15,585 research outputs found
Challenges in the Design and Implementation of IoT Testbeds in Smart-Cities : A Systematic Review
Advancements in wireless communication and the increased accessibility to low-cost sensing and data processing IoT technologies have increased the research and development of urban monitoring systems. Most smart city research projects rely on deploying proprietary IoT testbeds for indoor and outdoor data collection. Such testbeds typically rely on a three-tier architecture composed of the Endpoint, the Edge, and the Cloud. Managing the system's operation whilst considering the security and privacy challenges that emerge, such as data privacy controls, network security, and security updates on the devices, is challenging. This work presents a systematic study of the challenges of developing, deploying and managing urban monitoring testbeds, as experienced in a series of urban monitoring research projects, followed by an analysis of the relevant literature. By identifying the challenges in the various projects and organising them under the V-model development lifecycle levels, we provide a reference guide for future projects. Understanding the challenges early on will facilitate current and future smart-cities IoT research projects to reduce implementation time and deliver secure and resilient testbeds
Beam scanning by liquid-crystal biasing in a modified SIW structure
A fixed-frequency beam-scanning 1D antenna based on Liquid Crystals (LCs) is designed for application in 2D scanning with lateral alignment. The 2D array environment imposes full decoupling of adjacent 1D antennas, which often conflicts with the LC requirement of DC biasing: the proposed design accommodates both. The LC medium is placed inside a Substrate Integrated Waveguide (SIW) modified to work as a Groove Gap Waveguide, with radiating slots etched on the upper broad wall, that radiates as a Leaky-Wave Antenna (LWA). This allows effective application of the DC bias voltage needed for tuning the LCs. At the same time, the RF field remains laterally confined, enabling the possibility to lay several antennas in parallel and achieve 2D beam scanning. The design is validated by simulation employing the actual properties of a commercial LC medium
Role of Digitalization in Election Voting Through Industry 4.0 Enabling Technologies
The election voting system is one of the essential pillars of democracy to elect the representative for ruling the country. In the election voting system, there are multiple areas such as detection of fake voters, illegal activities for fake voting, booth capturing, ballot monitoring, etc., in which Industry 4.0 can be adopted for the application of real-time monitoring, intelligent detection, enhancing security and transparency of voting and other data during the voting. According to previous research, there are no studies that have presented the significance of industry 4.0 technologies for improving the electronic voting system from a sustainability standpoint. To overcome the research gap, this study aims to present literature about Industry 4.0 technologies on the election voting system. We examined individual industry enabling technologies such as blockchain, artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing, and the Internet of Things (IoT) that have the potential to strengthen the infrastructure of the election voting system. Based upon the analysis, the study has discussed and recommended suggestions for the future scope such as: IoT and cloud computing-based automatic systems for the detection of fake voters and updating voter attendance after the verification of the voter identity; AI-based illegal, and fake voting activities detection through vision node; blockchain-inspired system for the data integrity in between voter and election commission and robotic assistance system for guiding the voter and also for detecting disputes in the premises of election booth
Distributed Sensing, Computing, Communication, and Control Fabric: A Unified Service-Level Architecture for 6G
With the advent of the multimodal immersive communication system, people can
interact with each other using multiple devices for sensing, communication
and/or control either onsite or remotely. As a breakthrough concept, a
distributed sensing, computing, communications, and control (DS3C) fabric is
introduced in this paper for provisioning 6G services in multi-tenant
environments in a unified manner. The DS3C fabric can be further enhanced by
natively incorporating intelligent algorithms for network automation and
managing networking, computing, and sensing resources efficiently to serve
vertical use cases with extreme and/or conflicting requirements. As such, the
paper proposes a novel end-to-end 6G system architecture with enhanced
intelligence spanning across different network, computing, and business
domains, identifies vertical use cases and presents an overview of the relevant
standardization and pre-standardization landscape
Multilink and AUV-Assisted Energy-Efficient Underwater Emergency Communications
Recent development in wireless communications has provided many reliable
solutions to emergency response issues, especially in scenarios with
dysfunctional or congested base stations. Prior studies on underwater emergency
