UNITEN Generates Professionals - Volume 1...Editors : Zalina Hashim Dr. Mohd. Azam Nair Abdullah Dr. Yusof Ahmad Assoc. Prof. Dr. Zainuddin Hasan Assoc. Prof. Dr ... Dr. Siti Salbiah

VOLUME 1, ISSUE 2 / ISSN 1985-4854

ILLUMINATION is published biannually by the Research Management Centre, Universiti Tenaga Nasional Malaysia. Reproduction in part or whole is allowed provided ILLUMINATION is duly acknowledged. All correspondence should be addressed to the Editor, ILLUMINATION, Research Management Centre, Universiti Tenaga Nasional, Km. 7, Jln. Kajang‐Puchong, 43009 Kajang, Selangor, Malaysia. Telephone: 603‐89212020 ext. 7320; Fax: 603‐89212111; e‐mail:[email protected]

From left: Dr. Manjit, Dr. Mohd. Azree, Dr. Tiong, Dr. Md. Zaini, Dr. Sharifah Mumtazah and Dr. Lariyah with their awards

CONTENTS

...delving into research 2

Nurturing Research Excellence in the College of Information Technology 3

Low cost Reconfigurable External Mixed‐Signal VLSI Circuit Testing System 6

Students’ Accomplishment ‐ Carbon Capture and Storage 7

Handwriting Recognition Research Collaboration UNITEN, CAIRO, UTM, Université de Nantes, France and Vision Object, Nantes, France

8

The Utilisation of Tax Investment Incentives on Environmental Protection Activities (EPA) among Malaysian Companies

9

Energy Scavenging Charging Booth ‐ ESCAB: An Innovative Charging Booth 10

Open Source Internet Protocol Network Simulation Toolkits 11

Exemplary Research Opus from the Graduate School 12

A step closer… Once again UNITEN has proven that the University is a vigour to reckon with when it comes to research and innovation. At the MTE2009 held at PWTC from 19 to 21 February 2009, UNITEN pulled off five Gold medals, three Silver and one Bronze out of 10 entries submitted. The Gold awards winners were Dr. Tiong Sieh Kiong, Assoc. Prof. Ir Dr. Lariyah Mohd Sidek, Dr. Manjit Singh Sidhu, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Mohd. Azree Idris, and Dr. Abdul Rahman Khalid. Dr. Tiong also won "The Best Award" category. Dr. Johnny Koh Siaw Paw, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Saifuddin M. Norman‐bay and Dr. Sharifah Mumtazah Syed Ahmad secured Silver med‐als while Dr. Chong Kok Hen locked the Bronze award. In addi‐tion, UNITEN won "The Most Creative Booth Award”.

Partaking in more exhibitions linked to research and innova‐

tion is our mission, so as to be locally and internationally ac‐knowledged by our peers. This is yet another step closer to achieving the University’s aspiration into becoming an up market research hub.

SCOReD 2009 SCOReD is UNITEN’s College of Graduate Studies annual event that has the primary aim of providing an enriching and intellectual platform for graduate students, researchers, academics and professionals of various disciplines to present and share their latest research achievements, innovations, inven‐tions as well as other academic development activi‐ties, contemporary issues and empirical findings. The conference allows a multi‐dimensional ap‐proach encompassing all disciplines relating to tech‐nologies, engineering, business management, infor‐mation technology, and other areas including those in the social sciences.

SCOReD aims at becoming the platform for all academics intellectuals, thinker and philosophers to share and exchange their latest findings as they

strive for new knowledge frontiers – capable of facing challenges of the current and future eras of globalisation. The theme for this year’s SCOReD is based on the above notion.

UNITEN Generates Professionals

I am glad to say that with this second issue of ILLUMINATION, it signifies an unrelenting suste‐nance of our interest in highlighting UNITEN’s prolific research bustle. A dearth of research activities at the University has virtually become a non‐issue. In fact, this ascension in research and innovation at the University designates another step closer for it to be among the top academia in the country.

The Research Management Centre (RMC) has been given the task to dutifully manage and ensure that all research activities are methodically carried out. To ensure this momentum, together with participation from Colleges, RMC has been assisting researchers in preparing apt research proposals besides helping them on how to do more scientific research and getting their outcomes published in journals and industry bulletins. This has made it possible for the University to pull off a number of awards locally and internationally – facilitating it to become a sturdy competitor among the local research universities. This has been doable with the remarkable academic grit and research grants secured from various sources – spurring feasible research outputs of high merits. As for last year, the University managed to secure grants worth over RM4 million from external sources, and augmented by resourceful academics UNITEN foresees a mounting trend in its research realm.

The setting up of UNITEN R&D Sdn. Bhd of late as an R&D status company has marked another milestone in our annals to prod the industry in products development with new technology. This will be achieved through collaborative works that will in turn contribute to human capital development through knowledge shar‐ing and research know‐how. To establish itself as a research univer‐sity, the Strategic and Corporate Planning Centre, on the other hand, has been vested with the responsibility to come up with the appraisal criteria to help identify the directions towards this mantle – cogging our focus on academic excellence and well‐thought research spots.

Our enthusiasm in research should sanguinely get on our way to grow to be a renowned University. The journey is indisputably a difficult one, but with the right fervour it is possible to accomplish it with triumph. The first step marks the thousandth after it! Thus, let us put in our best efforts to hearten and imbibe the research culture in UNITEN in order to achieve our aspiration to become a Malaysian premier university in research, innovation and develop‐ment.

