Delivering IoT Services in Smart Cities and Environmental Monitoring through Collective Awareness, Mobile Crowdsensing and Open Data

The Internet of Things (IoT) is the paradigm that allows us to interact with the real world by means of networking-enabled devices and convert physical phenomena into valuable digital knowledge. Such a rapidly evolving field leveraged the explosion of a number of technologies, standards and platforms. Consequently, different IoT ecosystems behave as closed islands and do not interoperate with each other, thus the potential of the number of connected objects in the world is far from being totally unleashed. Typically, research efforts in tackling such challenge tend to propose a new IoT platforms or standards, however, such solutions find obstacles in keeping up the pace at which the field is evolving. Our work is different, in that it originates from the following observation: in use cases that depend on common phenomena such as Smart Cities or environmental monitoring a lot of useful data for applications is already in place somewhere or devices capable of collecting such data are already deployed. For such scenarios, we propose and study the use of Collective Awareness Paradigms (CAP), which offload data collection to a crowd of participants. We bring three main contributions: we study the feasibility of using Open Data coming from heterogeneous sources, focusing particularly on crowdsourced and user-contributed data that has the drawback of being incomplete and we then propose a State-of-the-Art algorith that automatically classifies raw crowdsourced sensor data; we design a data collection framework that uses Mobile Crowdsensing (MCS) and puts the participants and the stakeholders in a coordinated interaction together with a distributed data collection algorithm that prevents the users from collecting too much or too less data; (3) we design a Service Oriented Architecture that constitutes a unique interface to the raw data collected through CAPs through their aggregation into ad-hoc services, moreover, we provide a prototype implementation

5G Outlook – Innovations and Applications

5G Outlook - Innovations and Applications is a collection of the recent research and development in the area of the Fifth Generation Mobile Technology (5G), the future of wireless communications. Plenty of novel ideas and knowledge of the 5G are presented in this book as well as divers applications from health science to business modeling. The authors of different chapters contributed from various countries and organizations. The chapters have also been presented at the 5th IEEE 5G Summit held in Aalborg on July 1, 2016. The book starts with a comprehensive introduction on 5G and its need and requirement. Then millimeter waves as a promising spectrum to 5G technology is discussed. The book continues with the novel and inspiring ideas for the future wireless communication usage and network. Further, some technical issues in signal processing and network design for 5G are presented. Finally, the book ends up with different applications of 5G in distinct areas. Topics widely covered in this book are: • 5G technology from past to present to the future• Millimeter- waves and their characteristics• Signal processing and network design issues for 5G• Applications, business modeling and several novel ideas for the future of 5

5G Outlook – Innovations and Applications

5G Outlook - Innovations and Applications is a collection of the recent research and development in the area of the Fifth Generation Mobile Technology (5G), the future of wireless communications. Plenty of novel ideas and knowledge of the 5G are presented in this book as well as divers applications from health science to business modeling. The authors of different chapters contributed from various countries and organizations. The chapters have also been presented at the 5th IEEE 5G Summit held in Aalborg on July 1, 2016. The book starts with a comprehensive introduction on 5G and its need and requirement. Then millimeter waves as a promising spectrum to 5G technology is discussed. The book continues with the novel and inspiring ideas for the future wireless communication usage and network. Further, some technical issues in signal processing and network design for 5G are presented. Finally, the book ends up with different applications of 5G in distinct areas. Topics widely covered in this book are: • 5G technology from past to present to the future• Millimeter- waves and their characteristics• Signal processing and network design issues for 5G• Applications, business modeling and several novel ideas for the future of 5

Analytical Performance Evaluation of Cooperative and Multi-Radio Concepts in Emerging Wireless Networks

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5G and beyond networks

This chapter investigates the Network Layer aspects that will characterize the merger of the cellular paradigm and the IoT architectures, in the context of the evolution towards 5G-and-beyond, including some promising emerging services as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles or Base Stations, and V2X communications

