NRU :: Browsing by Author "Sansa-Otim, Julianne"

Browsing by Author "Sansa-Otim, Julianne"

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African Great Lakes Rural Broadband Research Infrastructure
(In IST-Africa Conference, 2012) Kahiigi, Peter; Kariuki, Eunice; Kyalo, Victor; Masinde, Muthoni; Ngarambe, Donart; Nungu, Amos; Sansa-Otim, Julianne; Pehrson, Björn
The African Great Lakes Rural Broadband Research Infrastructure (AGLARBRI) addresses the establishment of sustainable broadband markets in areas where there is demand but no supply of broadband services. The scientific objective is to validate the reproducibility, scalability and extensibility of earlier successful results from the Tanzania ICT for Rural Development program. The development objective is to accelerate the deployment of commercial last mile links by stimulating community based first mile initiatives. Under-served local communities in Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and eastern DRC are being targeted and supported by local research and higher education institutions to support capacity building. Innovative and affordable technical solutions based on off-the shelf hardware and open source software are being packaged for industrial distribution. The application focus is on inclusive ubiquitous access, and basic public services such as Healthcare, education and local administration. The project is well aligned with the new targets from the UN Broadband Commission, which clearly justify the mainstreaming of the results from Tanzania to the other neighbouring countries.
An Assessment of the Effectiveness ofWeather Information Dissemination among Farmers and Policy Makers
(Sustainability, 2022) Sansa-Otim, Julianne; Nsabagwa, Mary; Mwesigwa, Andrew; Faith, Becky; Owoseni, Mojisola; Osuolale, Olayinka; Mboma, Daudi; Khemis, Ben; Albino, Peter; Owusu Ansah, Samuel; Abla Ahiataku, Maureen; Owusu-Tawia, Victoria; Bashiru, Yahaya; Mugume, Isaac; Akol, Roseline; Kunya, Nathern; Inguula Odongo, Ronald
The changing environment, climate, and the increasing manifestation of disasters, has generated an increased demand for accurate and timely weather information. This information is provided by the National meteorological authorities (NMAs) through different dissemination channels e.g., using radios, Televisions, emails among others. The use of ICTs to provide weather information is recently gaining popularity. A study was conducted in three countries, namely Nigeria, Uganda, and South Sudan to assess the efficiency of an ICT tool, known as “Weather Information Dissemination System”. The study involved 254 participants (Uganda: 71; South Sudan: 133; and Nigeria: 50). The collected primary data were first quality controlled and organized thematically for detailed analysis. Descriptive statistics was used to provide quantitative analysis as well as content scrutinized for qualitative analysis. The results showed that there is a need for timely weather information to plan farming activities such as planting and application of fertilizers and pesticides as well as to manage flood and drought by the water sector and disaster management. Results further showed that the majority of the respondents have access to the technology needed to access weather and climate information. The respondents who received weather information from NMAs noted that the forecast was good. However, they further noted that there is more room for improvement especially with making the forecasts location-specific, ensuring mobile access is adequate in all regions, provision of weather information by SMS (in countries where this service is currently unavailable) and improved timing of the weather information. Finally, uncertainty about the accuracy of weather information and the weather information not meeting specific needs are key barriers to people’s willingness to pay for it (Uganda: 33.3%; South Sudan: 46.1%; and Nigeria: 33.3%). Improved collaborations between the NMAs, ICT service providers, policymakers and farmers will facilitate an effective approach to weather information access and dissemination. Innovative sensitization approaches through the media houses will enable better understanding of weather products and utilization, and access to enabling ICTs would increase access to weather forecasts
The Efficacy of ICT in Weather Forecast Information Dissemination: Evidence from Farming Communities in Mbale and Rakai Districts, Uganda
(Springer, Cham, 2019) Tuheirwe-Mukasa, Doreen; Haveraaen, Magne; Sansa-Otim, Julianne; Kanagwa, Benjamin; Rwamahe Mujuni, Godfrey
