Low-Power Wide-Area Networks: A Broad Overview of its Different Aspects

Low-power wide-area networks (LPWANs) are gaining popularity in the research community due to their low power consumption, low cost, and wide geographical coverage. LPWAN technologies complement and outperform short-range and traditional cellular wireless technologies in a variety of applications, including smart city development, machine-to-machine (M2M) communications, healthcare, intelligent transportation, industrial applications, climate-smart agriculture, and asset tracking. This review paper discusses the design objectives and the methodologies used by LPWAN to provide extensive coverage for low-power devices. We also explore how the presented LPWAN architecture employs various topologies such as star and mesh. We examine many current and emerging LPWAN technologies, as well as their system architectures and standards, and evaluate their ability to meet each design objective. In addition, the possible coexistence of LPWAN with other technologies, combining the best attributes to provide an optimum solution is also explored and reported in the current overview. Following that, a comparison of various LPWAN technologies is performed and their market opportunities are also investigated. Furthermore, an analysis of various LPWAN use cases is performed, highlighting their benefits and drawbacks. This aids in the selection of the best LPWAN technology for various applications. Before concluding the work, the open research issues, and challenges in designing LPWAN are presented.publishedVersio

D13.2 Techniques and performance analysis on energy- and bandwidth-efficient communications and networking

Deliverable D13.2 del projecte europeu NEWCOM#The report presents the status of the research work of the various Joint Research Activities (JRA) in WP1.3 and the results that were developed up to the second year of the project. For each activity there is a description, an illustration of the adherence to and relevance with the identified fundamental open issues, a short presentation of the main results, and a roadmap for the future joint research. In the Annex, for each JRA, the main technical details on specific scientific activities are described in detail.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

D6.6 Final report on the METIS 5G system concept and technology roadmap

This deliverable presents the METIS 5G system concept which was developed to fulfil the requirements of the beyond-2020 connected information society and to extend today’s wireless communication systems to include new usage scenarios. The METIS 5G system concept consists of three generic 5G services and four main enablers. The three generic 5G services are Extreme Mobile BroadBand (xMBB), Massive Machine- Type Communications (mMTC), and Ultra-reliable Machine-Type Communication (uMTC). The four main enablers are Lean System Control Plane (LSCP), Dynamic RAN, Localized Contents and Traffic Flows, and Spectrum Toolbox. An overview of the METIS 5G architecture is given, as well as spectrum requirements and considerations. System-level evaluation of the METIS 5G system concept has been conducted, and we conclude that the METIS technical objectives are met. A technology roadmap outlining further 5G development, including a timeline and recommended future work is given.Popovski, P.; Mange, G.; Gozalvez -Serrano, D.; Rosowski, T.; Zimmermann, G.; Agyapong, P.; Fallgren, M.... (2014). D6.6 Final report on the METIS 5G system concept and technology roadmap. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/7676

Energy Efficient and Cooperative Solutions for Next-Generation Wireless Networks

Energy efficiency is increasingly important for next-generation wireless systems due to the limited battery resources of mobile clients. While fourth generation cellular standards emphasize low client battery consumption, existing techniques do not explicitly focus on reducing power that is consumed when a client is actively communicating with the network. Based on high data rate demands of modern multimedia applications, active mode power consumption is expected to become a critical consideration for the development and deployment of future wireless technologies. Another reason for focusing more attention on energy efficient studies is given by the relatively slow progress in battery technology and the growing quality of service requirements of multimedia applications. The disproportion between demanded and available battery capacity is becoming especially significant for small-scale mobile client devices, where wireless power consumption dominates within the total device power budget. To compensate for this growing gap, aggressive improvements in all aspects of wireless system design are necessary. Recent work in this area indicates that joint link adaptation and resource allocation techniques optimizing energy efficient metrics can provide a considerable gain in client power consumption. Consequently, it is crucial to adapt state-of-the-art energy efficient approaches for practical use, as well as to illustrate the pros and cons associated with applying power-bandwidth optimization to improve client energy efficiency and develop insights for future research in this area. This constitutes the first objective of the present research. Together with energy efficiency, next-generation cellular technologies are emphasizing stronger support for heterogeneous multimedia applications. Since the integration of diverse services within a single radio platform is expected to result in higher operator profits and, at the same time, reduce network management expenses, intensive research efforts have been invested into design principles of such networks. However, as wireless resources are limited and shared by clients, service integration may become challenging. A key element in such systems is the packet scheduler, which typically helps ensure that the individual quality of service requirements of wireless clients are satisfied. In contrastingly different distributed wireless environments, random multiple access protocols are beginning to provide mechanisms for statistical quality of service assurance. However, there is currently a lack of comprehensive analytical frameworks which allow reliable control of the quality of service parameters for both cellular and local area networks. Providing such frameworks is therefore the second objective of this thesis. Additionally, the study addresses the simultaneous operation of a cellular and a local area network in spectrally intense metropolitan deployments and solves some related problems. Further improving the performance of battery-driven mobile clients, cooperative communications are sought as a promising and practical concept. In particular, they are capable of mitigating the negative effects of fading in a wireless channel and are thus expected to enhance next-generation cellular networks in terms of client spectral and energy efficiencies. At the cell edges or in areas missing any supportive relaying infrastructure, client-based cooperative techniques are becoming even more important. As such, a mobile client with poor channel quality may take advantage of neighboring clients which would relay data on its behalf. The key idea behind the concept of client relay is to provide flexible and distributed control over cooperative communications by the wireless clients themselves. By contrast to fully centralized control, this is expected to minimize overhead protocol signaling and hence ensure simpler implementation. Compared to infrastructure relay, client relay will also be cheaper to deploy. Developing the novel concept of client relay, proposing simple and feasible cooperation protocols, and analyzing the basic trade-offs behind client relay functionality become the third objective of this research. Envisioning the evolution of cellular technologies beyond their fourth generation, it appears important to study a wireless network capable of supporting machine-to-machine applications. Recent standardization documents cover a plethora of machine-to-machine use cases, as they also outline the respective technical requirements and features according to the application or network environment. As follows from this activity, a smart grid is one of the primary machine-to-machine use cases that involves meters autonomously reporting usage and alarm information to the grid infrastructure to help reduce operational cost, as well as regulate a customer's utility usage. The preliminary analysis of the reference smart grid scenario indicates weak system architecture components. For instance, the large population of machine-to-machine devices may connect nearly simultaneously to the wireless infrastructure and, consequently, suffer from excessive network entry delays. Another concern is the performance of cell-edge machine-to-machine devices with weak wireless links. Therefore, mitigating the above architecture vulnerabilities and improving the performance of future smart grid deployments is the fourth objective of this thesis. Summarizing, this thesis is generally aimed at the improvement of energy efficient properties of mobile devices in next-generation wireless networks. The related research also embraces a novel cooperation technique where clients may assist each other to increase per-client and network-wide performance. Applying the proposed solutions, the operation time of mobile clients without recharging may be increased dramatically. Our approach incorporates both analytical and simulation components to evaluate complex interactions between the studied objectives. It brings important conclusions about energy efficient and cooperative client behaviors, which is crucial for further development of wireless communications technologies

Cognitive Radio Systems

Cognitive radio is a hot research area for future wireless communications in the recent years. In order to increase the spectrum utilization, cognitive radio makes it possible for unlicensed users to access the spectrum unoccupied by licensed users. Cognitive radio let the equipments more intelligent to communicate with each other in a spectrum-aware manner and provide a new approach for the co-existence of multiple wireless systems. The goal of this book is to provide highlights of the current research topics in the field of cognitive radio systems. The book consists of 17 chapters, addressing various problems in cognitive radio systems

