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ITL Newsletter
May 1999

TESTING AND STANDARDS FOR PERVASIVE COMPUTING

Three major trends in computing over the years have been the decreasing size of computers, the increasing number of computers per person, and the enormous growth of the Internet. These trends are leading to the next major phase of computing - people will casually interact with numerous portable or invisible computers in their environment, and all these computers will be networked to each other and to the Internet.

Computers will be "everywhere," helping people manage in their daily lives. Computers will be embedded throughout the environment - in buildings, offices, classrooms and homes, in vehicles and roads, in factories and fabrication facilities, in chemical plants, military command posts, and hospitals, in equipment, and in people’s clothes. Portable computers will also be used in people’s everyday activities, helping them perform electronic commerce and other everyday tasks. These computers will be networked together and with the Internet through both wireless and wired communication modes. Information will be instantly accessible anytime and anywhere that connectivity is available. The computers will also have unprecedented capabilities to sense their environment and react intelligently.

The field of pervasive computing is still in its infancy, and many of the technologies required to make this field a reality are immature and involve high risks. NIST's Information Technology Laboratory has a unique role in this arena - to develop tests and standards that will help push the underlying technologies forward and help the pervasive computing field mature and grow.

Measurement tools developed by ITL provide impartial ways of measuring information technology products so that developers and users can evaluate how products perform and assess their quality based on objective criteria. In response to industry needs, ITL currently develops measurements, tests, and standards in technologies relevant to pervasive computing. Some ITL activities follow:

• More than 35 companies, including IBM, Microsoft, Hewlett Packard, Honeywell, Motorola, Nokia, Sun Microsystems, SoftPLC, and Siemens, asked ITL to lead an effort to determine the real-time requirements that are necessary to effectively make use of Java technologies. Java and Java-based software (such as Jini) can be used to link smart and portable appliances, computers, and peripherals to the Internet and to each other. ITL is also developing a set of measurements that will allow implementers of real-time Java to articulate the correctness and robustness of their implementations.
  
  
• ITL was asked by the Biometrics Consortium to help develop Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for biometrics-based systems. Biometrics offers identification and authentication technology, crucial for e-commerce and other applications for portable and smart devices. The companies involved include all of the major biometrics technology vendors and system integrators, including Compaq, IBM, Identicator, Microsoft, Miros, and Novell.
  
  
• ITL has an ongoing effort in evaluating technologies for retrieval of text documents, which is an important application for pervasive computing. Each year, the organizations involved ask NIST to continue providing evaluations, particularly in new and more challenging areas such as interactive retrieval, Web searching, and question answering. Last year, 58 organizations voluntarily participated in our document retrieval evaluations, including IBM, AT&T, GTE/BBN, CLARITECH Corp., FS Consulting, GE, Harris, Lexis-Nexis, TextWise, Inc., and Fujitsu.
  
  
• Speech offers an intuitive and natural way to interact with large numbers of embedded and invisible computers. ITL is involved in evaluation tasks in conversational telephone speech (with NSA) and broadcast news speech (with DARPA). In the area of conversational speech, challenges include spontaneous speech, telephone bandwidth and channel effects, and speech that is multi-dialectal and multi-lingual. The metric used in the evaluations is word error rate. In the area of broadcast news, there is both spontaneous and planned speech, there are varied bandwidth and channel effects, varying noise (music, environmental noise), and the speech is multi-dialectal and multi-lingual. NIST is involved in the following evaluation tasks: transcription, information extraction, topic detection and tracking, and spoken document retrieval.
  
  
• ITL is also involved in evaluating visual face recognition systems. The ability to identify who is interacting with a computer can lead to more efficient human-computer interaction. NIST is seen as an unbiased, neutral party with an established reputation in recognition systems evaluation with established expertise in face recognition. ITL is currently working with the National Institute of Justice in this area, but NIST personnel have previously done face recognition system evaluations with the Army, Navy, and DARPA through the Face Recognition Technology (FERET) program.
  
  
• ITL is developing a testbed for two wireless telephony systems, the W-CDMA and cdma2000 systems. This will allow evaluating the performance of specific systems under various channel conditions and traffic demands. For example, it will allow evaluating how well each system performs if a user decides to do some Web browsing via their wireless link while traveling on a train or in a car; determining what kind of voice and video quality one would get from the system; or determining how the system performs as a function of the number of active users.
  
