the sensors on modern-day cars could be capable of facilitating a range of smart applications, from monitoring air pollution to supporting mobile infotainment systems.
He said, “The technology already exists in vehicles to identify, for example, when it is raining, in order to start the windscreen wipers. If this data can be stored, processed and relayed, it can help to develop highly-localized weather monitoring and forecasting solutions that would be of benefit to a wide range of data users.”
Going on to discuss the challenges that lie ahead in the development of this area of technology, Dr. Hassanein said that there would be two main methods to generate data: opportunistic – where the data generator is a passive part of the process; and participatory, where the data generator is ‘recruited’ to specifically deliver the data. In relation to the latter, he highlighted the challenges around incentivization, scalability and data quality.
Dr. Hassanein, founder and director of the Telecommunications Research Lab (TRL) at Queen's University, Ontario, Canada, is a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and a former chair of the IEEE Communication Society Technical Committee on Ad hoc and Sensor Networks. With more than 500 publications and several best paper awards to his name, Dr. Hassanein is also an IEEE Communications Society Distinguished Speaker, and also Distinguished Lecturer from 2008 to 2010.
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