Friday 29 December 2017

An Enhanced Sender-Based Packet Loss-Recovery Technique 
in VoIP

VoIP Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is a telephony technology that commonly uses the real-time transport protocol (RTP) to transport voice packets over a IP based network. RTP runs on top of the user datagram protocol (UDP), and thus it is an unreliable delivery protocol. When a packet loss occurs, the quality of the audio at the receiving endpoint degrades because the receiving endpoint does not have voice data for regenerating the lost segment of the audio. Researchers proposed many techniques for improving quality of service (QoS) in the face of packet loss. Some of these techniques employ receiver-based packet loss concealment (PLC) approaches and others employ sender-based loss- recovery techniques (SBLR), where the sender assumes an active role to help the receiver recover lost data or improve QoS when packet loss occurs. Most SBLR mechanisms work by retransmitting voice data or by transmitting additional data. In what follow, this article briefly describe various sender-based loss- recovery techniques currently used.

Interleaving: This technique adds part of the same voice signal segment in different packets thus spreading the impact of loss over longer time period. Forward Error Correction (FEC) works by transmitting redundant packets for error correction. Redundant Data Transmission (RDT) works by transmitting audio data more than once. This technique includes previously transmitted audio data along with new audio data in a single IP packet. Duplicate Packet technique transmits the redundant data in separate IP packets and thereby increases bandwidth consumption by requiring additional data and header overhead.
Redundant and duplicate data transmission is shown to produce the best audio quality among other techniques in different packet loss situations (single packet, burst of 2,3… n packets). These approaches however, add overhead in term of more bandwidth requirement, CPU processing and packet transmission delay and may increase network congestion which lead to higher packet loss and may drops the voice call.
The proposed technique works toward improvement of QoS in VoIP system without adding excessive overhead in term of more network bandwidth requirement or processing/transmission delay.

The SBLR approach commonly is designed using several Operation factors. These include:

  • Degree of Redundancy :-This represents the amount of previously transmitted audio data to be retransmitted along with new audio data in a single IP packet.
  • P-persistence parameter :- Extensions of SBLR conventional redundant class works by randomly transmitting redundant audio with the redundancy rate depends on a pre-determined P-persistence parameter to improve QoS in VoIP system.
  • Threshold Value:-The SBLR technique redundancy may depend on fixed thresholds. When new packet arrives, the loss rate is compared to threshold if the loss is greater than the threshold, redundant data and new data will be included in the IP packet. Otherwise only new data will be sent.
  • Network QoS Factors:-The path taken by a VoIP packet traveling across the network depends on a large number of factors, including routing protocols and per network buffering policies. These factors may strongly impact the quality of VoIP.
  • SBLR technique is activated based on report about the actual network QoS measures. These include: packet Loss Rate, Packet Discard Rate -because of jitter and/or large delay, the distribution of lost and discarded packets, packets Round-Trip Delay corresponding to the packet path delay and End System Delay, which represents the delay that the VoIP endpoint adds (because of encoding, decoding and the jitter smoothing buffer).

SBLR TECHNIQUES PERFORMANCE MEASURES

The following measures to evaluate the performance of the proposed sender-based loss recovery scheme have been used:


  • Mean Opinion Score (MOS)
  • Throughput
  • Delay
  • Jitter
  • Cost of Technique
  • Power Ratio

MOS is a common benchmark introduced by ITU recommendation G.107 for measurement of the subjective quality of human speech, represented as a rating index with a maximum value equals to 5. MOS is derived by taking the average of numerical scores given by juries to rate quality and using it as a quantitative indicator of system performance. SBLR techniques generate more data bits than plain technique. The measure “Cost of Technique” can be defined as to compare the number of bits generated by specific technique to the number of bits generated by plain technique.

Power Ratio P: This measure helps in a collective analysis of different measures we used in this study. It is defined as a sum of functions of scaled performance measures including normalized throughput, normalized MOS, normalized delay, normalized jitter, cost of technique.


