30,292 research outputs found
Coordination of Mobile Mules via Facility Location Strategies
In this paper, we study the problem of wireless sensor network (WSN)
maintenance using mobile entities called mules. The mules are deployed in the
area of the WSN in such a way that would minimize the time it takes them to
reach a failed sensor and fix it. The mules must constantly optimize their
collective deployment to account for occupied mules. The objective is to define
the optimal deployment and task allocation strategy for the mules, so that the
sensors' downtime and the mules' traveling distance are minimized. Our
solutions are inspired by research in the field of computational geometry and
the design of our algorithms is based on state of the art approximation
algorithms for the classical problem of facility location. Our empirical
results demonstrate how cooperation enhances the team's performance, and
indicate that a combination of k-Median based deployment with closest-available
task allocation provides the best results in terms of minimizing the sensors'
downtime but is inefficient in terms of the mules' travel distance. A
k-Centroid based deployment produces good results in both criteria.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures, conferenc
Sensor Deployment for Network-like Environments
This paper considers the problem of optimally deploying omnidirectional
sensors, with potentially limited sensing radius, in a network-like
environment. This model provides a compact and effective description of complex
environments as well as a proper representation of road or river networks. We
present a two-step procedure based on a discrete-time gradient ascent algorithm
to find a local optimum for this problem. The first step performs a coarse
optimization where sensors are allowed to move in the plane, to vary their
sensing radius and to make use of a reduced model of the environment called
collapsed network. It is made up of a finite discrete set of points,
barycenters, produced by collapsing network edges. Sensors can be also
clustered to reduce the complexity of this phase. The sensors' positions found
in the first step are then projected on the network and used in the second
finer optimization, where sensors are constrained to move only on the network.
The second step can be performed on-line, in a distributed fashion, by sensors
moving in the real environment, and can make use of the full network as well as
of the collapsed one. The adoption of a less constrained initial optimization
has the merit of reducing the negative impact of the presence of a large number
of local optima. The effectiveness of the presented procedure is illustrated by
a simulated deployment problem in an airport environment
Supporting development and management of smart office applications: a DYAMAND case study
To realize the Internet of Things (IoT) vision, tools are needed to ease the development and deployment of practical applications. Several standard bodies, companies, and ad-hoc consortia are proposing their own solution for inter-device communication. In this context, DYnamic, Adaptive MAnagement of Networks and Devices (DYAMAND) was presented in a previous publication to solve the interoperability issues introduced by the multitude of available technologies.
In this paper a DYAMAND case study is presented: in cooperation with a large company, a monitoring application was developed for flexible office spaces in order to reliably reorganize an office environment and give real-time feedback on the usage of meeting rooms. Three wireless sensor technologies were investigated to be used in the pilot. The solution was deployed in a "friendly user" setting at a research institute (iMinds) prior to deployment at the large company's premises. Based on the findings of both installations, requirements for an application platform supporting development and management of smart (office) applications were listed. DYAMAND was used as the basis of the implementation. Although the local management of networked devices as provided by DYAMAND enables easier development of intelligent applications, a number of remote services discussed in this paper are needed to enable reliable and up-to-date support (of new technologies)
On the use of biased-randomized algorithms for solving non-smooth optimization problems
Soft constraints are quite common in real-life applications. For example, in freight transportation, the fleet size can be enlarged by outsourcing part of the distribution service and some deliveries to customers can be postponed as well; in inventory management, it is possible to consider stock-outs generated by unexpected demands; and in manufacturing processes and project management, it is frequent that some deadlines cannot be met due to delays in critical steps of the supply chain. However, capacity-, size-, and time-related limitations are included in many optimization problems as hard constraints, while it would be usually more realistic to consider them as soft ones, i.e., they can be violated to some extent by incurring a penalty cost. Most of the times, this penalty cost will be nonlinear and even noncontinuous, which might transform the objective function into a non-smooth one. Despite its many practical applications, non-smooth optimization problems are quite challenging, especially when the underlying optimization problem is NP-hard in nature. In this paper, we propose the use of biased-randomized algorithms as an effective methodology to cope with NP-hard and non-smooth optimization problems in many practical applications. Biased-randomized algorithms extend constructive heuristics by introducing a nonuniform randomization pattern into them. Hence, they can be used to explore promising areas of the solution space without the limitations of gradient-based approaches, which assume the existence of smooth objective functions. Moreover, biased-randomized algorithms can be easily parallelized, thus employing short computing times while exploring a large number of promising regions. This paper discusses these concepts in detail, reviews existing work in different application areas, and highlights current trends and open research lines
PhyNetLab: An IoT-Based Warehouse Testbed
Future warehouses will be made of modular embedded entities with
communication ability and energy aware operation attached to the traditional
materials handling and warehousing objects. This advancement is mainly to
fulfill the flexibility and scalability needs of the emerging warehouses.
However, it leads to a new layer of complexity during development and
evaluation of such systems due to the multidisciplinarity in logistics,
embedded systems, and wireless communications. Although each discipline
provides theoretical approaches and simulations for these tasks, many issues
are often discovered in a real deployment of the full system. In this paper we
introduce PhyNetLab as a real scale warehouse testbed made of cyber physical
objects (PhyNodes) developed for this type of application. The presented
platform provides a possibility to check the industrial requirement of an
IoT-based warehouse in addition to the typical wireless sensor networks tests.
We describe the hardware and software components of the nodes in addition to
the overall structure of the testbed. Finally, we will demonstrate the
advantages of the testbed by evaluating the performance of the ETSI compliant
radio channel access procedure for an IoT warehouse
In-Network Outlier Detection in Wireless Sensor Networks
To address the problem of unsupervised outlier detection in wireless sensor
networks, we develop an approach that (1) is flexible with respect to the
outlier definition, (2) computes the result in-network to reduce both bandwidth
and energy usage,(3) only uses single hop communication thus permitting very
simple node failure detection and message reliability assurance mechanisms
(e.g., carrier-sense), and (4) seamlessly accommodates dynamic updates to data.
We examine performance using simulation with real sensor data streams. Our
results demonstrate that our approach is accurate and imposes a reasonable
communication load and level of power consumption.Comment: Extended version of a paper appearing in the Int'l Conference on
Distributed Computing Systems 200
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