Underwater Image Transmission Using Spatial Modulation Unequal Error Protection for Internet of Underwater Things.

A spatial modulation (SM) scheme has been developed as a hopeful candidate for spectral and energy-efficient wireless communication systems, as it provides a great judgment for the system performance, data transmission rate, receiver complexity, and energy/spectrum efficiency. In SM, the data is conveyed by both habitual M-ary signal constellations and the transmit antennas indices. Therefore, the system data rate improvement due to the side information bits transmitted, encapsulated in indices of the transmit antennas, improves the SM transmission efficiency compared to the different MIMO players. The information bits transmitted over the antenna index and data symbol constellation using M-ary signal performance have different levels of bit error rate (BER) performance. This paper proposes unequal error protection (UEP) scheme for image transmission over the Internet of Underwater Things (IoUTs) using SM. The Set Partitioning in Hierarchical Trees (SPIHT) coders encode the underwater image and classify the encoded bits in two categories: critical and uncritical bits. The critical bits are transmitted over the SM index bits and have a low BER while the uncritical bits are transmitted over high order M-ary signal constellation to resolve the underwater acoustic channel bandwidth limitation problem. The proposed SM-UEP technique has been developed carefully with enough justification and evaluation over the measured underwater acoustic channel and the simulated channel. The simulation results show that the proposed SM-UEP can increase the average peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) of the reconstructed received image considerably, and significantly

Smart Sensor Technologies for IoT

The recent development in wireless networks and devices has led to novel services that will utilize wireless communication on a new level. Much effort and resources have been dedicated to establishing new communication networks that will support machine-to-machine communication and the Internet of Things (IoT). In these systems, various smart and sensory devices are deployed and connected, enabling large amounts of data to be streamed. Smart services represent new trends in mobile services, i.e., a completely new spectrum of context-aware, personalized, and intelligent services and applications. A variety of existing services utilize information about the position of the user or mobile device. The position of mobile devices is often achieved using the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) chips that are integrated into all modern mobile devices (smartphones). However, GNSS is not always a reliable source of position estimates due to multipath propagation and signal blockage. Moreover, integrating GNSS chips into all devices might have a negative impact on the battery life of future IoT applications. Therefore, alternative solutions to position estimation should be investigated and implemented in IoT applications. This Special Issue, “Smart Sensor Technologies for IoT” aims to report on some of the recent research efforts on this increasingly important topic. The twelve accepted papers in this issue cover various aspects of Smart Sensor Technologies for IoT

An Internet of Things (IoT) based wide-area Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) platform with mobility support.

