The IEC-60870-5 standard for a personal server applied to telemedicine

This paper presents a proposal of a flexible telemedicine system for remote patient monitoring. It can be used in different kind of environments where there is only available low speed transmission links like Radio Frequency. This proposal includes the use of a previous work where the IEC-60870-S standard was applied to the development of an open and flexible RTU (Remote Terminal Unit) based in open hardware, a SoCtype design using a FPGA programmed with the open core LEON and open source, so both the hardware and the ISO are open source.Junta de Andalucía p08-TIC-363

A Cross-Layer Approach for Minimizing Interference and Latency of Medium Access in Wireless Sensor Networks

In low power wireless sensor networks, MAC protocols usually employ periodic sleep/wake schedule to reduce idle listening time. Even though this mechanism is simple and efficient, it results in high end-to-end latency and low throughput. On the other hand, the previously proposed CSMA/CA-based MAC protocols have tried to reduce inter-node interference at the cost of increased latency and lower network capacity. In this paper we propose IAMAC, a CSMA/CA sleep/wake MAC protocol that minimizes inter-node interference, while also reduces per-hop delay through cross-layer interactions with the network layer. Furthermore, we show that IAMAC can be integrated into the SP architecture to perform its inter-layer interactions. Through simulation, we have extensively evaluated the performance of IAMAC in terms of different performance metrics. Simulation results confirm that IAMAC reduces energy consumption per node and leads to higher network lifetime compared to S-MAC and Adaptive S-MAC, while it also provides lower latency than S-MAC. Throughout our evaluations we have considered IAMAC in conjunction with two error recovery methods, i.e., ARQ and Seda. It is shown that using Seda as the error recovery mechanism of IAMAC results in higher throughput and lifetime compared to ARQ.Comment: 17 pages, 16 figure

A simulation into the physical and network layers of optical communication network for the subsea video surveillance of illicit activity.

Criminal activity is increasingly entering the ocean subsurface with acts such as illegal fishing and narco-submarining becoming points of contention. This among other illicit acts taking place in this domain imply a need for surveillance to render these activities apparent. However, subsurface Underwater Sensor Networking which is central to the surveillance is still generations behind terrestrial networking, therefore it is still challenging to monitor for subsurface activities. This is since the current signal transmission standard, acoustic communication, is limited in practical bandwidth and thus channel data-rate, this is, however, caveated with omni-directional propagation and supreme range rendering it reliable but incapable of carrying video or other data intensive sensor information. There is, however, an emerging technology based on optical (visible light) communication that can accommodate surveillance applications with superior data rates and energy savings. This investigation demonstrates how theoretically it is possible to achieve a network of underwater channels capable of sustaining a multimedia feed for monitoring subsurface activity using modern optical communication when in compared to an acoustic network. In addition, a simple topology was investigated that shows how the range limitations of this signaling can be extended by adding floating relay nodes. Through simulations in Network Simulator 3 (NS-3)/Aquasim-NG software it is shown that Visible Light wireless communication in visible light networks have a channel capacity high enough to carry out monitoring in strategic areas, referencing, optical modems that are available in the market. This implies that data-rates of 10 Mb/s are possible for the real-time video surveillance

Recent Advances in Smart Communication Protocols and Algorithms

This Special Issue includes the selected papers from the third International Workshop on Smart Communication Protocols & Algorithms (SCPA 2013), that took place in Budapest, Hungary, in June 9, 2013. This Workshop was organized in conjunction with the IEEE International Conference on Communications. This paper explains the work included in the best 6 papers of the workshop.Lloret, J. (2013). Recent Advances in Smart Communication Protocols and Algorithms. Recent Advances in Communications and Networking Technology. 2(2):63-64. doi:10.2174/221508110202131221213711S63642

S-PRAC: Fast Partial Packet Recovery with Network Coding in Very Noisy Wireless Channels

Well-known error detection and correction solutions in wireless communications are slow or incur high transmission overhead. Recently, notable solutions like PRAC and DAPRAC, implementing partial packet recovery with network coding, could address these problems. However, they perform slowly when there are many errors. We propose S-PRAC, a fast scheme for partial packet recovery, particularly designed for very noisy wireless channels. S-PRAC improves on DAPRAC. It divides each packet into segments consisting of a fixed number of small RLNC encoded symbols and then attaches a CRC code to each segment and one to each coded packet. Extensive simulations show that S-PRAC can detect and correct errors quickly. It also outperforms DAPRAC significantly when the number of errors is high

Airborne Directional Networking: Topology Control Protocol Design

This research identifies and evaluates the impact of several architectural design choices in relation to airborne networking in contested environments related to autonomous topology control. Using simulation, we evaluate topology reconfiguration effectiveness using classical performance metrics for different point-to-point communication architectures. Our attention is focused on the design choices which have the greatest impact on reliability, scalability, and performance. In this work, we discuss the impact of several practical considerations of airborne networking in contested environments related to autonomous topology control modeling. Using simulation, we derive multiple classical performance metrics to evaluate topology reconfiguration effectiveness for different point-to-point communication architecture attributes for the purpose of qualifying protocol design elements

Energy Savings via Harnessing Partial Packets in Body Area Networks

This work considers the incorporation, implications and potential energy savings of partial packet recovery schemes in Body Area Networks (BANs). Received packets which have not been fully corrected by the physical layer, called partial, are discarded by the vast majority of BAN protocols, as opposed to valid packets, which satisfy the error detection check and are propagated to higher layers. In typical networks using ARQ protocols, dropping partial packets results in retransmissions. However, because these packets contain useful information, partial packet recovery schemes have been proposed with demonstrated throughput and reliability benefits, targeting mostly wireless LANs. In order to quantify the potential energy benefits of harnessing partial packets in BANs, we use an experimental setup with four sensors mounted on a human body, transmitting information to a receiving node in a typical office environment. By precisely modeling the state transitions and energy consumption of sensors, we compare the efficiency of a baseline ARQ protocol against a scheme which leverages information in partial packets. Our results indicate that exploiting partial packets reduces on average the energy consumption of our sensors by 8--20%. The energy savings are pronounced in challenged channel conditions of high PER, where they can be up to 50%