ADAPTIVE REDUNDANT SBLR TECHNIQUE DESIGN

This technique works by incorporating an adaptive threshold for redundant transmission of voice audio data. The redundancy depends on two operation factors which are the actual current VoIP network packet loss and a threshold variable parameter set equal to the average network loss rate seen by the receiver. If network current loss rate is greater than the threshold, previous data and new data will be included in single IP packet. Otherwise only new data will be sent. The threshold average is updated whenever a new data segment arrives to the new loss average based on the current measured report of the loss rate seen by the receiver. Figure 1 shows the flow of Adaptive Threshold Redundant Delivery technique.
In mathematical notation;
Let threshold T = average loss. Let L= current loss rate.
For every packet
if L >T send packet j in frames i and i+1, otherwise send packet j in frame i
Update T to a new Average based on current and previous loss rates
Based on the above, the technique requires the knowledge of network loss rate to control sending redundant data. However, this requirement will not introduce extra overhead traffic to network because RTP Control Protocol, commonly used for VoIP calls packets transport, defines and reports a set of performance metrics such as Packet loss and discard rate, delay, and Call Quality (MOS). Thus, the proposed technique can be implemented with no additional changes to existing VoIP System.


Ms. Garima Verma
Assistant Professor
Dept of Information Technology


Employer Brand Management


All organisations strive for sustained competitive advantage in order to attain economic profit and to survive in an increasingly global and competitive marketplace. Human resources (HR) are crucial for competitive advantage, and they often represent the main investment in knowledge intensive firms. In large and open competing markets, brand and corporate reputation are crucial for attracting the best employees. There is a constant war over talent in several industries. The importance of brand and reputation is well known in the product market, and has recently become salient as well in the labour market including the recruitment process. Many organisations have long had their employer brand - the composite attributes and values offering enriching employment experiences that appeal to employees. A good brand is distinctive and diverse. It differentiates an organisation among competitors, stakeholders, labour markets and in the mind’s eye of future talent. It can be a crucial recruitment/attraction/retention tool - and a lever for better business performance. The attractiveness of an organisation is related to the manner in which particular characteristics of the job and the organisation are perceived. The importance of attracting high quality employees to organisations renders the development of a sound recruitment communication strategy essential. Finding the desired employees is not easy, as many organisations are seeking the same skills in their employees. The Employer Brand (EB) concept is based on the conviction that an employer can be seen as a brand Similar to customer brands, employer brands offer employees a variety of functional, economic and psychological advantages. In order to establish an employer brand, an organisation must build ‘an image in the minds of the potential labour market that the company, above all others, is a great place to work ’. Thus, employer brand management becomes important.

The below mentioned points should be studied to manage employer brand of any organisation:

  1. The Employee Value Proposition (EVP) should be clearly-stated, competitive, appealing - and fully representative of the entire organisation’s people.
  2. The organisation should be generally regarded as an employer of choice. The principles and practices should be justified.
  3. The employer brand profile should be clearly communicated amongst the talent markets, service providers, networks and recruitment agencies.
  4. The organisation must evaluate whatever it has done over the last two years to evaluate the brand promise and direction, along with its business benefits.
  5. The organisation must measure retention, motivation and engagement levels - and relate the findings to the employer brand.
  6. The brand, or EVP, should be compared with those of competitors, peers and sector leaders.


EB can therefore be seen as a part of the process of building a corporate identity: communicating and co-creating the organisation ’ s character in such a way that every current or potential employee feels a part of the organisation, shares and acts towards its core values and becomes an ambassador for the organisation. Organisations should therefore communicate their corporate identities to their personnel in order to develop, preserve and anchor them.


Ms. Karnica Tanwar
Assistant Professor
Dept. of Management Studies

Monday 25 December 2017

Emotional Intelligence and Sales Performance

The sales manager invests lot of energy and money to train the sales force but still the sales executives fail to perform. The reason here is not the lack of selling skills but lack of soft skills also termed as Emotional Intelligence skills.

Questions like-
  • Can soft skills enable hard sales result
  • Why should organization care for soft skills?
  • How emotional intelligence linked with attaining sales target.


Defining Emotional intelligence in a nonprofessional’s language  is the ability to perceive one’s emotion and act as per the perceived emotion. Emotional intelligence training can be an effective tool to improve sales performance. The EI selling concept is unique in itself. This approach  integrates a consultative sales process with EI Skills. In the words of Dr. Goleman the EI adds to the IQ of which most of us today are more familiar .He elaborates that skills such as self awareness, emotional mastery,motivation,empathy and social effectiveness have a greater impact than  raw  intelligence on career success, outstanding individual  performance, leadership and creation of successful teams. The sales force work in an environment where social and emotional skills both are required. Their performance is related to their ability to manage social and emotional problems and to maintain high level of motivation to face problems arising due to negative feedback and failures. Hence maintaining a high emotional Intelligence in sales task accomplishment is necessary.