Prof. Dato’ Dr. Ir. Mashkuri Yaakob, Vice Chancellor, UNITEN

ENRICHING LEARNING EXPERIENCE THAT FOSTERS INNOVATION AND RESEARCH , Vol.1, No.2, P.2

EDITORIAL TEAM

UNITEN RESEARCH AND GRADUATE BULLETIN

Editorial Note …delving into research

The thrust for research universities under the Ninth Malaysian Plan (9MP) marks another significant mile‐stone and successful history of our nation. This shows that the government is committed to transform higher educational institutions in the country to be world‐class universities. UNITEN in its quest to become a premier university, and subsequently to be one of the highly ranked universities in the world, has taken up this challenge. In a relatively short period of time UNITEN has emerged as one of the most dynamic and fastest growing universities (IPTS) in the country in carrying out research and development. We have managed to secure RM19 million in external research grants from 2003 until December 2008.

Having a reputation for high impact research

projects is seen as the way to attract bright students to pursue their dreams at UNITEN and become highly qualified and well‐trained graduates. It is by producing first‐class human capital with adequate knowledge and skills would it significantly contribute to national devel‐opment and progress. In moving forward, the Graduate School and Research Management Centre has come up with its strategic plan and has developed the UNITEN Research Road Map that will be the Research Blueprint of the University. The Research Road map addresses to future requirements of research areas such as renewal energy, IP technology and other themes that are of national interest. This will require an active participa‐tion of all researchers as well as ensure the spirit of research being embraced by the top management of the University.

In this issue, ILLUMINATION will focus on some

selected achievements that have contributed to the development of research activities in UNITEN’s growth to success.

Patron : Prof. Dato’ Dr. Ir. Mashkuri Yaakob Advisor : Prof. Dr. Ir. Ibrahim Hussein Associate Editors : Assoc. Prof. Dr. Md. Zaini Jamaludin

Assoc. Prof. Ir. Dr. Ramesh Singh Assoc. Prof. Dr. Mohd. Hariffin Boosroh

Editors : Zalina Hashim Dr. Mohd. Azam Nair Abdullah Dr. Yusof Ahmad Assoc. Prof. Dr. Zainuddin Hasan Assoc. Prof. Dr. Razali Jidin Zuraidah Ali

Secretary : Sarah Safiyah Mohd Yusuf Administration : Fatimah Abu Samah

The College has also set up numerous academic clusters for research and consultative purposes at the departmental level where each cluster is led by a senior academic. As a result of this effort, the College’s research activities have grown pro‐gressively, as seen in the growing number of research grants obtained. The total amount of grants received at until 2007 was RM932 766 as shown in Exhibit 1.

In the bargain, the number of awards accomplished by

the faculty during research exhibitions both locally and internationally has been remarkable. Dr. Norlaila Hussain, Oscar deBruijin and Dr. Zainuddin Hassan have won Best Paper Award at 4th International Conference on Informa‐tion Technology Asia 2005 for their paper Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing: Computing Anytime, Anywhere for Everyone; Uwe Rudi Dippel, Azizah Suliman and Azimah Abdul Ghapar for their project Paperless Archiving System for Paper‐based Documents, Dr. Manjit Singh Sidhu and and Assoc. Prof. Ir. Dr. Ramesh Singh for their project Develop‐ment of TAPS Package Package for Teaching Engineering Mechanics Dynamics; and Dr. Sharifah Mumtazah Syed Ahmad, Asma Shakil, and Mustafa Agil Muhamad Balbed for the project Online and Offline Automatic Signature Veri‐fication System using Hidden Markov Model and Fuzzy Logic.

P.3, Vol.1, No.2, ENRICHING LEARNING EXPERIENCE THAT FOSTERS INNOVATION AND RESEARCH

Nurturing Research Excellence in the College of Information Technology (COIT)

The College of Information Technology (COIT) was formed on 1st September 2003 given the growing capabilities of the Department itself and the increasing importance of ICT in the technical and business environments. In line with the Univer‐sity’s strategic direction, COIT has formulated the following mission and vision:

COIT puts equal emphasis on teaching and research. Furthermore, the wealth of expertise developed in the College has also benefited the industries at large. It is the commitment and teamwork in research among the academ‐ics that have contributed to this verve. The College offers four specialised areas of Computer Science and Information Technology Information Systems, Graphics and Multimedia, Software Engineering, and Systems and Networking. This specialisation has enabled the College to focus its expertise on designing a‐cut‐above quality academic programmes that meet the requirements of the National Accreditation Board and the needs of the ICT Industry.

Regular reviews by industry experts and other academics

alike, as well as input from professional external examiners have ensured that the programmes are comparable with international standards. This ascertains that the College graduates have the personal and intellectual skills demanded by employers — ensuring a very high level of graduate employment by renowned industry players such as DELL, ExxonMobil, ORACLE, and iCIMB among others.


Exhibit 1: Total Amount of Grants Received

Dr. Siti Salbiah Dean of COIT

Vision

To be a faculty of choice in quality education, research, and consultancy in ICT

Mission The College of IT with its dedicated workforce strives to deliver quality education and research for undergraduate and postgraduate students and to provide ICT consultancy services for rele‐vant industries


PG1) Maximise Power Generation PG2) Alternative Generation PG3) Supporting Technologies PE) Environment: Friendly, Hazard & Risk Free PT) Transmission: Self‐Healing Grid PD) Distribution: Improved Delivery System & Last Mile PP3) Power Economics

SP1) Service Positioning: Service Differentiation SP2) Service Value: Value Creation SP3) Service Culture: Organisational Transformation SP4) Service Performance:

Capitalisation of Intel‐lectual Property

Flagship Projects: Photovoltaic, Self‐Healing Grid, GeoHazard, Land III, Knowledge Management

Exhibit 2: COIT Research Roadmap as part of UNITEN R&D Roadmap

Given the above, the College believes that it can be one of the better institutions for ICT research in Malaysia. However, competition and ever increasing demands by the industry require that the College develops a Research Framework to move to the next level.

