Combined Coverage Area Reporting and Geographical Routing in Wireless Sensor-Actuator Networks for Cooperating with Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

In wireless sensor network (WSN) applications with multiple gateways, it is key to route location dependent subscriptions efficiently at two levels in the system. At the gateway level, data sinks must not waste the energy of the WSN by injecting subscriptions that are not relevant for the nodes in their coverage area and at WSN level, energy-efficient delivery of subscriptions to target areas is required. In this paper, we propose a mechanism in which (1) the WSN provides an accurate and up-to-date coverage area description to gateways and (2) the wireless sensor network re-uses the collected coverage area information to enable efficient geographical routing of location dependent subscriptions and other messages. The latter has a focus on routing of messages injected from sink nodes to nodes in the region of interest. Our proposed mechanisms are evaluated in simulation

Future wireless applications for a networked city: services for visitors and residents

Future wireless networks will offer near-ubiquitous high-bandwidth communications to mobile users. In addition, the accurate position of users will be known, either through network services or via additional sensing devices such as GPS. These characteristics of future mobile environments will enable the development of location-aware and, more generally, context-sensitive applications. In an attempt to explore the system, application, and user issues associated with the development and deployment of such applications, we began to develop the Lancaster GUIDE system in early 1997, finishing the first phase of the project in 1999. In its entirety, GUIDE comprises a citywide wireless network based on 802.11, a context-sensitive tour guide application with, crucially, significant content, and a set of supporting distributed systems services. Uniquely in the field, GUIDE has been evaluated using members of the general public, and we have gained significant experience in the design of usable context-sensitive applications. We focus on the applications and supporting infrastructure that will form part of GUIDE II, the successor to the GUIDE system. These developments are designed to expand GUIDE outside the tour guide domain, and to provide applications and services for residents of the city of Lancaster, offering a vision of the future mobile environments that will emerge once ubiquitous high-bandwidth coverage is available in most cities

Guidance Notes for Cloud Research Users

There is a rapidly increasing range of research activities which involve the outsourcing of computing and storage resources to public Cloud Service Providers (CSPs), who provide managed and scalable resources virtualised as a single service. For example Amazon Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2) and Simple Storage Service (S3) are two widely adopted open cloud solutions, which aim at providing pooled computing and storage services and charge users according to their weighted resource usage. Other examples include employment of Google Application Engine and Microsoft Azure as development platforms for research applications. Despite a lot of activity and publication on cloud computing, the term itself and the technologies that underpin it are still confusing to many. This note, as one of deliverables of the TeciRes project1, provides guidance to researchers who are potential end users of public CSPs for research activities. The note contains information to researchers on: •The difference between and relation to current research computing models •The considerations that have to be taken into account before moving to cloud-aided research •The issues associated with cloud computing for research that are currently being investigated •Tips and tricks when using cloud computing Readers who are interested in provisioning cloud capabilities for research should also refer to our guidance notes to cloud infrastructure service providers. This guidance notes focuses on technical aspects only. Readers who are interested in non-technical guidance should refer to the briefing paper produced by the “using cloud computing for research” project