Dr. Manisha Gupta
Assistant Professor
Dept. of Management Studies
Nature versus Nurture


“Genius is one percent inspiration and 99% perspiration.” The famous adage goes. Whereas in our day to day life, we observe that most of the qualities/talents/habits of our offspring are credited to the parents or paternal/maternal relatives. It means the success is related to the genes we get from our parents and ancestors. Some qualities are same in every kid like two eyes, two ears, one nose and one mouth etc. but their height, stature, colour of eyes, shape of nose and facial appearance varies due to genetic composition. And the greatest difference lies in their temperament as it has been observed that there is a stark contrast in the behavior of siblings. Even fraternal siblings may have dissimilarities in their behaviour and temperament. So how come one of the sibling becomes a successful individual, earns name, fame and money and other one remains an underprivileged unknown statistics in the history and economic books. Children with same environment and same genes may grow into different personalities.

What is the reality then? Recent research findings infer that good education and conducive environment results in good habits and thus successful individuals. Although students studying in the same classroom achieve different goals in their lives yet innate traits and social influences affect the outcome of education. So, there is a co-relation between nature and nurture. Nurture helps nature in grooming an ordinary individual to a powerful social reformer or inventor. On the other hand, a child reared in an abusive family may become criminal. It can be observed in the most brutal crime of NCR. The accused involved in Nirbhaya case had abusive backgrounds (both physical and mental) that led to a brutal crime which can’t be forgotten by the present generation.

Nurturing affects a child physically as well a mentally. Physical care like having nutritious and timely food leads to a healthy body and proper education with training develops a nascent brain into an intellectual which becomes a social asset. In fact, one of the reasons of social disparity is the nurturing. A society with the culture of nurturing may have more intellectuals and well learnt citizens rather than a place where children are not taken care of properly. If we go through the biographies of great men, it clearly indicates that good nurturing led to the useful inventions and impressive theories. This is one of the reasons that all countries or societies don’t have equitable representation in the scientific and engineering achievements of the world. Great personalities like Aristotle, Pluto or Chander Gupt Maurya had role models and mentors who opened the path of their success.

In present scenario, when a child is bombarded with the sought or unsought information, right kind of nurturing is lost in technical gadgets. Playful activities with neighborhood friends, relations with extended family and chats on dinner table used to play a crucial role in the overall development of the child. Being well informed citizens of the civil society this is our responsibility to make world a better, peaceful and prosperous place. To achieve this objective, we need to nurture our future generations with great love and care.


Dr. Kiran Khanna
Associate Professor
Dept of Communication Studies



Monday 11 December 2017

Cloud Computing


Cloud Computing in simple terms can be described as the delivery of on-demand computing services-storage, networking, servers, softwares, databases, analytics and more- over the internet (“the cloud”). Technically, the Cloud Computing can be defined as the virtualization and central management of datacenter resources as software defined pools.

Organizations offer the computing services that are termed as cloud providers as well as they are typically charge for cloud computing services depend on the usage i.e. on a pay-for-use basis.

Advantages of Cloud Computing:

Cloud Computing is a big change from the conventional way business consider about IT resources. Cloud Computing offers many attractive features for the business as well as end user.

  1. Cost- Cloud Computing eradicates the capital expenditure of purchasing hardware and software and setting up and operating on-site data centers, the IT experts for maintaining infrastructure, the rack of servers, the round the clock availability for electricity etc.
  2. Speed- Most Cloud Computing services are self service and on demand in nature, so even huge volumes of computing resources can be provisioned in minutes, only with just a few mouse clicks, providing business a lot of flexibility and eliminates the pressure off the capacity planning
  3. Global scale- The advantage of Cloud Computing services comprises the ability to scale elasticity. In Cloud Computing terms, that entails delivering the right amount of IT resources-for instance, more or less storage, computing power, bandwidth right when it is required and from the right geographical location.
  4. Productivity- On-site data centers typically need a fair amount of “racking” and “stacking”- software patching, hardware setup, and other time consuming IT management tasks. Cloud Computing eliminates the need for many of these chores, so IT teams can spare more quality time on accomplishing more vital business goals.
  5. Performance- The biggest Cloud Computing services operates on worldwide network of protected data centers, which are periodically updated to the latest versions of fast and efficient computing hardware. This provides many advantages over a single corporate data center along with less network latency from applications and generate economies of scale.
  6. Reliability- Cloud Computing enables disaster recovery, data back up and business continuity tasks to be performed easily and also they are less expensive as data can be reflected at multiple redundant sites on the cloud provider network.



