478 research outputs found
Building the Future Internet through FIRE
The Internet as we know it today is the result of a continuous activity for improving network communications, end user services, computational processes and also information technology infrastructures. The Internet has become a critical infrastructure for the human-being by offering complex networking services and end-user applications that all together have transformed all aspects, mainly economical, of our lives. Recently, with the advent of new paradigms and the progress in wireless technology, sensor networks and information systems and also the inexorable shift towards everything connected paradigm, first as known as the Internet of Things and lately envisioning into the Internet of Everything, a data-driven society has been created. In a data-driven society, productivity, knowledge, and experience are dependent on increasingly open, dynamic, interdependent and complex Internet services. The challenge for the Internet of the Future design is to build robust enabling technologies, implement and deploy adaptive systems, to create business opportunities considering increasing uncertainties and emergent systemic behaviors where humans and machines seamlessly cooperate
On the Experimental Evaluation of Vehicular Networks: Issues, Requirements and Methodology Applied to a Real Use Case
One of the most challenging fields in vehicular communications has been the
experimental assessment of protocols and novel technologies. Researchers
usually tend to simulate vehicular scenarios and/or partially validate new
contributions in the area by using constrained testbeds and carrying out minor
tests. In this line, the present work reviews the issues that pioneers in the
area of vehicular communications and, in general, in telematics, have to deal
with if they want to perform a good evaluation campaign by real testing. The
key needs for a good experimental evaluation is the use of proper software
tools for gathering testing data, post-processing and generating relevant
figures of merit and, finally, properly showing the most important results. For
this reason, a key contribution of this paper is the presentation of an
evaluation environment called AnaVANET, which covers the previous needs. By
using this tool and presenting a reference case of study, a generic testing
methodology is described and applied. This way, the usage of the IPv6 protocol
over a vehicle-to-vehicle routing protocol, and supporting IETF-based network
mobility, is tested at the same time the main features of the AnaVANET system
are presented. This work contributes in laying the foundations for a proper
experimental evaluation of vehicular networks and will be useful for many
researchers in the area.Comment: in EAI Endorsed Transactions on Industrial Networks and Intelligent
Systems, 201
Building the Future Internet through FIRE
The Internet as we know it today is the result of a continuous activity for improving network communications, end user services, computational processes and also information technology infrastructures. The Internet has become a critical infrastructure for the human-being by offering complex networking services and end-user applications that all together have transformed all aspects, mainly economical, of our lives. Recently, with the advent of new paradigms and the progress in wireless technology, sensor networks and information systems and also the inexorable shift towards everything connected paradigm, first as known as the Internet of Things and lately envisioning into the Internet of Everything, a data-driven society has been created. In a data-driven society, productivity, knowledge, and experience are dependent on increasingly open, dynamic, interdependent and complex Internet services. The challenge for the Internet of the Future design is to build robust enabling technologies, implement and deploy adaptive systems, to create business opportunities considering increasing uncertainties and emergent systemic behaviors where humans and machines seamlessly cooperate
ACWA: An AI-driven Cyber-Physical Testbed for Intelligent Water Systems
This manuscript presents a novel state-of-the-art cyber-physical water
testbed, namely: The AI and Cyber for Water and Agriculture testbed (ACWA).
ACWA is motivated by the need to advance water supply management using AI and
Cybersecurity experimentation. The main goal of ACWA is to address pressing
challenges in the water and agricultural domains by utilising cutting-edge AI
and data-driven technologies. These challenges include Cyberbiosecurity,
resources management, access to water, sustainability, and data-driven
decision-making, among others. To address such issues, ACWA consists of
multiple topologies, sensors, computational nodes, pumps, tanks, smart water
devices, as well as databases and AI models that control the system. Moreover,
we present ACWA simulator, which is a software-based water digital twin. The
simulator runs on fluid and constituent transport principles that produce
theoretical time series of a water distribution system. This creates a good
validation point for comparing the theoretical approach with real-life results
via the physical ACWA testbed. ACWA data are available to AI and water domain
researchers and are hosted in an online public repository. In this paper, the
system is introduced in detail and compared with existing water testbeds;
additionally, example use-cases are described along with novel outcomes such as
datasets, software, and AI-related scenarios
Deployment and operational aspects of rural broadband wireless access networks
Broadband speeds, Internet literacy and digital technologies have been steadily evolving
over the last decade. Broadband infrastructure has become a key asset in today’s
society, enabling innovation, driving economic efficiency and stimulating cultural inclusion.
