Power Systems Monitoring and Control using Telecom Network Management Standards

Historically, different solutions have been developed for power systems control and telecommunications network management environments. The former was characterized by proprietary solutions, while the latter has been involved for years in a strong standardization process guided by criteria of openness. Today, power systems control standardization is in progress, but it is at an early stage compared to the telecommunications management area, especially in terms of information modeling. Today, control equipment tends to exhibit more computational power, and communication lines have increased their performance. These trends hint at some conceptual convergence between power systems and telecommunications networks from a management perspective. This convergence leads us to suggest the application of well-established telecommunications management standards for power systems control. This paper shows that this is a real medium-to-long term possibility

BIBS: A Lecture Webcasting System

The Berkeley Internet Broadcasting System (BIBS) is a lecture webcasting system developed and operated by the Berkeley Multimedia Research Center. The system offers live remote viewing and on-demand replay of course lectures using streaming audio and video over the Internet. During the Fall 2000 semester 14 classes were webcast, including several large lower division classes, with a total enrollment of over 4,000 students. Lectures were played over 15,000 times per month during the semester. The primary use of the webcasts is to study for examinations. Students report they watch BIBS lectures because they did not understand material presented in lecture, because they wanted to review what the instructor said about selected topics, because they missed a lecture, and/or because they had difficulty understanding the speaker (e.g., non-native English speakers). Analysis of various survey data suggests that more than 50% of the students enrolled in some large classes view lectures and that as many as 75% of the lectures are played by members of the Berkeley community. Faculty attitudes vary about the virtues of lecture webcasting. Some question the use of this technology while others believe it is a valuable aid to education. Further study is required to accurately assess the pedagogical impact that lecture webcasts have on student learning

A Highly Scalable IoT Architecture through Network Function Virtualization

As the number of devices for Internet of Things (IoT) is rapidly growing, existing communication infrastructures are forced to continually evolve. The next generation network infrastructure is expected to be virtualized and able to integrate different kinds of information technology resources. Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) is one of the leading concepts facilitating the operation of network services in a scalable manner. In this paper, we present an architecture involving NFV to meet the requirements of highly scalable IoT scenarios. We highlight the benefits and challenges of our approach for IoT stakeholders. Finally, the paper illustrates our vision of how the proposed architecture can be applied in the context of a state-of-the-art high-tech operating room, which we are going to realize in future work

KRATOS: An Open Source Hardware-Software Platform for Rapid Research in LPWANs

Long-range (LoRa) radio technologies have recently gained momentum in the IoT landscape, allowing low-power communications over distances up to several kilometers. As a result, more and more LoRa networks are being deployed. However, commercially available LoRa devices are expensive and propriety, creating a barrier to entry and possibly slowing down developments and deployments of novel applications. Using open-source hardware and software platforms would allow more developers to test and build intelligent devices resulting in a better overall development ecosystem, lower barriers to entry, and rapid growth in the number of IoT applications. Toward this goal, this paper presents the design, implementation, and evaluation of KRATOS, a low-cost LoRa platform running ContikiOS. Both, our hardware and software designs are released as an open- source to the research community.Comment: Accepted at WiMob 201

Smart gateways for terabit/s satellite

To reach the terabit per second of throughput, telecommunication satellites cannot make use of frequency below Ka band only. Therefore, the use of broad portion of the spectrum available at Q/V (40/50 GHz) band is foreseen for the feeder link. This study presents the evaluation of performances of different macro-diversity schemes that may allow mitigating the deep fades experienced at Q/V bands by introducing cooperation and a limited redundancy between the different gateways of the system. Two different solutions are firstly described. The performances resulting from the use of those assumptions are derived in a second stage

A Review of the Open Educational Resources (OER) Movement: Achievements, Challenges, and New Opportunities

Examines the state of the foundation's efforts to improve educational opportunities worldwide through universal access to and use of high-quality academic content

Optimal Gateway Placement in Low-cost Smart Cities

Rapid urbanization burdens city infrastructure and creates the need for local governments to maximize the usage of resources to serve its citizens. Smart city projects aim to alleviate the urbanization problem by deploying a vast amount of Internet-of-things (IoT) devices to monitor and manage environmental conditions and infrastructure. However, smart city projects can be extremely expensive to deploy and manage partly due to the cost of providing Internet connectivity via 5G or WiFi to IoT devices. This thesis proposes the use of delay tolerant networks (DTNs) as a backbone for smart city communication; enabling developing communities to become smart cities at a fraction of the cost. A model is introduced to aid policy makers in designing and evaluating the expected performance of such networks and results are presented based on a public transit network data-set from Chapel Hill, North Carolina and Louisville, Kentucky. We also demonstrate that the performance of our network can be optimized using algorithms associated on set-cover and Influence maximization problems. Several optimization algorithms are then developed to facilitate the effective placement of gateways within the network model and these algorithms are shown to outperform traditional centrality-based algorithms in terms of cost-efficiency and network performance. Finally, other innovative ways of improving network performance in a low-cost smart city is discussed