Simplified gateway selection scheme for multihop relay in vehicular ad hoc network

Integrating vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) and universal mobile telecommunication system (UMTS) could be a promising architecture for future machine‐to‐machine applications. This integration can help vehicles have steady Internet connection through the UMTS network and in communicating with other vehicles. However, dead spot areas and unsuccessful handoff processes caused by the high speed of vehicles can disrupt the implementation of this kind of architecture. In this paper, a new simplified gateway selection (SGS) scheme for multihop relay in a VANET‐UMTS integration network is proposed. The proposed scheme extends the coverage or/and calming of the frequent handoff process and allows vehicles to continue to be connected to the UMTS infrastructure network. An integrated simulation environment that combines VanetMobiSim and NS2 is used to simulate and evaluate the proposed scheme. The simulation results show that the SGS scheme performed better when it was implemented with ad hoc on a demand distance vector routing and destination‐sequenced distance vector routing protocols. Furthermore, the SGS scheme is compared with other cluster‐based gateway selections used in the previous works. The results show that our SGS scheme outperforms other cluster‐based gateway selections scheme in terms of selection delay, control packet overhead, packet delivery ratio, and overall throughput. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Privacy management of patient physiological parameters

Patient Physiological Parameters (PPPs) seem to be the most extensively accessed and utilized Personal Health Information (PHI) in hospitals, and their utilization by the various medical entities for treatment and diagnosis creates a real threat to patient privacy. This study aims to investigate whether PPPs access in a hospital environment violates patient privacy. If so, to what extent can we manage patient privacy while accessing PPPs in this environment? We investigated this question by analyzing questionnaire-based data from two Asian countries: Group A (China) and Group B (Pakistan). For data collection, we targeted those medical entities which were directly dealing with PPPs in their routine tasks. Results suggest that patient type directly influences the collection of PPPs: Group A (one-time?=?1.9, follow-up?=?1.06) and Group B (one-time?=?2.0 and follow-up?=?1.9). Both groups agreed that patients have the right to control their own PPPs. In both, doctors are the most trusted entity: for Group A, the Pearson Chi-Square with one degree of freedom is 1.414, p?=?0.234, whereas for Group B, the Pearson Chi-Square with three degrees of freedom is 4.511, p?=?0.11. Most of the Group A entities (92%) are familiar with unauthorized access of PPPs, while in Group B the level was only 35%. In Group B, only 35% of entities stated the purpose, specification and use limitations of PPPs. Doctors in both groups showed a high utilization of PPPs read authorization rights. This empirical evidence about PPPs usage in both countries will benefit health technology and improve policy on patient privacy.     

A reliable energy-efficient pressure-based routing protocol for underwater wireless sensor network

Recently, Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks (UWSNs) has witnessed significant attention from both academia and industries in research and development, due to the growing number of applications for wide range of purposes including commercial, scientific, environmental and military. Some of the major applications include pollution monitoring, tactical surveillance, tsunami warnings and offshore exploration. Efficient communication among sensors in UWSNs is a challenging task due to the harsh environments and peculiar characteristics of UWSNs. Therefore, design of routing protocol for efficient communication among sensors and sink is one of the fundamental research themes in UWSNs. In this context, this paper proposes a location-free Reliable and Energy efficient Pressure-Based Routing (RE-PBR) protocol for UWSNs. RE-PBR considers three parameters including link quality, depth and residual energy for balancing energy consumption and reliable data delivery. Specifically, link quality is estimated using triangle metric method. A light weight information acquisition algorithm is developed for efficient knowledge discovery of the network. Multi-metric data forwarding algorithm is designed based on route cost calculation which utilizes residual energy and link quality. Simulations are carried out in NS-2 with Aqua-Sim package to evaluate the performance of RE-PBR. The performance of the proposed protocol is compared with the stat-of-the-art techniques: DBR and EEDBR. The comprehensive performance evaluation attests the benefit of RE-PBR as compared to the state-of-the-art techniques in terms of network lifetime, energy consumption, end-to-end delay and packet delivery ratio.     

