On the Deployment of Healthcare Applications over Fog Computing Infrastructure

Fog computing is considered as the most promising enhancement of the traditional cloud computing paradigm in order to handle potential issues introduced by the emerging Interned of Things (IoT) framework at the network edge. The heterogeneous nature, the extensive distribution and the hefty number of deployed IoT nodes will disrupt existing functional models, creating confusion. However, IoT will facilitate the rise of new applications, with automated healthcare monitoring platforms being amongst them. This paper presents the pillars of design for such applications, along with the evaluation of a working prototype that collects ECG traces from a tailor-made device and utilizes the patient's smartphone as a Fog gateway for securely sharing them to other authorized entities. This prototype will allow patients to share information to their physicians, monitor their health status independently and notify the authorities rapidly in emergency situations. Historical data will also be available for further analysis, towards identifying patterns that may improve medical diagnoses in the foreseeable future

Design and Analysis of an Asynchronous Microcontroller

This dissertation presents the design of the most complex MTNCL circuit to date. A fully functional MTNCL MSP430 microcontroller is designed and benchmarked against an open source synchronous MSP430. The designs are compared in terms of area, active energy, and leakage energy. Techniques to reduce MTNCL pipeline activity and improve MTNCL register file area and power consumption are introduced. The results show the MTNCL design to have superior leakage power characteristics. The area and active energy comparisons highlight the need for better MTNCL logic synthesis techniques

The Design of a System Architecture for Mobile Multimedia Computers

This chapter discusses the system architecture of a portable computer, called Mobile Digital Companion, which provides support for handling multimedia applications energy efficiently. Because battery life is limited and battery weight is an important factor for the size and the weight of the Mobile Digital Companion, energy management plays a crucial role in the architecture. As the Companion must remain usable in a variety of environments, it has to be flexible and adaptable to various operating conditions. The Mobile Digital Companion has an unconventional architecture that saves energy by using system decomposition at different levels of the architecture and exploits locality of reference with dedicated, optimised modules. The approach is based on dedicated functionality and the extensive use of energy reduction techniques at all levels of system design. The system has an architecture with a general-purpose processor accompanied by a set of heterogeneous autonomous programmable modules, each providing an energy efficient implementation of dedicated tasks. A reconfigurable internal communication network switch exploits locality of reference and eliminates wasteful data copies

Asynchronous Advanced Encryption Standard Hardware with Random Noise Injection for Improved Side-Channel Attack Resistance

This work presents the design, hardware implementation, and performance analysis of novel asynchronous AES (advanced encryption standard) Key Expander and Round Function, which offer increased side-channel attack (SCA) resistance. These designs are based on a delay-insensitive (DI) logic paradigm known as null convention logic (NCL), which supports useful properties for resisting SCAs including dual-rail encoding, clock-free operation, and monotonic transitions. Potential benefits include reduced and more uniform switching activities and reduced signal-to-noise (SNR) ratio. A novel method to further augment NCL AES hardware with random voltage scaling technique is also presented for additional security. Thereby, the proposed components leak significantly less side-channel information than conventional clocked approaches. To quantitatively verify such improvements, functional verification and WASSO (weighted average simultaneous switching output) analysis have been carried out on both conventional synchronous approach and the proposed NCL based approach using Mentor Graphics ModelSim and Xilinx simulation tools. Hardware implementation has been carried out on both designs exploiting a specified side-channel attack standard evaluation FPGA board, called SASEBO-GII, and the corresponding power waveforms for both designs have been collected. Along with the results of software simulations, we have analyzed the collected waveforms to validate the claims related to benefits of the proposed cryptohardware design approach

A critical analysis of research potential, challenges and future directives in industrial wireless sensor networks

In recent years, Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks (IWSNs) have emerged as an important research theme with applications spanning a wide range of industries including automation, monitoring, process control, feedback systems and automotive. Wide scope of IWSNs applications ranging from small production units, large oil and gas industries to nuclear fission control, enables a fast-paced research in this field. Though IWSNs offer advantages of low cost, flexibility, scalability, self-healing, easy deployment and reformation, yet they pose certain limitations on available potential and introduce challenges on multiple fronts due to their susceptibility to highly complex and uncertain industrial environments. In this paper a detailed discussion on design objectives, challenges and solutions, for IWSNs, are presented. A careful evaluation of industrial systems, deadlines and possible hazards in industrial atmosphere are discussed. The paper also presents a thorough review of the existing standards and industrial protocols and gives a critical evaluation of potential of these standards and protocols along with a detailed discussion on available hardware platforms, specific industrial energy harvesting techniques and their capabilities. The paper lists main service providers for IWSNs solutions and gives insight of future trends and research gaps in the field of IWSNs

Sparse Signal Processing Concepts for Efficient 5G System Design

As it becomes increasingly apparent that 4G will not be able to meet the emerging demands of future mobile communication systems, the question what could make up a 5G system, what are the crucial challenges and what are the key drivers is part of intensive, ongoing discussions. Partly due to the advent of compressive sensing, methods that can optimally exploit sparsity in signals have received tremendous attention in recent years. In this paper we will describe a variety of scenarios in which signal sparsity arises naturally in 5G wireless systems. Signal sparsity and the associated rich collection of tools and algorithms will thus be a viable source for innovation in 5G wireless system design. We will discribe applications of this sparse signal processing paradigm in MIMO random access, cloud radio access networks, compressive channel-source network coding, and embedded security. We will also emphasize important open problem that may arise in 5G system design, for which sparsity will potentially play a key role in their solution.Comment: 18 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in IEEE Acces