Open-Source, Open-Architecture SoftwarePlatform for Plug-InElectric Vehicle SmartCharging in California

This interdisciplinary eXtensible Building Operating System–Vehicles project focuses on controlling plug-in electric vehicle charging at residential and small commercial settings using a novel and flexible open-source, open-architecture charge communication and control platform. The platform provides smart charging functionalities and benefits to the utility, homes, and businesses.This project investigates four important areas of vehicle-grid integration research, integrating technical as well as social and behavioral dimensions: smart charging user needs assessment, advanced load control platform development and testing, smart charging impacts, benefits to the power grid, and smart charging ratepayer benefits

Advanced Metering and Demand Response communication performance in Zigbee based HANs

Using IEEE 802.15.4 and Zigbee for home area networks (HANs) in the Smart Grid is becoming an increasingly prominent topic in the research area. As the standard designed for low data rate and low cost wireless personal area networks, IEEE 802.15.4 is widely employed in the construction of home sensor networks to assist with real-time environment information. For the purposes of Smart Grid the Zigbee Alliance has defined new Smart Energy Profile Protocol that leverages the existing TCP and HTTP protocols. In this paper, we provide an overview of the Smart Grid's Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) and Demand Response (DR) functionalities, and the communication requirement they pose for the new SEP protocol. The discussion is followed by an evaluation of the theoretical performance bounds of the new architecture based on a analytical model. We conclude, by extending the model to account for WiFi interference which is expected to be present in home and office environments. © 2013 IEEE

A Priority-based Fair Queuing (PFQ) Model for Wireless Healthcare System

Healthcare is a very active research area, primarily due to the increase in the elderly population that leads to increasing number of emergency situations that require urgent actions. In recent years some of wireless networked medical devices were equipped with different sensors to measure and report on vital signs of patient remotely. The most important sensors are Heart Beat Rate (ECG), Pressure and Glucose sensors. However, the strict requirements and real-time nature of medical applications dictate the extreme importance and need for appropriate Quality of Service (QoS), fast and accurate delivery of a patient’s measurements in reliable e-Health ecosystem. As the elderly age and older adult population is increasing (65 years and above) due to the advancement in medicine and medical care in the last two decades; high QoS and reliable e-health ecosystem has become a major challenge in Healthcare especially for patients who require continuous monitoring and attention. Nevertheless, predictions have indicated that elderly population will be approximately 2 billion in developing countries by 2050 where availability of medical staff shall be unable to cope with this growth and emergency cases that need immediate intervention. On the other side, limitations in communication networks capacity, congestions and the humongous increase of devices, applications and IOT using the available communication networks add extra layer of challenges on E-health ecosystem such as time constraints, quality of measurements and signals reaching healthcare centres. Hence this research has tackled the delay and jitter parameters in E-health M2M wireless communication and succeeded in reducing them in comparison to current available models. The novelty of this research has succeeded in developing a new Priority Queuing model ‘’Priority Based-Fair Queuing’’ (PFQ) where a new priority level and concept of ‘’Patient’s Health Record’’ (PHR) has been developed and integrated with the Priority Parameters (PP) values of each sensor to add a second level of priority. The results and data analysis performed on the PFQ model under different scenarios simulating real M2M E-health environment have revealed that the PFQ has outperformed the results obtained from simulating the widely used current models such as First in First Out (FIFO) and Weight Fair Queuing (WFQ). PFQ model has improved transmission of ECG sensor data by decreasing delay and jitter in emergency cases by 83.32% and 75.88% respectively in comparison to FIFO and 46.65% and 60.13% with respect to WFQ model. Similarly, in pressure sensor the improvements were 82.41% and 71.5% and 68.43% and 73.36% in comparison to FIFO and WFQ respectively. Data transmission were also improved in the Glucose sensor by 80.85% and 64.7% and 92.1% and 83.17% in comparison to FIFO and WFQ respectively. However, non-emergency cases data transmission using PFQ model was negatively impacted and scored higher rates than FIFO and WFQ since PFQ tends to give higher priority to emergency cases. Thus, a derivative from the PFQ model has been developed to create a new version namely “Priority Based-Fair Queuing-Tolerated Delay” (PFQ-TD) to balance the data transmission between emergency and non-emergency cases where tolerated delay in emergency cases has been considered. PFQ-TD has succeeded in balancing fairly this issue and reducing the total average delay and jitter of emergency and non-emergency cases in all sensors and keep them within the acceptable allowable standards. PFQ-TD has improved the overall average delay and jitter in emergency and non-emergency cases among all sensors by 41% and 84% respectively in comparison to PFQ model

Meter Scoping Study

This report presents a summary of metering technology and cost information from past studies in an attempt to identify key barriers to more widespread implementation

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

Spectrum Sharing and Interference in Smart Homes

Internet of Things networks using Zigbee are very popular in smart homes. However, Zigbee networks are vulnerable to the interference of Wi-Fi networks because they share the same 2.4 GHz Industrial, Scientific, and Medical radio frequency band. Studies have shown that weaker Zigbee signals might be significantly interfered by stronger Wi-Fi signals. This type of interference may cause severe problems when these types of networks coexist in an indoor environment such as in a smart home. In this thesis, the performance of a Zigbee network with and without the presence of a Wi-Fi network has been evaluated in an apartment-based indoor environment mimicking a smart home. The experimental results are obtained and analyzed in terms of received signal strength indicator, packet delay, packet drop rate, and loopback throughput by changing operating channels, distances between Zigbee and Wi-Fi devices, transmission intervals of Zigbee packets, Zigbee transmit power, and Zigbee packet lengths

The Street and Organization Studies

Work and organization increasingly happen in transit. People meet in coffee shops and write emails from their phones while waiting for buses or sitting outdoors on benches. Business meetings are held in airports and projects are run from laptops during travel. We take the street as a place where organizing in transit accumulates. While the organization studies field has been catching up with various related phenomena, including co-working, digital nomadism, and mobile and online communities, we argue that it has overlooked what has historically been the most important site for organizational activity outside of organizations. The street has been both location and inspiration for organizing, whether political, social, or governmental. It is a space of both planning and spontaneity, of silent co-existence and explicit conflict, and therefore offers abundant empirical and methodological opportunities. It is surprising that the street and the experiences it brings with it have remained largely outside the scope of organization studies. We suggest that organization scholars take to the street, and offer recommendations asto how to do so. Specifically, we explore the tensionsthat become apparent when organizing happens in and through the street