Energy Efficient and Cooperative Solutions for Next-Generation Wireless Networks

Energy efficiency is increasingly important for next-generation wireless systems due to the limited battery resources of mobile clients. While fourth generation cellular standards emphasize low client battery consumption, existing techniques do not explicitly focus on reducing power that is consumed when a client is actively communicating with the network. Based on high data rate demands of modern multimedia applications, active mode power consumption is expected to become a critical consideration for the development and deployment of future wireless technologies. Another reason for focusing more attention on energy efficient studies is given by the relatively slow progress in battery technology and the growing quality of service requirements of multimedia applications. The disproportion between demanded and available battery capacity is becoming especially significant for small-scale mobile client devices, where wireless power consumption dominates within the total device power budget. To compensate for this growing gap, aggressive improvements in all aspects of wireless system design are necessary. Recent work in this area indicates that joint link adaptation and resource allocation techniques optimizing energy efficient metrics can provide a considerable gain in client power consumption. Consequently, it is crucial to adapt state-of-the-art energy efficient approaches for practical use, as well as to illustrate the pros and cons associated with applying power-bandwidth optimization to improve client energy efficiency and develop insights for future research in this area. This constitutes the first objective of the present research. Together with energy efficiency, next-generation cellular technologies are emphasizing stronger support for heterogeneous multimedia applications. Since the integration of diverse services within a single radio platform is expected to result in higher operator profits and, at the same time, reduce network management expenses, intensive research efforts have been invested into design principles of such networks. However, as wireless resources are limited and shared by clients, service integration may become challenging. A key element in such systems is the packet scheduler, which typically helps ensure that the individual quality of service requirements of wireless clients are satisfied. In contrastingly different distributed wireless environments, random multiple access protocols are beginning to provide mechanisms for statistical quality of service assurance. However, there is currently a lack of comprehensive analytical frameworks which allow reliable control of the quality of service parameters for both cellular and local area networks. Providing such frameworks is therefore the second objective of this thesis. Additionally, the study addresses the simultaneous operation of a cellular and a local area network in spectrally intense metropolitan deployments and solves some related problems. Further improving the performance of battery-driven mobile clients, cooperative communications are sought as a promising and practical concept. In particular, they are capable of mitigating the negative effects of fading in a wireless channel and are thus expected to enhance next-generation cellular networks in terms of client spectral and energy efficiencies. At the cell edges or in areas missing any supportive relaying infrastructure, client-based cooperative techniques are becoming even more important. As such, a mobile client with poor channel quality may take advantage of neighboring clients which would relay data on its behalf. The key idea behind the concept of client relay is to provide flexible and distributed control over cooperative communications by the wireless clients themselves. By contrast to fully centralized control, this is expected to minimize overhead protocol signaling and hence ensure simpler implementation. Compared to infrastructure relay, client relay will also be cheaper to deploy. Developing the novel concept of client relay, proposing simple and feasible cooperation protocols, and analyzing the basic trade-offs behind client relay functionality become the third objective of this research. Envisioning the evolution of cellular technologies beyond their fourth generation, it appears important to study a wireless network capable of supporting machine-to-machine applications. Recent standardization documents cover a plethora of machine-to-machine use cases, as they also outline the respective technical requirements and features according to the application or network environment. As follows from this activity, a smart grid is one of the primary machine-to-machine use cases that involves meters autonomously reporting usage and alarm information to the grid infrastructure to help reduce operational cost, as well as regulate a customer's utility usage. The preliminary analysis of the reference smart grid scenario indicates weak system architecture components. For instance, the large population of machine-to-machine devices may connect nearly simultaneously to the wireless infrastructure and, consequently, suffer from excessive network entry delays. Another concern is the performance of cell-edge machine-to-machine devices with weak wireless links. Therefore, mitigating the above architecture vulnerabilities and improving the performance of future smart grid deployments is the fourth objective of this thesis. Summarizing, this thesis is generally aimed at the improvement of energy efficient properties of mobile devices in next-generation wireless networks. The related research also embraces a novel cooperation technique where clients may assist each other to increase per-client and network-wide performance. Applying the proposed solutions, the operation time of mobile clients without recharging may be increased dramatically. Our approach incorporates both analytical and simulation components to evaluate complex interactions between the studied objectives. It brings important conclusions about energy efficient and cooperative client behaviors, which is crucial for further development of wireless communications technologies