Information and communication technology (ICT) has pervaded all spheres of life from the upscale rich to the rural poor in developing countries. ICT is increasingly being harnessed universally to better the quality of life of communities. This chapter highlights the need to utilize ICT tools to improve livelihoods of farmers in Uganda, in the face of climate change and variations in seasonal weather. We investigated the use of ICT tools and services in enhancing farmers’ access to weather forecast information to improve agricultural productivity in Uganda. The ICT tools in question included mobile phones and computers/laptops, while the services included the use of emails, websites, and social network sites. We used focus group sessions with farmers in Mbale and Rakai districts to (1) capture their perception of the use of ICT tools and (2) establish the mode of ICT-supported dissemination that would be most effective and efficient for relevant weather forecast information dissemination. Extra information was sourced from key informant interviews with agricultural extension workers and personnel from Uganda National Meteorological Authority. We transcribed the information gathered into descriptive narratives, used thematic analysis and coding with spreadsheets for analysis. We found the mobile phone to be the ICT tool that most farmers have access to, and we found them open to solutions designed around the mobile phone. We establish and recommend using ICT tools to complement existing and conventional weather information dissemination strategies such as mass media. ICT tools allow for customized information to be sent to farmers in text, graphic, audio, or visual formats
Energy Storage Options for Environment Monitoring Wireless Sensor Networks in Rural Africa
(Springer, 2012) Byamukama, Maximus; Akol, Roseline; Bakkabulindi, Geofrey; Pehrson, Björn; Olsson, Robert; Sansa-Otim, Julianne
This paper explores various traditional and emerging battery technologies available for deployments of automated environment monitoring devices using Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) in Africa and the considerations designers must take into account when implementing these systems. Environment-monitoring applications of WSNs are focusing more on reducing power consumption and optimizing data transmission and less on the constraints that their applications and deployment environments put on the energy storage device. We describe the various properties of energy storage devices and, for each, we highlight the requirements to be met for environment monitoring applications, especially in remote areas in Africa. We evaluate the performance of some of these energy storage options against the requirements using three use cases. We indicate the technologies that have shown reliability for each use case. We show that emerging battery technologies, such as Lithium Ion Capacitors are well suited for long-life low power deployments while the options for high-power deployments depend on the constraints faced by the designers, such as the power consumption of the sensor network components sand environment temperature range of the deployment environment.
F-TCP: a Delay-based Protocol with Fair Co-existence
(IEEE, 2010) Sansa-Otim, Julianne; Rai, Idris A.; van der Hulst, J. M.
Various studies have shown that regular TCP is inefficient in high-speed networks. This paper proposes F-TCP, a delay-based TCP variant, which is able to operate efficiently in high-speed networks. The slowstart phase of F-TCP continues until a threshold determined from probing the available bandwidth. When competing with loss-based flows F-TCP reduces it’s window to a value derived from the available bandwidth. More specifically, an adaptive bandwidth share estimation with a delay-sensitive instability measure is employed to guide window backoff when congestion is detected by F-TCP. Using ns-2 simulations we show that F-TCP has good throughput efficiency, intra-protocol fairness and TCP friendliness properties. Our results also illustrate fair coexistence between a delay-based protocol (F-TCP) and a loss-based protocol (regular TCP) thus F-TCP maintains it’s fair share of the link. In addition we show that F-TCP avoids self-induced packet losses by using delay as the congestion signal hence zero packet loss is experienced in all the simulations where all the flows are F-TCP. In simulations with regular TCP, packet losses are inevitable since it is loss-based. We therefore conclude that when treated carefully, delay (or RTT) can indeed be a useful congestion signal indicator. Bandwidth estimation is a good indication of available bandwidth for delay-based flows if made aware of the early congestion back off experienced by these flows.