However, populations living in remote and rural communities are unable to
take advantage of these trends. Globally, a significant part of the world population is
still deprived of basic access to the Internet.
Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) networks are regarded as a viable solution
for providing Internet access to populations living in rural regions. In recent years,
Wireless Internet Service Providers (WISPs) and community organizations around the
world proved that rural BWA networks can be an effective strategy and a profitable
business.
This research began by deploying a BWA network testbed, which also provides
Internet access to several remote communities in the harsh environment of the Scottish
Highlands and Islands. The experience of deploying and operating this network
pointed out three unresolved research challenges that need to be addressed to ease
the path towards widespread deployment of rural BWA networks, thereby bridging
the rural-urban broadband divide. Below, our research contributions are outlined with
respect to these challenges.
Firstly, an effective planning paradigm for deploying BWA networks is proposed:
incremental planning. Incremental planning allows to anticipate return of investment
and to overcome the limited network infrastructure (e.g., backhaul fibre links) in rural
areas. I have developed a software tool called IncrEase and underlying network
planning algorithms to consider a varied set of operational metrics to guide the operator
in identifying the regions that would benefit the most from a network upgrade,
automatically suggesting the best long-term strategy to the network administrator.
Second, we recognize that rural and community networks present additional issues
for network management. As the Internet uplink is often the most expensive part
of the operational expenses for such deployments, it is desirable to minimize overhead
for network management. Also, unreliable connectivity between the network operation
centre and the network being managed can render traditional centralized management
approaches ineffective. Finally, the number of skilled personnel available to maintain
such networks is limited. I have developed a distributed network management platform called Stix for BWA networks, to make it easy to manage such networks
for rural/community deployments and WISPs alike while keeping the network management
infrastructure scalable and flexible. Our approach is based on the notions of
goal-oriented and in-network management: administrators graphically specify network
management activities as workflows, which are run in the network on a distributed set
of agents that cooperate in executing those workflows and storing management information.
The Stix system was implemented on low-cost and small form-factor embedded
boards and shown to have a low memory footprint.
Third, the research focus moves to the problem of assessing broadband coverage
and quality in a given geographic region. The outcome is BSense, a flexible framework
that combines data provided by ISPs with measurements gathered by distributed
software agents. The result is a census (presented as maps and tables) of the coverage
and quality of broadband connections available in the region of interest. Such information
can be exploited by ISPs to drive their growth, and by regulators and policy
makers to get the true picture of broadband availability in the region and make informed
decisions. In exchange for installing the multi-platform measurement software
(that runs in the background) on their computers, users can get statistics about their
Internet connection and those in their neighbourhood.
Finally, the lessons learned through this research are summarised. The outcome is
a set of suggestions about how the deployment and operation of rural BWA networks,
including our own testbed, can be made more efficient by using the proper tools. The
software systems presented in this thesis have been evaluated in lab settings and in real
networks, and are available as open-source software
Networking Solutions for Integrated Heterogeneous Wireless Ecosystem
As wireless communications technology is steadily evolving to improve the offered connectivity levels, additional research on emerging network architectures is becoming timely to understand the applicability of both traditional and novel networking solutions. This chapter concentrates on the utilization of cloud computing techniques to construct feasible system prototypes and demonstrators within the rapidly maturing heterogeneous wireless ecosystem. Our first solution facilitates cooperative radio resource management in heterogeneous networks. The second solution enables assisted direct connectivity between proximate users. The contents of the chapter outline our corresponding research and development efforts as well as summarize the major experiences and lessons learned
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