Architecture and communication protocol to monitor and control water quality and irrigation in agricultural environments

[ES] La introducción de soluciones tecnológicas en la agricultura permite reducir el uso de recursos y aumentar la producción de los cultivos. Además, la calidad del agua de regadío se puede monitorizar para asegurar la seguridad de los productos para el consumo humano. Sin embargo, la localización remota de la mayoría de los campos presenta un problema para proveer de cobertura inalámbrica a los nodos sensores y actuadores desplegados en los campos y los canales de agua para regadío. El trabajo presentado en esta tesis aborda el problema de habilitar la comunicación inalámbrica entre los dispositivos electrónicos desplegados para la monitorización de la calidad del agua y el campo a través de un protocolo de comunicación y arquitectura heterogéneos. La primera parte de esta tesis introduce los sistemas de agricultura de precisión (PA) y la importancia de la monitorización de la calidad del agua y el campo. Asimismo, las tecnologías que permiten la comunicación inalámbrica en sistemas PA y el uso de soluciones alternativas como el internet de las cosas bajo tierra (IoUT) y los vehículos aéreos no tripulados (UAV) se introducen también. Después, se realiza un análisis en profundidad del estado del arte respecto a los sensores para la monitorización del agua, el campo y las condiciones meteorológicas, así como sobre las tecnologías inalámbricas más empleadas en PA. Además, las tendencias actuales y los desafíos de los sistemas de internet de las cosas (IoT) para regadío, incluyendo las soluciones alternativas introducidas anteriormente, han sido abordados en detalle. A continuación, se presenta la arquitectura propuesta para el sistema, la cual incluye las áreas de interés para las actividades monitorización que incluye las áreas de los canales y el campo. A su vez, la descripción y los algoritmos de operación de los nodos sensores contemplados para cada área son proporcionados. El siguiente capítulo detalla el protocolo de comunicación heterogéneo propuesto, incluyendo los mensajes y alertas del sistema. Adicionalmente, se presenta una nueva topología de árbol para redes híbridas LoRa/WiFi multisalto. Las funcionalidades específicas adicionales concebidas para la arquitectura propuesta están descritas en el siguiente capítulo. Éstas incluyen algoritmos de agregación de datos para la topología propuesta, un esquema de las amenazas de seguridad para los sistemas PA, algoritmos de ahorro de energía y tolerancia a fallos, comunicación bajo tierra para IoUT y el uso de drones para adquisición de datos. Después, los resultados de las simulaciones para las soluciones propuestas anteriormente son presentados. Finalmente, se tratan las pruebas realizadas en entornos reales para el protocolo heterogéneo presentado, las diferentes estrategias de despliegue de los nodos empleados, el consumo energético y la función de cuantificación de fruta. Estas pruebas demuestran la validez de la arquitectura y protocolo de comunicación heterogéneos que se han propuesto.[CA] La introducció de solucions tecnològiques en l'agricultura permet reduir l'ús de recursos i augmentar la producció dels cultius. A més, la qualitat de l'aigua de regadiu es pot monitoritzar per assegurar la qualitat dels productes per al consum humà. No obstant això, la localització remota de la majoria dels camps presenta un problema per a proveir de cobertura sense fils als nodes sensors i actuadors desplegats als camps i els canals d'aigua per a regadiu. El treball presentat en aquesta tesi tracta el problema d'habilitar la comunicació sense fils entre els dispositius electrònics desplegats per a la monitorització de la qualitat de l'aigua i el camp a través d'un protocol de comunicació i arquitectura heterogenis. La primera part d'aquesta tesi introdueix els sistemes d'agricultura de precisió (PA) i la importància de la monitorització de la qualitat de l'aigua i el camp. Així mateix, també s'introdueixen les tecnologies que permeten la comunicació sense fils en sistemes PA i l'ús de solucions alternatives com l'Internet de les coses sota terra (IoUT) i els vehicles aeris no tripulats (UAV). Després, es realitza una anàlisi en profunditat de l'estat de l'art respecte als sensors per a la monitorització de l'aigua, el camp i les condicions meteorològiques, així com sobre les tecnologies sense fils més emprades en PA. S'aborden les tendències actuals i els reptes dels sistemes d'internet de les coses (IoT) per a regadiu, incloent les solucions alternatives introduïdes anteriorment. A continuació, es presenta l'arquitectura proposada per al sistema, on s'inclouen les àrees d'interès per a les activitats monitorització en els canals i el camp. Finalment, es proporciona la descripció i els algoritmes d'operació dels nodes sensors contemplats per a cada àrea. El següent capítol detalla el protocol de comunicació heterogeni proposat, així como el disseny del missatges i alertes que el sistema proposa. A més, es presenta una nova topologia d'arbre per a xarxes híbrides Lora/WiFi multi-salt. Les funcionalitats específiques addicionals concebudes per l'arquitectura proposada estan descrites en el següent capítol. Aquestes inclouen algoritmes d'agregació de dades per a la topologia proposta, un esquema de les alertes de seguretat per als sistemes PA, algoritmes d'estalvi d'energia i tolerància a fallades, comunicació per a IoUT i l'ús de drons per a adquisició de dades. Després, es presenten els resultats de les simulacions per a les solucions proposades. Finalment, es duen a terme les proves en entorns reals per al protocol heterogeni dissenyat. A més s'expliquen les diferents estratègies de desplegament dels nodes empleats, el consum energètic, així com, la funció de quantificació de fruita. Els resultats d'aquetes proves demostren la validesa de l'arquitectura i protocol de comunicació heterogenis propost en aquesta tesi.[EN] The introduction of technological solutions in agriculture allows reducing the use of resources and increasing the production of the crops. Furthermore, the quality of the water for irrigation can be monitored to ensure the safety of the produce for human consumption. However, the remote location of most fields presents a problem for providing wireless coverage to the sensing nodes and actuators deployed on the fields and the irrigation water canals. The work presented in this thesis addresses the problem of enabling wireless communication among the electronic devices deployed for water quality and field monitoring through a heterogeneous communication protocol and architecture. The first part of the dissertation introduces Precision Agriculture (PA) systems and the importance of water quality and field monitoring. In addition, the technologies that enable wireless communication in PA systems and the use of alternative solutions such as Internet of Underground Things (IoUT) and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) are introduced as well. Then, an in-depth analysis on the state of the art regarding the sensors for water, field and meteorology monitoring and the most utilized wireless technologies in PA is performed. Furthermore, the current trends and challenges for Internet of Things (IoT) irrigation systems, including the alternate solutions previously introduced, have been discussed in detail. Then, the architecture for the proposed system is presented, which includes the areas of interest for the monitoring activities comprised of the canal and field areas. Moreover, the description and operation algorithms of the sensor nodes contemplated for each area is provided. The next chapter details the proposed heterogeneous communication protocol including the messages and alerts of the system. Additionally, a new tree topology for hybrid LoRa/WiFi multi-hop networks is presented. The specific additional functionalities intended for the proposed architecture are described in the following chapter. It includes data aggregation algorithms for the proposed topology, an overview on the security threats of PA systems, energy-saving and fault-tolerance algorithms, underground communication for IoUT, and the use of drones for data acquisition. Then, the simulation results for the solutions previously proposed are presented. Finally, the tests performed in real environments for the presented heterogeneous protocol, the different deployment strategies for the utilized nodes, the energy consumption, and a functionality for fruit quantification are discussed. These tests demonstrate the validity of the proposed heterogeneous architecture and communication protocol.García García, L. (2021). Architecture and communication protocol to monitor and control water quality and irrigation in agricultural environments [Tesis doctoral]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/17422