Theoretical Prediction of an Antimony-Silicon Monolayer $$(\hbox {penta-Sb}_{2}\hbox {Si})$$: Band Gap Engineering by Strain Effect

In this paper, using a first principles calculation, a two-dimensional structure of silicon-antimony named penta-Sb\(_{2}\)Si is predicted. The structural, kinetic, and thermal stabilities of the predicted monolayer are confirmed by the cohesive energy calculation, phonon dispersion analysis, and first principles molecular dynamic simulation, respectively. The electronic properties investigation shows that the pentagonal Sb\(_{2}\)Si monolayer is a semiconductor with an indirect band gap of about 1.53 eV (2.1 eV) from GGA-PBE (PBE0 hybrid functional) calculations which can be effectively engineered by employing external biaxial compressive and tensile strain. Furthermore, the optical characteristics calculation indicates that the predicted monolayer has considerable optical absorption and reflectivity in the ultraviolet region. The results suggest that a Sb\(_{2}\)Si monolayer has very good potential applications in new nano-optoelectronic devices.     

A novel ±0.5 V,high current drive,and rail to rail current operational amplifier

A current operational amplifier (COA) with very high current drive capability is presented in this paper. The principle of operation of this unique structure is discussed, its most important formulas are derived and its outstanding performance is verified by HSPICE simulation in TSMC 0.18 μm CMOS, BSIM3, and Level49 technology. Owing to the elaborately arranged components, the proposed circuit demonstrates very high frequency bandwidth, extremely high CMRR, high output impedance, and true rail to rail output voltage swing range while operating at very low power supply of ±0.5 V. The interesting results such as current drive capability of ±1 mA, high output impedance of 5 GΩ, wide gain bandwidth of 220 MHz, extremely high output voltage swing of ±0.45 V, which interestingly provides the highest yet reported output voltage compliance for current mode building blocks implemented by regular CMOS technology, low static power consumption of 159 μW, and very high CMRR of 155 dB is achieved utilizing standard CMOS technology. Full process, voltage, and temperature variation analysis of the circuit is also investigated in order to approve the well robustness of the structure. The transient stepwise and sinusoidal response analysis is also done to verify the proposed COA stability.     

New evolution in two-way relay networks based on physical layer network coding

Telecommunication Systems - In this paper, a physical-layer network coding (PNC) method is offered for a two-way relay network with spatial modulation (SM) for source node and relay node. For this...     

Combining replication and checkpointing redundancies for reducing resiliency overhead

We herein propose a heuristic redundancy selection algorithm that combines resubmission, replication, and checkpointing redundancies to reduce the resiliency overhead in fault‐tolerant workflow scheduling. The appropriate combination of these redundancies for workflow tasks is obtained in two consecutive phases. First, to compute the replication vector (number of task replicas), we apportion the set of provisioned resources among concurrently executing tasks according to their needs. Subsequently, we obtain the optimal checkpointing interval for each task as a function of the number of replicas and characteristics of tasks and computational environment. We formulate the problem of obtaining the optimal checkpointing interval for replicated tasks in situations where checkpoint files can be exchanged among computational resources. The results of our simulation experiments, on both randomly generated workflow graphs and real‐world applications, demonstrated that both the proposed replication vector computation algorithm and the proposed checkpointing scheme reduced the resiliency overhead.     

Fingerprinting Based Indoor Localization Considering the Dynamic Nature of Wi-Fi Signals

Current localization techniques in outdoors cannot work well in indoors. Wi-Fi fingerprinting technique is an emerging localization technique for indoor environments. However in this technique, the dynamic nature of WiFi signals affects the accuracy of the measurements. In this paper, we use affinity propagation clustering method to decrease the computation complexity in location estimation. Then, we use the least variance of Received Signal Strength (RSS) measured among Access Points (APs) in each cluster. Also we assign lower weights to altering APs for each point in a cluster, to represent the level of similarity to Test Point (TP) by considering the dynamic nature of signals in indoor environments. A method for updating the radio map and improving the results is then proposed to decrease the cost of constructing the radio map. Simulation results show that the proposed method has 22.5% improvement in average in localization results, considering one altering AP in the layout, compared to the case when only RSS subset sampling is considered for localization because of altering APs.

     

An Enhanced Cooperative Communication Scheme for Physical Uplink Shared Channel in NB-IoT

Wireless Personal Communications - Smart Home is one of the most established applications of the Internet of Things. Almost every equipment we use in our daily life—appliances, electric...     

An Adaptable and Scalable Generator of Distributed Massive MIMO Baseband Processing Systems

Journal of Signal Processing Systems - This paper presents an algorithm-adaptable, scalable, and platform-portable generator for massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) baseband processing...