Dynamic adaptive cost model for wireless Internet connectivity in African rural communities
- Authors: Sibanda, Khulumani
- Date: 2010
- Subjects: Internet , Community development -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Cost effectiveness , Wireless communication systems , Rural development -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD (Computer Science)
- Identifier: vital:11389 , http://hdl.handle.net/10353/380 , Internet , Community development -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Cost effectiveness , Wireless communication systems , Rural development -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape
- Description: In today’s dynamic technological landscape, wireless communication networks have become an important part of economic development. The emergence of wireless technologies raises hopes to extend communication to remote areas that have not seen any tangible deployment to date. As developing nations pin their hopes to wireless technologies, cost models for wireless communication networks are becoming vital to support the emerging technologies. However, varying cost changes raise critical challenges to the estimation of both capital expenditure and operational expenditure. The network deployment process has numerous events that may cause adjustments to initially estimated project costs. These adjustments are necessary for a cost management plan and this plan includes monitoring cost performance and ensuring that only appropriate changes are made to the network project. The incidents that may cause cost changes can not be entirely predicted as their distribution tend to change dynamically from time to time. Estimating network deployment costs in such a dynamic environment necessitates cost models that can adapt to random occurrence of cost changes. Widely used cost models are usually performed by experienced personnel whose engineering experience is derived from deploying similar networks. In this approach experienced personnel add a certain percentage to the cost estimate to cater for contingency costs. Certainly such an approach depends on individual opinion, making it subjective and void of mathematical estimating relationships which are of paramount importance in ensuring that estimated deployment costs are sufficient to deal with cost uncertainties. We observe that existing approaches can only explore a limited solution space and hence can lead to cost overruns if implemented in dynamically cost changing environments. This thesis presents a wireless communication network deployment cost model that incorporates uncertainties into the final cost estimate. The model is adaptive to unpredictable cost changes since it allows adjustments of confidence levels when calculating contingency costs. This allows dynamically updating the cost changes without the cost model being reconstructed from scratch. We make use of the Poisson process in modeling the occurrence of incidents that are responsible for causing cost changes during network deployment. We also show that the occurrence of the incidents causing cost change are random and tend to follow the Poisson distribution. Using different levels of confidence we model various cost contingencies and make sensitivity analyses to identify the probability of cost overrun when given different contingencies. The dynamic adaptive cost model can be used either at the strategic level to understand the cost of a particular technique or at the operational level, as a way to show how Poisson process in network deployment can compare with engineering experience and other estimating techniques. We believe that the model is useful for remote areas where deployment costs are volatile and the distribution of incidents causing cost change to original cost estimates are diverse and dynamically changing. Further we expect that our research improves the knowledge base of information about the costs for rural communities to connect to the Internet, consequently providing useful input to future policy debates. This work is further poised to be a utility function to help those planning internet infrastructure deployments in least developed regions.
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- Authors: Sibanda, Khulumani
- Date: 2010
- Subjects: Internet , Community development -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Cost effectiveness , Wireless communication systems , Rural development -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD (Computer Science)
- Identifier: vital:11389 , http://hdl.handle.net/10353/380 , Internet , Community development -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Cost effectiveness , Wireless communication systems , Rural development -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape
- Description: In today’s dynamic technological landscape, wireless communication networks have become an important part of economic development. The emergence of wireless technologies raises hopes to extend communication to remote areas that have not seen any tangible deployment to date. As developing nations pin their hopes to wireless technologies, cost models for wireless communication networks are becoming vital to support the emerging technologies. However, varying cost changes raise critical challenges to the estimation of both capital expenditure and operational expenditure. The network deployment process has numerous events that may cause adjustments to initially estimated project costs. These adjustments are necessary for a cost management plan and this plan includes monitoring cost performance and ensuring that only appropriate changes are made to the network project. The incidents that may cause cost changes can not be entirely predicted as their distribution tend to change dynamically from time to time. Estimating network deployment costs in such a dynamic environment necessitates cost models that can adapt to random occurrence of cost changes. Widely used cost models are usually performed by experienced personnel whose engineering experience is derived from deploying similar networks. In this approach experienced personnel add a certain percentage to the cost estimate to cater for contingency costs. Certainly such an approach depends on individual opinion, making it subjective and void of mathematical estimating relationships which are of paramount importance in ensuring that estimated deployment costs are sufficient to deal with cost uncertainties. We observe that existing approaches can only explore a limited solution space and hence can lead to cost overruns if implemented in dynamically cost changing environments. This thesis presents a wireless communication network deployment cost model that incorporates uncertainties into the final cost estimate. The model is adaptive to unpredictable cost changes since it allows adjustments of confidence levels when calculating contingency costs. This allows dynamically updating the cost changes without the cost model being reconstructed from scratch. We make use of the Poisson process in modeling the occurrence of incidents that are responsible for causing cost changes during network deployment. We also show that the occurrence of the incidents causing cost change are random and tend to follow the Poisson distribution. Using different levels of confidence we model various cost contingencies and make sensitivity analyses to identify the probability of cost overrun when given different contingencies. The dynamic adaptive cost model can be used either at the strategic level to understand the cost of a particular technique or at the operational level, as a way to show how Poisson process in network deployment can compare with engineering experience and other estimating techniques. We believe that the model is useful for remote areas where deployment costs are volatile and the distribution of incidents causing cost change to original cost estimates are diverse and dynamically changing. Further we expect that our research improves the knowledge base of information about the costs for rural communities to connect to the Internet, consequently providing useful input to future policy debates. This work is further poised to be a utility function to help those planning internet infrastructure deployments in least developed regions.
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Development of a web-based interface for a wireless sensor network monitoring system
- Authors: Gumbo, Sibukele
- Date: 2007
- Subjects: Wireless LAN , Sensor networks , Wireless communication systems , Web sites -- Design , User interfaces (Computer systems)
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MSc (Computer Science)
- Identifier: vital:11372 , http://hdl.handle.net/10353/68 , Wireless LAN , Sensor networks , Wireless communication systems , Web sites -- Design , User interfaces (Computer systems)
- Description: In the recent past, wireless sensor technology has undergone advancements in its autonomous data collecting aspects, and has become an area worth investigating in relation to structural monitoring applications. The system described in this thesis aims at acquiring, storing and displaying overhead transmission line related data collected from a wireless sensor network. Open source tools were used in its development and implementation. The inherent linearly aligned topology of transmission line monitoring devices is not without shortcomings; hence analysis of linear node placement, hardware and software components was carried out to determine the feasibility of the system. Their limited data processing capabilities has motivated the development of a post processing wireless sensor application in order to present any collected structural data in an understandable format.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Gumbo, Sibukele
- Date: 2007
- Subjects: Wireless LAN , Sensor networks , Wireless communication systems , Web sites -- Design , User interfaces (Computer systems)
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MSc (Computer Science)
- Identifier: vital:11372 , http://hdl.handle.net/10353/68 , Wireless LAN , Sensor networks , Wireless communication systems , Web sites -- Design , User interfaces (Computer systems)
- Description: In the recent past, wireless sensor technology has undergone advancements in its autonomous data collecting aspects, and has become an area worth investigating in relation to structural monitoring applications. The system described in this thesis aims at acquiring, storing and displaying overhead transmission line related data collected from a wireless sensor network. Open source tools were used in its development and implementation. The inherent linearly aligned topology of transmission line monitoring devices is not without shortcomings; hence analysis of linear node placement, hardware and software components was carried out to determine the feasibility of the system. Their limited data processing capabilities has motivated the development of a post processing wireless sensor application in order to present any collected structural data in an understandable format.
- Full Text:
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