COIT has developed a Research Roadmap as part of the UNITEN Research Roadmap in order to chart its overall

research direction of the Uni‐versity. Three research pro‐grammes and one flagship pro‐ject have been identified. These programmes will be spurred with immediacy and the projects accomplished after they have been fine‐tuned. Concurrenlty, the fagship pro‐ject led by Dr. Sharifah Mumta‐zah which is in progress will catapult COIT into the forefront of knowledge management (KM) by delivering findings on several technology components under the domain of KM, which

include low level image processing and understanding of handwriting and signatures images, translation of the image data into their respective meanings and semantic technology that performs natural language processing for linguistic steganography purposes. In order to ensure the successful conclusion and sustainability of its efforts, COIT has developed some key strategic actions.

The College also focuses on providing consultancy services to the ICT industry and has since established itself as a dominant ICT consultancy service provider. Its recent consultancy projects with TNB alone have reached a highly respectable figure of nearly RM2 million. These projects include TNB ICT Master Plan, ICT Governance & Value Chain Structure, Network Security Assessment Project, LGBNet Data Migration Project, Optimisation of Distribution Protection Relay Maintenance, Tools & Equipment Management Informa‐tion System, and The Study On Distribution Automation Applica‐tion In TNB 11kV Network And Development Of Software On Dis‐trict Power Distribution Automa‐tion System. Since many of the consultancy projects were done using the TNB R&D Fund, a signifi‐cant amount of research content for the work completed was gen‐erated. With this, the number of College publications has since shown a marked increase of 400 percent from the FY 03/04.

With this steadily under its belt, COIT has gone ahead

with its own online bi‐annual journal: Electronic Journal of Computer Science and Information Technology, eJCSIT (http://ejcsit.uniten.edu.my/), scheduled March 2009. The scope of the journal includes all aspects of Computer Science and Information Technology.


PC1) Seamless Connectivity PC2) Next Generation Last Mile & Intra‐Networks PC3) Ubiquitous Services PC4) Connectivity Economics & Regulations

PK1) Power Computing PK2) Knowledge Management Application Builder PK3) Enterprise Knowledge Strategies

Power Technology & Energy Systems

Communications Service Convergence

Knowledge & Power Computing

Service Power

‘COIT has developed a Re‐search Roadmap as part of the UNITEN Research Road‐map in order to chart its over‐all research direction of the University. Three research programmes and one flagship project have been identified’

UNITEN R&D Roadmap

http://ejcsit.uniten.edu.my/


To further impel COIT’s research adroitness, the Centre of Information and Communication Technology Security is now slathered in the pipe line. Both these RCs will utilise their own home‐grown expertise and also international experts.

Endowed with a diligent faculty, COIT is able to rise and deliver numerous research and consultancy solutions. The best has yet to be achieved, though. For it to excel as a premier research institution and earn a reputation nation‐ally and regionally as a centre of excellence in ICT research, a genre of proactive initiatives have been initiated.

Another milestone for COIT is the development of its Research Centres (RCs). The first COIT Research Centre called Software Engineering Centre (SEC), is currently led by Prof. Dr. Khairuddin Hashim, one of the leading Software Engineer‐ing professors in the country. SEC will help encourage indus‐try‐academia and academia‐academia research collaboration, and build up expertise in the development of methods and tools to support some of these specialised areas:

• requirements engineering • code generation based on specification • process modelling and improvement • construction by configuration • component‐based development • open source‐based development • software metrics • cost estimation • risk management • agile‐based development • Model Driven Architecture (MDA) • multi‐sites/global software development software secu‐

rity


Exhibit 3: COIT Strategic Research Directions

Exhibit 4: COIT Research Groups

MAIN ACTION

• Brain Gain Program • Formation of New Research Centre

ANCILLARY ACTION

• Promote Multi‐Disciplinary Work • Accelerate High Impact Research and

Innovation • Amplify International and Local

Awards • Intensity Funding‐Multiple Sources

Software Engineering Adaptive Software Development Approaches Group,

Business Intelligence Research and Development Group, Process Quality and Improvement Group, Computer Forensics Group,

Emotion and programming Group, Affective Computing Group, Process Modeling & Enterprise Risk Management Group

Information Systems Knowledge Management Group,

Information Strategy Research Group, E‐Learning Group, Software Agent Group,

ICT Governance and Value Chain Structure Group

Systems and Network Biometric Research Group, Pattern Recognition Group,

Machine, Learning and Soft Computing Group, Network and Security Group

Graphics and Multimedia Computer Aided Learning,

Education Technology Group, Multimedia and Desktop Virtual Reality Group, Image Processing Group, Mixed Reality Group,

Game Intelligence Group


This research depicts a testing system that employs the mixed‐mode technique of test pattern generation. Its very large scale integration (VLSI) circuit testing features overcome requirements for

expensive automatic test equipment (ATE) as well as extra silicon area in built‐in self test (BIST) application. The system is also extended to implement the boundary scan test tech‐nique for large sequential circuits to achieve better fault cov‐erage.

The research develops an effective TPG to achieve full coverage for combinational and sequential circuits with minimum number of test lengths. The TPG in digital IC testing usually generates pseudorandom patterns and after the pseudorandom testing phase the random resistant faults are detected by additional deterministic test patterns. Exhibit 1 shows the structure of the TPG used to develop the testing system.

