CIRA annual report FY 2016/2017

Reporting period April 1, 2016-March 31, 2017

Recent Trends in Communication Networks

In recent years there has been many developments in communication technology. This has greatly enhanced the computing power of small handheld resource-constrained mobile devices. Different generations of communication technology have evolved. This had led to new research for communication of large volumes of data in different transmission media and the design of different communication protocols. Another direction of research concerns the secure and error-free communication between the sender and receiver despite the risk of the presence of an eavesdropper. For the communication requirement of a huge amount of multimedia streaming data, a lot of research has been carried out in the design of proper overlay networks. The book addresses new research techniques that have evolved to handle these challenges

ROBOTIC LAWN MOWER

The Final Year Project course is designed for students to do research; design and development work in each discipline, to produce practical solutions. It provides opportunity for students to use the tools and techniques of problem-solving by engagement of the project. Under proper guidance of supervisor, the students will shape the direction in the field of interest as a preparation for approaching their desired career path in the near future, as well as gain better understanding of the responsibilities they have to shoulder when they undertake a project. The objective of this project is to produce an automatic robotic lawn mover which is able to cut grass of a specified area of flat land. The first approach to this project is to conduct intensive literature reviews regarding the functions of robots and robotic designs and programming. The Second phase of this project is implementation of the theory to build a functioning robot. The scope of the study would focus on the design and implementation of the robot from scratch. The study is broken down into sub sections, which are electronic circuits, movement mechanism and programming. These subsections are developed and combined until the implementation of the workable robot. In the discussion section, all findings would be discussed in more detail and alternatives are compared as to assure the objectives are met during implementation

Energy-Sustainable IoT Connectivity: Vision, Technological Enablers, Challenges, and Future Directions

Technology solutions must effectively balance economic growth, social equity, and environmental integrity to achieve a sustainable society. Notably, although the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm constitutes a key sustainability enabler, critical issues such as the increasing maintenance operations, energy consumption, and manufacturing/disposal of IoT devices have long-term negative economic, societal, and environmental impacts and must be efficiently addressed. This calls for self-sustainable IoT ecosystems requiring minimal external resources and intervention, effectively utilizing renewable energy sources, and recycling materials whenever possible, thus encompassing energy sustainability. In this work, we focus on energy-sustainable IoT during the operation phase, although our discussions sometimes extend to other sustainability aspects and IoT lifecycle phases. Specifically, we provide a fresh look at energy-sustainable IoT and identify energy provision, transfer, and energy efficiency as the three main energy-related processes whose harmonious coexistence pushes toward realizing self-sustainable IoT systems. Their main related technologies, recent advances, challenges, and research directions are also discussed. Moreover, we overview relevant performance metrics to assess the energy-sustainability potential of a certain technique, technology, device, or network and list some target values for the next generation of wireless systems. Overall, this paper offers insights that are valuable for advancing sustainability goals for present and future generations.Comment: 25 figures, 12 tables, submitted to IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Societ

Intelligent Circuits and Systems

ICICS-2020 is the third conference initiated by the School of Electronics and Electrical Engineering at Lovely Professional University that explored recent innovations of researchers working for the development of smart and green technologies in the fields of Energy, Electronics, Communications, Computers, and Control. ICICS provides innovators to identify new opportunities for the social and economic benefits of society.　 This conference bridges the gap between academics and R&D institutions, social visionaries, and experts from all strata of society to present their ongoing research activities and foster research relations between them. It provides opportunities for the exchange of new ideas, applications, and experiences in the field of smart technologies and finding global partners for future collaboration. The ICICS-2020 was conducted in two broad categories, Intelligent Circuits & Intelligent Systems and Emerging Technologies in Electrical Engineering

Non-invasive wearable sensing systems for continuous health monitoring and long-term behavior modeling

