Versatility Of Low-Power Wide-Area Network Applications

Low-Power Wide-Area Network (LPWAN) is regarded as the leading communication technology for wide-area Internet-of-Things (IoT) applications. It offers low-power, long-range, and low-cost communication. With different communication requirements for varying IoT applications, many competing LPWAN technologies operating in both licensed (e.g., NB-IoT, LTE-M, and 5G) and unlicensed (e.g., LoRa and SigFox) bands have emerged. LPWANs are designed to support applications with low-power and low data rate operations. They are not well-designed to host applications that involve high mobility, high traffic, or real-time communication (e.g., volcano monitoring and control applications).With the increasing number of mobile devices in many IoT domains (e.g., agricultural IoT and smart city), mobility support is not well-addressed in LPWAN. Cellular-based/licensed LPWAN relies on the wired infrastructure to enable mobility. On the other hand, most unlicensed LPWANs operate on the crowded ISM band or are required to duty cycle, making handling mobility a challenge. In this dissertation, we first identify the key opportunities of LPWAN, highlight the challenges, and show potential directions for future research. We then enable the versatility of LPWAN applications first by enabling applications involving mobility over LPWAN. Specifically, we propose to handle mobility in LPWAN over white space considering Sensor Network Over White Space (SNOW). SNOW is a highly scalable and energy-efficient LPWAN operating over the TV white spaces. TV white spaces are the allocated but locally unused available TV channels (54 - 698 MHz in the US). We proposed a dynamic Carrier Frequency Offset (CFO) estimation and compensation technique that considers the impact of the Doppler shift due to mobility. Also, we design energy-efficient and fast BS discovery and association approaches. Finally, we demonstrate the feasibility of our approach through experiments in different deployments. Finally, we present a collision detection and recovery technique called RnR (Reverse & Replace Decoding) that applies to LPWANs. Additionally, we discuss future work to enable handling burst transmission over LPWAN and localization in mobile LPWAN

Smart Metering in Infrastructure-Less Communication Environments and Applicability of LoRa Technology

Advanced-Metering-Infrastructure (AMI) is an integral part of Smart-Grids (SGs). It enables accurate consumer billing in presence of dynamic pricing, and improves efficiency and reliability of electricity distribution in presence of distributed generation. Value-added features of AMI such as diagnostics and maintenance service can identify the anomalous power consumption patterns of appliances at the end of their life cycle. Water and gas utility distribution networks in smart cities will incorporate AMI as an application of Internet-of-Things (IoT). The communication infrastructure plays a crucial role in enabling two-way communication between Smart-Meters (SMs) and the utility. AMI’s bi-directional communication facility supports precise modeling of load information and data management system facilitating demand-response applications to reduce energy wastage. Researchers have investigated the role of wireless technologies in Home-Area-Networks (HANs), Neighborhood-Area-Networks (NANs) and Wide-Area-Networks (WANs) in AMI. The arrival of new Low-Power-Wide-Area-Networks (LPWANs) technologies has opened up new technology integration possibilities in AMI. However, it is essential to understand the AMI architecture, envisioned application types, network requirements, features and limitations of existing technologies to determine a technology’s integration suitability in an application for smart metering technology. This chapter discusses LoRa for smart metering in infrastructure-less environments and the possible use of our multi-hop routing scheme

On the Support of Massive Machine-to-Machine Traffic in Heterogeneous Networks and Fifth-Generation Cellular Networks

The widespread availability of many emerging services enabled by the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm passes through the capability to provide long-range connectivity to a massive number of things, overcoming the well-known issues of ad-hoc, short-range networks. This scenario entails a lot of challenges, ranging from the concerns about the radio access network efficiency to the threats about the security of IoT networks. In this thesis, we will focus on wireless communication standards for long-range IoT as well as on fundamental research outcomes about IoT networks. After investigating how Machine-Type Communication (MTC) is supported nowadays, we will provide innovative solutions that i) satisfy the requirements in terms of scalability and latency, ii) employ a combination of licensed and license-free frequency bands, and iii) assure energy-efficiency and security