communications, however, remain under-studied, which poses a need for combining
the merits of different underwater communication links (UCLs) and the
manipulability of unmanned vehicles. To realize energy-efficient underwater
emergency communications, we develop a novel underwater emergency communication
network (UECN) assisted by multiple links, including underwater light,
acoustic, and radio frequency links, and autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs)
for collecting and transmitting underwater emergency data. First, we determine
the optimal emergency response mode for an underwater sensor node (USN) using
greedy search and reinforcement learning (RL), so that isolated USNs (I-USNs)
can be identified. Second, according to the distribution of I-USNs, we dispatch
AUVs to assist I-USNs in data transmission, i.e., jointly optimizing the
locations and controls of AUVs to minimize the time for data collection and
underwater movement. Finally, an adaptive clustering-based multi-objective
evolutionary algorithm is proposed to jointly optimize the number of AUVs and
the transmit power of I-USNs, subject to a given set of constraints on transmit
power, signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratios (SINRs), outage probabilities,
and energy, which achieves the best tradeoff between the maximum emergency
response time (ERT) and the total energy consumption (EC). Simulation results
indicate that our proposed approach outperforms benchmark schemes in terms of
energy efficiency (EE), contributing to underwater emergency communications.Comment: 15 page
Blockchain-Empowered Security Enhancement IoT Framework in Building Management System
Centralized architectures, like the cloud model, have their advantages, but they also come with drawbacks, such as higher upfront costs, longer deployment times, and a higher probability of catastrophic failure. Building Management Systems (BMS) is an application that can adopt Internet of Things (IoT) designs and services. However, implementing IoT in a highly modular environment with various moving parts and interdependencies between stakeholders can create security issues. Therefore, this paper proposes a system design using Blockchain technology as a means to protect and control the system, which includes the integration of IoT and BMS technologies. This paper has also included broad discussion on current Blockchain based IoT solution and its IoT limitations in Building Management Systems
A Conceptual Framework for Designing Interactive Human-Centred Building Spaces to Enhance User Experience in Specific-Purpose Buildings
Human/User interaction with buildings are mostly restricted to interacting
with building automation systems through user-interfaces that mainly aim to
improve energy efficiency of buildings and ensure comfort of occupants. This
research builds on the existing theories of Human-Building Interaction (HBI)
and proposes a novel conceptual framework for HBI that combines the concepts of
Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Ambient Intelligence (AmI). The proposed
framework aims to study the needs of occupants in specific-purpose buildings,
which is currently undermined. Specifically, we explore the application of the
proposed HBI framework to improve the learning experience of students in
academic buildings. Focus groups and semi-structured interviews were conducted
among students who are considered primary occupants of Goodwin Hall, a flagship
smart engineering building at Virginia Tech. Qualitative coding and concept
mapping were used to analyze the qualitative data and determine the impact of
occupant-specific needs on the learning experience of students in academic
buildings. The occupant-specific problem that was found to have the highest
direct impact on learning experience was finding study space and highest
indirect impact was Indoor Environment Quality (IEQ). We discuss new ideas for
designing Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI), e.g. Augmented Reality (AR),
increase the perceivable affordances for building occupants and considering a
context-aware ubiquitous analytics-based strategy to provide services that are
tailored to address the identified needs
Design and Advanced Model Predictive Control of Wide Bandgap Based Power Converters
The field of power electronics (PE) is experiencing a revolution by harnessing the superior technical characteristics of wide-band gap (WBG) materials, namely Silicone Carbide (SiC) and Gallium Nitride (GaN). Semiconductor devices devised using WBG materials enable high temperature operation at reduced footprint, offer higher blocking voltages, and operate at much higher switching frequencies compared to conventional Silicon (Si) based counterpart. These characteristics are highly desirable as they allow converter designs for challenging applications such as more-electric-aircraft (MEA), electric vehicle (EV) power train, and the like. This dissertation presents designs of a WBG based power converters for a 1 MW, 1 MHz ultra-fast offboard EV charger, and 250 kW integrated modular motor drive (IMMD) for a MEA application. The goal of these designs is to demonstrate the superior power density and efficiency that are achievable by leveraging