Integrated Feature Extraction Approach Towards Detection of Polymorphic Malware In Executable Files
(International Journal of Computer Science and Security (IJCSS, 2016) Masabo, Emmanuel; Kaawaase, Kyanda Swaib; Sansa-Otim, Julianne; Hanyurwimfura, Damien
Some malware are sophisticated with polymorphic techniques such as self-mutation and emulation based analysis evasion. Most anti-malware techniques are overwhelmed by the polymorphic malware threats that self-mutate with different variants at every attack. This research aims to contribute to the detection of malicious codes, especially polymorphic malware by utilizing advanced static and advanced dynamic analyses for extraction of more informative key features of a malware through code analysis, memory analysis and behavioral analysis. Correlation based feature selection algorithm will be used to transform features; i.e. filtering and selecting optimal and relevant features. A machine learning technique called K-Nearest Neighbor (K-NN) will be used for classification and detection of polymorphic malware. Evaluation of results will be based on the following measurement metrics—True Positive Rate (TPR), False Positive Rate (FPR) and the overall detection accuracy of experiments
Leveraging Inter-Institutional Connectivity to Facilitate Weather Data Transmission from Automatic Weather Stations in Uganda
(School of Engineering, Makerere University, 2016) Byamukama1, ,Maximus; Nsabagwa, Mary; Sansa-Otim, Julianne
The use of Automatic Weather Stations (AWS) for Environment monitoring by the Uganda National Meteorological Authority has increased massively over the past 15 years. This increase is mainly due to the savings in time, energy and money that are usually accompanied by the use of Information Technology to replace manual organizational processes. These stations collect various weather data and automatically transmit this data to a central repository, usually a physical server in a relatively remote location. The transmission of this data, in Uganda, is achieved primary by GSM/GPRS over the backbone of one of the national service provider. While GPRS speeds are probably sufficient for the small amounts of data from these AWS, the consequence of this is a regular cost to the authority, not only in financial terms but also poor connectivity in remote areas, downtime and high power consumption. Since universities in Uganda are spread across the country with considerable spatial separation, it is possible that the UNMA (Uganda National Meteorological Authority) could place a number of AWSs at these campuses and still cover many climatological zones and, equally importantly, benefit from transmitting the AWS data through the networks at these universities that have been set-up by the national NREN, RENU. Because this data volume is very low, the cost of such transmission would be almost zero and other advantages would be manifested, such as the very limited involvement in communication channel maintenance and a higher availability of power. In this paper, we investigate the practical consequences that leveraging inter-institutional NREN connectivity would bring to a government authority like UNMA. We analyze the impact that this would have on the cost, operation and reliability of the whole AWS.
Modeling Efficient Radio Resource Allocation Scheme for MTC and HTC over Mobile Wireless Networks
(Australasian J. Comp. Sci., 2018) Nakalema, Grace; Sansa-Otim, Julianne; Okopa, Michael
: MTC traffic cannot access radio channels reserved for HTC traffic even if the channels are idle and vice versa which leads to the underutilization of the radio channels. Therefore, the objective of this study was to model an improved channel allocation scheme, where portions of the radio channels are reserved for each of MTC and HTC traffic but each traffic can access channels reserved for the other traffic when not in use. Methodology: To overcome the above challenge, this study proposed a channel allocation scheme to increase the channel utilization. The proposed channel allocation scheme was then analyzed basing on the blocking probability. Queuing theory was employed to derive expressions for blocking probability of MTC and HTC traffic. The performance of the improved radio channel allocation scheme was compared to the channel allocation scheme where MTC traffic cannot access channels reserved for HTC traffic when not in use and vice versa using MATLAB. Results: Numerical results showed that the improved radio channel allocation scheme reduces the blocking probability of packets which in turn improves the system performance. It was further noted that the threshold values of channels set for HTC and MTC traffic have an effect on the blocking probability. In addition, channel utilization and blocking probability are observed to increase with increase in arrival rate and packet sizes. Conclusion: The improved channel allocation scheme reduces the blocking probability of traffic which in turn improves system performance.
New Techniques for Sizing Solar Photovoltaic Panels for Environment Monitoring Sensor Nodes
(Journal of Sensors, 2019) Byamukama, Maximus; Bakkabulindi, Geofrey; Akol, Roseline; Sansa-Otim, Julianne
The development of perpetually powered sensor networks for environment monitoring to avoid periodic battery replacement and to ensure the network never goes offline due to power is one of the primary goals in sensor network design. In many environment-monitoring applications, the sensor network is internet-connected, making the energy budget high because data must be transmitted regularly to a server through an uplink device. Determining the optimal solar panel size that will deliver sufficient energy to the sensor network in a given period is therefore of primary importance. The traditional technique of sizing solar photovoltaic (PV) panels is based on balancing the solar panel power rating and expected hours of radiation in a given area with the load wattage and hours of use. However, factors like the azimuth and tilt angles of alignment, operating temperature, dust accumulation, intermittent sunshine and seasonal effects influencing the duration of maximum radiation in a day all reduce the expected power output and cause this technique to greatly underestimate the required solar panel size.Themajority of these factors are outside the scope of human control and must be therefore be budgeted for using an error factor. Determining of the magnitude of the error factor to use is crucial to prevent not only undersizing the panel, but also to prevent oversizing which will increase the cost of operationalizing the sensor network. But modeling error factors when there are many parameters to consider is not trivial. Equally importantly, the concept of microclimate may cause any two nodes of similar specifications to have very different power performance when located in the same climatological zone. There is then a need to change the solar panel sizing philosophy for these systems. This paper proposed the use of actual observed solar radiation and battery state of charge data in a realistic WSNbased automatic weather station in an outdoor uncontrolled environment.We then develop two mathematical models that can be used to determine the required minimum solar PV wattage that will ensure that the battery stays above a given threshold given the weather patterns of the area. The predicted and observed battery state of charge values have correlations of 0.844 and 0.935 and exhibit Root Mean Square Errors of 9.2% and 1.7% for the discrete calculus model and the transfer function estimation (TFE) model respectively. The results show that the models perform very well in state of charge prediction and subsequent determination of ideal solar panel rating for sensor networks used in environment monitoring applications.