Cooperative Radio Communications for Green Smart Environments

The demand for mobile connectivity is continuously increasing, and by 2020 Mobile and Wireless Communications will serve not only very dense populations of mobile phones and nomadic computers, but also the expected multiplicity of devices and sensors located in machines, vehicles, health systems and city infrastructures. Future Mobile Networks are then faced with many new scenarios and use cases, which will load the networks with different data traffic patterns, in new or shared spectrum bands, creating new specific requirements. This book addresses both the techniques to model, analyse and optimise the radio links and transmission systems in such scenarios, together with the most advanced radio access, resource management and mobile networking technologies. This text summarises the work performed by more than 500 researchers from more than 120 institutions in Europe, America and Asia, from both academia and industries, within the framework of the COST IC1004 Action on "Cooperative Radio Communications for Green and Smart Environments". The book will have appeal to graduates and researchers in the Radio Communications area, and also to engineers working in the Wireless industry. Topics discussed in this book include: • Radio waves propagation phenomena in diverse urban, indoor, vehicular and body environments• Measurements, characterization, and modelling of radio channels beyond 4G networks• Key issues in Vehicle (V2X) communication• Wireless Body Area Networks, including specific Radio Channel Models for WBANs• Energy efficiency and resource management enhancements in Radio Access Networks• Definitions and models for the virtualised and cloud RAN architectures• Advances on feasible indoor localization and tracking techniques• Recent findings and innovations in antenna systems for communications• Physical Layer Network Coding for next generation wireless systems• Methods and techniques for MIMO Over the Air (OTA) testin

Low power wide area network, cognitive radio and the internet of things : potentials for integration

The Internet of Things (IoT) is an emerging paradigm that enables many beneficial and prospective application areas, such as smart metering, smart homes, smart industries, and smart city architectures, to name but a few. These application areas typically comprise end nodes and gateways that are often interconnected by low power wide area network (LPWAN) technologies, which provide low power consumption rates to elongate the battery lifetimes of end nodes, low IoT device development/purchasing costs, long transmission range, and increased scalability, albeit at low data rates. However, most LPWAN technologies are often confronted with a number of physical (PHY) layer challenges, including increased interference, spectral inefficiency, and/or low data rates for which cognitive radio (CR), being a predominantly PHY layer solution, suffices as a potential solution. Consequently, in this article, we survey the potentials of integrating CR in LPWAN for IoT-based applications. First, we present and discuss a detailed list of different state-of-the-art LPWAN technologies; we summarize the most recent LPWAN standardization bodies, alliances, and consortia while emphasizing their disposition towards the integration of CR in LPWAN.We then highlight the concept of CR in LPWAN via a PHY-layer front-end model and discuss the benefits of CR-LPWAN for IoT applications. A number of research challenges and future directions are also presented. This article aims to provide a unique and holistic overview of CR in LPWAN with the intention of emphasizing its potential benefits.This work was supported by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, Pretoria, South Africa, through the Smart Networks collaboration initiative and Internet of Things (IoT)-Factory Program (funded by the Department of Science and Innovation (DSI), South Africa).http://www.mdpi.com/journal/sensorsam2021Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineerin

Cooperative Radio Communications for Green Smart Environments

The demand for mobile connectivity is continuously increasing, and by 2020 Mobile and Wireless Communications will serve not only very dense populations of mobile phones and nomadic computers, but also the expected multiplicity of devices and sensors located in machines, vehicles, health systems and city infrastructures. Future Mobile Networks are then faced with many new scenarios and use cases, which will load the networks with different data traffic patterns, in new or shared spectrum bands, creating new specific requirements. This book addresses both the techniques to model, analyse and optimise the radio links and transmission systems in such scenarios, together with the most advanced radio access, resource management and mobile networking technologies. This text summarises the work performed by more than 500 researchers from more than 120 institutions in Europe, America and Asia, from both academia and industries, within the framework of the COST IC1004 Action on "Cooperative Radio Communications for Green and Smart Environments". The book will have appeal to graduates and researchers in the Radio Communications area, and also to engineers working in the Wireless industry. Topics discussed in this book include: • Radio waves propagation phenomena in diverse urban, indoor, vehicular and body environments• Measurements, characterization, and modelling of radio channels beyond 4G networks• Key issues in Vehicle (V2X) communication• Wireless Body Area Networks, including specific Radio Channel Models for WBANs• Energy efficiency and resource management enhancements in Radio Access Networks• Definitions and models for the virtualised and cloud RAN architectures• Advances on feasible indoor localization and tracking techniques• Recent findings and innovations in antenna systems for communications• Physical Layer Network Coding for next generation wireless systems• Methods and techniques for MIMO Over the Air (OTA) testin