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, February 2006.Includes bibliographical references (p. 212-228).Deploying new healthcare technologies for proactive health and elder care will become a major priority over the next decade, as medical care systems worldwide become strained by the aging populations. This thesis presents LiveNet, a distributed mobile system based on low-cost commodity hardware that can be deployed for a variety of healthcare applications. LiveNet embodies a flexible infrastructure platform intended for long-term ambulatory health monitoring with real-time data streaming and context classification capabilities. Using LiveNet, we are able to continuously monitor a wide range of physiological signals together with the user's activity and context, to develop a personalized, data-rich health profile of a user over time. Most clinical sensing technologies that exist have focused on accuracy and reliability, at the expense of cost-effectiveness, burden on the patient, and portability. Future proactive health technologies, on the other hand, must be affordable, unobtrusive, and non-invasive if the general population is going to adopt them.(cont.) In this thesis, we focus on the potential of using features derived from minimally invasive physiological and contextual sensors such as motion, speech, heart rate, skin conductance, and temperature/heat flux that can be used in combination with mobile technology to create powerful context-aware systems that are transparent to the user. In many cases, these non-invasive sensing technologies can completely replace more invasive diagnostic sensing for applications in long-term monitoring, behavior and physiology trending, and real-time proactive feedback and alert systems. Non-invasive sensing technologies are particularly important in ambulatory and continuous monitoring applications, where more cumbersome sensing equipment that is typically found in medical and clinical research settings is not usable. The research in this thesis demonstrates that it is possible to use simple non-invasive physiological and contextual sensing using the LiveNet system to accurately classify a variety of physiological conditions. We demonstrate that non-invasive sensing can be correlated to a variety of important physiological and behavioral phenomenon, and thus can serve as substitutes to more invasive and unwieldy forms of medical monitoring devices while still providing a high level of diagnostic power.(cont.) From this foundation, the LiveNet system is deployed in a number of studies to quantify physiological and contextual state. First, a number of classifiers for important health and general contextual cues such as activity state and stress level are developed from basic non-invasive physiological sensing. We then demonstrate that the LiveNet system can be used to develop systems that can classify clinically significant physiological and pathological conditions and that are robust in the presence of noise, motion artifacts, and other adverse conditions found in real-world situations. This is highlighted in a cold exposure and core body temperature study in collaboration with the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine. In this study, we show that it is possible to develop real-time implementations of these classifiers for proactive health monitors that can provide instantaneous feedback relevant in soldier monitoring applications. This thesis also demonstrates that the LiveNet platform can be used for long-term continuous monitoring applications to study physiological trends that vary slowly with time.(cont.) In a clinical study with the Psychiatry Department at the Massachusetts General Hospital, the LiveNet platform is used to continuously monitor clinically depressed patients during their stays on an in-patient ward for treatment. We show that we can accurately correlate physiology and behavior to depression state, as well as to track changes in depression state over time through the course of treatment. This study demonstrates how long-term physiology and behavioral changes can be captured to objectively measure medical treatment and medication efficacy. In another long-term monitoring study, the LiveNet platform is used to collect data on people's everyday behavior as they go through daily life. By collecting long-term behavioral data, we demonstrate the possibility of modeling and predicting high-level behavior using simple physiologic and contextual information derived solely from ambulatory mobile sensing technology.by Michael Sung.Ph.D

New Approach of Indoor and Outdoor Localization Systems

Accurate determination of the mobile position constitutes the basis of many new applications. This book provides a detailed account of wireless systems for positioning, signal processing, radio localization techniques (Time Difference Of Arrival), performances evaluation, and localization applications. The first section is dedicated to Satellite systems for positioning like GPS, GNSS. The second section addresses the localization applications using the wireless sensor networks. Some techniques are introduced for localization systems, especially for indoor positioning, such as Ultra Wide Band (UWB), WIFI. The last section is dedicated to Coupled GPS and other sensors. Some results of simulations, implementation and tests are given to help readers grasp the presented techniques. This is an ideal book for students, PhD students, academics and engineers in the field of Communication, localization & Signal Processing, especially in indoor and outdoor localization domains