Comparing the Performance of NB-IoT,LTE Cat-M1, Sigfox,and LoRa for IoT End Devices Moving at High Speeds in the Air

Recently, NB-IoT, LTE Cat-M1, Sigfox, and LoRa have been proposed as promising Low-Power Wide Area Networks (LPWANs) technologies for Internet-of-Things (IoT) applications. These technologies are aimed for IoT applications such as smart meters that can tolerate long transmission delays and only need a narrow band to periodically transmit a small amount of data. Although the performances of these technologies have been studied or compared in the literature, most comparisons were conducted in non-mobile conditions. In this work, we used a drone flying at 70 km/hr along a 10 km motorway to act as a mobile IoT end device to do the performance measurements. In this paper, we report and compare the performances of these technologies in such high-speed mobile conditions in the air.

     

Continuously Changing Information on a Global Scale and its Impact for the Internet-of-Things

This article analyzes the challenges of supporting continual changes of context information in Internet-of-Things applications. These applications require a constant flow of continuously changing information from sensor based sources in order to ensure a high quality-of-experience. However, an uncontrolled flow between sources and sinks on a global scale wastes resources, such as computational power, communication bandwidth, and battery time. In response to these challenges we present a general approach which focuses on four layers where we provide a proposed solution to each layer. We have realized the general model into a proof-of-concept implementation running on devices with limited resources, where we can moderate the information exchange based on relevance and sought after quality-of-experience by the applications. In conclusion, we evaluate our solution and present a summary of our experiences regarding the impact of continuously changing information on the Internet-of-Things.     

Proficient User and Antenna Selection Strategies for Multi-carrier MIMO Communications Using Adjacent Sub-carrier Clustering

Wireless Personal Communications - The innovative services of Internet-of-Things (IoT) led to the design of sophisticated systems using heterogeneous technologies. IoT poses integrating networks to...     

Drone services: issues in drones for location-based services from human-drone interaction to information processing

Recently, drones (or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)) are getting increasing attention and taking mobile computing to a new era. Due to the support of highly advanced technologies, soon they might be ubiquitous and networks of drones might be used in providing civilian drone services. In this paper, we provide a survey of drone services and applications, data management for drones, data services using drones, distributed computing trends fuelled by drones and a range of human-drone interaction research which is useful if drones are to regularly serve non-technical users, while highlighting the specific concerns in data management and airborne Internet-of-Things (IoT) computing infrastructure. We present concepts such as drones-as-a-service and fly-in, fly-out computing infrastructure, and note data management and system design issues that arise in these situations. Issues of Big Data arising from such applications, optimising the configuration of airborne and ground infrastructure to provide the best QoS and QoE, situation-awareness, scalability, reliability, scheduling for efficiency, interaction with users and drones using different methods are noted.     

Edge Computing-Based Joint Client Selection and Networking Scheme for Federated Learning in Vehicular IoT

In order to support advanced vehicular Internet-of-Things(IoT)applications,information ex-changes among different vehicles are required to find efficient soluti...     

Robust and Cost-effective Resource Allocation for Complex IoT Applications in Edge-Cloud Collaboration

Mobile Networks and Applications - The rapid increasing of the Internet-of-Things (IoT) applications make it convenient to sense and collect real-world information in our daily life. To ensure the...     

MAC-layer rate control for 802.11 networks: a survey

Rate control at the MAC-layer is one of the fundamental building blocks in many wireless networks. Over the past two decades, around thirty mechanisms have been proposed in the literature. Among them, there are mechanisms that make rate selection decisions based on sophisticated measurements of wireless link quality, and others that are based on straight-forward heuristics. Minstrel, for example, is an elegant mechanism that has been adopted by hundreds of millions of computers, yet, not much was known about its performance until recently. The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive survey and analysis of the existing solutions from the two fundamental aspects of rate control—metrics and algorithms. We also review how these solutions were evaluated and compared against each other. Based on our detailed studies and observations, we share important insights on future development of rate control mechanisms at the MAC-layer. This discussion also takes into account the recent developments in wireless technologies and emerging applications, such as Internet-of-Things, and shows issues that need to be addressed in the design of new rate control mechanisms suitable for these technologies and applications.