  
• The Bluetooth Consortium is a group of companies (Ericsson, IBM, Intel, Nokia, Toshiba and many others) developing a standard for RF communications within a short range of about 10 meters. NIST is starting to work with this consortium to help push the technology forward. Portable and smart devices can use this technology to communicate with one another and with nearby embedded devices. In the area of conformance testing, ITL will develop abstract test suites for the Bluetooth system, starting with the link layer. We might also help test-equipment vendors with the implementation of such a test suite. In the area of protocol modeling and verification, ITL will develop formal models of Bluetooth protocols to verify that the protocol specifications are complete, unambiguous and free from deadlocks and livelocks. NIST will also develop a (primarily software) testbed for Bluetooth air interface to be used for testing. Using this testbed, NIST will evaluate Bluetooth tolerance to interference by other users (piconets) and from other potential sources.
  
  For more information on ITL involvement in pervasive computing technologies, contact Dr. Martin Herman, Chief, Information Access and User Interfaces Division, ITL, 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8940, Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8940, telephone (301) 975-4495, or e-mail martin.herman@nist.gov.
  
  FEDERAL INFORMATION PROCESSING STANDARDS (FIPS) ACTIVITIES
  
  Secretary of Commerce Approves Withdrawal of 16 FIPS
  
  The Secretary of Commerce recently approved the withdrawal of 16 FIPS because they are obsolete or have not been updated to adopt current voluntary industry standards. Withdrawal means that the FIPS will no longer be part of a subscription series that is provided by the National Technical Information Service, and that NIST will no longer be able to support the standards by answering implementation questions or updating the FIPS when the voluntary industry standards are revised. Current voluntary industry standards should be used by agencies in their procurement actions when appropriate, in accordance with OMB Circular A-119, Federal Participation and Use of Voluntary Standards. For a list of withdrawn FIPS, see http://www.itl.nist.gov/div897/pubs/message.htm.
  
  UPDATE ON NEW PUBLICATIONS
  
  ITL publishes the results of studies, investigations, and research. The publications listed are available for sale through either the Government Printing Office (GPO) Publications or the National Technical Information Service (NTIS).
  
  Guide for Developing Security Plans for Information Technology Systems
  By Marianne Swanson and Federal Computer Security Program Managers’ Forum Working Group
  NIST Special Publication 800-18
  December 1998
  PB99-105116
  Order from NTIS
  This guidance document addresses the development of security plans that document the management, technical, and operational controls for federal automated information systems. The publication provides guidance for individuals responsible for IT security at the system level and at the organization level. It is written specifically for individuals with little or no computer security expertise. The document can also be used as an auditing tool by auditors, managers, and IT security officers. The concepts presented are generic and can be applied to organizations in private and public sectors.
  
  Truncating the Singular Value Decomposition for Ill-Posed Problems
  By Bert W. Rust
  NISTIR 6131
  July 1998
  PB98-157050 - $25.50 paper - $12.00 microfiche
  Order from NTIS
  This paper reports that for ill-posed problems in which the dominant errors are the measurement uncertainties for the right hand side vector, the instability in estimating the solution is attributable to components of the measurements which are overwhelmed by the random error.
  
  Finite Precision Representation of the Conley Decomposition
  By Fern Y. Hunt
  NISTIR 6182
  December 1998
  PB99-134363 - $23.00 paper - $12.00 microfiche
  Order from NTIS
  This document presents the theoretical basis for a novel way of studying and representing the long-time behavior of finite dimensional maps.
  
  A Revised Model for Role Based Access Control
  By Wayne A. Jansen
  NISTIR 6192
  July 1998
  PB99-130825 - $23.00 paper - $12.00 microfiche
  Order from NTIS
  This report reviews the original Role Based Access Control (RBAC) model, corrects notational problems, and formulates a revised model to address noted discrepancies. The aim is to improve understanding of implications within the original model and to provide a firm baseline for subsequent activities involving the use or implementation of the model.
  
  Anisotropy of Interfaces in an Ordered HCP Binary Alloy
  By J.W. Cahn, S.C. Han, and G.B. McFadden
  NISTIR 6217
  September 1998
  PB98-158405 - Order from NTIS
  This paper describes the analogous form of the gradient energy term for a hexagonal close packed (HCP) binary alloy, by considering the continuum limit of a discrete Ising-like model.
  