Wide-area remote monitoring applications use cellular networks or satellite links to transfer sensor data to the central storage. Remote monitoring applications uses Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) to accommodate more Sensor Nodes (SNs) and for better management. Internet of Things (IoT) network connects the WSN with the data storage and other application specific services using the existing internet infrastructure. Both cellular networks, such as the Narrow-Band IoT (NB-IoT), and satellite links will not be suitable for point-to-point connections of the SNs due to their lack of coverage, high cost, and energy requirement. Low Power Wireless Area Network (LPWAN) is used to interconnect all the SNs and accumulate the data to a single point, called Gateway, before sending it to the IoT network. WSN implements clustering of the SNs to increase the network coverage and utilizes multiple wireless links between the repeater nodes (called hops) to reach the gateway at a longer distance. Clustered WSN can cover up to a few km using the LPWAN technologies such as Zigbee using multiple hops. Each Zigbee link can be from 200 m to 500 m long. Other LPWAN technologies, such as LoRa, can facilitate an extended range from 1km to 15km. However, the LoRa will not be suitable for the clustered WSN due to its long Time on Air (TOA) which will introduce data transmission delay and become severe with the increase of hop count. Besides, a sensor node will need to increase the antenna height to achieve the long-range benefit of Lora using a single link (hop) instead of using multiple hops to cover the same range. With the increased WSN coverage area, remote monitoring applications such as smart farming may require mobile sensor nodes. This research focuses on the challenges to overcome LoRa’s limitations (long TOA and antenna height) and accommodation of mobility in a high-density and wide-area WSN for future remote monitoring applications. Hence, this research proposes lightweight communication protocols and networking algorithms using LoRa to achieve mobility, energy efficiency and wider coverage of up to a few hundred km for the WSN. This thesis is divided into four parts. It presents two data transmission protocols for LoRa to achieve a higher data rate and wider network coverage, one networking algorithm for wide-area WSN and a channel synchronization algorithm to improve the data rate of LoRa links. Part one presents a lightweight data transmission protocol for LoRa using a mobile data accumulator (called data sink) to increase the monitoring coverage area and data transmission energy efficiency. The proposed Lightweight Dynamic Auto Reconfigurable Protocol (LDAP) utilizes direct or single hop to transmit data from the SNs using one of them as the repeater node. Wide-area remote monitoring applications such as Water Quality Monitoring (WQM) can acquire data from geographically distributed water resources using LDAP, and a mobile Data Sink (DS) mounted on an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). The proposed LDAP can acquire data from a minimum of 147 SNs covering 128 km in one direction reducing the DS requirement down to 5% comparing other WSNs using Zigbee for the same coverage area with static DS. Applications like smart farming and environmental monitoring may require mobile sensor nodes (SN) and data sinks (DS). The WSNs for these applications will require real-time network management algorithms and routing protocols for the dynamic WSN with mobility that is not feasible using static WSN technologies. This part proposes a lightweight clustering algorithm for the dynamic WSN (with mobility) utilizing the proposed LDAP to form clusters in real-time during the data accumulation by the mobile DS. The proposed Lightweight Dynamic Clustering Algorithm (LDCA) can form real-time clusters consisting of mobile or stationary SNs using mobile DS or static GW. WSN using LoRa and LDCA increases network capacity and coverage area reducing the required number of DS. It also reduces clustering energy to 33% and shows clustering efficiency of up to 98% for single-hop clustering covering 100 SNs. LoRa is not suitable for a clustered WSN with multiple hops due to its long TOA, depending on the LoRa link configurations (bandwidth and spreading factor). This research proposes a channel synchronization algorithm to improve the data rate of the LoRa link by combining multiple LoRa radio channels in a single logical channel. This increased data rate will enhance the capacity of the clusters in the WSN supporting faster clustering with mobile sensor nodes and data sink. Along with the LDCA, the proposed Lightweight Synchronization Algorithm for Quasi-orthogonal LoRa channels (LSAQ) facilitating multi-hop data transfer increases WSN capacity and coverage area. This research investigates quasi-orthogonality features of LoRa in terms of radio channel frequency, spreading factor (SF) and bandwidth. It derived mathematical models to obtain the optimal LoRa parameters for parallel data transmission using multiple SFs and developed a synchronization algorithm for LSAQ. The proposed LSAQ achieves up to a 46% improvement in network capacity and 58% in data rate compared with the WSN using the traditional LoRa Medium Access Control (MAC) layer protocols. Besides the high-density clustered WSN, remote monitoring applications like plant phenotyping may require transferring image or high-volume data using LoRa links. Wireless data transmission protocols used for high-volume data transmission using the link with a low data rate (like LoRa) requiring multiple packets create a significant amount of packet overload. Besides, the reliability of these data transmission protocols is highly dependent on acknowledgement (ACK) messages creating extra load on overall data transmission and hence reducing the application-specific effective data rate (goodput). This research proposes an application layer protocol to improve the goodput while transferring an image or sequential data over the LoRa links in the WSN. It uses dynamic acknowledgement (DACK) protocol for the LoRa physical layer to reduce the ACK message overhead. DACK uses end-of-transmission ACK messaging and transmits multiple packets as a block. It retransmits missing packets after receiving the ACK message at the end of multiple blocks. The goodput depends on the block size and the number of lossy packets that need to be retransmitted. It shows that the DACK LoRa can reduce the total ACK time 10 to 30 times comparing stop-wait protocol and ten times comparing multi-packet ACK protocol. The focused wide-area WSN and mobility requires different matrices to be evaluated. The performance evaluation matrices used for the static WSN do not consider the mobility and the related parameters, such as clustering efficiency in the network and hence cannot evaluate the performance of the proposed wide-area WSN platform supporting mobility. Therefore, new, and modified performance matrices are proposed to measure dynamic performance. It can measure the real-time clustering performance using the mobile data sink and sensor nodes, the cluster size, the coverage area of the WSN and more. All required hardware and software design, dimensioning, and performance evaluation models are also presented

Networks, Communication, and Computing Vol. 2

Networks, communications, and computing have become ubiquitous and inseparable parts of everyday life. This book is based on a Special Issue of the Algorithms journal, and it is devoted to the exploration of the many-faceted relationship of networks, communications, and computing. The included papers explore the current state-of-the-art research in these areas, with a particular interest in the interactions among the fields

