Synchronous wearable wireless body sensor network composed of autonomous textile nodes

A novel, fully-autonomous, wearable, wireless sensor network is presented, where each flexible textile node performs cooperative synchronous acquisition and distributed event detection. Computationally efficient situational-awareness algorithms are implemented on the low-power microcontroller present on each flexible node. The detected events are wirelessly transmitted to a base station, directly, as well as forwarded by other on-body nodes. For each node, a dual-polarized textile patch antenna serves as a platform for the flexible electronic circuitry. Therefore, the system is particularly suitable for comfortable and unobtrusive integration into garments. In the meantime, polarization diversity can be exploited to improve the reliability and energy-efficiency of the wireless transmission. Extensive experiments in realistic conditions have demonstrated that this new autonomous, body-centric, textile-antenna, wireless sensor network is able to correctly detect different operating conditions of a firefighter during an intervention. By relying on four network nodes integrated into the protective garment, this functionality is implemented locally, on the body, and in real time. In addition, the received sensor data are reliably transferred to a central access point at the command post, for more detailed and more comprehensive real-time visualization. This information provides coordinators and commanders with situational awareness of the entire rescue operation. A statistical analysis of measured on-body node-to-node, as well as off-body person-to-person channels is included, confirming the reliability of the communication system

Characterization of the on-body path Loss at 2.45 GHz and energy efficient WBAN design for dairy cows

Wireless body area networks (WBANs) provide promising applications in the healthcare monitoring of dairy cows. The characterization of the path loss (PL) between on-body nodes constitutes an important step in the deployment of a WBAN. In this paper, the PL between nodes placed on the body of a dairy cow was determined at 2.45 GHz. Finite-difference time domain simulations with two half-wavelength dipoles placed 20 mm above a cow model were performed using a 3-D electromagnetic solver. Measurements were conducted on a live cow to validate the simulation results. Excellent agreement between measurements and simulations was achieved and the obtained PL values as a function of the transmitter-receiver separation were well fitted by a lognormal PL model with a PL exponent of 3.1 and a PL at reference distance ( 10 cm) of 44 dB. As an application, the packet error rate ( PER) and the energy efficiency of different WBAN topologies for dairy cows (i.e., single-hop, multihop, and cooperative networks) were investigated. The analysis results revealed that exploiting multihop and cooperative communication schemes decrease the PER and increase the optimal payload packet size. The analysis results revealed that exploiting multihop and cooperative communication schemes increase the optimal payload packet size and improve the energy efficiency by 30%

Indoor wireless communications and applications

Chapter 3 addresses challenges in radio link and system design in indoor scenarios. Given the fact that most human activities take place in indoor environments, the need for supporting ubiquitous indoor data connectivity and location/tracking service becomes even more important than in the previous decades. Specific technical challenges addressed in this section are(i), modelling complex indoor radio channels for effective antenna deployment, (ii), potential of millimeter-wave (mm-wave) radios for supporting higher data rates, and (iii), feasible indoor localisation and tracking techniques, which are summarised in three dedicated sections of this chapter

Resource Allocation in Wireless Networks with RF Energy Harvesting and Transfer

Radio frequency (RF) energy harvesting and transfer techniques have recently become alternative methods to power the next generation of wireless networks. As this emerging technology enables proactive replenishment of wireless devices, it is advantageous in supporting applications with quality-of-service (QoS) requirement. This article focuses on the resource allocation issues in wireless networks with RF energy harvesting capability, referred to as RF energy harvesting networks (RF-EHNs). First, we present an overview of the RF-EHNs, followed by a review of a variety of issues regarding resource allocation. Then, we present a case study of designing in the receiver operation policy, which is of paramount importance in the RF-EHNs. We focus on QoS support and service differentiation, which have not been addressed by previous literatures. Furthermore, we outline some open research directions.Comment: To appear in IEEE Networ

A cross layer multi hop network architecture for wireless Ad Hoc networks

In this paper, a novel decentralized cross-layer multi-hop cooperative network architecture is presented. Our architecture involves the design of a simple yet efficient cooperative flooding scheme,two decentralized opportunistic cooperative forwarding mechanisms as well as the design of Routing Enabled Cooperative Medium Access Control (RECOMAC) protocol that spans and incorporates the physical, medium access control (MAC) and routing layers for improving the performance of multihop communication. The proposed architecture exploits randomized coding at the physical layer to realize cooperative diversity. Randomized coding alleviates relay selection and actuation mechanisms,and therefore reduces the coordination among the relays. The coded packets are forwarded via opportunistically formed cooperative sets within a region, without communication among the relays and without establishing a prior route. In our architecture, routing layer functionality is submerged into the MAC layer to provide seamless cooperative communication while the messaging overhead to set up routes, select and actuate relays is minimized. RECOMAC is shown to provide dramatic performance improvements, such as eight times higher throughput and ten times lower end-to-end delay as well as reduced overhead, as compared to networks based on well-known IEEE 802.11 and Ad hoc On Demand Distance Vector (AODV) protocols

Goodbye, ALOHA!

©2016 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.The vision of the Internet of Things (IoT) to interconnect and Internet-connect everyday people, objects, and machines poses new challenges in the design of wireless communication networks. The design of medium access control (MAC) protocols has been traditionally an intense area of research due to their high impact on the overall performance of wireless communications. The majority of research activities in this field deal with different variations of protocols somehow based on ALOHA, either with or without listen before talk, i.e., carrier sensing multiple access. These protocols operate well under low traffic loads and low number of simultaneous devices. However, they suffer from congestion as the traffic load and the number of devices increase. For this reason, unless revisited, the MAC layer can become a bottleneck for the success of the IoT. In this paper, we provide an overview of the existing MAC solutions for the IoT, describing current limitations and envisioned challenges for the near future. Motivated by those, we identify a family of simple algorithms based on distributed queueing (DQ), which can operate for an infinite number of devices generating any traffic load and pattern. A description of the DQ mechanism is provided and most relevant existing studies of DQ applied in different scenarios are described in this paper. In addition, we provide a novel performance evaluation of DQ when applied for the IoT. Finally, a description of the very first demo of DQ for its use in the IoT is also included in this paper.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft