Cross-layer Optimized Wireless Video Surveillance

A wireless video surveillance system contains three major components, the video capture and preprocessing, the video compression and transmission over wireless sensor networks (WSNs), and the video analysis at the receiving end. The coordination of different components is important for improving the end-to-end video quality, especially under the communication resource constraint. Cross-layer control proves to be an efficient measure for optimal system configuration. In this dissertation, we address the problem of implementing cross-layer optimization in the wireless video surveillance system. The thesis work is based on three research projects. In the first project, a single PTU (pan-tilt-unit) camera is used for video object tracking. The problem studied is how to improve the quality of the received video by jointly considering the coding and transmission process. The cross-layer controller determines the optimal coding and transmission parameters, according to the dynamic channel condition and the transmission delay. Multiple error concealment strategies are developed utilizing the special property of the PTU camera motion. In the second project, the binocular PTU camera is adopted for video object tracking. The presented work studied the fast disparity estimation algorithm and the 3D video transcoding over the WSN for real-time applications. The disparity/depth information is estimated in a coarse-to-fine manner using both local and global methods. The transcoding is coordinated by the cross-layer controller based on the channel condition and the data rate constraint, in order to achieve the best view synthesis quality. The third project is applied for multi-camera motion capture in remote healthcare monitoring. The challenge is the resource allocation for multiple video sequences. The presented cross-layer design incorporates the delay sensitive, content-aware video coding and transmission, and the adaptive video coding and transmission to ensure the optimal and balanced quality for the multi-view videos. In these projects, interdisciplinary study is conducted to synergize the surveillance system under the cross-layer optimization framework. Experimental results demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed schemes. The challenges of cross-layer design in existing wireless video surveillance systems are also analyzed to enlighten the future work. Adviser: Song C

Cross-layer Optimized Wireless Video Surveillance

A wireless video surveillance system contains three major components, the video capture and preprocessing, the video compression and transmission over wireless sensor networks (WSNs), and the video analysis at the receiving end. The coordination of different components is important for improving the end-to-end video quality, especially under the communication resource constraint. Cross-layer control proves to be an efficient measure for optimal system configuration. In this dissertation, we address the problem of implementing cross-layer optimization in the wireless video surveillance system. The thesis work is based on three research projects. In the first project, a single PTU (pan-tilt-unit) camera is used for video object tracking. The problem studied is how to improve the quality of the received video by jointly considering the coding and transmission process. The cross-layer controller determines the optimal coding and transmission parameters, according to the dynamic channel condition and the transmission delay. Multiple error concealment strategies are developed utilizing the special property of the PTU camera motion. In the second project, the binocular PTU camera is adopted for video object tracking. The presented work studied the fast disparity estimation algorithm and the 3D video transcoding over the WSN for real-time applications. The disparity/depth information is estimated in a coarse-to-fine manner using both local and global methods. The transcoding is coordinated by the cross-layer controller based on the channel condition and the data rate constraint, in order to achieve the best view synthesis quality. The third project is applied for multi-camera motion capture in remote healthcare monitoring. The challenge is the resource allocation for multiple video sequences. The presented cross-layer design incorporates the delay sensitive, content-aware video coding and transmission, and the adaptive video coding and transmission to ensure the optimal and balanced quality for the multi-view videos. In these projects, interdisciplinary study is conducted to synergize the surveillance system under the cross-layer optimization framework. Experimental results demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed schemes. The challenges of cross-layer design in existing wireless video surveillance systems are also analyzed to enlighten the future work. Adviser: Song C

ReSCon '09, Research Student Conference: Book of Abstracts

The second SED Research Student Conference (ReSCon2009) was hosted over three days, 22-24 June 2009, in the Lecture Centre at Brunel University. The conference consisted of technical presentations, a poster session and social events. The abstracts and presentations were the result of ongoing research by postgraduate research students from the School of Engineering and Design at Brunel University. The conference is held annually, and ReSCon plays a key role in contributing to research and innovations within the School

