Evaluating the more suitable ISM frequency band for iot-based smart grids: a quantitative study of 915 MHz vs. 2400 MHz

IoT has begun to be employed pervasively in industrial environments and critical infrastructures thanks to its positive impact on performance and efficiency. Among these environments, the Smart Grid (SG) excels as the perfect host for this technology, mainly due to its potential to become the motor of the rest of electrically-dependent infrastructures. To make this SG-oriented IoT cost-effective, most deployments employ unlicensed ISM bands, specifically the 2400 MHz one, due to its extended communication bandwidth in comparison with lower bands. This band has been extensively used for years by Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) and Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANET), from which the IoT technologically inherits. However, this work questions and evaluates the suitability of such a "default" communication band in SG environments, compared with the 915 MHz ISM band. A comprehensive quantitative comparison of these bands has been accomplished in terms of: power consumption, average network delay, and packet reception rate. To allow such a study, a dual-band propagation model specifically designed for the SG has been derived, tested, and incorporated into the well-known TOSSIM simulator. Simulation results reveal that only in the absence of other 2400 MHz interfering devices (such as WiFi or Bluetooth) or in small networks, is the 2400 MHz band the best option. In any other case, SG-oriented IoT quantitatively perform better if operating in the 915 MHz band.This research was supported by the MINECO/FEDER project grants TEC2013-47016-C2-2-R (COINS) and TEC2016-76465-C2-1-R (AIM). The authors would like to thank Juan Salvador Perez Madrid nd Domingo Meca (part of the Iberdrola staff) for the support provided during the realization of this work. Ruben M. Sandoval also thanks the Spanish MICINN for an FPU (REF FPU14/03424) pre-doctoral fellowship

An extension to the CORBA Audio/Video Streaming Service: A QoS adaptive middleware

The CORBA audio/video (A/V) Streaming Service has been designed to implement and integrate open distributed multimedia applications. In this paper, a set of impairments resulting of the original A/V service are identified. To overcome such limitations, we propose an extension to the specification of the A/V Streaming Service. It defines a flexible architecture creating a framework that simplifies the implementation of applications handling audio/video flows. To evaluate our service extension we develop middleware objects of an application to control and manage uncompressed video data flows with strict time restrictions. Empirical results obtained by executing this application are also presented and discussed.This work has been supported by project grant TEC2007-67966-01/TCM (CON-PARTE-1) and it is also developed in the framework of “Programa de Ayudas a Grupos de Excelencia de la Región de Murcia, de la Fundación Séneca, Agencia de Ciencia y Tecnología de la RM”

Tourism and hospitality sector electricity use: evidences from 12 EU countries

At the Paris Conference of the Parties (COP21) in 2015, 195 countries agreed to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change. Along this line, the EU is committed to a 40% reduction in their domestic greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. This new target represents a significant progression beyond its existing 20% emission reduction commitment by 2020. Thus, greater efforts will be needed affecting all productive sectors in order to reduce CO2 emissions and energy consumption. In order to reach this ambitious target, new measures affecting all economic sectors would be needed. This paper focuses on the tourism sector. This aim of this study is to investigate the relationships between tourist overnight stays and the hospitality sector electricity consumption. These relationships are studied for 12 EU countries during the period 2005-2012, accordingly with the available data. With this aim, econometric panel data techniques are used in order to estimate an electricity consumption function for the hospitality sector which depends on tourism, income, price and climate variables. The Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis is also tested. An Energy-tourism Kuznets Curve would show that increasing earnings from tourism will bring about reduced electricity consumption from a threshold point, which could be related to the fact that more earnings could imply undertaking more energy efficiency measures

