646 research outputs found
NILM techniques for intelligent home energy management and ambient assisted living: a review
The ongoing deployment of smart meters and different commercial devices has made electricity disaggregation feasible in buildings and households, based on a single measure of the current and, sometimes, of the voltage. Energy disaggregation is intended to separate the total power consumption into specific appliance loads, which can be achieved by applying Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring (NILM) techniques with a minimum invasion of privacy. NILM techniques are becoming more and more widespread in recent years, as a consequence of the interest companies and consumers have in efficient energy consumption and management. This work presents a detailed review of NILM methods, focusing particularly on recent proposals and their applications, particularly in the areas of Home Energy Management Systems (HEMS) and Ambient Assisted Living (AAL), where the ability to determine the on/off status of certain devices can provide key information for making further decisions. As well as complementing previous reviews on the NILM field and providing a discussion of the applications of NILM in HEMS and AAL, this paper provides guidelines for future research in these topics.Agência financiadora:
Programa Operacional Portugal 2020 and Programa Operacional Regional do Algarve
01/SAICT/2018/39578
Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia through IDMEC, under LAETA:
SFRH/BSAB/142998/2018
SFRH/BSAB/142997/2018
UID/EMS/50022/2019
Junta de Comunidades de Castilla-La-Mancha, Spain:
SBPLY/17/180501/000392
Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness (SOC-PLC project):
TEC2015-64835-C3-2-R MINECO/FEDERinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
Toward a fully cloudified mobile network infrastructure
Cloud computing enables the on-demand delivery of resources for a multitude of services and gives the opportunity for small agile companies to compete with large industries. In the telco world, cloud computing is currently mostly used by mobile network operators (MNO) for hosting non-critical support services and selling cloud services such as applications and data storage. MNOs are investigating the use of cloud computing to deliver key telecommunication services in the access and core networks. Without this, MNOs lose the opportunities of both combining this with over-the-top (OTT) and value-added services to their fundamental service offerings and leveraging cost-effective commodity hardware. Being able to leverage cloud computing technology effectively for the telco world is the focus of mobile cloud networking (MCN). This paper presents the key results of MCN integrated project that includes its architecture advancements, prototype implementation, and evaluation. Results show the efficiency and the simplicity that a MNO can deploy and manage the complete service lifecycle of fully cloudified, composed services that combine OTT/IT- and mobile-network-based services running on commodity hardware. The extensive performance evaluation of MCN using two key proof-of-concept scenarios that compose together many services to deliver novel converged elastic, on-demand mobile-based but innovative OTT services proves the feasibility of such fully virtualized deployments. Results show that it is beneficial to extend cloud computing to telco usage and run fully cloudified mobile-network-based systems with clear advantages and new service opportunities for MNOs and end-users
Air Force Institute of Technology Research Report 2019
This Research Report presents the FY19 research statistics and contributions of the Graduate School of Engineering and Management (EN) at AFIT. AFIT research interests and faculty expertise cover a broad spectrum of technical areas related to USAF needs, as reflected by the range of topics addressed in the faculty and student publications listed in this report. In most cases, the research work reported herein is directly sponsored by one or more USAF or DOD agencies. AFIT welcomes the opportunity to conduct research on additional topics of interest to the USAF, DOD, and other federal organizations when adequate manpower and financial resources are available and/or provided by a sponsor. In addition, AFIT provides research collaboration and technology transfer benefits to the public through Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs). Interested individuals may discuss ideas for new research collaborations, potential CRADAs, or research proposals with individual faculty using the contact information in this document
Securing Wireless Communications of the Internet of Things from the Physical Layer, An Overview
The security of the Internet of Things (IoT) is receiving considerable
interest as the low power constraints and complexity features of many IoT
devices are limiting the use of conventional cryptographic techniques. This
article provides an overview of recent research efforts on alternative
approaches for securing IoT wireless communications at the physical layer,
specifically the key topics of key generation and physical layer encryption.
These schemes can be implemented and are lightweight, and thus offer practical
solutions for providing effective IoT wireless security. Future research to
make IoT-based physical layer security more robust and pervasive is also
covered
Exploring Computing Continuum in IoT Systems: Sensing, Communicating and Processing at the Network Edge
As Internet of Things (IoT), originally comprising of only a few simple sensing devices, reaches 34 billion units by the end of 2020, they cannot be defined as merely monitoring sensors anymore.