Optical Wireless Data Center Networks

Bandwidth and computation-intensive Big Data applications in disciplines like social media, bio- and nano-informatics, Internet-of-Things (IoT), and real-time analytics, are pushing existing access and core (backbone) networks as well as Data Center Networks (DCNs) to their limits. Next generation DCNs must support continuously increasing network traffic while satisfying minimum performance requirements of latency, reliability, flexibility and scalability. Therefore, a larger number of cables (i.e., copper-cables and fiber optics) may be required in conventional wired DCNs. In addition to limiting the possible topologies, large number of cables may result into design and development problems related to wire ducting and maintenance, heat dissipation, and power consumption. To address the cabling complexity in wired DCNs, we propose OWCells, a class of optical wireless cellular data center network architectures in which fixed line of sight (LOS) optical wireless communication (OWC) links are used to connect the racks arranged in regular polygonal topologies. We present the OWCell DCN architecture, develop its theoretical underpinnings, and investigate routing protocols and OWC transceiver design. To realize a fully wireless DCN, servers in racks must also be connected using OWC links. There is, however, a difficulty of connecting multiple adjacent network components, such as servers in a rack, using point-to-point LOS links. To overcome this problem, we propose and validate the feasibility of an FSO-Bus to connect multiple adjacent network components using NLOS point-to-point OWC links. Finally, to complete the design of the OWC transceiver, we develop a new class of strictly and rearrangeably non-blocking multicast optical switches in which multicast is performed efficiently at the physical optical (lower) layer rather than upper layers (e.g., application layer). Advisors: Jitender S. Deogun and Dennis R. Alexande

Smart Wireless Sensor Networks

The recent development of communication and sensor technology results in the growth of a new attractive and challenging area - wireless sensor networks (WSNs). A wireless sensor network which consists of a large number of sensor nodes is deployed in environmental fields to serve various applications. Facilitated with the ability of wireless communication and intelligent computation, these nodes become smart sensors which do not only perceive ambient physical parameters but also be able to process information, cooperate with each other and self-organize into the network. These new features assist the sensor nodes as well as the network to operate more efficiently in terms of both data acquisition and energy consumption. Special purposes of the applications require design and operation of WSNs different from conventional networks such as the internet. The network design must take into account of the objectives of specific applications. The nature of deployed environment must be considered. The limited of sensor nodes� resources such as memory, computational ability, communication bandwidth and energy source are the challenges in network design. A smart wireless sensor network must be able to deal with these constraints as well as to guarantee the connectivity, coverage, reliability and security of network's operation for a maximized lifetime. This book discusses various aspects of designing such smart wireless sensor networks. Main topics includes: design methodologies, network protocols and algorithms, quality of service management, coverage optimization, time synchronization and security techniques for sensor networks

