Efficient energy management for the internet of things in smart cities

The drastic increase in urbanization over the past few years requires sustainable, efficient, and smart solutions for transportation, governance, environment, quality of life, and so on. The Internet of Things offers many sophisticated and ubiquitous applications for smart cities. The energy demand of IoT applications is increased, while IoT devices continue to grow in both numbers and requirements. Therefore, smart city solutions must have the ability to efficiently utilize energy and handle the associated challenges. Energy management is considered as a key paradigm for the realization of complex energy systems in smart cities. In this article, we present a brief overview of energy management and challenges in smart cities. We then provide a unifying framework for energy-efficient optimization and scheduling of IoT-based smart cities. We also discuss the energy harvesting in smart cities, which is a promising solution for extending the lifetime of low-power devices and its related challenges. We detail two case studies. The first one targets energy-efficient scheduling in smart homes, and the second covers wireless power transfer for IoT devices in smart cities. Simulation results for the case studies demonstrate the tremendous impact of energy-efficient scheduling optimization and wireless power transfer on the performance of IoT in smart cities

Distributed Relay Selection for Heterogeneous UAV Communication Networks Using A Many-to-Many Matching Game Without Substitutability

This paper proposes a distributed multiple relay selection scheme to maximize the satisfaction experiences of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) communication networks. The multi-radio and multi-channel (MRMC) UAV communication system is considered in this paper. One source UAV can select one or more relay radios, and each relay radio can be shared by multiple source UAVs equally. Without the center controller, source UAVs with heterogeneous requirements compete for channels dominated by relay radios. In order to optimize the global satisfaction performance, we model the UAV communication network as a many-to-many matching market without substitutability. We design a potential matching approach to address the optimization problem, in which the optimizing of local matching process will lead to the improvement of global matching results. Simulation results show that the proposed distributed matching approach yields good matching performance of satisfaction, which is close to the global optimum result. Moreover, the many-to-many potential matching approach outperforms existing schemes sufficiently in terms of global satisfaction within a reasonable convergence time.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, conferenc

On provision of resilient connectivity in cognitive unmanned aerial vehicles

Mobile ad-hoc network (MANET) can be established in the areas/scenarios where the infrastructure networks are either out of service or no more available. MANETs have a lot of applications in sensor networks. Generally, a MANET deploys mobile ground nodes to set up a network. However, there can be some severe scenarios such as flood, battlefield, rescue operations, etc. where these ground nodes cannot be deployed. In such cases, a network of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can be a more viable option. Normally, UAVs operates on IEEE L-Band, IEEE S-Band or ISM band. These bands are already overcrowded, therefore, UAVs will face the problem of the spectrum scarcity. To resolve this issue cognitive radio (CR) is a most promising technology. Hence, in this work, we focus on CR based UAVs. As CR is based on opportunistic spectrum access, therefore, it is quite possible that all UAVs do not have one single channel available to communicate with each other. They need to form clusters for their communication depending on the availability of the channel. However, channel availability is intermittent because of opportunistic spectrum access. This may result in reforming of the cluster again and again. To avoid this frequent re-clustering and to maintain connectivity among the UAVs, in this paper, we present a resilient clustering technique with a concept of introducing a backup channel for each cluster. Simulation results show the significance of the proposed technique

Joint workload scheduling and BBU allocation in cloud-RAN for 5G networks

Copyright 2017 ACM. Cloud-radio access network (C-RAN) emerges as a solution to satisfy the demand for a diverse range of applications, massive connectivity, and network heterogeneity. C-RAN uses central cloud network for processing user requests. Efficient management of cloud resources (e.g., computation and transmission resources) is one of the important challenges in C-RAN. In this paper, we investigate a joint workload scheduling and baseband unit (BBU) allocation in Cloud-RAN for 5G networks. First, we establish a queueing model in C-RAN. We then formulate an optimization problem for joint workload scheduling and BBU allocation with the aim to minimize mean response time and aggregate power. Queueing stability and workload conservation constraints are considered in the optimization problem. To solve this problem, we propose an energy efficient joint workload scheduling and BBU allocation (EE-JWSBA) algorithm using the concept of queueing theory. The EE-JWSBA algorithm is evaluated via simulations by considering three different scheduling weights (e.g., random, normalized, and upper limit). Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of proposed scheme using different scheduling weights

Towards Tactile Internet in Beyond 5G Era: Recent Advances, Current Issues and Future Directions

Tactile Internet (TI) is envisioned to create a paradigm shift from the content-oriented communications to steer/control-based communications by enabling real-time transmission of haptic information (i.e., touch, actuation, motion, vibration, surface texture) over Internet in addition to the conventional audiovisual and data traffics. This emerging TI technology, also considered as the next evolution phase of Internet of Things (IoT), is expected to create numerous opportunities for technology markets in a wide variety of applications ranging from teleoperation systems and Augmented/Virtual Reality (AR/VR) to automotive safety and eHealthcare towards addressing the complex problems of human society. However, the realization of TI over wireless media in the upcoming Fifth Generation (5G) and beyond networks creates various non-conventional communication challenges and stringent requirements in terms of ultra-low latency, ultra-high reliability, high data-rate connectivity, resource allocation, multiple access and quality-latency-rate tradeoff. To this end, this paper aims to provide a holistic view on wireless TI along with a thorough review of the existing state-of-the-art, to identify and analyze the involved technical issues, to highlight potential solutions and to propose future research directions. First, starting with the vision of TI and recent advances and a review of related survey/overview articles, we present a generalized framework for wireless TI in the Beyond 5G Era including a TI architecture, the main technical requirements, the key application areas and potential enabling technologies. Subsequently, we provide a comprehensive review of the existing TI works by broadly categorizing them into three main paradigms; namely, haptic communications, wireless AR/VR, and autonomous, intelligent and cooperative mobility systems. Next, potential enabling technologies across physical/Medium Access Control (MAC) and network layers are identified and discussed in detail. Also, security and privacy issues of TI applications are discussed along with some promising enablers. Finally, we present some open research challenges and recommend promising future research directions