A Hierarchical Communication Architecture for Oceanic Survelliance Applications

The interest in monitoring applications using underwater sensor networks has been growing in recent years. The severe communication restrictions imposed by underwater channels make that efficient monitoring be a challenging task. Though a lot of research has been conducted on underwater sensor networks, there are only few concrete applications to a real-world case study. In this work, hence, we propose a general three tier architecture leveraging low cost wireless technologies for acoustic communications between underwater sensors and standard technologies, Zigbee and Wireless Fidelity (WiFi), for water surface communications. We have selected a suitable Medium Access Control (MAC) layer, after making a comparison with some common MAC protocols. Thus the performance of the overall system in terms of Signals Discarding Rate (SDR), signalling delay at the surface gateway as well as the percentage of true detection have been evaluated by simulation, pointing out good results which give evidence in applicability’s favour

Routing, Localization And Positioning Protocols For Wireless Sensor And Actor Networks

Wireless sensor and actor networks (WSANs) are distributed systems of sensor nodes and actors that are interconnected over the wireless medium. Sensor nodes collect information about the physical world and transmit the data to actors by using one-hop or multi-hop communications. Actors collect information from the sensor nodes, process the information, take decisions and react to the events. This dissertation presents contributions to the methods of routing, localization and positioning in WSANs for practical applications. We first propose a routing protocol with service differentiation for WSANs with stationary nodes. In this setting, we also adapt a sports ranking algorithm to dynamically prioritize the events in the environment depending on the collected data. We extend this routing protocol for an application, in which sensor nodes float in a river to gather observations and actors are deployed at accessible points on the coastline. We develop a method with locally acting adaptive overlay network formation to organize the network with actor areas and to collect data by using locality-preserving communication. We also present a multi-hop localization approach for enriching the information collected from the river with the estimated locations of mobile sensor nodes without using positioning adapters. As an extension to this application, we model the movements of sensor nodes by a subsurface meandering current mobility model with random surface motion. Then we adapt the introduced routing and network organization methods to model a complete primate monitoring system. A novel spatial cut-off preferential attachment model and iii center of mass concept are developed according to the characteristics of the primate groups. We also present a role determination algorithm for primates, which uses the collection of spatial-temporal relationships. We apply a similar approach to human social networks to tackle the problem of automatic generation and organization of social networks by analyzing and assessing interaction data. The introduced routing and localization protocols in this dissertation are also extended with a novel three dimensional actor positioning strategy inspired by the molecular geometry. Extensive simulations are conducted in OPNET simulation tool for the performance evaluation of the proposed protocol

Internet of robotic things : converging sensing/actuating, hypoconnectivity, artificial intelligence and IoT Platforms

The Internet of Things (IoT) concept is evolving rapidly and influencing newdevelopments in various application domains, such as the Internet of MobileThings (IoMT), Autonomous Internet of Things (A-IoT), Autonomous Systemof Things (ASoT), Internet of Autonomous Things (IoAT), Internetof Things Clouds (IoT-C) and the Internet of Robotic Things (IoRT) etc.that are progressing/advancing by using IoT technology. The IoT influencerepresents new development and deployment challenges in different areassuch as seamless platform integration, context based cognitive network integration,new mobile sensor/actuator network paradigms, things identification(addressing, naming in IoT) and dynamic things discoverability and manyothers. The IoRT represents new convergence challenges and their need to be addressed, in one side the programmability and the communication ofmultiple heterogeneous mobile/autonomous/robotic things for cooperating,their coordination, configuration, exchange of information, security, safetyand protection. Developments in IoT heterogeneous parallel processing/communication and dynamic systems based on parallelism and concurrencyrequire new ideas for integrating the intelligent “devices”, collaborativerobots (COBOTS), into IoT applications. Dynamic maintainability, selfhealing,self-repair of resources, changing resource state, (re-) configurationand context based IoT systems for service implementation and integrationwith IoT network service composition are of paramount importance whennew “cognitive devices” are becoming active participants in IoT applications.This chapter aims to be an overview of the IoRT concept, technologies,architectures and applications and to provide a comprehensive coverage offuture challenges, developments and applications

Sensor Network Architectures for Monitoring Underwater Pipelines

This paper develops and compares different sensor network architecture designs that can be used for monitoring underwater pipeline infrastructures. These architectures are underwater wired sensor networks, underwater acoustic wireless sensor networks, RF (Radio Frequency) wireless sensor networks, integrated wired/acoustic wireless sensor networks, and integrated wired/RF wireless sensor networks. The paper also discusses the reliability challenges and enhancement approaches for these network architectures. The reliability evaluation, characteristics, advantages, and disadvantages among these architectures are discussed and compared. Three reliability factors are used for the discussion and comparison: the network connectivity, the continuity of power supply for the network, and the physical network security. In addition, the paper also develops and evaluates a hierarchical sensor network framework for underwater pipeline monitoring

