ReSCon '11, Research Student Conference: Book of Abstracts

The fourth SED Research Student Conference (ReSCon2011) was hosted over three days, 20-22 June 2011, in the Hamilton Centre at Brunel University. The conference consisted of technical presentations, a poster session and social events. which focused on current research being conducted within the School of Engineering and Design by postgraduate research students from the School. The conference is held annually, and ReSCon plays a key role in contributing to research and innovations within the School

GUARDIANS final report

Emergencies in industrial warehouses are a major concern for firefghters. The large dimensions together with the development of dense smoke that drastically reduces visibility, represent major challenges. The Guardians robot swarm is designed to assist fire fighters in searching a large warehouse. In this report we discuss the technology developed for a swarm of robots searching and assisting fire fighters. We explain the swarming algorithms which provide the functionality by which the robots react to and follow humans while no communication is required. Next we discuss the wireless communication system, which is a so-called mobile ad-hoc network. The communication network provides also one of the means to locate the robots and humans. Thus the robot swarm is able to locate itself and provide guidance information to the humans. Together with the re ghters we explored how the robot swarm should feed information back to the human fire fighter. We have designed and experimented with interfaces for presenting swarm based information to human beings

Alternative Network Deployments: Taxonomy, Characterization, Technologies, and Architectures

This document presents a taxonomy of a set of "Alternative Network Deployments" that emerged in the last decade with the aim of bringing Internet connectivity to people or providing a local communication infrastructure to serve various complementary needs and objectives. They employ architectures and topologies different from those of mainstream networks and rely on alternative governance and business models. The document also surveys the technologies deployed in these networks, and their differing architectural characteristics, including a set of definitions and shared properties. The classification considers models such as Community Networks, Wireless Internet Service Providers (WISPs), networks owned by individuals but leased out to network operators who use them as a low-cost medium to reach the underserved population, networks that provide connectivity by sharing wireless resources of the users, and rural utility cooperatives

Internet of Things-aided Smart Grid: Technologies, Architectures, Applications, Prototypes, and Future Research Directions

Traditional power grids are being transformed into Smart Grids (SGs) to address the issues in existing power system due to uni-directional information flow, energy wastage, growing energy demand, reliability and security. SGs offer bi-directional energy flow between service providers and consumers, involving power generation, transmission, distribution and utilization systems. SGs employ various devices for the monitoring, analysis and control of the grid, deployed at power plants, distribution centers and in consumers' premises in a very large number. Hence, an SG requires connectivity, automation and the tracking of such devices. This is achieved with the help of Internet of Things (IoT). IoT helps SG systems to support various network functions throughout the generation, transmission, distribution and consumption of energy by incorporating IoT devices (such as sensors, actuators and smart meters), as well as by providing the connectivity, automation and tracking for such devices. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive survey on IoT-aided SG systems, which includes the existing architectures, applications and prototypes of IoT-aided SG systems. This survey also highlights the open issues, challenges and future research directions for IoT-aided SG systems

Reefer container monitoring system based on WSN and cloud technology

Reefer containers are the main transportation method for the import and export of food and medicine. For high-quality products is necessary to monitor the condition of the reefer containers in order to avoid affecting goods quality due to environmental variations. Monitoring the reefer containers which are used to transport fruits, vegetables, and dairy products is one of the examples. In this context appears the necessity to develop this work expressed by a distributed sensor system for monitoring reefer containers. With the support of the WSN (wireless sensor network) including a set of sensors, it is possible to obtain the information about the temperature, humidity and location data of the reefer container and upload those data to a cloud platform expressed in the case of the purposed system by The Things Network platform. Based on LEACH (Low Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy) routing algorithm, the embedded software was developed to guarantee a well-balanced distribution of the energy load among WSN end-nodes. A web application and a mobile application has been developed to display the data coming from the WSN node. To check if the reefer container working in a good condition, an alarm software module has been developed to highlight abnormal data coming for the system. The routing algorithm has been simulated and the effectiveness of the algorithm is verified by simulation results. The effectiveness of the proposed system was experimentally tested, and several results are included in this dissertation.Os contentores frigoríficos são o principal método de transporte para a importação e exportação de alimentos e medicamentos. Em produtos de alta qualidade, é necessário monitorizar as condições dos contentores frigoríficos, a fim de evitar a perda da qualidade das merca dorias devido a variações térmicas. Por exemplo, monitorarizando os contentores frigoríficos usados para transportar frutas, vegetais e laticínios. Neste contexto, aparece a necessidade do desenvolvimento deste projeto descrito por um sistema de sensores distribuídos para monitorizar contentores frigoríficos. Com o suporte da rede de sensores sem fios, incluindo um conjunto de sensores, é possível obter informações sobre os dados da temperatura, humidade e localização do contentor refrigerado e fazer uplo ad desses dados numa plataforma em cloud expressa no caso do sistema proposto por plataforma de rede de coisas. Com base no algoritmo de roteamento LEACH, o software incorporado foi desenvolvido para garantir uma distribuição equilibrada da carga de energi a entre os nós de WSN. Uma aplicação Web e uma aplicação móvel foram desenvolvidas para mostrar os dados provenientes do nó WSN. Para verificar a qualidade dos dados, um módulo de software de alarme foi também desenvolvido para destacar dados anormais que chegam ao sistema. O algoritmo de roteamento foi simulado e a eficiência do algoritmo é verificada pelos resultados da simulação. A eficiência do sistema proposto foi testada experimentalmente e os vários resultados estão incluídos nesta dissertação

Mesh-Mon: a Monitoring and Management System for Wireless Mesh Networks

A mesh network is a network of wireless routers that employ multi-hop routing and can be used to provide network access for mobile clients. Mobile mesh networks can be deployed rapidly to provide an alternate communication infrastructure for emergency response operations in areas with limited or damaged infrastructure. In this dissertation, we present Dart-Mesh: a Linux-based layer-3 dual-radio two-tiered mesh network that provides complete 802.11b coverage in the Sudikoff Lab for Computer Science at Dartmouth College. We faced several challenges in building, testing, monitoring and managing this network. These challenges motivated us to design and implement Mesh-Mon, a network monitoring system to aid system administrators in the management of a mobile mesh network. Mesh-Mon is a scalable, distributed and decentralized management system in which mesh nodes cooperate in a proactive manner to help detect, diagnose and resolve network problems automatically. Mesh-Mon is independent of the routing protocol used by the mesh routing layer and can function even if the routing protocol fails. We demonstrate this feature by running Mesh-Mon on two versions of Dart-Mesh, one running on AODV (a reactive mesh routing protocol) and the second running on OLSR (a proactive mesh routing protocol) in separate experiments. Mobility can cause links to break, leading to disconnected partitions. We identify critical nodes in the network, whose failure may cause a partition. We introduce two new metrics based on social-network analysis: the Localized Bridging Centrality (LBC) metric and the Localized Load-aware Bridging Centrality (LLBC) metric, that can identify critical nodes efficiently and in a fully distributed manner. We run a monitoring component on client nodes, called Mesh-Mon-Ami, which also assists Mesh-Mon nodes in the dissemination of management information between physically disconnected partitions, by acting as carriers for management data. We conclude, from our experimental evaluation on our 16-node Dart-Mesh testbed, that our system solves several management challenges in a scalable manner, and is a useful and effective tool for monitoring and managing real-world mesh networks