Reti Wireless Cognitive Cooperanti su TV White e Grey Spaces

Wireless networks rapidly became a fundamental pillar of everyday activities. Whether at work or elsewhere, people often benefits from always-on connections. This trend is likely to increase, and hence actual technologies struggle to cope with the increase in traffic demand. To this end, Cognitive Wireless Networks have been studied. These networks aim at a better utilization of the spectrum, by understanding the environment in which they operate, and adapt accordingly. In particular recently national regulators opened up consultations on the opportunistic use of the TV bands, which became partially free due to the digital TV switch over. In this work, we focus on the indoor use of of TVWS. Interesting use cases like smart metering and WiFI like connectivity arise, and are studied and compared against state of the art technology. New measurements for TVWS networks will be presented and evaluated, and fundamental characteristics of the signal derived. Then, building on that, a new model of spectrum sharing, which takes into account also the height from the terrain, is presented and evaluated in a real scenario. The principal limits and performance of TVWS operated networks will be studied for two main use cases, namely Machine to Machine communication and for wireless sensor networks, particularly for the smart grid scenario. The outcome is that TVWS are certainly interesting to be studied and deployed, in particular when used as an additional offload for other wireless technologies. Seeing TVWS as the only wireless technology on a device is harder to be seen: the uncertainity in channel availability is the major drawback of opportunistic networks, since depending on the primary network channel allocation might lead in having no channels available for communication. TVWS can be effectively exploited as offloading solutions, and most of the contributions presented in this work proceed in this direction

A REVIEW STUDY OF EUROPEAN R&amp;D PROJECTS FOR SATELLITE COMMUNICATIONS IN 5G/6G ERA

Κατά τις τελευταίες δεκαετίες τα δορυφορικά συστήματα τηλεπικοινωνιών έχουν προσφέρει μια γκάμα από πολυμεσικές υπηρεσίες όπως δορυφορική τηλεόραση, δορυφορική τηλεφωνία και ευρυζωνική πρόσβαση στο διαδίκτυο. Οι μακροπρόθεσμες τεχνολογικές αναβαθμίσεις σε συνδυασμό με την προσθήκη νέων δορυφορικών συστημάτων γεωστατικής και ελλειπτικής τροχιάς και με την ενσωμάτωση τεχνολογιών πληροφορικής έχουν ωθήσει την αύξηση του μέγιστου εύρους των δορυφόρων στο 1Gbps σε μεμονωμένους δορυφόρους ενώ σε διάταξη αστερισμού μπορούν να ξεπεράσουν το 1 Tbps. Σε συνδυασμό με την μείωση του χρόνου απόκρισης σε ρυθμούς ανταγωνιστικούς με τις χερσαίες υποδομές ανοίγουν νέες ευκαιρίες και νέους ρόλους εντός ενός οικοσυστήματος ετερογενούς δικτύων 5ης γενιάς. Σε αυτήν την διατριβή, αξιολογούμε επιδοτούμενα επιστημονικά προγράμματα έρευνας και ανάπτυξης της Ευρωπαϊκής Επιτροπής Διαστήματος (ESA) και του προγράμματος επιδότησης Horizon 2020 της Ευρωπαϊκής Ένωσης, προκειμένου να εξηγήσουμε τις δυνατότητες των δορυφόρων εντός ενός ετερογενούς δικτύου 5ης γενιάς, αναφέρουμε συγκεκριμένα αυτά που αφορούν την εξέλιξη των δορυφορικών ψηφιακών συστημάτων και την ικανότητα ενσωμάτωσης τους σε τωρινές αλλά και μελλοντικές υποδομές χερσαίων τηλεπικοινωνιακών δικτύων μέσω της εμφάνισης νέων τεχνολογιών στις ηλεκτρονικές και οπτικές επικοινωνίες αέρος μαζί με την εμφάνιση τεχνολογιών πληροφορικής όπως της δικτύωσης βασισμένης στο λογισμικό και της εικονικοποίησης λειτουργιών δικτύου. Αναφερόμαστε στους στόχους του κάθε project ξεχωριστά και κατηγοριοποιημένα στους ακόλουθους τομείς έρευνας: -Συσσωμάτωση των δορυφόρων με τα επίγεια δίκτυα 5ης γενιάς με οργανωμένες μελέτες και στρατηγικές -Ενσωμάτωση των τεχνολογιών δικτύωσης βασισμένης στο λογισμικό και εικονικοποίησης λειτουργιών δικτύου στο δορυφορικών τμήμα των δικτύων 5ης γενιάς -Ο ρόλος των δορυφόρων σε εφαρμογές του διαδικτύου των πραγμάτων σε συνάφεια με τα χερσαία δίκτυα 5ης γενιάς -Ο ρόλος των δορυφόρων στην δίκτυα διανομής πολυμεσικού περιεχομένου &amp; η επιρροή των πρωτοκόλλων διαδικτύου στην ποιότητα υπηρεσίας χρήστη κατά την διάρκεια μιας δορυφορικής σύνδεσης. -Μελλοντικές βελτιώσεις και εφαρμογές στα δορυφορικά συστήματα με έμφαση στα μελλοντικά πρότυπα του φυσικό επιπέδου Στο τέλος διαθέτουμε ένα παράρτημα που αφορά τεχνικές αναλύσεις στην εξέλιξη του φυσικού επιπέδου των δορυφορικών συστημάτων, συνοδευόμενο με την συσχετιζόμενη βιβλιογραφία για περαιτέρω μελέτη.Over the last decades satellite telecommunication systems offer many types of multimedia services like Satellite TV, telephony and broadband internet access. The long-term technological evolutions occurred into state-of-the-art satellite systems altogether with the addition of new high throughput geostatic and non-geostatic systems, individual satellites can now achieve a peak bandwidth of up to Gbps, and with possible extension into satellite constellation systems the total capacity can reach up to Tbps. Supplementary, with systems latency being comparable to terrestrial infrastructures and with integration of several computer science technologies, satellite systems can achieve new &amp; more advanced roles inside a heterogeneous 5G network’s ecosystem. In this thesis, we have studied European Space Agency (ESA’s) and European Union’s (EU) Horizon 2020 Research and Development (R&amp;D) funded projects in order to describe the satellite capabilities within a 5G heterogeneous network, mentioning the impact of the evolution of digital satellite communications and furthermore the integration with the state-of the art &amp; future terrain telecommunication systems by new technologies occurred through the evolution of electronic &amp; free space optical communications alongside with the integration of computer science’s technologies like Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV). In order to describe this evolution we have studied the concepts of each individual project, categorized chronically and individual by its scientific field of research. Our main scientific trends for this thesis are: -Satellite Integration studies &amp; strategies into the 5G terrestrial networks -Integration of SDN and NFV technologies on 5G satellite component -Satellite’s role in the Internet of Things applications over 5G terrestrial networks -Satellite’s role in Content Distribution Networks &amp; internet protocols impact over user’s Quality of Experience (QoE) over a satellite link -The future proposals upon the evolution of Satellite systems by upcoming improvements and corresponding standards Finally, we have created an Annex for technical details upon the evolution of physical layer of the satellite systems with the corresponding bibliography of this thesis for future study