Rede multi-tecnologia para recolha de dados ambientais através de comunicações oportunistas

mestrado em Engenharia Eletrónica e TelecomunicaçõesO conceito de Smart City surge da combinação do paradigma de Internet of Things (IoT) sobre contextos urbanos aliado à exploração de soluções de Tecnologias de Informação e Comunicação (TIC). O típico cenário de Smart City tem de lidar com desafios, tais como as elevadas quantidades de sensores e geradores de dados, dos quais alguns são colocados em dispositivos de grande mobilidade, visando a recolha e geração de todo o tipo de informações e levando ao aumento do número de dispositivos comunicantes. Esta dissertação foca o desenvolvimento e implementação de uma plataforma heterogénea de sonorização ambiental com o objectivo de servir de infraestrutura para aplicações no âmbito das Smart Cities. Esta pretende tirar proveito da utilização de múltiplas tecnologias de comunicação, nomeadamente tecnologias de longo e curto alcance. Para al em disto, visto que a plataforma visa ambientes urbanos, esta tira proveito de uma rede oportunista e tolerante a atrasos, Delay Tolerant Network (DTN), através de entidades m oveis que circulam pela cidade, nomeadamente bicicletas. Assim sendo, esta dissertação propõe: (1) o desenho e desenvolvimento da rede e dos seus constituintes; (2) uma extensão a um protocolo de controlo de acesso ao meio, Medium Access Control (MAC), para a tecnologia LoRa com o objectivo de o dotar compatível para ambientes de gateways múltiplas; (3) novas estratégias de encaminhamento para a rede tolerante a atrasos, tendo em consideração a topologia e as características apresentadas por esta. As avaliações realizadas permitiram concluir que o protocolo MAC para LoRa em ambientes de gateways múltiplas proposto contribui para um aumento da escalabilidade da rede, bem como para uma melhoria do seu desempenho. Relativamente às estratégias de encaminhamento propostas para a DTN, os testes realizados permitiram avaliar o impacto que cada estratégia tem sobre o comportamento da rede, nomeadamente a taxa de entrega dos pacotes de dados, a sobrecarga da rede, o número de pacotes transmitidos, entre outros. Com estes resultados foi possível perceber as in- suficiências que as funcionalidades propostas têm sobre a solução geral, e identificar as caraterísticas necessárias de uma solução escalável para a recolha de dados massivos num ambiente de IoT.The Smart City concept is the combination of the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm under an urban context with the exploitation of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) solutions. The typical Smart City scenario has to deal with an extensive amount of sensors and data generators, some of them placed in high mobile devices, deployed to collect and generate all type of information which will increase the number of communicating machines. This dissertation focuses on the development and implementation of a heterogeneous environmental sensing platform to serve as an infrastructure for Smart City applications. It aims to take advantage of the use of multiple communication technologies, namely long and short range. Being within an urban environment, the platform bene ts from an opportunistic and Delay Tolerant Network (DTN) through mobile entities that travel over the city, such as bicycles. Therefore, this dissertation proposes: (1) the design and development of the network and its elements; (2) an extension to a LoRa Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol in order to endow it with capabilities to operate in multi-gateway environments; and lastly, (3) new forwarding strategies for the opportunistic network that takes into consideration the network topology. The performed evaluations showed that the proposed multi-gateway LoRa MAC protocol contributes to increase the LoRa network scalability, as well as its performance. The performed tests to the proposed DTN forwarding strategies evaluate the impact of each strategy on the network behavior, namely the delivery ratio, network overhead, number of transmitted packets, among others. As a result, it is possible to perceive which are the in- uences introduced by the proposed functionalities on the overall solution, and identify the characteristics of a scalable solution to collect massive data in an IoT environment

