108 research outputs found

    Wireless Underground Communications in Sewer and Stormwater Overflow Monitoring: Radio Waves through Soil and Asphalt Medium

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    Storm drains and sanitary sewers are prone to backups and overflows due to extra amount wastewater entering the pipes. To prevent that, it is imperative to efficiently monitor the urban underground infrastructure. The combination of sensors system and wireless underground communication system can be used to realize urban underground IoT applications, e.g., storm water and wastewater overflow monitoring systems. The aim of this article is to establish a feasibility of the use of wireless underground communications techniques, and wave propagation through the subsurface soil and asphalt layers, in an underground pavement system for storm water and sewer overflow monitoring application. In this paper, the path loss analysis of wireless underground communications in urban underground IoT for wastewater monitoring has been presented. The dielectric properties of asphalt, sub-grade aggregates, and soil are considered in the path loss analysis for the path loss prediction in an underground sewer overflow and wastewater monitoring system design. It has been shown that underground transmitter was able to communicate through thick asphalt (10 cm) and soil layers (20 cm) for a long range of up to 4 km

    Underground Environment Aware MIMO Design Using Transmit and Receive Beamforming in Internet of Underground Things

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    In underground (UG) multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO), the transmit beamforming is used to focus energy in the desired direction. There are three different paths in the underground soil medium through which the waves propagates to reach at the receiver. When the UG receiver receives a desired data stream only from the desired path, then the UG MIMO channel becomes three path (lateral, direct, and reflected) interference channel. Accordingly, the capacity region of the UG MIMO three path interference channel and degrees of freedom (multiplexing gain of this MIMO channel requires careful modeling). Therefore, expressions are required derived the degrees of freedom of the UG MIMO interference channel. The underground receiver needs to perfectly cancel the interference from the three different components of the EM-waves propagating in the soil medium. This concept is based upon reducing the interference the undesired components to minimum at UG receiver using the receive beamforming. In this paper, underground environment aware MIMO using transmit and receive beamforming has been developed. The optimal transmit beamforming and receive combin- ing vectors under minimal inter-component interference constraint are derived. It is shown that UG MIMO performs best when all three component of the wireless UG channel are leveraged for beamforming. The environment aware UG MIMO technique leads to three-fold performance improvements and paves the wave for design and development of next generation sensor-guided irrigation systems in the field of digital agriculture

    Urban Underground Infrastructure Monitoring IoT: The Path Loss Analysis

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    The extra quantities of wastewater entering the pipes can cause backups that result in sanitary sewer overflows. Urban underground infrastructure monitoring is important for controlling the flow of extraneous water into the pipelines. By combining the wireless underground communications and sensor solutions, the urban underground IoT applications such as real time wastewater and storm water overflow monitoring can be developed. In this paper, the path loss analysis of wireless underground communications in urban underground IoT for wastewater monitoring has been presented. It has been shown that the communication range of up to 4 kilometers can be achieved from an underground transmitter when communicating through 10cm thick asphalt layer

    Internet of Things in Smart Agriculture: Enabling Technologies

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    In this paper, an IoT technology research and innovation roadmap for the field of precision agriculture (PA) is presented. Many recent practical trends and the challenges have been highlighted. Some important objectives for integrated technology research and education in precision agriculture are described. Effective IoT based communications and sensing approaches to mitigate challenges in the area of precision agriculture are presented

    Design of Subsurface Phased Array Antennas for Digital Agriculture Application

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    With the advancement in subsurface communications technology, an overarching solution to a underground phased array antenna design for digital agriculture requires interdisciplinary research involving topics ranging from insights on the constitutive parameters of the soil medium and impact of soil moisture on the array factor to antenna measurements and subsurface communication system design. In this paper, based on the analysis of underground radio wave propagation in subsurface radio channel, a phased array antenna design is presented that uses water content information and beam steering mechanisms to improve efficiency and communication range of wireless underground communications. It is shown the subsurface beamforming using phased array antenna improves the wireless underground communications by using the array element optimization and soil-air interface refraction adjustment schemes. This design is useful for subsurface communication system where sophisticated sensors and software systems are used as data collection tools that measure, record, and manage spatial and temporal data in the field of digital agriculture

    Block-Based Development of Mobile Learning Experiences for the Internet of Things