Looking for Archetypes: Applying Game Data Mining to Hearthstone Decks

Digital Collectible Cards Games such as Hearthstone have become a very proli c test-bed for Arti cial Intelligence algorithms. The main researches have focused on the implementation of autonomous agents (bots) able to effectively play the game. However, this environment is also very attractive for the use of Data Mining (DM) and Machine Learning (ML) techniques, for analysing and extracting useful knowledge from game data. The objective of this work is to apply existing Game Mining techniques in order to study more than 600,000 real decks (groups of cards) created by players with many di erent skill levels. Data visualisation and analysis tools have been applied, namely, Graph representations and Clustering techniques. Then, an expert player has conducted a deep analysis of the results yielded by these methods, aiming to identify the use of standard - and well-known - archetypes de ned by the players. The used methods will also make it possible for the expert to discover hidden relationships between cards that could lead to nding better combinations of them, enhancing players' decks or, otherwise, identify unbalanced cards that could lead to a disappointing game experience. Moreover, although this work is mostly focused on data analysis and visualization, the obtained results can be applied to improve Hearthstone Bots' behaviour, e.g. predicting opponent's actions after identifying a speci c archetype in his/her deck.Spanish Government PID2020-113462RB-I00 PID2020-115570 GB-C22Junta de Andalucia B-TIC-402-UGR18 P18-RT-4830 A-TIC-608-UGR2

A bibliometric study of the research area of videogames using Dimensions.ai database

Videogames are a very interesting area of research for fields as diverse as computer science, health, psychology or even social sciences. Every year a growing number of articles are published in different topics inside this field, so it is very convenient to study the different bibliometric data in order to consolidate the research efforts. Thus, the aim of this work is to conduct a study on the distribution of articles related to videogames in the different fields of research, as well as to measure their interest over time, to identify the sources, countries and authors with the highest scientific production. In order to carry out this analysis, the information system Dimensions.ai has been considered, since it covers a large number of documents and allows for easy downloading and analysis of datasets. According to the study, three countries are the most prolific in this area: USA, Canada and UK. The obtained results also indicate that the fields with the highest number of publications are Information and Computer Sciences, Medical and Health Sciences, and Psychology and Cognitive Sciences, in this order. With regard to the impact of the publications, differences between the number of citations, and the number of Altmetric Attention Score, have been found

A nanoscale communication network scheme and energy model for a human hand scenario

Real-time monitoring of medical test parameters as well as biological and chemical substances inside the human body is an aspiration which might facilitate the control of pathologies and would ensure better effectiveness in diagnostics and treatments. Future Body Area NanoNetworks (BANN) represent an ongoing effort to complement these initiatives, although due to its early stage of development, further research is required. This paper contributes with a hierarchical BANN architecture consisting of two types of nanodevices, namely, nanonodes and a nanorouter, which are conceptually designed using technologically available electronic components. A straightforward communication scheme operating at the THz band for the exchange of information among nanodevices is also proposed. Communications are conducted in a human hand scenario since, unlike other parts of the human body, the negative impact of path loss and molecular absorption noise on the propagation of electromagnetic waves in biological tissues is mitigated. However, data transmission is restricted by the tiny size of nanodevices and their extremely limited energy storing capability. To overcome this concern, nanodevices must be powered through the bloodstream and external ultrasound energy harvesting sources. Under these conditions, the necessary energy and its management have been thoroughly examined and assessed. The results obtained reveal the outstanding ability of nanonodes to recharge, thus enabling each pair of nanonode–nanorouter to communicate every 52 min. This apparently long period is compensated by the considerably high number of nanonodes in the network, which satisfies a quasi-constant monitoring of medical parameter readings.This work has been supported by the project AIM, ref. TEC2016-76465-C2-1-R (AEI/FEDER, UE). Sebastian Canovas-Carrasco also thanks the Spanish MECD for an FPU (ref. FPU16/03530) pre-doctoral fellowship

