An Optimal Backoff Time-Based Internetwork Interference Mitigation Method in Wireless Body Area Network

When multiple Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) are aggregated, the overlapping region of their communications will result in internetwork interference, which could impose severe impacts on the reliability of WBAN performance. Therefore, how to mitigate the internetwork interference becomes the key problem to be solved urgently in practical applications of WBAN. However, most of the current researches on internetwork interference focus on traditional cellular networks and large-scale wireless sensor networks. In this paper, an Optimal Backoff Time Interference Mitigation Algorithm (OBTIM) is proposed. This method performs rescheduling or channel switching when the performance of the WBANs falls below tolerance, utilizing the cell neighbour list established by the beacon method. Simulation results show that the proposed method improves the channel utilization and the network throughput, and in the meantime, reduces the collision probability and energy consumption, when compared with the contention-based beacon schedule scheme

A survey of IEEE 802.15.4 effective system parameters for wireless body sensor networks

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Moravejosharieh, Amirhossein, Lloret, Jaime. (2016). A survey of IEEE 802.15.4 effective system parameters for wireless body sensor networks.International Journal of Communication Systems, 29, 7, 1269-1292. DOI: 10.1002/dac.3098, which has been published in final form at http://doi.org/10.1002/dac.3098. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving[EN] Wireless body sensor networks are offered to meet the requirements of a diverse set of applications such as health-related and well-being applications. For instance, they are deployed to measure, fetch and collect human body vital signs. Such information could be further used for diagnosis and monitoring of medical conditions. IEEE 802.15.4 is arguably considered as a well-designed standard protocol to address the need for low-rate, low-power and low-cost wireless body sensor networks. Apart from the vast deployment of this technology, there are still some challenges and issues related to the performance of the medium access control (MAC) protocol of this standard that are required to be addressed. This paper comprises two main parts. In the first part, the survey has provided a thorough assessment of IEEE 802.15.4 MAC protocol performance where its functionality is evaluated considering a range of effective system parameters, that is, some of the MAC and application parameters and the impact of mutual interference. The second part of this paper is about conducting a simulation study to determine the influence of varying values of the system parameters on IEEE 802.15.4 performance gains. More specifically, we explore the dependability level of IEEE 802.5.4 performance gains on a candidate set of system parameters. Finally, this paper highlights the tangible needs to conduct more investigations on particular aspect(s) of IEEE 802.15.4 MAC protocol. Copyright (c) 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Moravejosharieh, A.; Lloret, J. (2016). A survey of IEEE 802.15.4 effective system parameters for wireless body sensor networks. International Journal of Communication Systems. 29(7):1269-1292. https://doi.org/10.1002/dac.3098S12691292297Alrajeh, N. A., Lloret, J., & Canovas, A. (2014). A Framework for Obesity Control Using a Wireless Body Sensor Network. International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks, 10(7), 534760. doi:10.1155/2014/534760Lopes I Silva B Rodrigues J Lloret J Proenca M A mobile health monitoring solution for weight control International Conference on Wireless Communications and Signal Processing (WCSP) Nanjing / China 2011 1 5Singh, N., Singh, A. K., & Singh, V. K. (2015). Design and performance of wearable ultrawide band textile antenna for medical applications. Microwave and Optical Technology Letters, 57(7), 1553-1557. doi:10.1002/mop.29131Lan, K., Chou, C.-M., Wang, T., & Li, M.-W. (2012). 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Coexistence and interference mitigation for WPANs and WLANs from traditional approaches to deep learning: a review

More and more devices, such as Bluetooth and IEEE 802.15.4 devices forming Wireless Personal Area Networks (WPANs) and IEEE 802.11 devices constituting Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs), share the 2.4 GHz Industrial, Scientific and Medical (ISM) band in the realm of the Internet of Things (IoT) and Smart Cities. However, the coexistence of these devices could pose a real challenge—co-channel interference that would severely compromise network performances. Although the coexistence issues has been partially discussed elsewhere in some articles, there is no single review that fully summarises and compares recent research outcomes and challenges of IEEE 802.15.4 networks, Bluetooth and WLANs together. In this work, we revisit and provide a comprehensive review on the coexistence and interference mitigation for those three types of networks. We summarize the strengths and weaknesses of the current methodologies, analysis and simulation models in terms of numerous important metrics such as the packet reception ratio, latency, scalability and energy efficiency. We discover that although Bluetooth and IEEE 802.15.4 networks are both WPANs, they show quite different performances in the presence of WLANs. IEEE 802.15.4 networks are adversely impacted by WLANs, whereas WLANs are interfered by Bluetooth. When IEEE 802.15.4 networks and Bluetooth co-locate, they are unlikely to harm each other. Finally, we also discuss the future research trends and challenges especially Deep-Learning and Reinforcement-Learning-based approaches to detecting and mitigating the co-channel interference caused by WPANs and WLANs

