Background - Engineering education utilizes a face-to-face model for delivery of course materials and workshops. The recent outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic imposed a countrywide lockdown and forced education institutes to shift to an internet-based online delivery mode. Purpose/Hypothesis - This study developed an instrument to meticulously measure the students’ readiness for online learning in a pandemic situation. A situation like COVID-19 accelerates a long-standing issue of digital inequality among the students in education. The study proposed a reconceptualised model for students’ online readiness for emergencies like COVID-19. The proposed model consists of (a) motivation, (b) self-efficacy, and (c) situational factors.Design/Method - The proposed model was validated with the engineering students (for pilot study N = 68 and main study N = 988) from several universities in Bangladesh. To validate the underlying relationships between the latent constructs, an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was performed followed by structural equation modelling (SEM) for the construct validity of the measurement model and to assess the model fit. Results - The findings showed that besides motivation and self-efficacy, the situational factors describing the contextual dynamics emerging from the COVID-19 significantly influenced the student's online readiness.Conclusions - The impact of situational factors on student readiness for online learning is complex, specially during events such as the COVID-19 pandemic. By analyzing the collected data, it is evident that current practices of teaching should be blended with face-to-face, synchronous and asynchronous internet-based learning. We argue that digital inequality is an important factor influencing student readiness for online learning.

Market research finds that mobile commerce for 4G wireless systems will be dominated by basic human communication such as messaging, voice, and video communication. Because of its typically large bandwidth requirements, broadband communication is expected to emerge as the dominant type of traffic in 4G wireless systems. In this paper a new TCP based Multicarrier access technique named MC-CDMA for mitigating 4G requirements is proposed. This paper also presents analytical information regarding the transfer of TCP data flows on paths towards interconnected wireless systems, with emphasis on 4G cellular networks. The focus is on protocol modifications in face of problems arising from terminal mobility and wireless transmission. We advocate the use of TCP as the transport layer protocol for highspeed data in a Multi-Carrier CDMA (MC-CDMA) system for 4G wireless communications.

Cognitive radio (CR) is a promising technology that can enhance the radio spectrum utilization by enabling unlicensed users to exploit the spectrum in an opportunistic manner. However, the main challenge is to share the licensed spectrum without interfering transmissions of other licensed users. A CR node needs to vacate the spectrum upon detection of licensed users on a particular frequency band (e.g., spectrum handoff or spectrum mobility) leading to significant network performance drops and switching overheads. This chapter aims to propose a proactive spectrum handoff management scheme to overcome the problem of handoff latency management in CR ad hoc networks. The proposed scheme is modeled and its performance is evaluated using an OPNET simulation tool. Simulation results are presented to evaluate the performance of the proposed system. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion and future research directions.

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