V2V protocols for traffic congestion discovery along routes of interest in VANETs: a quantitative study

One of the most interesting and promising challenges for Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSs) relates to the traffic congestion problem. Congestion is a relevant issue for transportation because it reduces the efficiency of infrastructure and increases travel time, air pollution, and fuel consumption. Nowadays, the most promising technology in support of ITSs is found in the domain of Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs). In this paper, we propose three protocols that are able to transmit traffic information for routes of interest on VANETs without any Road Side Unit (RSU) support. The proposed protocols adopt strategies to improve the performance of packet routing based on the density and location of vehicles; moreover, they enable an interesting comparison of the performance achievable with either reactive or proactive approaches. The extensive performance results reported show how it is possible to limit the congestion monitoring overhead along Routes of Interest (ROIs), while maintaining a sufficiently high performance in terms of traffic reporting. This may be done by employing context‐aware data delivery techniques that autonomously adapt to runtime conditions. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Guest effect on nanopatterned spin-crossover thin films

Nanopatterned thin films of the metal-organic framework {Fe(bpac)[Pt(CN)4]} (bpac=bis(4-pyridyl)acetylene) are elaborated by the combination of a sequential assembly process and a lithographic method. Raman microspectroscopy is used to probe the temperature dependence of the spin state of the iron(II) ions in the films (40-90 nm in thickness), and reveals an incomplete but cooperative spin transition comparable to that of the bulk material. Adsorption/desorption of pyridine guest molecules is found to have a substantial influence on the spin-crossover properties of the thin layers. This interplay between host-guest and spin-crossover properties in thin films and nanopatterns demonstrates the potential ability of using this kind of material as a microsensor.     

LIP: an efficient lightweight iterative positioning algorithm for wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are increasingly being used in remote environment monitoring, security surveillance, military applications, and health monitoring systems among many other applications. Designing efficient localization techniques have been a major obstacle towards the deployment of WSN for these applications. In this paper, we present a novel lightweight iterative positioning (LIP) algorithm for next generation of wireless sensor networks, where we propose to resolve the localization problem through the following two phases: (1) initial position estimation and (2) iterative refinement. In the initial position estimation phase, instead of flooding the network with beacon messages, we propose to limit the propagation of the messages by using a random time-to-live for the majority of the beacon nodes. In the second phase of the algorithm, the nodes select random waiting periods for correcting their position estimates based on the information received from neighbouring nodes. We propose the use of Weighted Moving Average when the nodes have received multiple position corrections from a neighbouring node in order to emphasize the corrections with a high confidence. In addition, in the refinement phase, the algorithm employs low duty-cycling for the nodes that have low confidence in their position estimates, with the goal of reducing their impact on localization of neighbouring nodes and preserving their energy. Our simulation results indicate that LIP is not only scalable, but it is also capable of providing localization accuracy comparable to the Robust Positioning Algorithm, while significantly reducing the number of messages exchanged, and achieving energy savings.     

A Novel Image Mosaicking Technique for Enlarging the Field of View of Images Transmitted over Wireless Image Sensor Networks

Existing image mosaicking algorithms generate a complete scene that incorporates a number of images captured by several cameras. The traditional image mosaicking approaches cannot be applied directly to the emerging Wireless Image Sensor Networks (WISNs), since the low performance of image transmission over wireless sensor networks causes a noticeable delay before an entire image is received by a control center node. In this work, we propose a Progressive Image Mosaicking Algorithm (PIMA) based on the multi-scan feature of Progressive JPEG (P-JPEG). The originality of PIMA is based essentially on how it successfully performs mosaicking by using incremental image quality, as opposed to traditional methods that require complete data from all images. PIMA builds mosaics of images that are decoded from P-JPEG scans at three levels of quality, and delivers an approximate view of the scene in a short time while the reception of further image data is still in progress. Thereafter, it updates the image registration on two other refined levels to gradually enhance the display quality. We also propose the concept of Richer Information and Likeliest (RIL) block pair, which is a variation of the Sum of Absolute Difference (SAD). RIL can improve significantly the accuracy of image registration. We have conducted an extensive set of experiments and evaluated our proposed schemes against selected existing approaches. Our performance results indicate that PIMA decreases the delay before the first display of the scene, while preserving equivalent performance and image quality when compared to existing patch-based image mosaicking algorithms.     