A Framework of Fog Computing: Architecture, Challenges and Optimization

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from IEEE via the DOI in this record.Fog Computing (FC) is an emerging distributed computing platform aimed at bringing computation close to its data sources, which can reduce the latency and cost of delivering data to a remote cloud. This feature and related advantages are desirable for many Internet-of-Things applications, especially latency sensitive and mission intensive services. With comparisons to other computing technologies, the definition and architecture of FC are presented in this article. The framework of resource allocation for latency reduction combined with reliability, fault tolerance, privacy, and underlying optimization problems are also discussed. We then investigate an application scenario and conduct resource optimization by formulating the optimization problem and solving it via a Genetic Algorithm. The resulting analysis generates some important insights on the scalability of FC systems.This work was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council [grant number EP/P020224/1] and the EU FP7 QUICK project under Grant Agreement No. PIRSES-GA-2013-612652. Yang Liu was supported by the Chinese Research Council

Wireless Sensor Networks

The aim of this book is to present few important issues of WSNs, from the application, design and technology points of view. The book highlights power efficient design issues related to wireless sensor networks, the existing WSN applications, and discusses the research efforts being undertaken in this field which put the reader in good pace to be able to understand more advanced research and make a contribution in this field for themselves. It is believed that this book serves as a comprehensive reference for graduate and undergraduate senior students who seek to learn latest development in wireless sensor networks

Marine Vessel Inspection as a Novel Field for Service Robotics: A Contribution to Systems, Control Methods and Semantic Perception Algorithms.

