Robotic Wireless Sensor Networks

In this chapter, we present a literature survey of an emerging, cutting-edge, and multi-disciplinary field of research at the intersection of Robotics and Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) which we refer to as Robotic Wireless Sensor Networks (RWSN). We define a RWSN as an autonomous networked multi-robot system that aims to achieve certain sensing goals while meeting and maintaining certain communication performance requirements, through cooperative control, learning and adaptation. While both of the component areas, i.e., Robotics and WSN, are very well-known and well-explored, there exist a whole set of new opportunities and research directions at the intersection of these two fields which are relatively or even completely unexplored. One such example would be the use of a set of robotic routers to set up a temporary communication path between a sender and a receiver that uses the controlled mobility to the advantage of packet routing. We find that there exist only a limited number of articles to be directly categorized as RWSN related works whereas there exist a range of articles in the robotics and the WSN literature that are also relevant to this new field of research. To connect the dots, we first identify the core problems and research trends related to RWSN such as connectivity, localization, routing, and robust flow of information. Next, we classify the existing research on RWSN as well as the relevant state-of-the-arts from robotics and WSN community according to the problems and trends identified in the first step. Lastly, we analyze what is missing in the existing literature, and identify topics that require more research attention in the future

Low-latency Networking: Where Latency Lurks and How to Tame It

While the current generation of mobile and fixed communication networks has been standardized for mobile broadband services, the next generation is driven by the vision of the Internet of Things and mission critical communication services requiring latency in the order of milliseconds or sub-milliseconds. However, these new stringent requirements have a large technical impact on the design of all layers of the communication protocol stack. The cross layer interactions are complex due to the multiple design principles and technologies that contribute to the layers' design and fundamental performance limitations. We will be able to develop low-latency networks only if we address the problem of these complex interactions from the new point of view of sub-milliseconds latency. In this article, we propose a holistic analysis and classification of the main design principles and enabling technologies that will make it possible to deploy low-latency wireless communication networks. We argue that these design principles and enabling technologies must be carefully orchestrated to meet the stringent requirements and to manage the inherent trade-offs between low latency and traditional performance metrics. We also review currently ongoing standardization activities in prominent standards associations, and discuss open problems for future research

Sistema para gestão remota de redes experimentais

Mestrado em Engenharia de Computadores e TelemáticaA Internet e as redes no seu geral estão cada vez mais presentes no nosso quotidiano. No entanto, o seu crescente uso destaca também algumas das suas limitações, levando os investigadores de redes a criarem novas soluções, numa tentativa de preverem e resolverem problemas que daí possam advir. O desenvolvimento destas soluções implica que sejam realizados testes exaustivos antes que estas se tornem aptas para o uso das massas. Podem ser adoptadas diversas abordagens para a realização destes testes. Simulações são importantes como uma primeira aproximação, contudo, não conseguem captar a dinâmica e a imprevisibilidade de um ambiente real. A emulação surge como alternativa, tentando colmatar essa falha, no entanto, não é eficaz na reprodução de cenários mais complexos. A solução poderá passar pela criação de infra-estruturas dedicadas ao teste destas soluções, denominadas de redes experimentais, permitindo realizar uma avaliação mais profunda e fiável das mesmas. Contudo a sua construção envolve grandes custos e as infra-estruturas caem em desuso assim que é alcançado o produto final. É necessário desenvolver maneiras de instrumentalizar estas infra-estruturas, de forma a optimizar estes recursos para futuros testes. Esta dissertação centra-se nos problema evidenciados na criação destas redes de teste, estudando as existentes formas de gestão destas redes experimentais, bem como o seu uso optimizado com vista à criação de experiencias. Pretende-se assim desenvolver no âmbito desta tese, uma ferramenta que permita aos utilizadores criarem e usarem facilmente e de forma eficiente uma rede experimental.The Internet, as with networks in general, is increasingly present in our everyday lives. However, its use also highlights some of their limitations, leading researchers to create new network solutions in an attempt to anticipate and solve problems that may arise. These solutions require exhaustive tests before they become eligible for production. Several approaches can be taken to conduct such tests. Simulations are important as first approximations; however, they fail to capture the dynamics and unpredictability of a real environment. Emulations present an alternative, but fail to reproduce more complex scenarios. Experimentation facilities must therefore be deployed, to achieve a higher level of realism. These facilities, also referred as testbeds, involve high-complexity deployment and operation, falling into disuse once they arrive at a final product. Methods of managing these infrastructures must be developed in order to avoid this waste of resources for future tests. This dissertation focuses on the problems inherent to the management of these facilities, with a focus on their users. Different approaches in network testing must be studied and the different methodologies on experimentation must be collected. An application is developed to address this problem, enabling users to create their experiments and collect results in both an organized and effective manner