Collective motion, sensor networks, and ocean sampling

Author Posting. © IEEE, 2007. This article is posted here by permission of IEEE for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Proceedings of the IEEE 95 (2007): 48-74, doi:10.1109/jproc.2006.887295.This paper addresses the design of mobile sensor networks for optimal data collection. The development is strongly motivated by the application to adaptive ocean sampling for an autonomous ocean observing and prediction system. A performance metric, used to derive optimal paths for the network of mobile sensors, defines the optimal data set as one which minimizes error in a model estimate of the sampled field. Feedback control laws are presented that stably coordinate sensors on structured tracks that have been optimized over a minimal set of parameters. Optimal, closed-loop solutions are computed in a number of low-dimensional cases to illustrate the methodology. Robustness of the performance to the influence of a steady flow field on relatively slow-moving mobile sensors is also explored

When Things Matter: A Data-Centric View of the Internet of Things

With the recent advances in radio-frequency identification (RFID), low-cost wireless sensor devices, and Web technologies, the Internet of Things (IoT) approach has gained momentum in connecting everyday objects to the Internet and facilitating machine-to-human and machine-to-machine communication with the physical world. While IoT offers the capability to connect and integrate both digital and physical entities, enabling a whole new class of applications and services, several significant challenges need to be addressed before these applications and services can be fully realized. A fundamental challenge centers around managing IoT data, typically produced in dynamic and volatile environments, which is not only extremely large in scale and volume, but also noisy, and continuous. This article surveys the main techniques and state-of-the-art research efforts in IoT from data-centric perspectives, including data stream processing, data storage models, complex event processing, and searching in IoT. Open research issues for IoT data management are also discussed

Classification of Routing Algorithms in Volatile Environment of Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks

The planet earth is basically a planet of water with less than 30% land mass available for humans to live on. However, the areas covered with water are important to mankind for the various resources which have been proven to be valuable. Such resources are gas, oil, marine products which can be used as food, and other minerals. In view of the vast area in which these resources can be found, a network of sensors is necessary so that they can be explored. However, sensor networks may not be helpful in the exploration of these resources if they do not have a sufficiently good routing mechanism. Over the past few decades, several methods for routing have been suggested to address the volatile environment in underwater communications. These continue researches; have enhanced the performance along with time. Meanwhile, there are still challenges to deal with for a better and efficient routing of data packets. Large end-to-end delays, high error channel rates, limited bandwidth, and the consumption of energy in sensor network are some such challenges. A comprehensive survey of the various routing methods for the partially connected underwater communication environment are presented in this paper

A Survey on UAV-Aided Maritime Communications: Deployment Considerations, Applications, and Future Challenges

Maritime activities represent a major domain of economic growth with several emerging maritime Internet of Things use cases, such as smart ports, autonomous navigation, and ocean monitoring systems. The major enabler for this exciting ecosystem is the provision of broadband, low-delay, and reliable wireless coverage to the ever-increasing number of vessels, buoys, platforms, sensors, and actuators. Towards this end, the integration of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in maritime communications introduces an aerial dimension to wireless connectivity going above and beyond current deployments, which are mainly relying on shore-based base stations with limited coverage and satellite links with high latency. Considering the potential of UAV-aided wireless communications, this survey presents the state-of-the-art in UAV-aided maritime communications, which, in general, are based on both conventional optimization and machine-learning-aided approaches. More specifically, relevant UAV-based network architectures are discussed together with the role of their building blocks. Then, physical-layer, resource management, and cloud/edge computing and caching UAV-aided solutions in maritime environments are discussed and grouped based on their performance targets. Moreover, as UAVs are characterized by flexible deployment with high re-positioning capabilities, studies on UAV trajectory optimization for maritime applications are thoroughly discussed. In addition, aiming at shedding light on the current status of real-world deployments, experimental studies on UAV-aided maritime communications are presented and implementation details are given. Finally, several important open issues in the area of UAV-aided maritime communications are given, related to the integration of sixth generation (6G) advancements

Adaptable underwater networks: The relation between autonomy and communications

This paper discusses requirements for autonomy and communications in maritime environments through two use cases which are sourced from military scenarios: Mine Counter Measures (MCM) and Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW). To address these requirements, this work proposes a service-oriented architecture that breaks the typical boundaries between the autonomy and the communications stacks. An initial version of the architecture has been implemented and its deployment during a field trial done in January 2019 is reported. The paper discusses the achieved results in terms of system flexibility and ability to address the MCM and ASW requirements