Distributed Energy-Saving Algorithms for Wireless Networks

The rapid growth of wireless networks has led to increasing interest in designing new algorithms that can efficiently reduce the energy consumption of routers and other devices. We present a new formulation of the Network Flow problem that takes into account the energy consumption of the data flows, and reduces the overall network energy expenditure. We introduce an energy model for wireless connections and analyse its validity with real measurements. Then we propose a convex optimization problem that establishes energy constraints on the links, and encourages energy savings that induce sparsity (shut-off of links). We propose several algorithms that can be computed in a distributed fashion for different types of capacity constraints. Finally we justify the sparsity of the solution by using the theory of proximal methods and present simulations for different scenarios. Our algorithms have application both in wired networks as well as in TDMA and 802.11 wireless networks

ReSCon '10, Research Student Conference: Book of Abstracts

The third SED Research Student Conference (ReSCon2010) was hosted over three days, 21-23 June 2010, in the Hamilton Centre at Brunel University. The conference consisted of oral and poster presentations, which showcased the high quality and diversity of the research being conducted within the School of Engineering and Design. The abstracts and presentations were the result of ongoing research by postgraduate research students from the School. The conference is held annually, and ReSCon plays a key role in contributing to research and innovations within the School

Smartphone-based vehicle telematics: a ten-year anniversary

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the publisher via the DOI in this recordJust as it has irrevocably reshaped social life, the fast growth of smartphone ownership is now beginning to revolutionize the driving experience and change how we think about automotive insurance, vehicle safety systems, and traffic research. This paper summarizes the first ten years of research in smartphone-based vehicle telematics, with a focus on user-friendly implementations and the challenges that arise due to the mobility of the smartphone. Notable academic and industrial projects are reviewed, and system aspects related to sensors, energy consumption, and human-machine interfaces are examined. Moreover, we highlight the differences between traditional and smartphone-based automotive navigation, and survey the state of the art in smartphone-based transportation mode classification, vehicular ad hoc networks, cloud computing, driver classification, and road condition monitoring. Future advances are expected to be driven by improvements in sensor technology, evidence of the societal benefits of current implementations, and the establishment of industry standards for sensor fusion and driver assessment

Development of wireless sensor network using Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) for construction noise monitoring

In this paper the development of a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) for construction noise identification and sound locating is investigated using the novel application of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). Three WSNs using different system-on-chip (SoC) devices and networking protocols have been prototyped using a Raspberry Pi as the gateway in the network. The functionality of the system has been demonstrated with data logging experiments and comparisons has been made between the different WSN systems developed to identify the relative advantages of BLE. Experiments using the WSN for vehicle noise identification and sound location have further demonstrated the potential of the system. This paper demonstrates the versatility of a BLE WSNs and the low power consumption that is achievable with BLE devices for noise detection applications

ReSCon '11, Research Student Conference: Book of Abstracts

The fourth SED Research Student Conference (ReSCon2011) was hosted over three days, 20-22 June 2011, in the Hamilton Centre at Brunel University. The conference consisted of technical presentations, a poster session and social events. which focused on current research being conducted within the School of Engineering and Design by postgraduate research students from the School. The conference is held annually, and ReSCon plays a key role in contributing to research and innovations within the School

Enabling Parallel Wireless Communication in Mobile Robot Teams

Wireless inter-robot communication enables robot teams to cooperatively solve complex problems that cannot be addressed by a single robot. Applications for cooperative robot teams include search and rescue, exploration and surveillance. Communication is one of the most important components in future autonomous robot systems and is essential for core functions such as inter-robot coordination, neighbour discovery and cooperative control algorithms. In environments where communication infrastructure does not exist, decentralised multi-hop networks can be constructed using only the radios on-board each robot. These are known as wireless mesh networks (WMNs). However existing WMNs have limited capacity to support even small robot teams. There is a need for WMNs where links act like dedicated point-to-point connections such as in wired networks. Addressing this problem requires a fundamentally new approach to WMN construction and this thesis is the first comprehensive study in the multi-robot literature to address these challenges. In this thesis, we propose a new class of communication systems called zero mutual interference (ZMI) networks that are able to emulate the point-to-point properties of a wired network over a WMN implementation. We instantiate the ZMI network using a multi-radio multi-channel architecture that autonomously adapts its topology and channel allocations such that all network edges communicate at the full capacity of the radio hardware. We implement the ZMI network on a 100-radio testbed with up to 20-individual nodes and verify its theoretical properties. Mobile robot experiments also demonstrate these properties are practically achievable. The results are an encouraging indication that the ZMI network approach can facilitate the communication demands of large cooperative robot teams deployed in practical problems such as data pipe-lining, decentralised optimisation, decentralised data fusion and sensor networks