139 research outputs found

    Learning automata-based solution to target coverage problem for directional sensor networks with adjustable sensing ranges

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    The extensive applications of directional sensor networks (DSNs) in a wide range of situations have attracted a great deal of attention. One significant problem linked with DSNs is target coverage, which primarily operate based on simultaneously observing a group of targets occurring in a set area, hence maximizing the network lifetime. As there are limitations to the directional sensors’ sensing angle and energy resource, designing new techniques for effectively managing the energy consumption of the sensors is crucial. In this study, two problems were addressed. First, a new learning automata-based algorithm is proposed to solve the target coverage problem, in cases where sensors have multiple power levels (i.e., sensors have multiple sensing ranges), by selecting a subset of sensor directions that is able to monitor all the targets. In real applications, targets may have different coverage quality requirements, which leads to the second; the priority-based target coverage problem, which has not yet been investigated in the field of study. In this problem, two newly developed algorithms based on learning automata and greedy are proposed to select a subset of sensor directions in a way that different coverage quality requirements of all the targets could be satisfied. All of the proposed algorithms were assessed for their performances via a number of experiments. In addition, the effect of each algorithm on maximizing network lifetime was also investigated via a comparative study. All algorithms are successful in solving the problems; however, the learning automata-based algorithms are proven to be superior by up to 18% comparing with the greedy-based algorithms, when considering extending the network lifetime

    Airborne chemical sensing with mobile robots

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    Airborne chemical sensing with mobile robots has been an active research areasince the beginning of the 1990s. This article presents a review of research work in this field,including gas distribution mapping, trail guidance, and the different subtasks of gas sourcelocalisation. Due to the difficulty of modelling gas distribution in a real world environmentwith currently available simulation techniques, we focus largely on experimental work and donot consider publications that are purely based on simulations

    Noninteractive Localization of Wireless Camera Sensors with Mobile Beacon

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    Routing, Localization And Positioning Protocols For Wireless Sensor And Actor Networks

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    Wireless sensor and actor networks (WSANs) are distributed systems of sensor nodes and actors that are interconnected over the wireless medium. Sensor nodes collect information about the physical world and transmit the data to actors by using one-hop or multi-hop communications. Actors collect information from the sensor nodes, process the information, take decisions and react to the events. This dissertation presents contributions to the methods of routing, localization and positioning in WSANs for practical applications. We first propose a routing protocol with service differentiation for WSANs with stationary nodes. In this setting, we also adapt a sports ranking algorithm to dynamically prioritize the events in the environment depending on the collected data. We extend this routing protocol for an application, in which sensor nodes float in a river to gather observations and actors are deployed at accessible points on the coastline. We develop a method with locally acting adaptive overlay network formation to organize the network with actor areas and to collect data by using locality-preserving communication. We also present a multi-hop localization approach for enriching the information collected from the river with the estimated locations of mobile sensor nodes without using positioning adapters. As an extension to this application, we model the movements of sensor nodes by a subsurface meandering current mobility model with random surface motion. Then we adapt the introduced routing and network organization methods to model a complete primate monitoring system. A novel spatial cut-off preferential attachment model and iii center of mass concept are developed according to the characteristics of the primate groups. We also present a role determination algorithm for primates, which uses the collection of spatial-temporal relationships. We apply a similar approach to human social networks to tackle the problem of automatic generation and organization of social networks by analyzing and assessing interaction data. The introduced routing and localization protocols in this dissertation are also extended with a novel three dimensional actor positioning strategy inspired by the molecular geometry. Extensive simulations are conducted in OPNET simulation tool for the performance evaluation of the proposed protocol

    Characterization of Field-of-View for Energy Efficient Application-Aware Visual Sensor Networks

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    Energy consumption is one of the primary concerns in a resource-constrained visual sensor network (VSN). The existing VSN design solutions under particular resource-constrained scenarios are application specific, whereas the degree of sensitivity of the resource constraints varies from one application to another. This limits the implementation of the existing energy efficient solutions within a VSN node, which may be considered to be a part of a heterogeneous network. The heterogeneity of image capture and processing within a VSN can be adaptively reflected with a dynamic field-of-view (FoV) realization. This is expected to allow the implementation of a generalized energy efficient solution to adapt with the heterogeneity of the network. In this paper, an energy efficient FoV characterization framework is proposed, which can support a diverse range of applications. The context of adaptivity in the proposed FoV characterization framework is considered to be: 1) sensing range selection; 2) maximizing spatial coverage; 3) adaptive task classification; and 4) minimizing the number of required nodes. Soft decision criteria is exploited, and it is observed that for a given detection reliability, the proposed framework provides energy efficient solutions, which can be implemented within heterogeneous networks. It is also found that the proposed design solution for heterogeneous networks leads to 49.8% energy savings compared with the trivial design solution

    Edge Artificial Intelligence for Real-Time Target Monitoring

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    The key enabling technology for the exponentially growing cellular communications sector is location-based services. The need for location-aware services has increased along with the number of wireless and mobile devices. Estimation problems, and particularly parameter estimation, have drawn a lot of interest because of its relevance and engineers' ongoing need for higher performance. As applications expanded, a lot of interest was generated in the accurate assessment of temporal and spatial properties. In the thesis, two different approaches to subject monitoring are thoroughly addressed. For military applications, medical tracking, industrial workers, and providing location-based services to the mobile user community, which is always growing, this kind of activity is crucial. In-depth consideration is given to the viability of applying the Angle of Arrival (AoA) and Receiver Signal Strength Indication (RSSI) localization algorithms in real-world situations. We presented two prospective systems, discussed them, and presented specific assessments and tests. These systems were put to the test in diverse contexts (e.g., indoor, outdoor, in water...). The findings showed the localization capability, but because of the low-cost antenna we employed, this method is only practical up to a distance of roughly 150 meters. Consequently, depending on the use-case, this method may or may not be advantageous. An estimation algorithm that enhances the performance of the AoA technique was implemented on an edge device. Another approach was also considered. Radar sensors have shown to be durable in inclement weather and bad lighting conditions. Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) radars are the most frequently employed among the several sorts of radar technologies for these kinds of applications. Actually, this is because they are low-cost and can simultaneously provide range and Doppler data. In comparison to pulse and Ultra Wide Band (UWB) radar sensors, they also need a lower sample rate and a lower peak to average ratio. The system employs a cutting-edge surveillance method based on widely available FMCW radar technology. The data processing approach is built on an ad hoc-chain of different blocks that transforms data, extract features, and make a classification decision before cancelling clutters and leakage using a frame subtraction technique, applying DL algorithms to Range-Doppler (RD) maps, and adding a peak to cluster assignment step before tracking targets. In conclusion, the FMCW radar and DL technique for the RD maps performed well together for indoor use-cases. The aforementioned tests used an edge device and Infineon Technologies' Position2Go FMCW radar tool-set

    Full-View Coverage Problems in Camera Sensor Networks

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    Camera Sensor Networks (CSNs) have emerged as an information-rich sensing modality with many potential applications and have received much research attention over the past few years. One of the major challenges in research for CSNs is that camera sensors are different from traditional scalar sensors, as different cameras from different positions can form distinct views of the object in question. As a result, simply combining the sensing range of the cameras across the field does not necessarily form an effective camera coverage, since the face image (or the targeted aspect) of the object may be missed. The angle between the object\u27s facing direction and the camera\u27s viewing direction is used to measure the quality of sensing in CSNs instead. This distinction makes the coverage verification and deployment methodology dedicated to conventional sensor networks unsuitable. A new coverage model called full-view coverage can precisely characterize the features of coverage in CSNs. An object is full-view covered if there is always a camera to cover it no matter which direction it faces and the camera\u27s viewing direction is sufficiently close to the object\u27s facing direction. In this dissertation, we consider three areas of research for CSNS: 1. an analytical theory for full-view coverage; 2. energy efficiency issues in full-view coverage CSNs; 3. Multi-dimension full-view coverage theory. For the first topic, we propose a novel analytical full-view coverage theory, where the set of full-view covered points is produced by numerical methodology. Based on this theory, we solve the following problems. First, we address the full-view coverage holes detection problem and provide the healing solutions. Second, we propose kk-Full-View-Coverage algorithms in camera sensor networks. Finally, we address the camera sensor density minimization problem for triangular lattice based deployment in full-view covered camera sensor networks, where we argue that there is a flaw in the previous literature, and present our corresponding solution. For the second topic, we discuss lifetime and full-view coverage guarantees through distributed algorithms in camera sensor networks. Another energy issue we discuss is about object tracking problems in full-view coverage camera sensor networks. Next, the third topic addresses multi-dimension full-view coverage problem where we propose a novel 3D full-view coverage model, and we tackle the full-view coverage optimization problem in order to minimize the number of camera sensors and demonstrate a valid solution. This research is important due to the numerous applications for CSNs. Especially some deployment can be in remote locations, it is critical to efficiently obtain accurate meaningful data