This cumulative thesis introduces a novel field for service robotics: the inspection of marine vessels using mobile inspection robots. In this thesis, three scientific contributions are provided and experimentally verified in the field of marine inspection, but are not limited to this type of application. The inspection scenario is merely a golden thread to combine the cumulative scientific results presented in this thesis. The first contribution is an adaptive, proprioceptive control approach for hybrid leg-wheel robots, such as the robot ASGUARD described in this thesis. The robot is able to deal with rough terrain and stairs, due to the control concept introduced in this thesis. The proposed system is a suitable platform to move inside the cargo holds of bulk carriers and to deliver visual data from inside the hold. Additionally, the proposed system also has stair climbing abilities, allowing the system to move between different decks. The robot adapts its gait pattern dynamically based on proprioceptive data received from the joint motors and based on the pitch and tilt angle of the robot's body during locomotion. The second major contribution of the thesis is an independent ship inspection system, consisting of a magnetic wall climbing robot for bulkhead inspection, a particle filter based localization method, and a spatial content management system (SCMS) for spatial inspection data representation and organization. The system described in this work was evaluated in several laboratory experiments and field trials on two different marine vessels in close collaboration with ship surveyors. The third scientific contribution of the thesis is a novel approach to structural classification using semantic perception approaches. By these methods, a structured environment can be semantically annotated, based on the spatial relationships between spatial entities and spatial features. This method was verified in the domain of indoor perception (logistics and household environment), for soil sample classification, and for the classification of the structural parts of a marine vessel. The proposed method allows the description of the structural parts of a cargo hold in order to localize the inspection robot or any detected damage. The algorithms proposed in this thesis are based on unorganized 3D point clouds, generated by a LIDAR within a ship's cargo hold. Two different semantic perception methods are proposed in this thesis. One approach is based on probabilistic constraint networks; the second approach is based on Fuzzy Description Logic and spatial reasoning using a spatial ontology about the environment

Lightweight Information Security Methods for Indoor Wireless Body Area Networks: from Channel Modeling to Secret Key Extraction

A group of wirelessly communicating sensors that are placed inside, on or around a human body constitute a Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN). Continuous monitoring of vital signs through WBANs have a potential to revolutionize current health care services by reducing the cost, improving accessibility, and facilitating medical diagnosis. However, sensitive nature of personal health data requires WBANs to integrate appropriate security methods and practices. As limited hardware resources make conventional security measures inadequate in a WBAN context, this work is focused on alternative techniques based on Wireless Physical Layer Security (WPLS). More specifically, we introduce a symbiosis of WPLS and Compressed Sensing to achieve security at the time of sampling. We successfully show how the proposed framework can be applied to electrocardiography data saving significant computational and memory resources. In the scenario when a WBAN Access Point can make use of diversity methods in the form of Switch-and-Stay Combining, we demonstrate that output Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) and WPLS key extraction rate are optimized at different switching thresholds. Thus, the highest key rate may result in significant loss of output SNR. In addition, we also show that the past WBAN off-body channel models are insufficient when the user exhibits dynamic behavior. We propose a novel Rician based off-body channel model that can naturally reflect body motion by randomizing Rician factor K and considering small and large scale fading to be related. Another part of our investigation provides implications of user\u27s dynamic behavior on shared secret generation. In particular, we reveal that body shadowing causes negative correlation of the channel exposing legitimate participants to a security threat. This threat is analyzed from a qualitative and quantitative perspective of a practical secret key extraction algorithm

Standardization for intelligent detection and autonomous operation of non-structured hardware, and its application on railcar brake release operation

textThis thesis introduces a standard framework for evaluating and planning for desired autonomous (or semi-autonomous) operations, then applies the framework, in detail, to the task of automating emergency brake release before rail-car decoupling. A significant hurdle to be accounted for is the lack of standardization of much of the hardware of interest in industry. Non-standardized rail car components must be formally structured as fully as possible to improve the reliability of the robotic automation. This brake release task requires either pushing or pulling a “bleed rod” that protrudes from the side of each rail car. The requirements for each step of the evaluation and planning process will be laid out in this thesis, as an example of how it should be applied to future automation tasks.Mechanical Engineerin

Average Load Distance (ALD) radio communication model for wireless sensor networks

The lifetime of network is one of the most critical issues that have to be considered in the application of wireless sensor networks. The network nodes are battery powered and remain operational as long as they can transmit the sensed data to the processing (sink) node. The main energy consumption of sensor node can be attributed to the task of data transmission to sink node or cluster head. Hence, conserving energy in transmitting data shall maximize functional life of the wireless networks. In this paper we proposed a computationally efficient Average Load Distance (ALD) communication model for forwarding data from sensor to the cluster head. Experiment results indicate that the proposed model can be up to 88% more efficient over direct mode of communication, in respect of per-round maximum energy consumption. An application study shows that ALD can save up to 89% of wireless sensor networks operational cost when compared to direct mode transmission

Smart Monitoring and Control in the Future Internet of Things

The Internet of Things (IoT) and related technologies have the promise of realizing pervasive and smart applications which, in turn, have the potential of improving the quality of life of people living in a connected world. According to the IoT vision, all things can cooperate amongst themselves and be managed from anywhere via the Internet, allowing tight integration between the physical and cyber worlds and thus improving efficiency, promoting usability, and opening up new application opportunities. Nowadays, IoT technologies have successfully been exploited in several domains, providing both social and economic benefits. The realization of the full potential of the next generation of the Internet of Things still needs further research efforts concerning, for instance, the identification of new architectures, methodologies, and infrastructures dealing with distributed and decentralized IoT systems; the integration of IoT with cognitive and social capabilities; the enhancement of the sensing–analysis–control cycle; the integration of consciousness and awareness in IoT environments; and the design of new algorithms and techniques for managing IoT big data. This Special Issue is devoted to advancements in technologies, methodologies, and applications for IoT, together with emerging standards and research topics which would lead to realization of the future Internet of Things