the power of SiC and GaN semiconductors. Ultra-fast EV charging is expected to alleviate the challenge of range anxiety , which is currently hindering the mass adoption of EVs in automotive market. The power converter design presented in the dissertation utilizes SiC MOSFETs embedded in a topology that is a modification of the conventional three-level (3L) active neutral-point clamped (ANPC) converter. A novel phase-shifted modulation scheme presented alongside the design allows converter operation at switching frequency of 1 MHz, thereby miniaturizing the grid-side filter to enhance the power density. IMMDs combine the power electronic drive and the electric machine into a single unit, and thus is an efficient solution to realize the electrification of aircraft. The IMMD design presented in the dissertation uses GaN devices embedded in a stacked modular full-bridge converter topology to individually drive each of the motor coils. Various issues and solutions, pertaining to paralleling of GaN devices to meet the high current requirements are also addressed in the thesis. Experimental prototypes of the SiC ultra-fast EV charger and GaN IMMD were built, and the results confirm the efficacy of the proposed designs. Model predictive control (MPC) is a nonlinear control technique that has been widely investigated for various power electronic applications in the past decade. MPC exploits the discrete nature of power converters to make control decisions using a cost function. The controller offers various advantages over, e.g., linear PI controllers in terms of fast dynamic response, identical performance at a reduced switching frequency, and ease of applicability to MIMO applications. This dissertation also investigates MPC for key power electronic applications, such as, grid-tied VSC with an LCL filter and multilevel VSI with an LC filter. By implementing high performance MPC controllers on WBG based power converters, it is possible to formulate designs capable of fast dynamic tracking, high power operation at reduced THD, and increased power density
Integration of heterogeneous data sources and automated reasoning in healthcare and domotic IoT systems
In recent years, IoT technology has radically transformed many crucial industrial and service sectors such as healthcare. The multi-facets heterogeneity of the devices and the collected information provides important opportunities to develop innovative systems and services. However, the ubiquitous presence of data silos and the poor semantic interoperability in the IoT landscape constitute a significant obstacle in the pursuit of this goal. Moreover, achieving actionable knowledge from the collected data requires IoT information sources to be analysed using appropriate artificial intelligence techniques such as automated reasoning. In this thesis work, Semantic Web technologies have been investigated as an approach to address both the data integration and reasoning aspect in modern IoT systems. In particular, the contributions presented in this thesis are the following: (1) the IoT Fitness Ontology, an OWL ontology that has been developed in order to overcome the issue of data silos and enable semantic interoperability in the IoT fitness domain; (2) a Linked Open Data web portal for collecting and sharing IoT health datasets with the research community; (3) a novel methodology for embedding knowledge in rule-defined IoT smart home scenarios; and (4) a knowledge-based IoT home automation system that supports a seamless integration of heterogeneous devices and data sources
Evaluating footwear “in the wild”: Examining wrap and lace trail shoe closures during trail running
Trail running participation has grown over the last two decades. As a result, there have been an increasing number of studies examining the sport. Despite these increases, there is a lack of understanding regarding the effects of footwear on trail running biomechanics in ecologically valid conditions. The purpose of our study was to evaluate how a Wrap vs. Lace closure (on the same shoe) impacts running biomechanics on a trail. Thirty subjects ran a trail loop in each shoe while wearing a global positioning system (GPS) watch, heart rate monitor, inertial measurement units (IMUs), and plantar pressure insoles. The Wrap closure reduced peak foot eversion velocity (measured via IMU), which has been associated with fit. The Wrap closure also increased heel contact area, which is also associated with fit. This increase may be associated with the subjective preference for the Wrap. Lastly, runners had a small but significant increase in running speed in the Wrap shoe with no differences in heart rate nor subjective exertion. In total, the Wrap closure fit better than the Lace closure on a variety of terrain. This study demonstrates the feasibility of detecting meaningful biomechanical differences between footwear features in the wild using statistical tools and study design. Evaluating footwear in ecologically valid environments often creates additional variance in the data. This variance should not be treated as noise; instead, it is critical to capture this additional variance and challenges of ecologically valid terrain if we hope to use biomechanics to impact the development of new products
- …