     

An Efficient FIR Filter Based on Hardware Sharing Architecture Using CSD Coefficient Grouping for Wireless Application

Current research emphasis on IoT (Internet-of-Things) to enable physical objects to connect, co-ordinate among themselves in a ubiquitous manner. Specifically, for this type of applications, the quality of wireless communication is indeed considered vital to enhance the reliability of battery operated IoT devices. Moreover, these devices operate on unlicensed bands creating heavy congestion on spectrum. Interestingly operating these devices on Cognitive Radio band avoids the spectrum shortage problem by exploiting the dynamic spectrum access capabilities. Cognitive relaying for IoT applications ensures reliable communication through interference mitigation among co-existing IoT devices. In this paper, we therefore propose spectrally efficient two-path decode and amplify relaying technique in three time slots through network-coded co-operation of Primary user and Secondary User. To address the interference issues, optimum power allocation is formulated as a convex optimization problem solved through a modeling system named CVX. Thereby we achieve co-operative diversity without the need for additional antennas for IoT networks. Performance evaluation compares the Bit Error Rate for different relaying schemes with and without optimum power allocation. Our simulation results ensure that the probability of error is minimized and rate is maximized by our proposed algorithm.

     

Organic semiconductors:commercialization and market

Organic semiconductors (OS) have a number of advant-ages over their inorganic counterparts,e.g.,mechanical flexibil-ity,lightweight,solution processability,and low-cost high-throughput production.Moreover,thanks to the versatility of synthetic organic chemistry,the optoelectronic properties of OS can be tuned readily on demand.They can be incorpor-ated into a wide range of applications from biomedical sensors,image sensors,flexible microprocessors,photovolta-ics to flexible displays,etc.In the field of wearable electron-ics and Internet-of-Things,there is an increasing demand for smart and unobtrusive sensors that can be adhered onto curved surfaces or interfaced with human body[1].In such cases,the rigidity and heavy weight of traditional inorganic semiconductors will certainly become a limitation,while OS will become alternatives,standing on their rapidly improved performance.In fact,ever since the first demonstration of thin-film organic solar cell and light-emitting diode in late 1980s,research on OS has been pushing these novel semicon-ducting technologies into commercialization[2].     

Simulations and experiments for optimal deployment of an RFID‐based location‐aware system

The proliferation of communication and mobile computing devices and local‐area wireless networks has cultivated a growing interest in location‐aware systems and services. An essential problem in location‐aware computing is the determination of physical locations. RFID technologies are gaining much attention, as they are attractive solutions to indoor localization in many healthcare applications. In this paper, we propose a new indoor localization methodology that aims to deploying RFID technologies in achieving accurate location‐aware undertakings with real‐time computation. The proposed algorithm introduces means to improve the accuracy of the received RF signals. Optimal settings for the parameters in terms of reader and reference tag properties were investigated through simulations and experiments. The experimental results indicate that our indoor localization methodology is promising in applications that require fast installation, low cost and high accuracy. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Embedded TLS 1.2 Implementation for Smart Metering & Smart Grid Applications

Digital networked communications are the key to all Internet-of-Things applications, especially to smart metering systems and the smart grid. In order to ensure a safe operation of systems and the privacy of users, the transport layer security (TLS) protocol, a mature and well standardized solution for secure communications, may be used. We implemented the TLS protocol in its latest version in a way suitable for embedded and resource-constrained systems. This paper outlines the challenges and opportunities of deploying TLS in smart metering and smart grid applications and presents performance results of our TLS implementation. Our analysis shows that given an appropriate implementation and configuration, deploying TLS in constrained smart metering systems is possible with acceptable overhead.     

Die-attachment solutions for SiC power devices

Silicon carbide has become a very attractive material for high temperature and high power electronics applications due to its physical properties, which are different than those of conventional Si semiconductors. However, the reliability of SiC devices is limited by assembly processes comprising die attachment and interconnections technology as well as the stability of ohmic contacts at high temperatures.The investigations of die to substrate connection methods which can fulfill high temperature and high power requirements are the main focuses of the paper. This work focuses on die attach technologies: solder bonding by means of gold-germanium alloys, adhesive bonding with the use of organic and inorganic conductive compositions, as well as die bonding with the use of low temperature sintering with silver nanoparticles. The applied bonding technologies are described and obtained results are presented. Of the methods tested, the best solutions for high temperature application are two die attach technologies: silver glass die attach and die bonding with the use of low temperature sintered Ag nanopowders.     

Wireless Technology in Industrial Networks

With the success of wireless technologies in consumer electronics, standard wireless technologies are envisioned for the deployment in industrial environments as well. Industrial applications involving mobile subsystems or just the desire to save cabling make wireless technologies attractive. Nevertheless, these applications often have stringent requirements on reliability and timing. In wired environments, timing and reliability are well catered for by fieldbus systems (which are a mature technology designed to enable communication between digital controllers and the sensors and actuators interfacing to a physical process). When wireless links are included, reliability and timing requirements are significantly more difficult to meet, due to the adverse properties of the radio channels. In this paper, we thus discuss some key issues coming up in wireless fieldbus and wireless industrial communication systems: 1) fundamental problems like achieving timely and reliable transmission despite channel errors; 2) the usage of existing wireless technologies for this specific field of applications; and 3) the creation of hybrid systems in which wireless stations are incorporated into existing wired systems.     

