Supporting Cyber-Physical Systems with Wireless Sensor Networks: An Outlook of Software and Services

Sensing, communication, computation and control technologies are the essential building blocks of a cyber-physical system (CPS). Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are a way to support CPS as they provide fine-grained spatial-temporal sensing, communication and computation at a low premium of cost and power. In this article, we explore the fundamental concepts guiding the design and implementation of WSNs. We report the latest developments in WSN software and services for meeting existing requirements and newer demands; particularly in the areas of: operating system, simulator and emulator, programming abstraction, virtualization, IP-based communication and security, time and location, and network monitoring and management. We also reflect on the ongoing efforts in providing dependable assurances for WSN-driven CPS. Finally, we report on its applicability with a case-study on smart buildings

ERDF 156 - Developing a national environmental monitoring infrastructure and capacity : shifting the state of access

Chapter 1Malta, through an initiative spanning 9 years, has completed an exercise aimed at obtaining a complete set of data that will serve as a basis for cross-thematic research. This is made achievable through the creation of essential datasets that will give the public, terrestrial and bathymetric baseline information for free. Such was made possible through an initiative as part of a project, entitled “Developing a National Environmental Monitoring Infrastructure and Capacity”. The Malta Environment and Planning Authority (MEPA) was the lead partner of this project together with the University of Malta (UoM), the Malta Resources Authority (MRA), the Environmental Health Directorate (EHD) and the National Statistics Office (NSO) as external partner organisations. Th e project had a total budget of €4.9M, of which €4.8M was co-funded by ERDF (85%) and National Funds (15%) under the Operational Programme 1 – Investing in Competitiveness for a Better Quality of Life. MEPA’s funding contribution to this project was €180K. Of these, €4.26M were utilised due to savings pertaining to the tendering process. The aim of this chapter is to describe the project aims, process and outcomes.peer-reviewe

Timely and reliable packets delivery over Internet of Vehicles (IoVs) for road accidents prevention: a cross-layer approach

With the envisioned era of Internet of Things (IoTs), all aspects of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) will be connected to improve transport safety, relieve traffic congestion, reduce air pollution, enhance the comfort of transportation and significantly reduce road accidents. In IoVs, regular exchange of current position, direction, velocity, etc., enables mobile vehicles to predict an upcoming accident and alert the human drivers in time or proactively take precautionary actions to avoid the accident. The actualization of this concept requires the use of channel access protocols that can guarantee reliable and timely broadcast of safety messages. This paper investigates the application of network coding concept to increase content of every transmission and achieve improved broadcast reliability with less number of retransmission. In particular, we proposed Code Aided Retransmission-based Error Recovery (CARER) scheme, introduced an RTB/CTB handshake to overcome hidden node problem and reduce packets collision rate. In order to avoid broadcast storm problem associated with the use of RTB/CTB packet in a broadcast transmission, we developed a rebroadcasting metric used to successfully select a vehicle to rebroadcast the encoded message. The performance of CARER protocol is clearly shown with detailed theoretical analysis and further validated with simulation experiments

Developing a distributed electronic health-record store for India

The DIGHT project is addressing the problem of building a scalable and highly available information store for the Electronic Health Records (EHRs) of the over one billion citizens of India

A survey on online monitoring approaches of computer-based systems

This report surveys forms of online data collection that are in current use (as well as being the subject of research to adapt them to changing technology and demands), and can be used as inputs to assessment of dependability and resilience, although they are not primarily meant for this use