Inter-vehicle communication of warning information: an experimental study

In this paper, we show experimentally the feasibility of intervehicle communication of warning information. Warning messages convey significant information that might improve the safety of drivers and passengers. Intervehicle communication can be achieved by the detection of important events through a vision-based detection module, and sharing them between vehicles using a transmission module. In this paper, we developed a testbed that considers both modules in order to detect, recognize and share relevant information, such as traffic signs. To the best of our knowledge, our architecture is the first that combines detection and transmission of messages in the same platform. We detect traffic signs as blobs using the Maximally Stable Extremal Regions (MSER) algorithm, and we recognize them using Random forest classifiers. In the transmission module, we used a simplied broadcasting mechanism that avoids the use of handshaking to establish a communication. In order to assess our system, a set of indoor and outdoor experiments are considered.     

HD Tree: A novel data structure to support multi-dimensional range query for P2P networks

There are two basic concerns for supporting multi-dimensional range query in P2P overlay networks. The first is to preserve data locality in the process of data space partitioning, and the second is the maintenance of data locality among data ranges with an exponentially expanding and extending rate. The first problem has been well addressed by using recursive decomposition schemes, such as Quad-tree, K-d tree, Z-order, and Hilbert curve. On the other hand, the second problem has been recently identified by our novel data structure: HD Tree. In this paper, we explore how data locality can be easily maintained, and how range query can be efficiently supported in HD Tree. This is done by introducing two basic routing strategies: hierarchical routing and distributed routing. Although hierarchical routing can be applied to any two nodes in the P2P system, it generates high volume traffic toward nodes near the root, and has very limited options to cope with node failure. On the other hand, distributed routing concerns source and destination pairs only at the same depth, but traffic load is bound to some nodes at two neighboring depths, and multiple options can be found to redirect a routing request. Because HD Tree supports multiple routes between any two nodes in the P2P system, routing in HD Tree is very flexible; it can be designed for many purposes, like fault tolerance, or dynamic load balancing. Distributed routing oriented combined routing (DROCR) algorithm is one such routing strategy implemented so far. It is a hybrid algorithm combining advantages from both hierarchical routing and distributed routing. The experimental results show that DROCR algorithm achieves considerable performance gain over the equivalent tree routing at the highest depth examined. For supporting multi-dimensional range query, the experimental results indicate that the exponentially expanding and extending rate have been effectively controlled and minimized by HD Tree overlay structure and DROCR routing.     

A mobility management scheme for wireless mesh networks based on a hybrid routing protocol

Recent advances in wireless mesh networks (WMNs) have overcome the drawbacks of traditional wired networks and wireless ad hoc networks. WMNs will play a leading role in the next generation of networks, and the question of how to provide seamless mobility management for WMNs is the driving force behind the research. The inherent characteristics of WMNs, such as relatively static backbones and highly mobile clients, require new mobility management solutions to be designed and implemented.In this paper, a hybrid routing protocol for forwarding packets is proposed: this involves both link layer routing and network layer routing. Based on the hybrid routing protocol, a mobility management scheme for WMNs is presented. Both intra-domain and inter-domain mobility management have been designed to support seamless roaming in WiFi-based WMNs. During intra-domain handoff, gratuitous ARP messages are used to provide new routing information, thus avoiding re-routing and location update. For inter-domain handoff, redundant tunnels are removed in order to minimize forwarding latency. Comprehensive simulation results illustrate that our scheme has low packet latency, low packet loss ratio and short handoff latency. As a result, real-time applications over 802.11 WMNs such as VoIP can be supported.     

New insights into the normalization of the least mean fourth algorithm

The available normalization of the least mean fourth algorithm is investigated. It is shown that that normalization does not protect the algorithm from divergence when the input power of the adaptive filter increases. The reason of this drawback is that the normalization is done by dividing the weight vector update term by the squared norm of the regressor, while the update term is a fourth order polynomial in the regressor. The paper presents a normalized LMF algorithm that is based on dividing the weight vector update term by the fourth power of the norm of the regressor. This normalization protects the algorithm from divergence when the input power increases. An approximate stability step-size bound of the proposed algorithm is derived. The step-size bound depends on the weight initialization, while it does not depend on the input power of the adaptive filter for non-small signal-to-noise ratio. Simulation results support the analytical results of the paper.