Towards reliable communication in low-power wireless body area networks

Es wird zunehmend die Ansicht vertreten, dass tragbare Computer und Sensoren neue Anwendungen in den Bereichen Gesundheitswesen, personalisierte Fitness oder erweiterte Realität ermöglichen werden. Die am Körper getragenen Geräte sind dabei mithilfe eines Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) verbunden, d.h. es wird drahtlose Kommunikation statt eines drahtgebundenen Kanals eingesetzt. Der drahtlose Kanal ist jedoch typischerweise ein eher instabiles Kommunikationsmedium und die Einsatzbedingungen von WBANs sind besonders schwierig: Einerseits wird die Kanalqualität stark von den physischen Bewegungen der Person beeinflusst, andererseits werden WBANs häufig in lizenzfreien Funkbändern eingesetzt und sind daher Störungen von anderen drahtlosen Geräten ausgesetzt. Oft benötigen WBAN Anwendungen aber eine zuverlässige Datenübertragung. Das erste Ziel dieser Arbeit ist es, ein besseres Verständnis dafür zu schaffen, wie sich die spezifischen Einsatzbedingungen von WBANs auf die intra-WBAN Kommunikation auswirken. So wird zum Beispiel analysiert, welchen Einfluss die Platzierung der Geräte auf der Oberfläche des menschlichen Körpers und die Mobilität des Benutzers haben. Es wird nachgewiesen, dass während regelmäßiger Aktivitäten wie Laufen die empfangene Signalstärke stark schwankt, gleichzeitig aber Signalstärke-Spitzen oft einem regulären Muster folgen. Außerdem wird gezeigt, dass in urbanen Umgebungen die Effekte von 2.4 GHz Radio Frequency (RF) Interferenz im Vergleich zu den Auswirkungen von fading (Schwankungen der empfangenen Signalstärke) eher gering sind. Allerdings führt RF Interferenz dazu, dass häufiger Bündelfehler auftreten, d.h. Fehler zeitlich korrelieren. Dies kann insbesondere in Anwendungen, die eine geringe Übertragungslatenz benötigen, problematisch sein. Der zweite Teil dieser Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit der Analyse von Verfahren, die potentiell die Zuverlässigkeit der Kommunikation in WBANs erhöhen, ohne dass wesentlich mehr Energie verbraucht wird. Zunächst wird der Trade-off zwischen Übertragungslatenz und der Zuverlässigkeit der Kommunikation analysiert. Diese Analyse basiert auf einem neuen Paket-Scheduling Algorithmus, der einen Beschleunigungssensor nutzt, um die WBAN Kommunikation auf die physischen Bewegungen der Person abzustimmen. Die Analyse zeigt, dass unzuverlässige Kommunikationsverbindungen oft zuverlässig werden, wenn Pakete während vorhergesagter Signalstärke-Spitzen gesendet werden. Ferner wird analysiert, inwiefern die Robustheit gegen 2.4 GHz RF Interferenz verbessert werden kann. Dazu werden zwei Verfahren betrachtet: Ein bereits existierendes Verfahren, das periodisch einen Wechsel der Übertragungsfrequenz durchführt (channel hopping) und ein neues Verfahren, das durch RF Interferenz entstandene Bitfehler reparieren kann, indem der Inhalt mehrerer fehlerhafter Pakete kombiniert wird (packet combining). Eine Schlussfolgerung ist, dass Frequenzdiversität zwar das Auftreten von Bündelfehlern reduzieren kann, dass jedoch die statische Auswahl eines Kanals am oberen Ende des 2.4 GHz Bandes häufig schon eine akzeptable Abhilfe gegen RF Interferenz darstellt.There is a growing belief that wearable computers and sensors will enable new applications in areas such as healthcare, personal fitness or augmented reality. The devices are attached to a person and connected through a Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN), which replaces the wires of traditional monitoring systems by wireless communication. This comes, however, at the cost of turning a reliable communication channel into an unreliable one. The wireless channel is typically a rather unstable medium for communication and the conditions under which WBANs have to operate are particularly harsh: not only is the channel strongly influenced by the movements of the person, but WBANs also often operate in unlicensed frequency bands and may therefore be exposed to a significant amount of interference from other wireless devices. Yet, many envisioned WBAN applications require reliable data transmission. The goals of this thesis are twofold: first, we aim at establishing a better understanding of how the specific WBAN operating conditions, such as node placement on the human body surface and user mobility, impact intra-WBAN communication. We show that during periodic activities like walking the received signal strength on an on-body communication link fluctuates strongly, but signal strength peaks often follow a regular pattern. Furthermore, we find that in comparison to the effects of fading 2.4 GHz Radio Frequency (RF) interference causes relatively little packet loss - however, urban 2.4 GHz RF noise is bursty (correlated in time), which may be problematic for applications with low latency bounds. The second goal of this thesis is to analyze how communication reliability in WBANs can be improved without sacrificing a significant amount of additional energy. To this end, we first explore the trade-off between communication latency and communication reliability. This analysis is based on a novel packet scheduling algorithm, which makes use of an accelerometer to couple WBAN communication with the movement patterns of the user. The analysis shows that unreliable links can often be made reliable if packets are transmitted at predicted signal strength peaks. In addition, we analyze to what extent two mechanisms can improve robustness against 2.4 GHz RF interference when adopted in a WBAN context: we analyze the benefits of channel hopping, and we examine how the packet retransmission process can be made more efficient by using a novel packet combining algorithm that allows to repair packets corrupted by RF interference. One of the conclusions is that while frequency agility may decrease "burstiness" of errors the static selection of a channel at the upper end of the 2.4 GHz band often already represents a good remedy against RF interference

