448 research outputs found
Disruption-Tolerant Wireless Biomedical Monitoring for Marathon Runners: a Feasibility Study
International audienceOff-the-shelf wireless sensing devices open a wide range of perspectives for tetherless biomedical monitoring. Yet most applications considered to date imply either indoor realtime data streaming or ambulatory data recording. Disruption-tolerant networking is a means to cope with challenging situations where continuous end-to-end connectivity between communicating devices cannot be guaranteed. In this paper we investigate the possibility of using this approach to remotely monitor the cardiac activity of runners during a marathon race, using off-the shelf sensing devices and a limited number of base stations deployed along the marathon route. Preliminary experiments show that such a scenario is indeed viable, although special attention must be paid to balancing the requirements of ECG monitoring with the constraints of episodic, low-rate transmissions
Smart Computing and Sensing Technologies for Animal Welfare: A Systematic Review
Animals play a profoundly important and intricate role in our lives today.
Dogs have been human companions for thousands of years, but they now work
closely with us to assist the disabled, and in combat and search and rescue
situations. Farm animals are a critical part of the global food supply chain,
and there is increasing consumer interest in organically fed and humanely
raised livestock, and how it impacts our health and environmental footprint.
Wild animals are threatened with extinction by human induced factors, and
shrinking and compromised habitat. This review sets the goal to systematically
survey the existing literature in smart computing and sensing technologies for
domestic, farm and wild animal welfare. We use the notion of \emph{animal
welfare} in broad terms, to review the technologies for assessing whether
animals are healthy, free of pain and suffering, and also positively stimulated
in their environment. Also the notion of \emph{smart computing and sensing} is
used in broad terms, to refer to computing and sensing systems that are not
isolated but interconnected with communication networks, and capable of remote
data collection, processing, exchange and analysis. We review smart
technologies for domestic animals, indoor and outdoor animal farming, as well
as animals in the wild and zoos. The findings of this review are expected to
motivate future research and contribute to data, information and communication
management as well as policy for animal welfare
Design of implicit routing protocols for large scale mobile wireless sensor networks
Strathclyde theses - ask staff. Thesis no. : T13189Most developments in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) routing protocols address static network scenarios. Schemes developed to manage mobility in other mobile networking implementations do not translate effectively to WSNs as the system design parameters are markedly different. Thus this research focuses on the issues of mobility and scalability in order to enable the full potential of WSNs to self-organise and co-operate and in so doing, meet the requirements of a rich mix of applications. In the goal of designing efficient, reliable routing protocols for large scale mobile WSN applications, this work lays the foundation by firstly presenting a strong case supported by extensive simulations, for the use of implicit connections. Then two novel implicit routing protocols - Virtual Grid Paging (VGP) and Virtual Zone Registration and Paging (VZRP) - that treat packet routing from node mobility and network scalability viewpoints are designed and analysed. Implicit routing exploits the connection availability and diversity in the underlying network to provide benefits such as fault tolerance, overhead control and improvement in QoS (Quality of Service) such as delay. Analysis and simulation results show that the proposed protocols guarantee significant improvement, delivering a more reliable, more efficient and better network performance compared with alternatives.Most developments in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) routing protocols address static network scenarios. Schemes developed to manage mobility in other mobile networking implementations do not translate effectively to WSNs as the system design parameters are markedly different. Thus this research focuses on the issues of mobility and scalability in order to enable the full potential of WSNs to self-organise and co-operate and in so doing, meet the requirements of a rich mix of applications. In the goal of designing efficient, reliable routing protocols for large scale mobile WSN applications, this work lays the foundation by firstly presenting a strong case supported by extensive simulations, for the use of implicit connections. Then two novel implicit routing protocols - Virtual Grid Paging (VGP) and Virtual Zone Registration and Paging (VZRP) - that treat packet routing from node mobility and network scalability viewpoints are designed and analysed. Implicit routing exploits the connection availability and diversity in the underlying network to provide benefits such as fault tolerance, overhead control and improvement in QoS (Quality of Service) such as delay. Analysis and simulation results show that the proposed protocols guarantee significant improvement, delivering a more reliable, more efficient and better network performance compared with alternatives
Progressively communicating rich telemetry from autonomous underwater vehicles via relays
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution June 2012As analysis of imagery and environmental data plays a greater role in mission construction
and execution, there is an increasing need for autonomous marine vehicles
to transmit this data to the surface. Without access to the data acquired by a
vehicle, surface operators cannot fully understand the state of the mission. Communicating
imagery and high-resolution sensor readings to surface observers remains
a significant challenge – as a result, current telemetry from free-roaming
autonomous marine vehicles remains limited to ‘heartbeat’ status messages, with
minimal scientific data available until after recovery. Increasing the challenge, longdistance
communication may require relaying data across multiple acoustic hops
between vehicles, yet fixed infrastructure is not always appropriate or possible.
In this thesis I present an analysis of the unique considerations facing telemetry
systems for free-roaming Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) used in exploration.