  A Phase-Field Model of Solidification with Convection
  By D.M. Anderson, G.B. McFadden, and A.A. Wheeler
  NISTIR 6237
  September 1998
  PB98-169170 - Order from NTIS
  This paper describes a phase-field model for the solidification of a pure material that includes convection in the liquid phase.
  
  Surface Energy Formula for a Hsieh-Clough-Tocher Element
  By Marjorie McClain and Christoph Witzgall
  NISTIR 6246
  January 1999
  PB99-105025 - $25.50 paper - $12.00 microfiche
  Order from NTIS
  This report describes a problem in terrain modeling to find an approach to interpolation, which displays low sensitivity to the choice of triangulation.
  
  FERET Evaluation Methodology for Face-Recognition Algorithms
  By P.J. Phillips, H. Moon, S.A. Rizvi, and P.J. Rauss
  NISTIR 6264
  October 1998
  PB99-105157 - $23.00 paper - $12.00 microfiche
  Order from NTIS
  This report discusses two of the most critical requirements in support of producing reliable face-recognition systems, a large database of facial images and a testing procedure to evaluate systems. The Face Recognition Technology (FERET) program addresses both issues through the FERET database of facial images and the establishment of the FERET tests. In September 1996, the FERET program administered the third in a series of FERET face-recognition tests. The primary objectives of the third test were to assess the state of the art, identify future areas of research, and measure algorithm performance.
  
  The FERET Verification Testing Protocol for Face Recognition Algorithms
  By S.A. Rizvi, J.P. Phillips, and H. Moon
  NISTIR 6281
  October 1998
  PB99-114662 - $23.00 paper - $12.00 microfiche
  Order from NTIS
  This report describes the verification performance obtained from the September 1996 FERET test; FERET is the de facto standard evaluation methodology in face recognition.
  
  Interactive 3D Visualization of Mathematical Functions Using
  By Qiming Wang and Bonita Saunders
  NISTIR 6289
  February 1999
  PB99-130767 - $23.00 paper - $12.00 microfiche Order from NTIS
  A key feature of the electronic handbook Digital Library of Mathematical Functions will be dynamic 3D visualizations of special functions. This paper discusses some of the visualization results obtained to date using Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML), a standard file format for describing the behavior and geometry of a 3D virtual world.
  
  UPCOMING TECHNICAL CONFERENCES
  
  5th Human Factors and the Web Conference
  
  NIST is hosting the 5th Conference on Human Factors and the Web. The theme this year is "The Future of Web Applications." This is an annual conference whose purpose is to provide a forum for sharing information among a community of human factors engineers, designers, and developers who are interested in producing Web sites that are more useful and usable.
  Date: June 3, 1999
  Place: NIST, Gaithersburg, Maryland
  Contact: Sharon Laskowski, 301-975-4535; sharon.laskowski@nist.gov; http://www.nist.gov/hfweb
  
  North American ISDN Users' Forum (NIUF)
  The NIUF addresses high-level concerns over a broad range of Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) issues and seeks to reach consensus on ISDN Implementation Agreements. Participants include ISDN users, ISDN implementors, ISDN service providers, and Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) vendors.
  Dates: Feb. 22-24, 1999 (NIST); June 21-23, 1999 (Montreal)
  Contact: Diane Honeycutt, (301) 975-2937; niuf@nist.gov; http://www.niuf.nist.gov/misc/niuf.html
  
  22nd National Information Systems Security Conference
  
  An annual conference attended by representatives of a broad range of information security interests spanning government, industry, and academic communities. This year's conference theme is "Security Solutions for the New Millenium."The goal of the conference is to educate the IT community on major information security issues and solutions, and promote demand and investment in information security products, solutions, and research. Visit the conference Web site at http://csrc.nist.gov/nissc/.
  Sponsors: NIST and the National Computer Security Center
  Dates: October 18-21, 1999
  Place: Hyatt Regency, Crystal City, Virginia
  Technical Contact: Patricia Toth, (301) 975-5140; patricia.toth@nist.gov
  
  National Information Assurance Partnership (NIAP) Training Courses
  
  Check out the NIAP Web site and click on Events, click on Training Classes.