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    The Internet of Things enables experts of given domains to create smart user experiences for interacting with the environment. However, development of such experiences requires strong programming skills, which are challenging to develop for non-technical users. This paper presents several extensions to the block-based programming language used in App Inventor to make the creation of mobile apps for smart learning experiences less challenging. Such apps are used to process and graphically represent data streams from sensors by applying map-reduce operations. A workshop with students without previous experience with Internet of Things (IoT) and mobile app programming was conducted to evaluate the propositions. As a result, students were able to create small IoT apps that ingest, process and visually represent data in a simpler form as using App Inventor's standard features. Besides, an experimental study was carried out in a mobile app development course with academics of diverse disciplines. Results showed it was faster and easier for novice programmers to develop the proposed app using new stream processing blocks.Spanish National Research Agency (AEI) - ERDF fund

    A Theoretical Model of Underground Dipole Antennas for Communications in Internet of Underground Things

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    The realization of Internet of Underground Things (IOUT) relies on the establishment of reliable communication links, where the antenna becomes a major design component due to the significant impacts of soil. In this paper, a theoretical model is developed to capture the impacts of change of soil moisture on the return loss, resonant frequency, and bandwidth of a buried dipole antenna. Experiments are conducted in silty clay loam, sandy, and silt loam soil, to characterize the effects of soil, in an indoor testbed and field testbeds. It is shown that at subsurface burial depths (0.1-0.4m), change in soil moisture impacts communication by resulting in a shift in the resonant frequency of the antenna. Simulations are done to validate the theoretical and measured results. This model allows system engineers to predict the underground antenna resonance, and also helps to design an efficient communication system in IOUT. Accordingly, a wideband planar antenna is designed for an agricultural IOUT application. Empirical evaluations show that an antenna designed considering both the dispersion of soil and the reflection from the soil-air interface can improve communication distances by up to five times compared to antennas that are designed based on only the wavelength change in soil

    Design and Empirical Validation of a LoRaWAN IoT Smart Irrigation System

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    [Abstract] In some parts of the world, climate change has led to periods of drought that require managing efficiently the scarce water and energy resources. This paper proposes an IoT smart irrigation system specifically designed for urban areas where remote IoT devices have no direct access to the Internet or to the electrical grid, and where wireless communications are difficult due to the existence of long distances and multiple obstacles. To tackle such issues, this paper proposes a LoRaWAN-based architecture that provides long distance and communications with reduced power consumption. Specifically, the proposed system consists of IoT nodes that collect sensor data and send them to local fog computing nodes or to a remote cloud, which determine an irrigation schedule that considers factors such as the weather forecast or the moist detected by nearby nodes. It is essential to deploy the IoT nodes in locations within the provided coverage range and that guarantee good speed rates and reduced energy consumption. Due to this reason, this paper describes the use of an in-house 3D-ray launching radio-planning tool to determine the best locations for IoT nodes on a real medium-scale scenario (a university campus) that was modeled with precision, including obstacles such as buildings, vegetation, or vehicles. The obtained simulation results were compared with empirical measurements to assess the operating conditions and the radio planning tool accuracy. Thus, it is possible to optimize the wireless network topology and the overall performance of the network in terms of coverage, cost, and energy consumption.This work was funded by Xunta de Galicia (ED431C 2016-045, ED431G/01) and Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades, Gobierno de España (MCIU/AEI/FEDER,UE), Project RTI2018-095499-B-C31Xunta de Galicia; ED431C 2016-045Xunta de Galicia; ED431G/0

    Ciudades inteligentes en colaboración con internet de las cosas

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    The use of the Internet has Reached a point in the world in Which it has Become essential in everyday life, the need to Have information at hand in the shortest possible time has generated a technological revolution That incurs the constant connection to this tool, from our Personal life to the same objects That we use in daily life, creating a need to check what surrounds us to Improve our quality of life, reason for the birth of the Internet of Things (IoT, for acronym in English), as well as the convergence of our environment through the creation with Technology of smart cities (Smart City in English). In view of the above, this article addresses concepts about the future of smart cities in collaboration with the Internet of things, the advantages and Disadvantages of these, their comparison, reception, adaptability.El uso de Internet ha llegado a un punto en el mundo en el que se ha vuelto esencial en la vida cotidiana, la necesidad de tener información a la mano en el menor tiempo posible ha generado una revolución tecnológica que incurre en la conexión constante a Internet, creando la necesidad de verificar lo que nos rodea para mejorar nuestra calidad de vida, razón por la cual nace Internet de las cosas (IoT, por sus siglas en inglés), también como la convergencia de nuestro entorno a través de la creación con de ciudades inteligentes (Smart City en inglés). En vista de lo anterior, este artículo aborda conceptos sobre el futuro de las ciudades inteligentes en colaboración con Internet de las Cosas, las ventajas y desventajas de estas, su comparación, recepción, adaptabilidad
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