Exhibit 1: Test Configuration in Testing System

Dr. Syed Zahidul

Exhibit 2: A Photograph of the Testing System


Low cost Reconfigurable External Mixed‐ Signal VLSI Circuit Testing System

In this structure, the feedback polynomial of the LFSR (Id) and seed is initially selected to insert pseudorandom TPG. Deterministic test pattern generator (DTPG) is inserted simultaneously with pseudorandom generators to achieve complete fault coverage.

Exhibit 2 shows the complete photograph of the testing system — the component locations in the board are labeled with their functions. The board is facilitated with RS232 socket to communicate with PC. Display devices and necessary control switches are also provided on the board.

The low‐cost testing system can be used for the testing of all circuits with scan path. For instance, the ISCAS’89 benchmark s1196 which has 14 primary inputs, 14 primary outputs, and a scan path of 18 storage elements can be taken to test the performance. The test lengths to get desired fault coverage of 100 percent can be estimated and the fault coverage is validated by fault simulation.

Dr. Syed Zahidul Islam is a senior lecturer at the Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering at the College of Engineering.

This is joint project with the Faculty of Engineering and Built Environ‐ment, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. The project is sponsored by the Malaysian Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation.


Exhibit 3: Geological Storage mechanism

Exhibit 1: CO2 Emission of Stationary Point Sources

2) Transportation Transport is the stage of carbon capture and storage that links sources and storage sites. CO2 is transported in three phases (gas, liquid, solid) through underwater pipelines, ships and tanks. 3) Sequestration/Storage Geological Storage — depleted oil and gas reservoirs, EOR operations, unminable coal seams, and deep saline forma‐tions, as illustrated in Exhibit 2. Ocean Storage‐storing is relatively pure stream of CO2 that has been captured and compressed; injected directly into the ocean, or deposited on the sea floor. The potential of CCS As affirmed in the Inter‐governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) fossil fuel namely coal contributes 38 per‐cent of CO2. CCS has the potential to halt a major portion of the CO2 from being emitted to the atmosphere. In addition to that, CCS has the potential of reducing other GHG gases such as SOx and NOx. This technology is applicable to all major carbon emitter sources such as power generation plant, cement production plant, oil refineries, etc. CCS tech‐nology does not require major changes to the current set‐ting as CCS or also known as ‘End of Pipe’ technology only requires fitting the capture components for the collection of CO2. The reliability and sustainability even in a large scale has been proven successful by major operations such as in Sleipner, Norway and In Salah, Algeria.


What is Carbon Capture & Storage (CCS)? CCS is a mitigation technology with huge potential to cool the planet and halt the climate change. CCS is a CO2 mitigation technology that concentrates on three simple steps:‐ Capture, Transportation, and Sequestration/Storage. Why CCS? The use of fossil fuel (coal, oil, natural gas) in power genera‐tion is inevitable (Emission of CO2 is 10.539 billion tonnes/year = 79 percent); hence, the use of CCS will allow the use of fossil fuel and reduce the emission of CO2 by 85‐95 percent effectively (6.65 Mt CO2/yr ). How does it work? 1) Capture There are three basic systems for capturing CO2 from use of fossil fuels and/or biomass:

• Post‐combustion capture • Pre‐combustion capture • Oxy‐fuel combustion capture

Exhibit 2: CCS Process

Team members: Dominic Hua Shi Hao (leader), Tan Pong Seng Ghokulesh Satkuna Nasan and Lim See Beng.

This final year students’ project is under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Ir. Ibrahim Hussein.

Students’ Accomplishment: Carbon Capture and Storage


Handwriting Recognition software is not alien to users of PDA, PDA phones and devices requiring handwriting recognition input. The software should allow handwriting entry of whole words and phrases on the

screen of the device and then translate them into text as input into applications in it. The development of recogni‐tion engine that recognises and translates handwriting into text has been the subject of researches, theoretically or towards building a finished product.

Recognition performed by the engine can be by charac‐ter, word or sentence. Even though widely used, the recog‐nition performance of handwriting recogniser is still far from perfect. Many researches aim to improve recognition rate, time or ease of use. A character based recogniser is simple. It only needs to be taught (or trained) with all sample characters which are not that many, only about 60 in the case of English or Malay characters (capital letters, small letters, symbols and numbers) and 68 for French. Word and sentence recognisers are complex if they are to be used to recognise any words or sentences, because in any language, there are many words and ways to combine words into sentences. However, recognition is simpler if based on a dictionary (or lexicon) where for a written word all words in the dictionary are compared for similarity to it. A written word is first sliced into small cuts and the cuts are then combined in various ways to find the best points to form characters that make up the word.

To find the character and word probabilities, various soft computing methods such as neural network, fuzzy logic and hidden Markov models are used. A combination or hybrid of the methods is sometimes used. Some com‐panies develop and sell only the recognition engine to

Handwriting Recognition Research Collaboration (UNITEN, CAIRO UTM, Université de Nantes, France and Vision Objects, Nantes, France)

1 http://www.irccyn.ec-nantes.fr 2http://www.visionobjects.com/ 3http://www.cairo-aisb.com 4http://www.ambafrance-my.org/ 5http://ww.uniten.edu.my

application developers that develop applications requiring handwriting input. The engine is sold in the form of a Software Development Kit (SDK).

Our research into handwriting recognition makes use of a

hybrid of a new soft computing method called Support Vector Machine (SVM) for character recognition and Hidden Markov Model (HMM) for word probability computation. The research into handwriting recognition makes use of a hybrid of a new soft computing method called Support Vector Machine (SVM) for character recognition and Hidden Markov Model (HMM) for word probability computation.