Innovative energy-efficient wireless sensor network applications and MAC sub-layer protocols employing RTS-CTS with packet concatenation

of energy-efficiency as well as the number of available applications. As a consequence there are challenges that need to be tackled for the future generation of WSNs. The research work from this Ph.D. thesis has involved the actual development of innovative WSN applications contributing to different research projects. In the Smart-Clothing project contributions have been given in the development of a Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) to monitor the foetal movements of a pregnant woman in the last four weeks of pregnancy. The creation of an automatic wireless measurement system for remotely monitoring concrete structures was an contribution for the INSYSM project. This was accomplished by using an IEEE 802.15.4 network enabling for remotely monitoring the temperature and humidity within civil engineering structures. In the framework of the PROENEGY-WSN project contributions have been given in the identification the spectrum opportunities for Radio Frequency (RF) energy harvesting through power density measurements from 350 MHz to 3 GHz. The design of the circuits to harvest RF energy and the requirements needed for creating a WBAN with electromagnetic energy harvesting and Cognitive Radio (CR) capabilities have also been addressed. A performance evaluation of the state-of-the art of the hardware WSN platforms has also been addressed. This is explained by the fact that, even by using optimized Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols, if the WSNs platforms do not allow for minimizing the energy consumption in the idle and sleeping states, energy efficiency and long network lifetime will not be achieved. The research also involved the development of new innovative mechanisms that tries and solves overhead, one of the fundamental reasons for the IEEE 802.15.4 standard MAC inefficiency. In particular, this Ph.D. thesis proposes an IEEE 802.15.4 MAC layer performance enhancement by employing RTS/CTS combined with packet concatenation. The results have shown that the use of the RTS/CTS mechanism improves channel efficiency by decreasing the deferral time before transmitting a data packet. In addition, the Sensor Block Acknowledgment MAC (SBACK-MAC) protocol has been proposed that allows the aggregation of several acknowledgment responses in one special Block Acknowledgment (BACK) Response packet. Two different solutions are considered. The first one considers the SBACK-MAC protocol in the presence of BACK Request (concatenation) while the second one considers the SBACK-MAC in the absence of BACK Request (piggyback). The proposed solutions address a distributed scenario with single-destination and single-rate frame aggregation. The throughput and delay performance is mathematically derived under both ideal conditions (a channel environment with no transmission errors) and non ideal conditions (a channel environment with transmission errors). An analytical model is proposed, capable of taking into account the retransmission delays and the maximum number of backoff stages. The simulation results successfully validate our analytical model. For more than 7 TX (aggregated packets) all the MAC sub-layer protocols employing RTS/CTS with packet concatenation allows for the optimization of channel use in WSNs, v8-48 % improvement in the maximum average throughput and minimum average delay, and decrease energy consumption

