Will 5G See its Blind Side? Evolving 5G for Universal Internet Access

Internet has shown itself to be a catalyst for economic growth and social equity but its potency is thwarted by the fact that the Internet is off limits for the vast majority of human beings. Mobile phones---the fastest growing technology in the world that now reaches around 80\% of humanity---can enable universal Internet access if it can resolve coverage problems that have historically plagued previous cellular architectures (2G, 3G, and 4G). These conventional architectures have not been able to sustain universal service provisioning since these architectures depend on having enough users per cell for their economic viability and thus are not well suited to rural areas (which are by definition sparsely populated). The new generation of mobile cellular technology (5G), currently in a formative phase and expected to be finalized around 2020, is aimed at orders of magnitude performance enhancement. 5G offers a clean slate to network designers and can be molded into an architecture also amenable to universal Internet provisioning. Keeping in mind the great social benefits of democratizing Internet and connectivity, we believe that the time is ripe for emphasizing universal Internet provisioning as an important goal on the 5G research agenda. In this paper, we investigate the opportunities and challenges in utilizing 5G for global access to the Internet for all (GAIA). We have also identified the major technical issues involved in a 5G-based GAIA solution and have set up a future research agenda by defining open research problems

Information dissemination in mobile networks

This thesis proposes some solutions to relieve, using Wi-Fi wireless networks, the data consumption of cellular networks using cooperation between nodes, studies how to make a good deployment of access points to optimize the dissemination of contents, analyzes some mechanisms to reduce the nodes' power consumption during data dissemination in opportunistic networks, as well as explores some of the risks that arise in these networks. Among the applications that are being discussed for data off-loading from cellular networks, we can find Information Dissemination in Mobile Networks. In particular, for this thesis, the Mobile Networks will consist of Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks and Pedestrian Ad-Hoc Networks. In both scenarios we will find applications with the purpose of vehicle-to-vehicle or pedestrian-to-pedestrian Information dissemination, as well as vehicle-to-infrastructure or pedestrian-to-infrastructure Information dissemination. We will see how both scenarios (vehicular and pedestrian) share many characteristics, while on the other hand some differences make them unique, and therefore requiring of specific solutions. For example, large car batteries relegate power saving techniques to a second place, while power-saving techniques and its effects to network performance is a really relevant issue in Pedestrian networks. While Cellular Networks offer geographically full-coverage, in opportunistic Wi-Fi wireless solutions the short-range non-fullcoverage paradigm as well as the high mobility of the nodes requires different network abstractions like opportunistic networking, Disruptive/Delay Tolerant Networks (DTN) and Network Coding to analyze them. And as a particular application of Dissemination in Mobile Networks, we will study the malware spread in Mobile Networks. Even though it relies on similar spreading mechanisms, we will see how it entails a different perspective on Dissemination

Driving the Network-on-Chip Revolution to Remove the Interconnect Bottleneck in Nanoscale Multi-Processor Systems-on-Chip

The sustained demand for faster, more powerful chips has been met by the availability of chip manufacturing processes allowing for the integration of increasing numbers of computation units onto a single die. The resulting outcome, especially in the embedded domain, has often been called SYSTEM-ON-CHIP (SoC) or MULTI-PROCESSOR SYSTEM-ON-CHIP (MP-SoC). MPSoC design brings to the foreground a large number of challenges, one of the most prominent of which is the design of the chip interconnection. With a number of on-chip blocks presently ranging in the tens, and quickly approaching the hundreds, the novel issue of how to best provide on-chip communication resources is clearly felt. NETWORKS-ON-CHIPS (NoCs) are the most comprehensive and scalable answer to this design concern. By bringing large-scale networking concepts to the on-chip domain, they guarantee a structured answer to present and future communication requirements. The point-to-point connection and packet switching paradigms they involve are also of great help in minimizing wiring overhead and physical routing issues. However, as with any technology of recent inception, NoC design is still an evolving discipline. Several main areas of interest require deep investigation for NoCs to become viable solutions: • The design of the NoC architecture needs to strike the best tradeoff among performance, features and the tight area and power constraints of the onchip domain. • Simulation and verification infrastructure must be put in place to explore, validate and optimize the NoC performance. • NoCs offer a huge design space, thanks to their extreme customizability in terms of topology and architectural parameters. Design tools are needed to prune this space and pick the best solutions. • Even more so given their global, distributed nature, it is essential to evaluate the physical implementation of NoCs to evaluate their suitability for next-generation designs and their area and power costs. This dissertation performs a design space exploration of network-on-chip architectures, in order to point-out the trade-offs associated with the design of each individual network building blocks and with the design of network topology overall. The design space exploration is preceded by a comparative analysis of state-of-the-art interconnect fabrics with themselves and with early networkon- chip prototypes. The ultimate objective is to point out the key advantages that NoC realizations provide with respect to state-of-the-art communication infrastructures and to point out the challenges that lie ahead in order to make this new interconnect technology come true. Among these latter, technologyrelated challenges are emerging that call for dedicated design techniques at all levels of the design hierarchy. In particular, leakage power dissipation, containment of process variations and of their effects. The achievement of the above objectives was enabled by means of a NoC simulation environment for cycleaccurate modelling and simulation and by means of a back-end facility for the study of NoC physical implementation effects. Overall, all the results provided by this work have been validated on actual silicon layout