Agricultural Monitoring System using Images through a LPWAN Network

Internet of things (IoT) has turned into an opportunity to connect millions of devices through communication networks in digital environments. Inside IoT and mainly in the technologies of communication networks, it is possible to find Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWAN). Within these technologies, there are service platforms in unlicensed frequency bands such as the LoRa Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN). It has features such as low power consumption, long-distance operation between gateway and node, and low data transport capacity. LPWAN networks are not commonly used to transport high data rates as in the case of agricultural images. The main goal of this research is to present a methodology to transport images through LPWAN networks using LoRa modulation. The methodology presented in this thesis is composed of three stages mainly. The first one is image processing and classification process. This stage allows preparing the image in order to give the information to the classifier and separate the normal and abnormal images; i.e. to classify the images under the normal conditions of its representation in contrast with the images that can represent some sick or affectation with the consequent presence of a particular pathology. For this activity. it was used some techniques were used classifiers such as Support Vector Machine SVM, K-means clustering, neuronal networks, deep learning and convolutional neuronal networks. The last one offered the best results in classifying the samples of the images. The second stage consists in a compression technique and reconstruction algorithms. In this stage, a method is developed to process the image and entails the reduction of the high amount of information that an image has in its normal features with the goal to transport the lowest amount of information. For this purpose, a technique will be presented for the representation of the information of an image in a common base that improves the reduction process of the information. For this activity, the evaluated components were Wavelet, DCT-2D and Kronecker algorithms. The best results were obtained by Wavelet Transform. On the other hand, the compres- sion process entails a series of iterations in the vector information, therefore, each iteration is a possibility to reduce that vector until a value with a minimum PSNR (peak signal to noise ratio) that allows rebuilding the original vector. In the reconstruction process, Iterative Hard Thresholding (IHT), Ortogonal MAtching Pur- suit (OMP), Gradient Projection for Sparse Reconstruction (GPSR)and Step Iterative Shrinage/Thresholding (Twist) algorithms were evaluated. Twist showed the best performance in the results. Finally, in the third stage, LoRa modulation is implemented through the creation of LoRa symbols in Matlab with the compressed information. The symbols were delivered for transmission to Software Defined Radio (SDR). In the receptor, a SDR device receives the signal, which is converted into symbols that are in turn converted in an information vector. Then, the reconstruction process is carried out following the description in the last part of stage 2 - compression technique and reconstruction algorithms, which is described in more detailed in chapter 3, section 3.2. Finally, the image reconstructed is presented. The original image and the result image were compared in order to find the differences. This comparison used Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) feature in order to get the fidelity of the reconstructed image with respect of the original image. In the receptor node, it is possible to observe the pathology of the leaf. The methodology is particularly applied for monitoring abnormal leaves samples in potato crops. This work allows finding a methodology to communicate images through LPWAN using the LoRa modulation technique. In this work, a framework was used to classify the images, then, to process them in order to reduce the amount of data, to establish communication between a transmitter and a receiver through a wireless communication system and finally, in the receptor, to obtain a picture that shows the particularity of the pathology in an agricultural crop.Gobernación de Boyacá, Colfuturo, Colciencias, Universidad Santo Tomás, Pontificia Universidad JaverianaInternet of things (IoT) has turned into an opportunity to connect millions of devices through communication networks in digital environments. Inside IoT and mainly in the technologies of communication networks, it is possible to find Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWAN). Within these technologies, there are service platforms in unlicensed frequency bands such as the LoRa Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN). It has features such as low power consumption, long-distance operation between gateway and node, and low data transport capacity. LPWAN networks are not commonly used to transport high data rates