Congestion control mechanism for sensor-cloud Infrastructure

 This thesis has developed a sensor-Cloud system that integrates WBANs with Cloud computing to enable real-time sensor data collection, storage, processing, sharing and management. As the main contribution of this study, a congestion detection and control protocol is proposed to ensure acceptable data flows are maintained during the network lifetime

Thirty Years of Machine Learning: The Road to Pareto-Optimal Wireless Networks

Future wireless networks have a substantial potential in terms of supporting a broad range of complex compelling applications both in military and civilian fields, where the users are able to enjoy high-rate, low-latency, low-cost and reliable information services. Achieving this ambitious goal requires new radio techniques for adaptive learning and intelligent decision making because of the complex heterogeneous nature of the network structures and wireless services. Machine learning (ML) algorithms have great success in supporting big data analytics, efficient parameter estimation and interactive decision making. Hence, in this article, we review the thirty-year history of ML by elaborating on supervised learning, unsupervised learning, reinforcement learning and deep learning. Furthermore, we investigate their employment in the compelling applications of wireless networks, including heterogeneous networks (HetNets), cognitive radios (CR), Internet of things (IoT), machine to machine networks (M2M), and so on. This article aims for assisting the readers in clarifying the motivation and methodology of the various ML algorithms, so as to invoke them for hitherto unexplored services as well as scenarios of future wireless networks.Comment: 46 pages, 22 fig

Five Facets of 6G: Research Challenges and Opportunities

Whilst the fifth-generation (5G) systems are being rolled out across the globe, researchers have turned their attention to the exploration of radical next-generation solutions. At this early evolutionary stage we survey five main research facets of this field, namely {\em Facet~1: next-generation architectures, spectrum and services, Facet~2: next-generation networking, Facet~3: Internet of Things (IoT), Facet~4: wireless positioning and sensing, as well as Facet~5: applications of deep learning in 6G networks.} In this paper, we have provided a critical appraisal of the literature of promising techniques ranging from the associated architectures, networking, applications as well as designs. We have portrayed a plethora of heterogeneous architectures relying on cooperative hybrid networks supported by diverse access and transmission mechanisms. The vulnerabilities of these techniques are also addressed and carefully considered for highlighting the most of promising future research directions. Additionally, we have listed a rich suite of learning-driven optimization techniques. We conclude by observing the evolutionary paradigm-shift that has taken place from pure single-component bandwidth-efficiency, power-efficiency or delay-optimization towards multi-component designs, as exemplified by the twin-component ultra-reliable low-latency mode of the 5G system. We advocate a further evolutionary step towards multi-component Pareto optimization, which requires the exploration of the entire Pareto front of all optiomal solutions, where none of the components of the objective function may be improved without degrading at least one of the other components

A Survey on Security and Privacy of 5G Technologies: Potential Solutions, Recent Advancements, and Future Directions

Security has become the primary concern in many telecommunications industries today as risks can have high consequences. Especially, as the core and enable technologies will be associated with 5G network, the confidential information will move at all layers in future wireless systems. Several incidents revealed that the hazard encountered by an infected wireless network, not only affects the security and privacy concerns, but also impedes the complex dynamics of the communications ecosystem. Consequently, the complexity and strength of security attacks have increased in the recent past making the detection or prevention of sabotage a global challenge. From the security and privacy perspectives, this paper presents a comprehensive detail on the core and enabling technologies, which are used to build the 5G security model; network softwarization security, PHY (Physical) layer security and 5G privacy concerns, among others. Additionally, the paper includes discussion on security monitoring and management of 5G networks. This paper also evaluates the related security measures and standards of core 5G technologies by resorting to different standardization bodies and provide a brief overview of 5G standardization security forces. Furthermore, the key projects of international significance, in line with the security concerns of 5G and beyond are also presented. Finally, a future directions and open challenges section has included to encourage future research.European CommissionNational Research Tomsk Polytechnic UniversityUpdate citation details during checkdate report - A