The joint research was done at the laboratory in the Insti‐

tute for Research in Computers and Communications, Nantes (IRCCyN)1 in France where the IRONOFF handwriting data‐bases collected at the laboratory were used. Vision Objects2, a company based in Nantes provided an SDK for use in the research. Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics3 (CAIRO), UTM, the Scientific and Cultural section of the French Embassy in Malaysia4 and UNITEN provided grants for travel and living expenses in France.

A lexicon‐based handwritten word recognizer using a

hybrid of SVM and HMM was successfully developed and tested recently. It can be used to recognize words based on medium sized lexicon in French and English language. The system was tested and performed fairly satisfactorily — with more than 98 percent recognition rate on an English language lexicon.

Dr. Abdul Rahim Ahmad is a principal lecturer at the Department of Systems and Networking, College of Information Technology. He is currently the Deputy Dean of COIT.


Dr. Abdul Rahim

http://www.irccyn.ec-nantes.fr

http://www.visionobjects.com/

http://www.cairo-aisb.com

http://www.ambafrance-my.org/

Mr. Mohmad Sakarnor Deris is Dean of the College Of Business Manage‐ment and Accounting, UNITEN.

Other Team members: Sharifah Buniamin, Norkhazimah Ahmad and Bakhtiar Alrazi. Exhibit 1: Environmental Protection Activities in Malaysia


The Utilisation of Tax Investment Incentives on Environmental Protection Activities (EPA) among Malaysian Companies

Malaysia shows evidence of most of the environmental problems that are typical of many developing countries such as over‐logging of primary forest, air and water pollution, and the dump‐ing of hazardous waste. To brazen out these problems, the Malaysian govern‐

ment has introduced various tax investment incentives related to the protection of the environment (under both Income Tax Act 1967 and Promotion of Investments Act 1986), including pioneer status, investment tax allowance and accelerated capital allowance for the storage, treat‐ment, disposal and the recycling of waste as well as for generating renewable energy.

All the five companies enjoyed the reinvestment allow‐ance incentive and this incurred a total cost of more than RM100, 000 on qualified expenditure within the recent five years. If 60 percent allowance was to be imposed, the chargeable income of these companies could be reduced by RM60, 000, or tax payable by RM16, 800 per company. Thus, government revenue could also be reduced by the same amount. Though it seems like a loss to the government, it is viably compensated by a cleaner and healthier environment that can benefit the public at large.

This research will benefit the industry by inculcating awareness in them on the benefits their companies may enjoy should they undertake such activities. This study was presented at the International Conference on Energy and Environment 2006 and had won 5th place in the MIA‐MAREF Outstanding Research Paper Award 2006/2007.

This poses four important questions:

• What are the types of environmental protection activities undertaken by the Malaysian companies?

• Are they aware of the availability of tax incentives on such activities?

• If they are aware, what types of incentive do they apply? • How much would be the government’s loss due to the

reduction in tax collection? This study was the first attempt internationally to examine the awareness and utilisation of tax investment incentives on the environmental protection activities. Its novelty is worth our appraisal.

Companies participating in the ACCA’s Malaysian Envi‐ronmental Reporting Award (MERA) were selected to make up the population for the research involving 31 companies — public listed and private. The research revealed environ‐mental education and waste water management as the most frequently cited EPA, which accounted for 69 percent of the companies while no evidence was found of the companies’ involvement in the safeguarding of habitats, biodiversity and endangered species as shown in Exhibit 1.

Besides the involvement in the EPA, companies were asked on their awareness of the availability of the tax investment incentives on such activities. 87 percent indi‐cated that they were aware of the existence of the incen‐tives from the government, but only 40 percent utilised these incentives. For those companies which applied for the incentives, the reinvestment allowance was the most common tax incentives — 31 percent — utilised by these companies, as shown in Exhibit 2. Although the taking up of the incentives was very low, this still affected the revenue of the government as it reduced the amount of tax income to the be collected.

Exhibit 2: Types of Incentives Utilised


Mr. Sakarnor

ENRICHING LEARNING EXPERIENCE THAT FOSTERS INNOVATION AND RESEARCH, Vol.1, No.2, P.10

ESCAB is an innovative charging booth which is powered by wind and solar scavenging system. The charging booth has a trendy and unique design. The charging connector is via USB since elec‐tronic gadgets with USB connected charger has become a trend nowa‐

days. ESCAB is designed for consumers at public places, for example at the hill sides, public parks, universities, shopping complexes, airports and train stations to charge any USB‐charged devices. The booth as shown in Exhibit 1, can be installed at any places as long as wind flow or sunlight is present. The uniqueness of the design is also due to its scavenging system which generates power from ambient environment. The system consists of a generator and a fan that convert wind energy to electrical energy. It also has solar cells that convert solar energy to electrical energy. The output power will be controlled by an interface circuit where the energy produced can be stored.

The testing was done on the roof top of a 14‐metre building in UNITEN. The data from the wind flow and solar was found to be at an average of 0.25A. An empty battery can be fully charged in 48 hours. A fully charged battery can charge up to 16 handphones (750AH), 80 MP3 players (150mAH) or 48 MP4 players (250mAH). Continuously charg‐ing handphones with 750mAH, a full battery will approxi‐mately take three days to be emptied. All approximations do not take into account any losses at the charging circuit. The V‐I characteristic of the USB port of ESCAB was obtained and it is found that the performance of the system is better than the computer USB port. A charge controller rated at 5A is used to control the charging of the battery. It prevents any back flow from the batteries to the generator. The charge controller protects the battery from being over charged and from being deep discharged by the loads. The charging characteristics com‐prise several stages which include automatic adaption to the ambient temperature.