These considerations include high-cost vehicle nodes with persistent storage
and significant computation capabilities, combined with human surface operators
monitoring each node. I then propose mechanisms for interactive, progressive
communication of data across multiple acoustic hops. These mechanisms include
wavelet-based embedded coding methods, and a novel image compression scheme
based on texture classification and synthesis. The specific characteristics of underwater
communication channels, including high latency, intermittent communication,
the lack of instantaneous end-to-end connectivity, and a broadcast medium,
inform these proposals. Human feedback is incorporated by allowing operators to
identify segments of data thatwarrant higher quality refinement, ensuring efficient
use of limited throughput. I then analyze the performance of these mechanisms
relative to current practices.
Finally, I present CAPTURE, a telemetry architecture that builds on this analysis.
CAPTURE draws on advances in compression and delay tolerant networking to
enable progressive transmission of scientific data, including imagery, across multiple acoustic hops. In concert with a physical layer, CAPTURE provides an endto-
end networking solution for communicating science data from autonomous marine
vehicles. Automatically selected imagery, sonar, and time-series sensor data
are progressively transmitted across multiple hops to surface operators. Human
operators can request arbitrarily high-quality refinement of any resource, up to an
error-free reconstruction. The components of this system are then demonstrated
through three field trials in diverse environments on SeaBED, OceanServer and
Bluefin AUVs, each in different software architectures.Thanks to the National Science Foundation, and the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for
their funding of my education and this work
Intrusion tolerant routing with data consensus in wireless sensor networks
Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em
Engenharia InformáticaWireless sensor networks (WSNs) are rapidly emerging and growing as an important
new area in computing and wireless networking research. Applications of WSNs are numerous,
growing, and ranging from small-scale indoor deployment scenarios in homes
and buildings to large scale outdoor deployment settings in natural, industrial, military
and embedded environments. In a WSN, the sensor nodes collect data to monitor physical
conditions or to measure and pre-process physical phenomena, and forward that
data to special computing nodes called Syncnodes or Base Stations (BSs). These nodes
are eventually interconnected, as gateways, to other processing systems running applications.
In large-scale settings, WSNs operate with a large number of sensors – from hundreds
to thousands of sensor nodes – organised as ad-hoc multi-hop or mesh networks, working
without human supervision. Sensor nodes are very limited in computation, storage,
communication and energy resources. These limitations impose particular challenges in
designing large scale reliable and secure WSN services and applications. However, as
sensors are very limited in their resources they tend to be very cheap. Resilient solutions
based on a large number of nodes with replicated capabilities, are possible approaches to
address dependability concerns, namely reliability and security requirements and fault
or intrusion tolerant network services.
This thesis proposes, implements and tests an intrusion tolerant routing service for
large-scale dependable WSNs. The service is based on a tree-structured multi-path routing
algorithm, establishing multi-hop and multiple disjoint routes between sensors and
a group of BSs. The BS nodes work as an overlay, processing intrusion tolerant data consensus
over the routed data. In the proposed solution the multiple routes are discovered,
selected and established by a self-organisation process. The solution allows the WSN
nodes to collect and route data through multiple disjoint routes to the different BSs, with
a preventive intrusion tolerance approach, while handling possible Byzantine attacks and
failures in sensors and BS with a pro-active recovery strategy supported by intrusion and
fault tolerant data-consensus algorithms, performed by the group of Base Stations
Wireless social networks: a survey of recent advances, applications and challenges
With the ubiquitous use of smartphones and other connected pieces of equipment, the number of devices connected to the Internet is exponentially growing. This will test the efficiency of the envisioned 5G network architectures for data acquisition and its storage. It is a common observation that the communication between smart devices is typically influenced by their social relationship. This suggests that the theory of social networks can be leveraged to improve the quality of service for such communication links. In fact, the social networking concepts of centrality and community have been investigated for an efficient realization of novel wireless network architectures. This work provides a comprehensive introduction to social networks and reviews the recent literature on the application of social networks in wireless communications. The potential challenges in communication network design are also highlighted, for a successful implementation of social networking strategies. Finally, some future directions are discussed for the application of social networking strategies to emerging wireless technologies such as non-orthogonal multiple access and visible light communications
A Fog Computing Architecture for Disaster Response Networks
In the aftermath of a disaster, the impacted communication infrastructure is
unable to provide first responders with a reliable medium of communication. Delay
tolerant networks that leverage mobility in the area have been proposed as a scalable
solution that can be deployed quickly. Such disaster response networks (DRNs)
typically have limited capacity due to frequent disconnections in the network, and
under-perform when saturated with data. On the other hand, there is a large amount
of data being produced and consumed due to the recent popularity of smartphones
and the cloud computing paradigm.
Fog Computing brings the cloud computing paradigm to the complex environments
that DRNs operate in. The proposed architecture addresses the key challenges
of ensuring high situational awareness and energy efficiency when such DRNs are saturated
with large amounts of data. Situational awareness is increased by providing
data reliably, and at a high temporal and spatial resolution. A waypoint placement
algorithm places hardware in the disaster struck area such that the aggregate good-put
is maximized. The Raven routing framework allows for risk-averse data delivery
by allowing the user to control the variance of the packet delivery delay. The Pareto
frontier between performance and energy consumption is discovered, and the DRN
is made to operate at these Pareto optimal points. The FuzLoc distributed protocol
enables mobile self-localization in indoor environments. The architecture has
been evaluated in realistic scenarios involving deployments of multiple vehicles and
devices
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