Towards the efficient use of LoRa for wireless sensor networks

Since their inception in 1998 with the Smart Dust Project from University of Berkeley, Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) had a tremendous impact on both science and society, influencing many (new) research fields, like Cyber-physical System (CPS), Machine to Machine (M2M), and Internet of Things (IoT). In over two decades, WSN researchers have delivered a wide-range of hardware, communication protocols, operating systems, and applications, to deal with the now classic problems of resourceconstrained devices, limited energy sources, and harsh communication environments. However, WSN research happened mostly on the same kind of hardware. With wireless communication and embedded hardware evolving, there are new opportunities to resolve the long standing issues of scaling, deploying, and maintaining a WSN. To this end, we explore in this work the most recent advances in low-power, longrange wireless communication, and the new challenges these new wireless communication techniques introduce. Specifically, we focus on the most promising such technology: LoRa. LoRa is a novel low-power, long-range communication technology, which promises a single-hop network with millions of sensor nodes. Using practical experiments, we evaluate the unique properties of LoRa, like orthogonal spreading factors, nondestructive concurrent transmissions, and carrier activity detection. Utilising these unique properties, we build a novel TDMA-style multi-hop Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol called LoRaBlink. Based on empirical results, we develop a communication model and simulator called LoRaSim to explore the scalability of a LoRa network. We conclude that, in its current deployment, LoRa cannot support the scale it is envisioned to operate at. One way to improve this scalability issue is Adaptive Data Rate (ADR). We develop two ADR protocols, Probing and Optimistic Probing, and compare them with the de facto standard ADR protocol used in the crowdsourced TTN LoRaWAN network. We demonstrate that our algorithms are much more responsive, energy efficient, and able to reach a more efficient configuration quicker, though reaching a suboptimal configuration for poor links, which is offset by the savings caused by the convergence speed. Overall, this work provides theoretical and empirical proofs that LoRa can tackle some of the long standing problems within WSN. We envision that future work, in particular on ADR and MAC protocols for LoRa and other low-power, long-range communication technologies, will help push these new communication technologies to main-stream status in WSNs

IEEE 802.11ax: challenges and requirements for future high efficiency wifi

The popularity of IEEE 802.11 based wireless local area networks (WLANs) has increased significantly in recent years because of their ability to provide increased mobility, flexibility, and ease of use, with reduced cost of installation and maintenance. This has resulted in massive WLAN deployment in geographically limited environments that encompass multiple overlapping basic service sets (OBSSs). In this article, we introduce IEEE 802.11ax, a new standard being developed by the IEEE 802.11 Working Group, which will enable efficient usage of spectrum along with an enhanced user experience. We expose advanced technological enhancements proposed to improve the efficiency within high density WLAN networks and explore the key challenges to the upcoming amendment.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

A Comparative Analysis on IoT Communication Protocols for Future Internet Applications

With the emergence of 5G, the Internet of Things (IoT) will bring about the next industrial revolution in the name of Industry 4.0. The communication aspect of IoT devices is one of the most important factors in choosing the right device for the right usage. So far, the IoT physical layer communication challenges have been met with various communications protocols that provide varying strengths and weaknesses. And most of them are wireless protocols due to the sheer number of device requirements for IoT. In this paper, we summarize the network architectures of some of the most popular IoT wireless communications protocols. We also present them side by side and provide a comparative analysis revolving around some key features, including power consumption, coverage, data rate, security, cost, and Quality of Service (QoS). This comparative study shows that LTE-based protocols like NB-IoT and LTE-M can offer better QoS and robustness, while the Industrial, Scientific, and Medical (ISM) Band based protocols like LoRa, Sigfox, and Z-wave claim their place in usage where lower power consumption and lesser device complexity are desired. Based on their respective strengths and weaknesses, the study also presents an application perspective of the suitability of each protocol in a certain type of scenario and addresses some open issues that need to be researched in the future. Thus, this study can assist in the decision making regarding choosing the most suitable protocol for a certain field