The charge controller adjusts itself automatically to 12V or 24V system voltage. It has a clear readable display of the state of charge, an audible signal when the state of charge changes. The controller measures the ambient temperature to determine the charging voltage.

Two deep cycles 6V, 12AH, sealed lead acid (SLA) batteries are used to store the energy. The USB charging circuit obtains power source from the solar and wind flow source through charge controller via the batteries. The USB charging circuit regulates the input voltage to 5V as required by USB devices. The circuit is fine tuned to match the characteristics of the USB port to achieve maximum performance. The heat sink is added to protect the device from being over heated.

This invention has been proven to be low cost and has

faster charging time and higher power output when compared to the USB port from the computer. At the best knowledge of the authors, it is the first invention in the world after going through the patent search. Other types of charging booth do not use the concept of wind and solar scavenging system.

This product has patent pending (PI 20084344) and

has won gold medal in ITEX 2008, and silver in INNOVA 2008, Belgium. It is ready to be commercialised with customised specifications. It is expected to have vast market potential since most population use USB devices.

Energy SCAvenging Charging Booth – ESCAB: An Innovative Charging Booth

Dr. Hanim Salleh is a senior lecturer at the Department of Mechani‐cal Engineering, College of Engineering.


Dr. Hanim

Exhibit 1: ESCAB Functional Flow Diagram

ESCAB

Simulation is a valuable method for experimentation, validation of model, architectures and mechanism in the Internet networking field. Internet net‐work simulators can be used as tools to help design, test and analyse new net‐work protocols such as scheduling,

routing, policing, admission control, Quality of Service (QoS), fairness and security. In 2004, the Internet QoS Simulator Kit (IPQit) was built on top of the open source Network Simula‐tor 2 (NS2) by the University of Berkeley, California. It devel‐oped on Linux platform using TCL\TK scripting language as shown in Exhibit 1.

Exhibit 2: IPQit Trace Analyser


Assoc. Prof. Dr. Norashidah Md. Din is Head of the Electronics and Communication Engineering Department, College of Engineering.

Other Team members: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Md. Zaini Jamaludin, Zulkifli Ishak, Hazlinda Hakimie, Sharifah Azwa Shaaya and Chan Weng Yuen Ex‐members/contributors: Mohamad Suhaimi Abdul Aziz and Aliff Umair Salleh.

Dr. Norashidah

Open Source Internet Protocol Network Simulation Toolkits

The Communications Network Research Group is one of the support groups in the Centre of Communications Service Convergence Technologies, College of Engineering, UNITEN. It promotes and covers research work in areas that are in‐line with Uniten’s R&D Roadmap 2008 ‐2015 under the Communications Service Convergence strategy. Besides developing the simulation toolkits, the group is working on two MOSTI projects:

• Internet Protocol to Optical Traffic Controller using Fuzzy Logic for Ethernet Passive Optical Net‐work (Project Leader: Norashidah Md Din)

• Next Generation Quality of Service (QoS) Based Optical‐IP Transceiver (Project Leader: Fairuz Abdullah)

Currently, the group is studying the effect of radio fre‐

quency radiation caused by mobile phone base station and Wireless LAN access points to the public. Another project, which is an interdisciplinary initiative, investigates wireless network centralised data acquisition solutions for hazard‐ous environment, i.e. energy from landfill environment, geo‐hazard early warning system environment and struc‐ture monitoring.


IPQit supports Differentiated Services and Multi Protocol Label Switching architectures as proposed by Internet En‐gineering Task Force and basic Internet network nodes. This simulator features friendly graphical user interfaces for creating Internet network topologies and setting up of simu‐lation and network parameters. The results of simulations are available in the form of report, graph and animation based on QoS parameters, i.e. Delay, Jitter, Bandwidth, Loss and Queue Size as shown in Exhibit 2.

Later in 2007, the Intelligent Network Performance Analysis Tool (INPAT) was developed to complement IPQIT. Equipped with the Graphical User Interface, it reduces the manual process of setting up and doing performance analysis of network simulation data and enhances productivity among users. INPAT also has the capability of doing network performance evaluation using a fuzzy logic decision making scheme.

Exhibit 1: IPQit Network Editor


Exemplary Research Opus from the Graduate School


From Tall to Venti: What Lies Ahead for the Starbucks Brew in Malaysia Shanti Kathiripillai & Sheela Vijayan

The primary aim of this case study was to determine solutions and recommendations to further strengthen marketing strategies and solve issues faced by Starbucks. A SWOT analysis was performed on Starbucks Malaysia to further understand their operations. As Starbucks continues to expand, it will encounter different product markets comprising various categories of new customers demanding for unique and more appealing products. Results of the survey conducted indicate:

• Rapid Expansion – analysed to be an issue that could cripple Starbucks but results show that it is still well‐favoured by Malaysians;

• Employee Benefits – found to be a non‐issue and results indicate that Malaysians are generally happy with Starbucks’ services which, in turn, reflect employees’ happiness and satisfaction with the company;

• Upcoming Competition – the study proves that Malaysian consumers still prefer it as their retail coffee outlet and the company is comfortable facing Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf as its major competitors but, with the upcoming and modernised kopitiams, it is now quite an issue for Starbucks;

• Diminishing Competitive Advantage – discovered as another non‐issue due to survey findings showing that Starbucks is still ahead of competitors and holding the three strong competitive advantages (Quality of Coffee, Ambience and Environment, and Friendly Staff).