Performance of the Energy Aware Routing Protocol in Wireless Sensor Networks with mobile nodes
(International Conference on Wireless Networks (ICWN), 2012) Fote Kamanyi, Antonia; Ngubiri, John; Sansa-Otim, Julianne
Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are increasing in popularity. This is due to several applications (like car tracking, acute patient monitoring and forest fire detection). Energy in WSNs is a scarce resource and therefore has to be optimized. Several studies on energy aware routing schemes have been made. However, most of them cater for fixed nodes yet in some cases, some WSN nodes are mobile. In this paper, we extend the Energy Aware Routing Protocol (EARP) [1] to cater for WSNs with some mobile nodes. We propose EARP with Mobility Support (EARP-MS) and evaluate its performance. We show that (i) the energy consumed increases as the distance between the source and recipient nodes increase, (ii) providing for node mobility prolongs the WSN lifespan, (iii) mobile nodes have higher residual energy than the static nodes and (iv) the average transmission time is lower when some nodes are mobile..
A State of the Art Survey on Polymorphic Malware Analysis and Detection Techniques
(Journal of Soft Computing, 2018) Masabo, Emmanuel; Kaawaase, Kyanda Swaib; Sansa-Otim, Julianne; Ngubiri, John; Hanyurwimfura, Damien
Nowadays, systems are under serious security threats caused by malicious software, commonly known as malware. Such malwares are sophisticatedly created with advanced techniques that make them hard to analyse and detect, thus causing a lot of damages. Polymorphism is one of the advanced techniques by which malware change their identity on each time they attack. This paper presents a detailed systematic and critical review that explores the available literature, and outlines the research efforts that have been made in relation to polymorphic malware analysis and their detection.
Structural Feature Engineering approach for detecting polymorphic malware
(IEEE, 2017) Masabo, Emmanuel; Kaawaase, Kyanda Swaib; Sansa-Otim, Julianne; Hanyurwimfura, Damien
Currently, malware are distributed in a polymorphic form. There are very smart and obfuscated. This serves the purpose of hardening detection or simply making it impossible. Researchers have mainly resorted to static analysis, dynamic analysis or a combination of both in attempting to find advanced solutions to polymorphic malware detection problems. This paper presents a novel simple feature engineering approach in terms of extracting, analyzing and processing static based features for efficient detection of polymorphic malware. K-NN algorithm is used to build the detection model. Our experiments achieve a detection accuracy of 98.7% with 0.014% False Positive Rate (FPR) on a relatively small dataset.
WRF Simulations of Extreme Rainfall over Uganda’s Lake Victoria Basin: Sensitivity to Parameterization, Model Resolution and Domain Size
(Journal of Geoscience and Environment Protection, 2020) Opio, Ronald; Sabiiti, Geoffrey; Nimusiima, Alex; Mugume, Isaac; Sansa-Otim, Julianne
Rainfall extremes have strong connotations to socio-economic activities and human well-being in Uganda’s Lake Victoria Basin (LVB). Reliable prediction and dissemination of extreme rainfall events are therefore of paramount im-portance to the region’s development agenda. The main objective of this study was to contribute to the prediction of rainfall extremes over this region using a numerical modelling approach. The Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model was used to simulate a 20-day period of extremely heavy rainfall that was observed in the March to May season of 2008. The underlying interest was to investigate the performance of different combinations of cumulus and mi-crophysical parameterization along with the model grid resolution and do-main size. The model output was validated against rainfall observations from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) using 5 metrics; the rain-fall distribution, root mean square error, mean error, probability of detection and false alarm ratio. The results showed that the model was able to simulate extreme rainfall and the most satisfactory skill was obtained with a model se-tup using the Grell 3D cumulus scheme combined with the SBU_YLin micro-physical scheme. This study concludes that the WRF model can be used for simulating extreme rainfall over western LVB. In the other 2 regions, central and eastern LVB, its performance is limited by failure to simulate nocturnal rainfall. Furthermore, increasing the model grid resolution showed good po-tential for improving the model simulation especially when a large domain is used.

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