IoT capabilities have been improved in recent years as relatively large internal computation and storage capacity are becoming a commodity.
In the early days of IoT, processing and storage were typically performed in cloud.
New IoT architectures are able to perform complex tasks directly on-device, thus enabling the concept of an extended computational continuum.
Real-time critical scenarios e.g. autonomous vehicles sensing, area surveying or disaster rescue and recovery require all the actors involved to be coordinated and collaborate without human interaction to a common goal, sharing data and resources, even in intermittent networks covered areas.
This poses new problems in distributed systems, resource management, device orchestration,as well as data processing.
This work proposes a new orchestration and communication framework, namely CContinuum, designed to manage resources in heterogeneous IoT architectures across multiple application scenarios. This work focuses on two key sustainability macroscenarios: (a) environmental sensing and awareness, and (b) electric mobility support.
In the first case a mechanism to measure air quality over a long period of time for different applications at global scale (3 continents 4 countries) is introduced. The system has been developed in-house from the sensor design to the mist-computing operations performed by the nodes.
In the second scenario, a technique to transmit large amounts of fine-time granularity battery data from a moving vehicle to a control center is proposed jointly with the ability of allocating tasks on demand within the computing continuum
Fall Prediction and Prevention Systems: Recent Trends, Challenges, and Future Research Directions.
Fall prediction is a multifaceted problem that involves complex interactions between physiological, behavioral, and environmental factors. Existing fall detection and prediction systems mainly focus on physiological factors such as gait, vision, and cognition, and do not address the multifactorial nature of falls. In addition, these systems lack efficient user interfaces and feedback for preventing future falls. Recent advances in internet of things (IoT) and mobile technologies offer ample opportunities for integrating contextual information about patient behavior and environment along with physiological health data for predicting falls. This article reviews the state-of-the-art in fall detection and prediction systems. It also describes the challenges, limitations, and future directions in the design and implementation of effective fall prediction and prevention systems
Portuguese SKA white book
Sem resumo disponível.publishe
Performance of management solutions and cooperation approaches for vehicular delay-tolerant networks
A wide range of daily-life applications supported by vehicular networks attracted the interest,
not only from the research community, but also from governments and the automotive
industry. For example, they can be used to enable services that assist drivers on the roads (e.g.,
road safety, traffic monitoring), to spread commercial and entertainment contents (e.g., publicity),
or to enable communications on remote or rural regions where it is not possible to have
a common network infrastructure. Nonetheless, the unique properties of vehicular networks
raise several challenges that greatly impact the deployment of these networks.
Most of the challenges faced by vehicular networks arise from the highly dynamic network
topology, which leads to short and sporadic contact opportunities, disruption, variable
node density, and intermittent connectivity. This situation makes data dissemination an interesting
research topic within the vehicular networking area, which is addressed by this study.
The work described along this thesis is motivated by the need to propose new solutions to deal
with data dissemination problems in vehicular networking focusing on vehicular delay-tolerant
networks (VDTNs).
To guarantee the success of data dissemination in vehicular networks scenarios it is important
to ensure that network nodes cooperate with each other. However, it is not possible
to ensure a fully cooperative scenario. This situation makes vehicular networks suitable to the
presence of selfish and misbehavior nodes, which may result in a significant decrease of the
overall network performance. Thus, cooperative nodes may suffer from the overwhelming load
of services from other nodes, which comprises their performance.
Trying to solve some of these problems, this thesis presents several proposals and studies
on the impact of cooperation, monitoring, and management strategies on the network performance
of the VDTN architecture. The main goal of these proposals is to enhance the network
performance. In particular, cooperation and management approaches are exploited to improve
and optimize the use of network resources. It is demonstrated the performance gains attainable
in a VDTN through both types of approaches, not only in terms of bundle delivery probability,
but also in terms of wasted resources.
The results and achievements observed on this research work are intended to contribute
to the advance of the state-of-the-art on methods and strategies for overcome the challenges
that arise from the unique characteristics and conceptual design of vehicular networks.O vasto número de aplicações e cenários suportados pelas redes veiculares faz com que
estas atraiam o interesse não só da comunidade científica, mas também dos governos e da indústria
automóvel. A título de exemplo, estas podem ser usadas para a implementação de serviços
e aplicações que podem ajudar os condutores dos veículos a tomar decisões nas estradas, para
a disseminação de conteúdos publicitários, ou ainda, para permitir que existam comunicações
em zonas rurais ou remotas onde não é possível ter uma infraestrutura de rede convencional.