Recommendations to address the issues identified are:

⇒ Rapid Expansion – A detailed study should be conducted to take into consideration the country’s economic and political scenarios to help decide on the frequency and level of expansion.

⇒ Upcoming Competition – While facing major and other indirect but rather strong competition from companies like McDonalds and Dunkin’ Donuts, Starbucks should retain its three major competitive advantages.

⇒ Employee Benefits – Starbucks should find a good balance between providing ample incentives to the employees and making profit for the company based on the notion that happy and satisfied employee provides better service and tends to be more loyal.

⇒ Diminishing Competitive Advantage – Several more detailed studies should be conducted to investigate areas rated low by customers so that issues could be discovered at the micro level and further fine‐tuning could be done.

Nonsurfactant Route of fatty Alcohols Decomposition for Templating of Mesoporous Silica and core‐Shell Silica Halina Misran

Mesoporous silica materials with wormhole‐like channel networks were successfully synthesised by a two‐step base‐acid catalysed nonsurfactant carbon templating sol‐gel route and room temperature. This new method allowed direct decomposition of palm oil derived fatty alcohols onto silica source where upon calcination will generate the required carbon template in situ to induce nanoporosity inside the materials. Carbon templating approach employing palm oil derived fatty alcohols is novel, renewable, low‐cost, and environmental‐friendly in comparison with conventional surfactants. The resulting materials had high surface area and pore volume with the latter having an estimated diameter between ca. 8 nm to 13 nm. The study found that the formation of mesoscale silica particles had given rise to the formation of textural mesoporosity in addition to framework mesopority. Simply by changing co‐solvent/water ratio, micro‐emulsions containing palm oil derived fatty alcohols were obtained without the aid of surfactants. The synthesis of monodisperse hollow silica spheres of diameter ca. 500nm and 700 nm was also done successfully. The formation mechanism of mesoporous silica materials occurred via the hydrolysis and condensation of silica precursor that bound themselves with fatty alcohol aggregates to form silica‐fatty alcohol complex until they were large enough to precipitate out from the solutions. On the other hand, formation of silica spheres occurred via the hydrolysis and condensation of silica precursors inside the stern layer surrounding the fatty alcohols oil nanodroplets. This research has shown the viability of employing fatty alcohols to produce mesoporous silica and core‐shell silica spheres with improved characteristics suitable for a host of applications without requiring expensive surfactants and complicated method thus making this a unique and economical synthesis process.



cont… Exemplary Research Opus from the Graduate School

Design, Construction and Performance Evaluation of a Short Duration High Speed Flow Test Facility Amir H. Al‐Falahi

There are many ways to generate a source of air at a sufficiently high temperature and pressure to act as the working fluid of a hypersonic wind tunnel. They include hotshots tunnels, plasma jets, shock tubes, shock tunnels, free piston tunnels, and light gas guns. Various hypersonic wind tunnels have been constructed at different universities and research centres around the world. However, these facilities are very costly to run and maintain. This research describes the procedure for designing a low‐cost, short‐duration hypersonic test facility that could show the various effects of hypersonic ionisation and dissociation, along with experimental testing of hypersonic heat transfer effects. The facility is first of its kind in Malaysia and it has been designed for the ease of use as a shock tube, shock tunnel and free piston tunnel interchangeably. The purpose of building such facility is to generate gas flows or gas conditions of sufficiently high temperature and pressure that are difficult to achieve in other test devices. Analytical procedure has been used to determine the facility geometry and its performance. Construction of this facility is fundamentally important for the development of advanced instrumentation and study of heat transfer/fluid mechanics. The advantage of developing instrumentation and investigating relevant flow fields in the wind tunnel environment is derived from the fact that the flow duration is very short (less than one second). This is sufficient time to establish the required flow fields and obtain the required measurements, but the energy requirements associated with operating the facility are relatively low. The facility is a very cost effective way to experimentally investigate critical heat and fluid flow processes associated with high speed flows.

Webcomo: Web Application Cost Estimation Tool Tan Chin Hooi

Software cost estimation is no longer an art but a science. Since 1980s, software cost estimation models have been developed for academic and commercial applications development. Today, proper software cost estimation is not only applicable to stand alone applications but also to web applications. In older days, web application development was mostly initiated on the ad‐hoc basis. It required rapid development with minimum time. It seldom followed standard development process. Cost estimation for web application development always followed the rules of thumb and estimation by analogy. Nevertheless, we could not afford to prolong these practices as they will eventually lead to immature approach to software development. Apparently, software cost estimation practice is evolving to web application development. Research and development have been done since the beginning of this millennium and researchers are busy looking forward to discover new and better practice in web application cost estimation. In this research, case studies on a prominent parametric web application cost estimation model namely WEBMO and its applicability on web application development in Malaysia are presented. It is part of the effort to evaluate WEBMO as a parametric web application cost estimation model within Malaysian context.

A Study of Workplace Stress in the Indentified Corporate Sectors in Cyberjaya Chan Pei Leng

This research was conducted to ascertain whether the variables (knowledge, relationship with peers, management’s support, work complexity, and skill sets) contribute to the work stress suffered by employees of a corporate sector located in Cyberjaya. Online survey to examine the pattern of working environment was conducted among the employees of a corporation in Cyberjaya. Data on staff turnover and cases related to subordinates and superior relationships were collected for computations and statistical analyses. Based on data analysis and five‐month involvement with and observation of handling issues concerning staff working relationships and their knowledge and skills, it was found that, over time, there was an increase in stress levels among the employees within the firm. Results of the study show that a comprehensive workplace management should be put in place. Recommendations for improvement (decreasing the stress levels) for this sector’s employees include implementing appropriate training programmes, hiring qualified employees and consultants, and providing a transparent work scope. Fulfilling these would produce a healthier and more productive workplace that may in turn lead to improved performance and reduced sick cases among employees of the corporate sector.