Underwater acoustic communications

The underwater acoustic medium poses unique challenges to the design of robust, high throughput digital communications. The aim of this work is to identify modulation and receiver processing techniques to enable the reliable transfer of data at high rate, at range between two, potentially mobile parties using acoustics. More generally, this work seeks to investigate techniques to effectively communicate between two or more parties over a wide range of channel conditions where data rate is a key but not always the absolute performance requirement. Understanding the intrinsic ocean mechanisms that influence signal coherence, the relationship between signal coherence and optimum signal design, and the development of robust modulation and receiver processing techniques are the main areas of study within this work. New and established signal design, modulation, synchronisation, equalisation and spatial processing techniques are investigated. Several new, innovative techniques are presented which seek to improve the robustness of ‘classical’ solutions to the underwater acoustic communications problem. The performance of these techniques to mitigate the severe temporal dispersion of the underwater channel and its unique temporal variability are assessed. A candidate modulation, synchronisation and equalisation architecture is proposed based on a spatial-temporal adaptive signal processing (STAP) receiver. Comprehensive simulation results are presented to demonstrate the performance of the candidate receiver to time selective, frequency selective and spatially selective channel behaviour. Several innovative techniques are presented which maximise system performance over a wider range of operational and environmental conditions. Field trials results are presented based on system evaluation over a wide range of geographically distinct environments demonstrating system performance over a diverse range of ocean bathymetry, topography and background noise conditions. A real time implementation of the system is reported and field trials results presented demonstrating the capability of the system to support a wide range of data formats including video at useful frame rates. Within this work, several novel techniques have been developed which have extended the state of the art in high data rate underwater communications:- • Robust, high fidelity open loop synchronisation techniques capable of operating at marginal signal-to-noise ratios over a wide range of severely time spread environments. These high probability of synchronisation, low probability of false alarm techniques, provide the means for ‘burst’ open loop synchronisation in time, Doppler and space (bearing). The techniques have been demonstrated in communication and position fixing/navigation systems to provide repeatable range accuracy’s to centimetric order. • Novel closed loop synchronisation compensation for STAP receiver architectures. Specifically, this work has demonstrated the performance benefits of including both delay lock loop (DLL) and phase lock loop (PLL) support for acoustic adaptive receivers to offload tracking effort from the fractional feedforward equaliser section. It has been shown that the addition of a DLL/PLL outperforms the PLL only case for Doppler errors exceeding a few fractions of a knot. • Recycling of training data has been demonstrated as a potentially useful means to improve equaliser convergence in difficult acoustic channels. With suitable processing power, training data recycling introduces no additional transmission time overhead, which may be a limiting factor in battery powered applications. • Forward and time reverse decoding of packet data has been demonstrated as an effective means to overcome some non-minimum phase channel conditions. It has also been shown that there may be further benefits in terms of improved bit error performance, by exploiting concurrent forward and backward symbol data under modest channel conditions. • Several wideband techniques have been developed and demonstrated to be effective at resolving and coherently tracking difficult doubly spread acoustic channels. In particular, wideband spread spectrum techniques have been shown to be effective at resolving acoustic multipath, and with the aid of independent delay lock loops, track individual path arrivals. Techniques have been developed which can effect coherent or non-coherent recombination of these paths with a view to improving the robustness of an acoustic link operating at very low signal-to-noise levels. • Demonstrated throughputs of up to 41kbps in a difficult, tropical environment, featuring significant biological noise levels for mobile platforms at range up to 1.5km. • Demonstrated throughputs of between 300bps and 1600bps in a shallow, reverberant environment, at a range up to 21km at LF. • Implemented and demonstrated all algorithms in real time systems

Research on PDMA system based on complementary sequence and low complexity detection algorithm

With the intensive deployment of mobile networks and the vigorous development of new multimedia services, video has gradually become the mainstream of cultural consumption. The contradiction between the proliferation of video data services and the scarcity of spectrum resources has brought great challenges to the current network resource allocation. Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) can be used to solve this problem by signal superposition and spectrum multiplexing to improve system access capability. As a new type of joint optimization design of transmitter and receiver side, PDMA has high research value. In this paper, a framework of PDMA video transmission system based on H.264 video compression coding (HVC-PDMA) is proposed. Poly complementary sequence (PCS) spread spectrum coding is performed on the transmission codebook in order to improve the transmission accuracy. Meanwhile, a low complexity serial sphere compensated Max-log MPA (SSCM-MPA) algorithm is proposed to reduce the complexity of the multi-user detection algorithm. Simulation results show that the PCS spread spectrum can improve system throughput and peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) while reducing bit error rate (BER). SSCM-MPA algorithm can greatly reduce the complexity and improve the transmission efficiency

Network Science for IoT

The research work presented in this thesis is based on the concept and defintion of network that can spread in several and different real world contexts. Indeed, we can refer to a network in a telecommunications sense considering a collection of transmitters, receivers, and communication channels that send or are used to send information to one another. However, as a matter of fact, in nature there are other several examples of networks: the human brain is one of them. The relationship between the actors in Hollywood can be studied in terms of network as well, a generic social community can be compared to a network, eco-systems are networks of species. The recent Network Science aims at studying all these systems using a set of common mathematical methods. In the following of the thesis, we will focus on some of well known telecommunications networks issues using standard telecommunications procedures to address them, with relevant reference to video flow transmissions and management of electric vehicles networks. At the same time, different models aiming at reach the same goals in contexts that may differ from a telecommunications setup can be used. In more details, we will evaluate queueing systems, jamming problems, groups recognition in networks, and mobile computing using game theoretic approaches. It is worth noting that this aspect can be also seen in a reverse order. Indeed, we will discuss how standard telecommunications analysis can be used to investigate on problems not directly related to a telecommunications background. In particular, one of our future purposes is to investigate on the brain connectivity that is raising significant interest in the recent scientific society

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