9,372 research outputs found
Hybrid Satellite-Terrestrial Communication Networks for the Maritime Internet of Things: Key Technologies, Opportunities, and Challenges
With the rapid development of marine activities, there has been an increasing
number of maritime mobile terminals, as well as a growing demand for high-speed
and ultra-reliable maritime communications to keep them connected.
Traditionally, the maritime Internet of Things (IoT) is enabled by maritime
satellites. However, satellites are seriously restricted by their high latency
and relatively low data rate. As an alternative, shore & island-based base
stations (BSs) can be built to extend the coverage of terrestrial networks
using fourth-generation (4G), fifth-generation (5G), and beyond 5G services.
Unmanned aerial vehicles can also be exploited to serve as aerial maritime BSs.
Despite of all these approaches, there are still open issues for an efficient
maritime communication network (MCN). For example, due to the complicated
electromagnetic propagation environment, the limited geometrically available BS
sites, and rigorous service demands from mission-critical applications,
conventional communication and networking theories and methods should be
tailored for maritime scenarios. Towards this end, we provide a survey on the
demand for maritime communications, the state-of-the-art MCNs, and key
technologies for enhancing transmission efficiency, extending network coverage,
and provisioning maritime-specific services. Future challenges in developing an
environment-aware, service-driven, and integrated satellite-air-ground MCN to
be smart enough to utilize external auxiliary information, e.g., sea state and
atmosphere conditions, are also discussed
Open-Source Telemedicine Platform for Wireless Medical Video Communication
An m-health system for real-time wireless communication of medical video based on open-source software is presented. The objective is to deliver a low-cost telemedicine platform which will allow for reliable remote diagnosis m-health applications such as emergency incidents, mass population screening, and medical education purposes. The performance of the proposed system is demonstrated using five atherosclerotic plaque ultrasound videos. The videos are encoded at the clinically acquired resolution, in addition to lower, QCIF, and CIF resolutions, at different bitrates, and four different encoding structures. Commercially available wireless local area network (WLAN) and 3.5G high-speed packet access (HSPA) wireless channels are used to validate the developed platform. Objective video quality assessment is based on PSNR ratings, following calibration using the variable frame delay (VFD) algorithm that removes temporal mismatch between original and received videos. Clinical evaluation is based on atherosclerotic plaque ultrasound video assessment protocol. Experimental results show that adequate diagnostic quality wireless medical video communications are realized using the designed telemedicine platform. HSPA cellular networks provide for ultrasound video transmission at the acquired resolution, while VFD algorithm utilization bridges objective and subjective ratings
Ultra-Reliable Communication in 5G Wireless Systems
Wireless 5G systems will not only be "4G, but faster". One of the novel
features discussed in relation to 5G is Ultra-Reliable Communication (URC), an
operation mode not present in today's wireless systems. URC refers to provision
of certain level of communication service almost 100 % of the time. Example URC
applications include reliable cloud connectivity, critical connections for
industrial automation and reliable wireless coordination among vehicles. This
paper puts forward a systematic view on URC in 5G wireless systems. It starts
by analyzing the fundamental mechanisms that constitute a wireless connection
and concludes that one of the key steps towards enabling URC is revision of the
methods for encoding control information (metadata) and data. It introduces the
key concept of Reliable Service Composition, where a service is designed to
adapt its requirements to the level of reliability that can be attained. The
problem of URC is analyzed across two different dimensions. The first dimension
is the type of URC problem that is defined based on the time frame used to
measure the reliability of the packet transmission. Two types of URC problems
are identified: long-term URC (URC-L) and short-term URC (URC-S). The second
dimension is represented by the type of reliability impairment that can affect
the communication reliability in a given scenario. The main objective of this
paper is to create the context for defining and solving the new engineering
problems posed by URC in 5G.Comment: To be presented at the 1st International Conference on 5G for
Ubiquitous Connectivit
- …