The IEEE 1906.1 Standard: nanocommunications as a new source of data

Nanoscale communications is a new paradigm encompassing all those concerns related to the exchange of information among devices at the nanometer scale. A network infrastructure consisting of a huge amount of nano-devices is envisaged to ensure robust, reliable and coordinated data transmission. This will enable a plethora of forthcoming applications and services in many different research fields, such as personalized medicine, synthetic biology, environmental science or industry, which will lead to outstanding and unprecedented advances. The IEEE P1906.1 standard provides a conceptual and general framework to set the starting point for future developments in nanoscale communication networks. This paper reviews the latest IEEE P1906.1 recommendations, observing their main features when applied to the electromagnetic (EM) nanocommunication area. We contribute by identifying and discussing the principal shortcomings of the standard, to which further research efforts must be devoted. We also provide interesting guidelines for focusing the object of future investigations.This work has been supported by the project AIM, ref. TEC2016-76465-C2-1-R (AEI/FEDER, UE)

An Efficient NVoD Scheme Using Implicit Error Correction and Subchannels for Wireless Networks

Implicit Error Correction (IEC) is a near Video-on-Demand (nVoD) scheme that trades bandwidth utilization for initial playback delay to potentially support an infinite number of users. Additionally, it provides error protection without any further bandwidth increase by exploiting the implicit redundancy of nVoD protocols, using linear combinations of the segments transmitted in a given time slot. However, IEC packet loss protection is weaker at the beginning of the playback due to the lack of implicit redundancy and lower decoding efficiency, resulting in worse subjective playback quality. In tackling this issue, this paper contributes with an extension of the original nVoD architecture, enhancing its performance by adding a new element namely, subchannels. These subdivisions of the original channels do not provide further packet loss protection but significantly improve the decoding efficiency, which in turn increases playback quality, especially at the beginning. Even for very high packet loss probabilities, subchannels are designed to obtain higher decoding efficiency which results in greater packet loss protection than that provided by IEC. The proposed scheme is especially useful in wireless cooperative networks using techniques such as network coding, as content transmissions can be split into different subchannels in order to maximize network efficiency.This work was supported by the AEI/FEDER, UE Project AIM under Grant TEC2016-76465-C2-1-R

An Alternative Internet-of-Things Solution Based on LoRa for PV Power Plants: Data Monitoring and Management

This paper proposes a wireless low-cost solution based on long-range (LoRa) technology able to communicate with remote PV power plants, covering long distances with minimum power consumption and maintenance. This solution includes a low-cost open-source technology at the sensor layer and a low-power wireless area network (LPWAN) at the communication layer, combining the advantages of long-range coverage and low power demand. Moreover, it offers an extensive monitoring system to exchange data in an Internet-of-Things (IoT) environment. A detailed description of the proposed system at the PV module level of integration is also included in the paper, as well as detailed information regarding LPWAN application to the PV power plant monitoring problem. In order to assess the suitability of the proposed solution, results collected in real PV installations connected to the grid are also included and discussed.This work was partially supported by the Spanish agreement (2017) between the Institute for Development of the Region of Murcia (INFO) and the Technological Center for Energy and Environment (CETENMA). The paper includes results of activities conducted under the Research Program for Groups of Scientific Excellence at Region of Murcia (Spain), the Seneca Foundation, and the Agency for Science and Technology of the Region of Murcia (Spain). This work was also supported by project AIM, Ref. TEC2016-76465-C2-1-R (AEI/FEDER, UE). The authors thank the staff of the Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena (Spain) for services and facilities provided

Estimación de la capacidad efectiva de las redes IEEE 802.15.4 en interferencia de redes IEEE 802.11

Las redes IEEE 802.15.4 pueden constituirse como redes de sensores y clasificarse como WPAN (Wireless Personal Area Network) con el objetivo principal de proporcionar las comunicaciones en entornos geográficos reducidos, con bajo coste y bajo consumo energético. Estas redes comparten su banda espectral de operación con otras tecnologías como por ejemplo las redes WLAN 802.11. Las interferencias que pueden producirse junto con el mecanismo de la capa MAC de la red, hacen que la capacidad efectiva del canal disponible para los dispositivos 802.15.4 se reduzca significativamente sobre la máxima especificada de 250 Kbps. En este trabajo se realiza una estimación de la capacidad efectiva que puede ofrecerse a las aplicaciones que operan sobre las redes 802.15.4