A high-throughput energy-efficient passive optical datacenter network

Datacenter applications impose heavy demands on bandwidth and also generate a variety of communication patterns (unicast, multicast, incast, and broadcast). Supporting such traffic demands leads to networks built with exorbitant facility costs and formidable power consumption if conventional design is followed. In this paper, we propose a novel high-throughput datacenter network that leverages passive optical technologies to efficiently support communications with mixed traffic patterns. Our network enables a dynamic traffic allocation that caters to diverse communication patterns at low power consumption. Specifically, our proposed network consists of two optical planes, each optimized for specific traffic patterns. We compare the proposed network with its optical and electronic counterparts and highlight its potential benefits in terms of facility costs and power consumption reductions. To avoid frame collisions, a high-efficiency distributed protocol is designed to dynamically distribute traffic between the two optical planes. Moreover, we formulate the scheduling process as a mixed integer programming problem and design three greedy heuristic algorithms. Finally, simulation results show that our proposed scheme outperforms the previous POXN architecture in terms of throughput and mean packet delay.     

Dielectric Structure with Periodic Strips for Increasing Radiation Power of Photoconductive Antennas: Theoretical Analysis

Low terahertz (THz) radiation power and low efficiency are the well-known drawbacks of photoconductive antennas (PCAs). To increase THz-radiation power of PCAs, a dielectric structure with periodic low-temperature-grown GaAs strips is proposed. Transmitted power of the proposed structure is obtained from a theoretical model, and further confirmed by finite element simulations. Results show that the structure is capable to transmit into the substrate 90 % of the power of transverse magnetic wave with wavelength as wide as from 0.7 to 1.0 μm. Favorability of this property gets amplified when power transmission in a wide range of frequency bandwidth is desired, e.g., for optical pulse with short duration time incident to PCA, which generates carriers in the semiconductor that create THz emission. Furthermore, the proposed dielectric structure with periodic strips, the whole structure placed in between electrodes of PCA is considered, and analyzed by the existing photoconductive antenna equivalent circuit model, to see how power radiation changes. Interestingly, THz-radiation power enhancements of 70 and 20 % are evinced for, respectively, 20 and 150 mW incident optical powers as instances, as compared to PCA without strips in the gap area.     

Evaluating Bluetooth Low Energy Suitability for Time-Critical Industrial IoT Applications

In recent years, integration of wireless sensor networks in industrial environments has greatly increased. With this trend, new fields such as industrial IoT have arisen, which in turn have opened the doors to new possibilities that are shaping the future of industrial automation. In contrast to regular wireless networks, however, industrial applications of WSN are characterized for being time-critical systems with highly stringent requirements that challenge all available technologies. Because of its ultra-low energy properties, compatibility with most mobile units, reduced production costs, robustness and high throughput, Bluetooth low energy (BLE) is a potential candidate for these settings. This article explores the potential of BLE of meeting the real-time demands found in the domain of industrial process automation and industrial IoT. In order to evaluate the suitability of the protocol for these scenarios, the effect of adaptations in the retransmission scheme on the reliability and timeliness performance are thoroughly studied. Three retransmission schemes are evaluated and simulation results proved that by optimally modifying the BLE retransmission model, a maximum delay below 46 ms and a packet loss rate in the order of \(10^{-5}\) can be obtained, enabling BLE to fulfill the requirements of even the most demanding cases within the considered range of applications.     

On security of wireless sensor networks: a data authentication protocol using digital signature

Guaranteeing end-to-end data security in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is important and has drawn much attention of researchers over past years. Because an attacker may take control of compromised sensor nodes to inject bogus reports into WSNs, enhancing data authenticity becomes a necessary issue in WSNs. Unlike PCREF (Yang et al. in IEEE Trans Comput 64(1):4–18, 2015) (LEDS, Ren et al. in IEEE Trans Mobile Comput 7(5):585–598, 2008), digital signature rather than message authentication polynomials (message authentication codes) is adopted by our protocol in en-route filtering. Keeping the advantages of clusters in PCREF and overcoming the drawbacks in LEDS, an enhanced and efficient cluster-based security protocol is proposed in this paper. The proposed protocol can guarantee end-to-end data authentication with the aid of digital signature and exhibits its effectiveness and efficiency through security analysis and performance analysis. Our analytical results show that the proposed protocol significantly outperforms the closely related protocols in the literature in term of security strength and protocol overhead.     

Liberalising Deployment of Internet of Things Devices and Services in Large Scale Environments

There is an ongoing enormous expansion of Internet of Things devices and services in everyday life, notably in novel large scale urban environments called Smart Cities. There, availability and uses of Internet of Things by end users and businesses is mainly palpable subject to prior knowledge of the relevant providers and use of dedicated applications that are associated with them. This current reality can be largely ascribed to the property of “verticality” of autonomous Internet of Things eco-systems in Smart Cities, where Internet of Things devices (e.g. sensor nodes) are connected over a communication infrastructure to service-cloud platforms that deliver and process data that is then presented at the applications level. This paper explains possibilities for revolutionary changes needed towards liberalising deployment and visibility of IoT services and data associated with them. It advocates a conceptual approach termed “horizontal networking for Internet of Things” facilitating a more open and generic presence of Internet of Things through the proposed Internet of Things identification meta-data. The vision is built on needed novel practical features in the current communication setups. The features comprise combinations of the opportunistic and near-match search and discovery model, Internet of Things identification meta-data also reflecting the physical and network-based dimensions of devices’ locations, novel routing and data flow models emerging via Information-Centric Networking and changes required in the elements of the current telecommunication infrastructure and the Internet.     