The Smart Mobile Application Framework (SMAF) - Exploratory Evaluation in the Smart City Contex

What makes mobile apps "smart"? This paper challenges this question by seeking to identify the inherent characteristics of smartness. Starting with the etymological foundations of the term, elements of smart behavior in software applications are extracted from the literature, elaborated and contrasted. Based on these findings we propose a Smart Mobile Application Framework incorporating a set of activities and qualities associated with smart mobile software. The framework is applied to analyze a specific mobile application in the context of Smart Cities and proves its applicability for uncovering the implementation of smart concepts in real-world settings. Hence, this work contributes to research by conceptualizing a new type of application and provides useful insights to practitioners who want to design, implement or evaluate smart mobile applications

Design Space Exploration and Resource Management of Multi/Many-Core Systems

The increasing demand of processing a higher number of applications and related data on computing platforms has resulted in reliance on multi-/many-core chips as they facilitate parallel processing. However, there is a desire for these platforms to be energy-efficient and reliable, and they need to perform secure computations for the interest of the whole community. This book provides perspectives on the aforementioned aspects from leading researchers in terms of state-of-the-art contributions and upcoming trends

The Energy Consumption of Blockchain Technology: Beyond Myth

When talking about blockchain technology in academia, business, and society, frequently generalizations are still heared about its – supposedly inherent – enormous energy consumption. This perception inevitably raises concerns about the further adoption of blockchain tech- nology, a fact that inhibits rapid uptake of what is widely considered to be a groundbreaking and disruptive innova- tion. However, blockchain technology is far from homo- geneous, meaning that blanket statements about its energy consumption should be reviewed with care. The article is meant to bring clarity to the topic in a holistic fashion, looking beyond claims regarding the energy consumption of Bitcoin, which have, so far, dominated the discussion

People centred eco-design: consumer adoption of low and zero carbon products and systems

Literature review, research model and findings of exploratory empirical research on consumer adoption and effective use of low and zero carbon technologies ranging from a hybrid car to solar water heating systems

Bioelectronic Sensor Nodes for Internet of Bodies

Energy-efficient sensing with Physically-secure communication for bio-sensors on, around and within the Human Body is a major area of research today for development of low-cost healthcare, enabling continuous monitoring and/or secure, perpetual operation. These devices, when used as a network of nodes form the Internet of Bodies (IoB), which poses certain challenges including stringent resource constraints (power/area/computation/memory), simultaneous sensing and communication, and security vulnerabilities as evidenced by the DHS and FDA advisories. One other major challenge is to find an efficient on-body energy harvesting method to support the sensing, communication, and security sub-modules. Due to the limitations in the harvested amount of energy, we require reduction of energy consumed per unit information, making the use of in-sensor analytics/processing imperative. In this paper, we review the challenges and opportunities in low-power sensing, processing and communication, with possible powering modalities for future bio-sensor nodes. Specifically, we analyze, compare and contrast (a) different sensing mechanisms such as voltage/current domain vs time-domain, (b) low-power, secure communication modalities including wireless techniques and human-body communication, and (c) different powering techniques for both wearable devices and implants.Comment: 30 pages, 5 Figures. This is a pre-print version of the article which has been accepted for Publication in Volume 25 of the Annual Review of Biomedical Engineering (2023). Only Personal Use is Permitte