    Pedestrian Mobility Mining with Movement Patterns

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    In street-based mobility mining, pedestrian volume estimation receives increasing attention, as it provides important applications such as billboard evaluation, attraction ranking and emergency support systems. In practice, empirical measurements are sparse due to budget limitations and constrained mounting options. Therefore, estimation of pedestrian quantity is required to perform pedestrian mobility analysis at unobserved locations. Accurate pedestrian mobility analysis is difficult to achieve due to the non-random path selection of individual pedestrians (resulting from motivated movement behaviour), causing the pedestrian volumes to distribute non-uniformly among the traffic network. Existing approaches (pedestrian simulations and data mining methods) are hard to adjust to sensor measurements or require more expensive input data (e.g. high fidelity floor plans or total number of pedestrians in the site) and are thus unfeasible. In order to achieve a mobility model that encodes pedestrian volumes accurately, we propose two methods under the regression framework which overcome the limitations of existing methods. Namely, these two methods incorporate not just topological information and episodic sensor readings, but also prior knowledge on movement preferences and movement patterns. The first one is based on Least Squares Regression (LSR). The advantage of this method is the easy inclusion of route choice heuristics and robustness towards contradicting measurements. The second method is Gaussian Process Regression (GPR). The advantages of this method are the possibilities to include expert knowledge on pedestrian movement and to estimate the uncertainty in predicting the unknown frequencies. Furthermore the kernel matrix of the pedestrian frequencies returned by the method supports sensor placement decisions. Major benefits of the regression approach are (1) seamless integration of expert data and (2) simple reproduction of sensor measurements. Further advantages are (3) invariance of the results against traffic network homeomorphism and (4) the computational complexity depends not on the number of modeled pedestrians but on the traffic network complexity. We compare our novel approaches to state-of-the-art pedestrian simulation (Generalized Centrifugal Force Model) as well as existing Data Mining methods for traffic volume estimation (Spatial k-Nearest Neighbour) and commonly used graph kernels for the Gaussian Process Regression (Squared Exponential, Regularized Laplacian and Diffusion Kernel) in terms of prediction performance (measured with mean absolute error). Our methods showed significantly lower error rates. Since pattern knowledge is not easy to obtain, we present algorithms for pattern acquisition and analysis from Episodic Movement Data. The proposed analysis of Episodic Movement Data involve spatio-temporal aggregation of visits and flows, cluster analyses and dependency models. For pedestrian mobility data collection we further developed and successfully applied the recently evolved Bluetooth tracking technology. The introduced methods are combined to a system for pedestrian mobility analysis which comprises three layers. The Sensor Layer (1) monitors geo-coded sensor recordings on people’s presence and hands this episodic movement data in as input to the next layer. By use of standardized Open Geographic Consortium (OGC) compliant interfaces for data collection, we support seamless integration of various sensor technologies depending on the application requirements. The Query Layer (2) interacts with the user, who could ask for analyses within a given region and a certain time interval. Results are returned to the user in OGC conform Geography Markup Language (GML) format. The user query triggers the (3) Analysis Layer which utilizes the mobility model for pedestrian volume estimation. The proposed approach is promising for location performance evaluation and attractor identification. Thus, it was successfully applied to numerous industrial applications: Zurich central train station, the zoo of Duisburg (Germany) and a football stadium (Stade des Costières Nîmes, France)

    Simulation and Measurement of Multispectral Space Debris Light Curves

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    The accumulation of space debris has become one of the greatest threats facing the space industry to date. Through an increasing amount of objects deposited in Earth's orbit, such as rocket bodies, defunct satellites and general debris fragments, space missions are exposed to a growing risk of collisions. Moreover, the recent surge in commercial space applications is expected to further contribute to the problem. At the Institute of Technical Physics of Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR) in Stuttgart, resident space objects are monitored using a number of telescopes through active laser and passive sunlight illumination. Due to the high altitude and relatively small size of the objects they generally appear as unresolved points in photometric images. An object's temporal variation in brightness is referred to as a light curve and implies key information concerning the object's shape, material composition and rotation. Recovering these parameters from light signals is not trivial and it is anticipated that additional information provided by multispectral observations will contribute to a more reliable characterization of space debris. This research covers the development of a physically based simulation to model multispectral light reflections from space debris. The software is targeted towards ground-based observations and is expected to form an integral part in facilitating future strategies for comprehensive collision avoidance and space debris removal. Both passive light curves and laser ranging measurements are simulated using three-dimensional satellite models. To improve the accuracy of simulations, spectral lab measurements of common space materials are incorporated into the render. Further, the process of gathering reference measurements using the DLR's 43 cm telescope at the Uhlandshöhe Forschungsobservatorium is presented. For the comparison between synthetic and empirical light curves, a detailed calibration of the optical system is performed. The validity of the light curve simulator is confirmed the on the basis of recordings obtained from radar calibration targets. Finally, simulated data is used to study benefits of multispectral observations for characterization and parameter estimation from space debris
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