Design and development of an SDN robotic system with intelligent openflow IOT testbeds for power assessment, prediction and fault management

This thesis was submitted for the award of Docctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University LondonCurrent wind turbine and power grid industry have relatively little research and development with regards to implementing novel communication network and intel- ligent system to overcome issues that pertain to network failure and lack of monitor- ing. Wind turbine location could be a big concern when it comes to identifying an efficient location for future wind turbine and the impact of a site with non-efficient meteorological parameters can result in relocation of a wind turbine and revenue- loss. Unplanned wind turbine shutdowns that are considered to be one of the major revenue-loss factors of a modern wind farm business. Typically, the unplanned wind turbine shutdown is a result of sensors fail due to harsh environment challenges that prevent hardware status from being available on the monitoring system. The above mentioned research problems pertain to wind turbine site assessment and predic- tion of power. In this thesis, a novel programmable software-defined robotics and IoT testbeds are proposed with the fusion of Artificial Intelligence and optimiza- tion methods to solve specific problems related to wind turbine site assessment and fault management. The site selection process is implemented using proposed aerial and ground robotic systems that are incorporated with Software-Defined Networks and OpenFlow switching capabilities. A second stage development of the system is proposing a prediction platform that run on the aerial robot cluster using neural net- works optimization regression techniques. To overcome the unplanned wind turbine network outage, an IoT micro cloud cluster system is proposed that act as immedi- ate fail-over platform to provide continuous health readings of the wind turbine to ensure the turbine in question will not get shutdown unnecessarily. The proposed system help in minimizing revenue-loss caused by stopping a wind turbine from op- eration and help maintain generated power stability on the grid. Additionally, since large wind farms require an agile and scalable management of selecting the most efficient wind turbine location install. Thus, a softwarized cognitive routing proto- col is proposed. The group of quadcopters is a redundant failover Software-Defined Network/OpenFlow system that can cover every single way point of the farm land. Although, power consumption is essential for the continuity the service, a Software- Defined charging system testbed is proposed that uses inductive power transfer wit

Discrete Event Simulations

Considered by many authors as a technique for modelling stochastic, dynamic and discretely evolving systems, this technique has gained widespread acceptance among the practitioners who want to represent and improve complex systems. Since DES is a technique applied in incredibly different areas, this book reflects many different points of view about DES, thus, all authors describe how it is understood and applied within their context of work, providing an extensive understanding of what DES is. It can be said that the name of the book itself reflects the plurality that these points of view represent. The book embraces a number of topics covering theory, methods and applications to a wide range of sectors and problem areas that have been categorised into five groups. As well as the previously explained variety of points of view concerning DES, there is one additional thing to remark about this book: its richness when talking about actual data or actual data based analysis. When most academic areas are lacking application cases, roughly the half part of the chapters included in this book deal with actual problems or at least are based on actual data. Thus, the editor firmly believes that this book will be interesting for both beginners and practitioners in the area of DES

2020 NASA Technology Taxonomy

This document is an update (new photos used) of the PDF version of the 2020 NASA Technology Taxonomy that will be available to download on the OCT Public Website. The updated 2020 NASA Technology Taxonomy, or "technology dictionary", uses a technology discipline based approach that realigns like-technologies independent of their application within the NASA mission portfolio. This tool is meant to serve as a common technology discipline-based communication tool across the agency and with its partners in other government agencies, academia, industry, and across the world