Contudo, as propriedades únicas das redes veiculares fazem com que seja necessário ultrapassar
um conjunto de desafios que têm grande impacto na sua aplicabilidade.
A maioria dos desafios que as redes veiculares enfrentam advêm da grande mobilidade dos
veículos e da topologia de rede que está em constante mutação. Esta situação faz com que este
tipo de rede seja suscetível de disrupção, que as oportunidades de contacto sejam escassas e de
curta duração, e que a ligação seja intermitente. Fruto destas adversidades, a disseminação dos
dados torna-se um tópico de investigação bastante promissor na área das redes veiculares e por
esta mesma razão é abordada neste trabalho de investigação. O trabalho descrito nesta tese é
motivado pela necessidade de propor novas abordagens para lidar com os problemas inerentes
à disseminação dos dados em ambientes veiculares.
Para garantir o sucesso da disseminação dos dados em ambientes veiculares é importante
que este tipo de redes garanta a cooperação entre os nós da rede. Contudo, neste tipo de ambientes
não é possível garantir um cenário totalmente cooperativo. Este cenário faz com que
as redes veiculares sejam suscetíveis à presença de nós não cooperativos que comprometem
seriamente o desempenho global da rede. Por outro lado, os nós cooperativos podem ver o seu
desempenho comprometido por causa da sobrecarga de serviços que poderão suportar.
Para tentar resolver alguns destes problemas, esta tese apresenta várias propostas e estudos
sobre o impacto de estratégias de cooperação, monitorização e gestão de rede no desempenho
das redes veiculares com ligações intermitentes (Vehicular Delay-Tolerant Networks
- VDTNs). O objetivo das propostas apresentadas nesta tese é melhorar o desempenho global
da rede. Em particular, as estratégias de cooperação e gestão de rede são exploradas para
melhorar e optimizar o uso dos recursos da rede. Ficou demonstrado que o uso deste tipo de
estratégias e metodologias contribui para um aumento significativo do desempenho da rede,
não só em termos de agregados de pacotes (“bundles”) entregues, mas também na diminuição
do volume de recursos desperdiçados.
Os resultados observados neste trabalho procuram contribuir para o avanço do estado
da arte em métodos e estratégias que visam ultrapassar alguns dos desafios que advêm das
propriedades e desenho conceptual das redes veiculares
220902
Low-power wide-area networks are extending beyond the conventional terrestrial domain. Coastal zones, rivers, wetlands, among others, are nowadays common deployment settings for Internet-of-Things nodes where communication technologies such as LoRa are becoming popular. In this article, we investigate large-scale fading dynamics of LoRa line-of-sight links deployed over an estuary with characteristic intertidal zones, considering both shore-to-shore and shore-to-vessel communications. We propose a novel methodology for path loss prediction which captures i) spatial, ii) temporal and iii) physical features of the RF signal interaction with the environmental dynamics, integrating those features into the two-ray propagation model. To this purpose, we resort to precise hydrodynamic modeling of the estuary, including the specific terrain profile (bathymetry) at the reflection point. These aspects are key to accounting for a reflecting surface of varying altitude and permittivity as a function of the tide. Experimental measurements using LoRa devices operating in the 868~MHz band show major trends on the received signal power in agreement with the methodology's predictions.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
Analysis of Android Device-Based Solutions for Fall Detection
Falls are a major cause of health and psychological problems as well as
hospitalization costs among older adults. Thus, the investigation on automatic Fall
Detection Systems (FDSs) has received special attention from the research community
during the last decade. In this area, the widespread popularity, decreasing price, computing
capabilities, built-in sensors and multiplicity of wireless interfaces of Android-based
devices (especially smartphones) have fostered the adoption of this technology to deploy
wearable and inexpensive architectures for fall detection. This paper presents a critical and
thorough analysis of those existing fall detection systems that are based on Android devices.
The review systematically classifies and compares the proposals of the literature taking into
account different criteria such as the system architecture, the employed sensors, the detection
algorithm or the response in case of a fall alarms. The study emphasizes the analysis of the
evaluation methods that are employed to assess the effectiveness of the detection process.
The review reveals the complete lack of a reference framework to validate and compare the
proposals. In addition, the study also shows that most research works do not evaluate the
actual applicability of the Android devices (with limited battery and computing resources) to
fall detection solutions.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TEC2013-42711-
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