MIMO-HFM: A MIMO System with Hyperbolic Frequency Modulation for Underwater Acoustic Communication

Reliable transmission and high data rate over underwater acoustic channels are considerably challenging. In this paper, we propose Multiple-Input and Multiple-Output (MIMO) scheme using a Hyperbolic Frequency Modulation (HFM) waveform. Our proposed system combines the advantages of both systems-special multiplexing of MIMO and immunity against Doppler shift of HFM. To increase the spectral efficiency, we employ M-ray HFM and overlapped sub-channels by leveraging the high temporal resolution characteristic. To verify effectiveness of our system, we have designed a theoretically enhanced acoustic simulator, which especially focuses on the reflection phenomenon by utilizing approved reflection loss models. Based on our acoustic simulator, we could verify that our system is robust against for multipath fading and Doppler shifting while keeping the multiplexing benefit of MIMO, while maintaining a very low complexity and system overhead. In addition, the results provide a useful insight for physical layer design in acoustic communication systems.     

Effects of CEE and Feedback Error on Performance for AF-ORS with PSA-CE Schemes Over Quasi-Static Rayleigh Fading Channels

In this paper, we propose the analytical approach for amplify-and-forward (AF) opportunistic relaying schemes (ORS). When operation of AF-ORS consists of relay selection and data transmission phases based on pilot symbol assisted-channel estimation (PSA-CE) methods over quasi-static Rayleigh fading channels, we show that the relay selection phase can be implemented by pilots symbols transmission for source-relay and relay-destination. Moreover, the feedback method for the selected relay index is proposed to have a simple fashion. Then, we investigate the effects of both a channel estimation error and an estimated noise variance, which are obtained by PSA-CE methods, on the received signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). The average SNR loss is also derived in terms with the number of pilots in PSA-CE methods. Moreover, the average symbol error rate, the outage probability, and the normalized channel capacity of the ORS are derived in approximated closed-form expressions for an arbitrary link SNR when the channel state information in the source-relay-destination link is estimated based on transmitted pilots symbols. As the number of pilot symbols, the derived analytical approach is verified, and by comparing it with simulation results, the accuracy is demonstrated. In addition, it is verified that the effect of the feedback error can be neglected for PAS-CE methods over quasi-static fading channels.     

WSN Deployment and Localization Using a Mobile Agent

To address the problem the sensors were typically deployed in fixed positions, but the robots can be used to calibrate, deploy and maintain the surrounding wireless sensor network (WSN) in disaster relief applications, a novel framework was proposed to obtain a wide coverage of the unknown environment by the sensors, which can help the robot during the disaster recovery activities, for the concurrent deployment and localization of a WSN by means of a mobile robot. During the mission, the robot explored an unknown environment, and was equipped with both proprioceptive sensors, range finders and wireless antennas. Moreover, the robot carried a set of nodes, and it can deploy them while exploring the unknown environment. Variou experimental results showd the proposed algorithm can outperform trilateration method in unknown environment exploration and network coverage problems.     

Effect of Annealing Temperature on Flowerlike Cu<Subscript>3</Subscript>BiS<Subscript>3</Subscript> Thin Films Grown by Chemical Bath Deposition

For widespread application of thin-film photovoltaic solar cells, synthesis of inexpensive absorber material is essential. In this work, deposition of ternary Cu₃BiS₃ absorber material, which contains abundant and environmentally benign elements, was carried out on glass substrate. Flowerlike Cu₃BiS₃ thin films with nanoflakes as building block were formed on glass substrate by chemical bath deposition. These films were annealed at 573 K and 673 K in sulfur ambient for structural improvement. Their structure was characterized using Raman spectroscopy, as well as their surface morphological and optical properties. The x-ray diffraction profile of as-deposited Cu₃BiS₃ thin film revealed amorphous structure, which transformed to orthorhombic phase after annealing. The Raman spectrum exhibited a characteristic peak at 290 cm^?1. Scanning electron microscopy of as-deposited Cu₃BiS₃ film confirmed formation of nanoflowers with diameter of around 1052 nm. Wettability testing of as-deposited Cu₃BiS₃ thin film demonstrated hydrophobic nature, which became hydrophilic after annealing. The measured ultraviolet–visible (UV–Vis) absorption spectra of the Cu₃BiS₃ thin films gave an absorption coefficient of 10⁵ cm^?1 and direct optical bandgap of about 1.42 eV after annealing treatment. Based on all these results, such Cu₃BiS₃ material may have potential applications in the photovoltaic field as an absorber layer.