Machine Learning for Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) Networking

Fueled by the advancement of 5G new radio (5G NR), rapid development has occurred in many fields. Compared with the conventional approaches, beamforming and network slicing enable 5G NR to have ten times decrease in latency, connection density, and experienced throughput than 4G long term evolution (4G LTE). These advantages pave the way for the evolution of Cyber-physical Systems (CPS) on a large scale. The reduction of consumption, the advancement of control engineering, and the simplification of Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) enable the UAS networking deployment on a large scale to become feasible. The UAS networking can finish multiple complex missions simultaneously. However, the limitations of the conventional approaches are still a big challenge to make a trade-off between the massive management and efficient networking on a large scale. With 5G NR and machine learning, in this dissertation, my contributions can be summarized as the following: I proposed a novel Optimized Ad-hoc On-demand Distance Vector (OAODV) routing protocol to improve the throughput of Intra UAS networking. The novel routing protocol can reduce the system overhead and be efficient. To improve the security, I proposed a blockchain scheme to mitigate the malicious basestations for cellular connected UAS networking and a proof-of-traffic (PoT) to improve the efficiency of blockchain for UAS networking on a large scale. Inspired by the biological cell paradigm, I proposed the cell wall routing protocols for heterogeneous UAS networking. With 5G NR, the inter connections between UAS networking can strengthen the throughput and elasticity of UAS networking. With machine learning, the routing schedulings for intra- and inter- UAS networking can enhance the throughput of UAS networking on a large scale. The inter UAS networking can achieve the max-min throughput globally edge coloring. I leveraged the upper and lower bound to accelerate the optimization of edge coloring. This dissertation paves a way regarding UAS networking in the integration of CPS and machine learning. The UAS networking can achieve outstanding performance in a decentralized architecture. Concurrently, this dissertation gives insights into UAS networking on a large scale. These are fundamental to integrating UAS and National Aerial System (NAS), critical to aviation in the operated and unmanned fields. The dissertation provides novel approaches for the promotion of UAS networking on a large scale. The proposed approaches extend the state-of-the-art of UAS networking in a decentralized architecture. All the alterations can contribute to the establishment of UAS networking with CPS

Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationNetwork emulation has become an indispensable tool for the conduct of research in networking and distributed systems. It offers more realism than simulation and more control and repeatability than experimentation on a live network. However, emulation testbeds face a number of challenges, most prominently realism and scale. Because emulation allows the creation of arbitrary networks exhibiting a wide range of conditions, there is no guarantee that emulated topologies reflect real networks; the burden of selecting parameters to create a realistic environment is on the experimenter. While there are a number of techniques for measuring the end-to-end properties of real networks, directly importing such properties into an emulation has been a challenge. Similarly, while there exist numerous models for creating realistic network topologies, the lack of addresses on these generated topologies has been a barrier to using them in emulators. Once an experimenter obtains a suitable topology, that topology must be mapped onto the physical resources of the testbed so that it can be instantiated. A number of restrictions make this an interesting problem: testbeds typically have heterogeneous hardware, scarce resources which must be conserved, and bottlenecks that must not be overused. User requests for particular types of nodes or links must also be met. In light of these constraints, the network testbed mapping problem is NP-hard. Though the complexity of the problem increases rapidly with the size of the experimenter's topology and the size of the physical network, the runtime of the mapper must not; long mapping times can hinder the usability of the testbed. This dissertation makes three contributions towards improving realism and scale in emulation testbeds. First, it meets the need for realistic network conditions by creating Flexlab, a hybrid environment that couples an emulation testbed with a live-network testbed, inheriting strengths from each. Second, it attends to the need for realistic topologies by presenting a set of algorithms for automatically annotating generated topologies with realistic IP addresses. Third, it presents a mapper, assign, that is capable of assigning experimenters' requested topologies to testbeds' physical resources in a manner that scales well enough to handle large environments