Applications of cloud computing:

Though the first Cloud Computing services started only a decade ago, now-a-days a large number of organizations – from small start-ups to huge global enterprises, government agencies to non-profits firms- are implementing the technology for enhancing their business. These are the few tasks that are made possible with the cloud:

  • ·        Create new apps and services
  • ·         Store, back up and recover data
  • ·         Host websites and blogs
  • ·         Stream audio and video
  • ·         Deliver software on demand
  • ·         Analyse data for patterns and make predictions



Ms. Nisha Wadhawan
Assistant Professor
Dept. of Management Studies 

I Want My RIGHT TO BE FORGOTTEN

 Introduction: A digital presence is now an integral part of our personal and professional lives and the information posted online is hard to remove. The internet practically never forgets. Google and other search engines are exceptionally competent at crawling the web to locate and store data.

The EU (European Union) has been assertive for a new law on data privacy of which “Right To Be Forgotten” is a key component. It claims that any inappropriate, in correct and outdated data should be taken out of the search results if the person involved requests it. Social media firms will now have to erase all the personal information on the individuals when requested under law that permits people the Right To Be Forgotten.

Definition:  Right To Be Forgotten can be defined as an amorphous privilege that would permit individuals to have more authority over their personal information, particularly that information which has been connected and collected through social forums.

ECJ (European Court of Justice) ruling imposed Right To Be Forgotten on search engines that are operating in Europe. The propagation of personal data accessible online expands further than their indexes. It is often subjugated for the advantages of other people and their intentions may be different form the wishes of data subjects. It will now be available for all data operators.

Need for The Right To Be Forgotten:  The Right To Be Forgotten provides the individuals with the authority to ask for the removal of their personal information in case there is no legitimate explanation for its ongoing processing by an organization.

The Right To Be Forgotten is however an elusive privilege. It is easier to understand as an idea rather than a policy to be implemented. It is nearly impractical to impose a law on dis-remembering, but the protocol has been raised to sustain personal confidentiality by deleting inappropriate, obsolete and incorrect information.

Implementation of The Right To Be Forgotten: The GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) supports the Right To Be Forgotten by stating that organizations in the online environment that are responsible for making personal data public, should notify other organizations who use that personal data to remove links to, copies or replication of the personal data in consideration. While this might be a challenging task, especially when one processes personal data online for instance on social forums, networks or websites, one must strive to fulfill these requirements.

If the data controller has made some personal data public and is obliged to erase it, they must take reasonable steps to inform anyone else processing that data that the erasure has been requested. The Right To Be Forgotten promotes to allow individuals to have their data, photographs about themselves erased from certain internet records so that they cannot be accessed by various search engines.

The Right To Be Forgotten is proposed to deal with privacy risks online, by authorizing individuals to manage their own identity and information in the online environment. Thus if an individual does not want his or her personal information to be maintained or processed by a controller (eg. Facebook) and there is no compelling justification for maintain it, the information should be deleted from the engine.

                                                             
 Ms. Priyanka Gupta
Assistant Professor
Dept of Information Technology




Monday 4 December 2017

Brands wed Social Causes: A happily ever after?


Reebok’s latest, hard hitting ad campaign featuring Bollywood’s female badass Kangana Ranaut is teaching ‘#girlsdontfight’. The ad film that has been conceptualized by McCann Worldgroup India is urging more and more Indian women to fight for themselves, shattering the long-held societal notion that ‘girls don’t fight’. Featuring Justine Rae Mellocastro, a professional hairstylist and a black belt in martial arts, the ad depicts Mellocastro facing and winning over eve-teasers.

Not only Reebok’s association with a social cause may help it build a customer base among young and fiercely independent women facing harassment anywhere, it may also help in brand recognition and provide Reebok an edge over its competitors. With women’s safety being a hot topic all over India, there couldn’t have been a better timing to drive home the point.

The growing trend of brands associating with social causes is a fairly new concept that has gained a lot of momentum in the Indian market over the past few years. Ariel’s ‘#sharetheload’ ad campaign is another case in point. The campaign depicts a father’s guilt over seeing her daughter manage all household chores and office work alone, while his son-in-law enjoys and relaxes after coming back from work. To set things right, the father goes back and helps his wife in the daily chore of laundry with of course Ariel, the socially conscious brand. I remember my dad sharing this ad film with my husband during one of his visits! So whether he bought Ariel or not, but my father did have a recall of the ad and even ended up sharing it with others (and hence indirectly promoting the Brand and the associated social cause).