as in the case of agricultural images. The main goal of this research is to present a methodology to transport images through LPWAN networks using LoRa modulation. The methodology presented in this thesis is composed of three stages mainly. The first one is image processing and classification process. This stage allows preparing the image in order to give the information to the classifier and separate the normal and abnormal images; i.e. to classify the images under the normal conditions of its representation in contrast with the images that can represent some sick or affectation with the consequent presence of a particular pathology. For this activity. it was used some techniques were used classifiers such as Support Vector Machine SVM, K-means clustering, neuronal networks, deep learning and convolutional neuronal networks. The last one offered the best results in classifying the samples of the images. The second stage consists in a compression technique and reconstruction algorithms. In this stage, a method is developed to process the image and entails the reduction of the high amount of information that an image has in its normal features with the goal to transport the lowest amount of information. For this purpose, a technique will be presented for the representation of the information of an image in a common base that improves the reduction process of the information. For this activity, the evaluated components were Wavelet, DCT-2D and Kronecker algorithms. The best results were obtained by Wavelet Transform. On the other hand, the compres- sion process entails a series of iterations in the vector information, therefore, each iteration is a possibility to reduce that vector until a value with a minimum PSNR (peak signal to noise ratio) that allows rebuilding the original vector. In the reconstruction process, Iterative Hard Thresholding (IHT), Ortogonal MAtching Pur- suit (OMP), Gradient Projection for Sparse Reconstruction (GPSR)and Step Iterative Shrinage/Thresholding (Twist) algorithms were evaluated. Twist showed the best performance in the results. Finally, in the third stage, LoRa modulation is implemented through the creation of LoRa symbols in Matlab with the compressed information. The symbols were delivered for transmission to Software Defined Radio (SDR). In the receptor, a SDR device receives the signal, which is converted into symbols that are in turn converted in an information vector. Then, the reconstruction process is carried out following the description in the last part of stage 2 - compression technique and reconstruction algorithms, which is described in more detailed in chapter 3, section 3.2. Finally, the image reconstructed is presented. The original image and the result image were compared in order to find the differences. This comparison used Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) feature in order to get the fidelity of the reconstructed image with respect of the original image. In the receptor node, it is possible to observe the pathology of the leaf. The methodology is particularly applied for monitoring abnormal leaves samples in potato crops. This work allows finding a methodology to communicate images through LPWAN using the LoRa modulation technique. In this work, a framework was used to classify the images, then, to process them in order to reduce the amount of data, to establish communication between a transmitter and a receiver through a wireless communication system and finally, in the receptor, to obtain a picture that shows the particularity of the pathology in an agricultural crop.Doctor en IngenieríaDoctoradohttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-3554-1531https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=5_dx9REAAAAJ&hl=eshttps://scienti.minciencias.gov.co/cvlac/EnRecursoHumano/query.d

Building the Future Internet through FIRE

The Internet as we know it today is the result of a continuous activity for improving network communications, end user services, computational processes and also information technology infrastructures. The Internet has become a critical infrastructure for the human-being by offering complex networking services and end-user applications that all together have transformed all aspects, mainly economical, of our lives. Recently, with the advent of new paradigms and the progress in wireless technology, sensor networks and information systems and also the inexorable shift towards everything connected paradigm, first as known as the Internet of Things and lately envisioning into the Internet of Everything, a data-driven society has been created. In a data-driven society, productivity, knowledge, and experience are dependent on increasingly open, dynamic, interdependent and complex Internet services. The challenge for the Internet of the Future design is to build robust enabling technologies, implement and deploy adaptive systems, to create business opportunities considering increasing uncertainties and emergent systemic behaviors where humans and machines seamlessly cooperate