GA applications to physical distribution scheduling problem

A physical distribution system has a number of optimization problems. Most of them belong to a combinatorial problem, to which conventional mathematical programming methods may hardly be applied. This paper reports on two applications of the genetic algorithm (GA) to physical distribution scheduling problems, which arise at real physical distribution centers. The developed GA schedulers took the place of conventional schedulers, which were coded by rule-based technologies. Advantages of the introduction of GA schedulers into the physical distribution system are as follows: (1) the GA becomes a general problem-solver engine. Once we develop this engine, we only have to develop interfaces for the applications; and (2) fitness functions necessary for the GA force the physical distribution schedulers to have approximate performance estimation. This was not taken into consideration when the rule-based scheduler was used. Two applications of the discussed schedulers were implemented with real distribution centers, and they brought much efficiency to their management     

Broadband transport — the synchronous digital hierarchy

All data networks require a physical transmission medium to convey information between network nodes. Within a local environment this physical medium might, for example, take the form of an Ethernet LAN, but wide area connections are provided using telecommunications constant bit rate transmission equipment. Furthermore, the assumption that data networking is simply the provision of WAN connectivity for large corporate networks is becoming dated. The explosion of interest in the Internet means that, for transport networks, the term data may encompass voice, video and multimedia applications for delivery to both home and office. This places additional requirements on the network infrastructure as each service has specific transport requirements.Network operators are currently in the process of deploying core networks of equipment conforming to the ITU-T Recommendations for a synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH), but many networks also contain a significant proportion of older transmission technologies. This paper provides a review of transmission technology and describes the impact of such networks on the transport of data.     

Security and privacy issues of physical objects in the IoT: Challenges and opportunities

In the Internet of Things (IoT), security and privacy issues of physical objects are crucial to the related applications. In order to clarify the complicated security and privacy issues, the life cycle of a physical object is divided into three stages of pre-working, in-working, and post-working. On this basis, a physical object-based security architecture for the IoT is put forward. According to the security architecture, security and privacy requirements and related protecting technologies for physical objects in different working stages are analyzed in detail. Considering the development of IoT technologies, potential security and privacy challenges that IoT objects may face in the pervasive computing environment are summarized. At the same time, possible directions for dealing with these challenges are also pointed out.     

Analysis of the trade-offs between conventional and superconductinginterconnections

The performance tradeoffs for conventional and superconducting interconnections in applications ranging from printed wiring boards to chips are examined. For most semiconductor device-based applications, the potential gains in wiring density offered by superconductors appear to be more important than the bandwidth improvements. The analysis determines the values of critical current density above which superconductors outperform conventional wires in systems of various physical sizes. This identifies particular interconnection technologies for which high-temperature superconductors show the most promise     

COLLABORATIVE INTELLIGENCE FOR VEHICULAR INTERNET OF THINGS

Future vehicular Internet-of-Things (IoT) systems feature a large number of devices and multi-ac-cess environments where different types of commu-nication,compu...     

Feasibility and Fundamental Limits of Energy-Harvesting Based M2M Communications

Energy-efficient, reliable and scalable machine-to-machine (M2M) communications is the key technical enabler of Internet-of-Things (IoT) networks. Furthermore, as the number of populated devices is constantly increasing, self-sustaining or energy-autonomous IoT nodes are a promising prospect receiving increasing interest. In this paper, the feasibility and fundamental limits of energy harvesting based M2M communication systems are studied and presented. The derived theoretical bounds are effectively based on the Shannon theorem, combined with selected propagation loss models, assumed link nonidealities, as well as the given energy harvesting and storage capabilities. Fundamental limits and available operational time of the communicating nodes are derived and analyzed, together with extensive numerical results evaluated in different practical scenarios for low power sensor type communication applications.     

CPW-Fed Quasi-Magnetic Printed Antenna for Ultra-Wideband Applications

An optimized coplanar waveguide fed quasimagnetic printed antenna for ultra wideband applications is described. A parameter study, motivated by a design procedure, allowed a substantial increase in the return-loss operational bandwidth. The numerically predicted performance was validated by means of physical measurements of fabricated samples. The measured radiation patterns of the antenna demonstrated its adequate radiation characteristics. The feed radiation was also investigated by means of physical measurements.