And before I’m termed a ‘Feminazi’ (a radical feminist) who is highlighting brands that are associating or rather promoting women’s rights, there is another very popular campaign I am sure most of you must have either seen or read about. I am talking about the hugely popular 2013 Google India’s ad promoting Google’s Search Engine. The ad film titled ‘Reunion’ was produced by Ogilvy & Mather India. It is story of two school friends separated after partition with one in India and the other in Pakistan and how they get in touch with each other with the help of Google Search. The emotional tale of friendship garnered over 1.6 million views online itself. The ad film had received praise from across the globe. ‘The Star’ (Malaysia) notes that Reunion has "gone viral online, reflecting demands in the two countries for closer people-to-people ties [....] Internet users left thousands of comments on social networking sites describing how the advert had brought them to tears and renewed their hopes for improved relations between the two neighbors."

With fierce competition and difficulty in differentiation in most product/service categories, the idea to build awareness and associate a brand with a social cause is here to stay. While it is effectively able to achieve the communication objective of advertising, it remains to be seen whether it is able to fulfill the sales objective!


Ms. Chhavi Bakaria
Assistant Professor
Dept. of Communication Studies

­­­­­­­­­­­Citizen Journalism: Expanding the Boundaries of Traditional Journalism by Democratization of Media

The rapid advancement in communication technologies has not only changed the lives of the people around the entire globe but has also revolutionized the ways of dissemination of information. The exponential growth of internet and its services has made it feasible for faster distribution of information via various mediums. In earlier times, the direction of flow of information was strictly unidirectional; from media persons to passive audience. Such passive audience was only at the receiving end of the media system and the responsibility of distribution of news was fulfilled solely by trained and skilled media personnel. The existence of social networking sites, media- streaming websites, personal blogs and discussion forums has led to the rise of a new form of journalism, called as Participatory Journalism or Citizen Journalism. The notion of citizen journalism is based upon the participation of public individuals in the process of gathering, reporting, evaluating and distributing news and information through various means of their capacity. The emergence of internet and the facilities provided by it has made it more accessible for the people to collect as well distribute user generated content. Citizen journalism is appreciably different from community or civic journalism as it functions outside of the mainstream media institutions. It not only facilitates general public without any professional training to generate and distribute information but also offers them the ability to transmit it globally. Through citizen journalism, it is viable for local news to be broadcasted on a global platform.

A root and integrated element of citizen journalism is modern technology. The technological advancements in communication devices in last few years have assisted the escalation in the rise of citizen journalism. With the use of modern Smartphone, a user can not only produce information but can also distribute it worldwide without any hassle. Hence, for the obvious reasons, citizen journalism is mostly found online through blogs, podcasts, video-streaming sites etc. and in form of text, pictures, audio and video. The accessibility of internet makes it convenient for the general public to report local breaking news more swiftly then conventional media. At some instances, information broadcasted by the conventional media outlets can be    person- opinioned and filtered. But since the information through citizen journalism tends to be generated first- hand by the members of general public, it is generally free from conventional media bias.

Citizen journalism can be considered to still be in its beginning stages. Even though citizen journalism empowers the general masses, there are still numerous aspects associated with it that need to be evaluated, reformed or redefined. Conventional news- reporting institutions may raise a point regarding the lack of exactness and ethical obligations associated with this new form of journalism. Owing to the fact that such user- generated content does not award any financial benefits in most of the situations, the lack of commitment, quality and content is inevitable. But the fact that citizen journalism facilitates democratization of media cannot be simply overlooked. With realization of that, convention media has opened the gateways for citizen journalism to co-exist with mainstream media. Now-a-days, both electronic and print media is effectively engaging general public in order to broaden its precincts.

Though citizen journalism has initiated to spread its roots, there are both advantageous as well as disadvantageous aspects coupled with it. It is vital to completely understand such distinct fragments in order to utilize citizen journalism to its maximum capacity while minimizing its detrimental segments.

Citizen Journalism has attained a definitive shape in last few decades owing to the vast use of internet and modern technologies. In spite of related limitations and drawbacks, citizen journalism proves to be valuable to the society as well as to traditional media. The relationship of citizen journalism and traditional media is intriguing and the collaboration between both has already been proven to be successful. It would not be wrong to conclude that future of journalism is one where both citizen journalism and traditional journalism can work together and can benefit from each other.

Ms. Shikha Kukreja
Assistant Professor
Dept. of Communication Studies