Dates : 04 to 05 August 2009 Theme : Fostering Creative and Innovative R&D to Meet Current and Future Challenges Venue : Opening Ceremony will be held at the UNITEN’s Admin Theatre and the Concurrent Sessions at the Multimedia Rooms on Level Four of the Administrative Building Participation : Open to Graduate Students of All Malaysian Institutes of Higher Learning Fee : RM100.00 per person

05 Feb 2009 - First Call for Papers 07 May 2009 - Submission of Abstract 14 May 2009 - Notification of Acceptance 14 Jun 2009 - Submission of Full Paper 14 Jul 2009 - Re-Submission of Full Paper 21 Jul 2009 - Compilation of Proceedings


cont… Exemplary Research Opus from the Graduate School

Artificila Intelligent Methods for Lightning Prediction Leong Yeng Weng

Cloud‐to‐ground lightning is a major concern among electric supply and aviation businesses. A method of predicting lightning around Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) was developed to avoid damages and service interruptions. Lightning prediction is this research consists of proposed data sets, data pre‐processing methods, algorithms and development software. The best method of predicting lightning available allowed a prediction of 100 percent of lightning and 94 percent of no lightning, yielding 97 percent prediction accuracy. This was achieved by incorporating pre‐segregation of predictants based on learning and prediction. The predictants consisted of Radiosonde data which are atmospheric data collected for a certain cross section of the sky. The pre‐segregation was implemented by means of the Kohonen Self‐Organizing Map. Meanwhile, the learning and prediction was conducted by the artificial Neural Networks. The results from the simulations show that this method is practicable and reliable.

Fuzzy Logic Controller for Gain Scheduling and Minimum Time Control Logah Perumal

This research presents the application of fuzzy logic control system in engineering related applications. Unmodelled dynamics or parametrics pertubations are usually present in the plant modelling. Classical control design techniques use simplified mathematical model to represent the plant and the true plant parameters remain unknown. Therefore, the plant behaviour may change in unpredictable ways. Intelligent control technique is able to represent the unmodelled dynamics of the plant and this improves the performance of the control system. Intelligent control technique implementations in engineering applications have been the focus of research over the past years. Fuzzy logic is one such approach that has been investigated. Direct control is demonstrated by implementing a fuzzy logic controller (FLC) for altitude control of an aircraft. A fuzzy logic gain scheduler is developed for a missile autopilot to demonstrate indirect control using FLC. From the simulation results, it is observed that FLCs outperform the conventional controllers. For a given fuzzy logic system, the best performance is obtained by tuning into the membership functions. Two such methods, gain scheduling and optimisation, are demonstrated here through the implementation of both tuning methods onto fuzzy logic membership functions which control attitude of a single axis system. Nelder‐Mead Simplex Search Method is used to obtain the best performance out of a fuzzy logic system. A practical application of fuzzy logic bang‐bang control is also demonstrated here by controlling angular position of a pneumatic rotary actuator. The pneumatic rotary actuator is controlled in real‐time using Matlab‐simulink xPC target environment.


IENA 2008 A group of UNITEN researchers participated in the international trade fair on Ideas‐Inventions‐New Products (IENA 2008) held at Nuremberg German on 30 October until 2 November 2008. We sent two products namely Technology‐Assisted Problem Solving (TAPS) Packages for Engineering headed by Dr. Manjit Singh Sidhu from COIT, and Fast, Compact Footprint and Processor Independent Recursive Mutex headed by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Razali Jidin from COE. Both participations won Gold awards. Besides UNITEN, UMP, UiTM, UTM, UPM, UIAM and MARDI also took part in this event. In the main, IENA08 provided a platform for researchers and innovators to display their products and inventions at the international level. It also allowed them to form international network to develop prototype models to help commercialise their innovations. About 780 participants from various countries took part during the expositon.

BIS 2008 On 15 to 19 October 2008, UNITEN participated in The British Invention Show (BIS2008) held at Alexandra Palace, London. 131 products and innovations from Iran, Libya, Malaysia and Hong Kong, among others, were displayed during the exhibition. Besides UNITEN, other local universities such as UiTM,UTM, UMT, UPM, UTHM, USIM and UTEM also participated. The competition was divided into three categories i.e. leisure, consumer and industrial. UNITEN was headed by Abdul Talip Zulkarnain (Automatic Racking System for Vacuum Circuit Breaker (VCB)) and Tengku Juhana Tengku Hashim (Decision Analysis Software for Maintenance of Protection Relays). Both won Silver medals for the industrial category.



Innova 2008

To share some good news from our participation in the INNOVA Exhibitions, Brussels. We won a Gold medal (Special Mention) for Dr. Bashar's and a Silver medal for Dr. Hanim's products, respectively. Dr. Bashar also won a special prize for Innovation from the Institute of Mechanized Construction and Rock Mining Warsaw, Poland. Dr. Bashar was one of three Malaysian entries who won the Gold medal (Special Mention). There were 34 Malaysian entries (6 universi‐ties and MARDI) from a total of 406 entries from more than 10 countries, inter alia Saudi Arabia, China, Bosnia, Moldova, France, Poland, Romania, Russia, Spain, Croatia, Switzerland, Cameroon, Hungary and Iran.
