SimulCity: Planning Communications in Smart Cities

[EN] Communication networks have become a critical element in the development of smart cities. The information flows generated by thousands of sensors and systems must be managed to assure the adequate guarantees of quality, availability, and security. This paper introduces the SimulCity tool, which assists in the design of a smart city's communications convergent network. SimulCity allows a flexible simulation of different scenarios where multiple heterogeneous sources of human type communications (HTCs) and machine type communications (MTCs) compete for limited bandwidth resources. SimulCity evaluates the impact of new services on the performance of a municipal communications network and, consequently, assists the modification of network values to optimize bandwidth and reduce costs. Several network characteristics can be easily configured in SimulCity, such as the definition of traffic sources, the parametrization of different network mechanisms, access admission control, quality of service (QoS), and traffic in the multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) network. SimulCity was used to simulate different projects in the smart city of Valencia (Spain). Specifically, SimulCity was used to study the impact on the Valencia City Council's communications network of several new services: the solid waste collection supervision, the street lighting management, the control of regulated parking areas, and the upgrade of voice and video communications systems of the city government buildings. The results obtained have allowed the analysis of the impact that these new services have on the existing network and to perform an adequate dimensioning of the future municipal communications network.This work was supported in part by the Spanish Government under Project TIN2013-47272-C2-1-R and Project TEC2015-71932-REDT, and in part by the ITACA Institute Ayudas 2019Rodríguez-Hernández, MA.; Gomez-Sacristan, Á.; Gomez-Cuadrado, D. (2019). SimulCity: Planning Communications in Smart Cities. IEEE Access. 7:46870-46884. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2909322S4687046884

Intelligent Municipal Heritage Management Service in a Smart City: Telecommunication Traffic Characterizationand Quality of Service

[EN] The monitoring of cultural heritage is becoming common in cities to provide heritage preservation and prevent vandalism. Using sensors and video cameras for this task implies the need to transmit information. In this paper, the teletraffic that cameras and sensors generate is characterized and the transmissions¿ influence on the municipal communications network is evaluated. Then, we propose models for telecommunication traffic sources in an intelligent municipal heritage management service inside a smart sustainable city. The sources were simulated in a smart city scenario to find the proper quality of service (QoS) parameters for the communication network, using Valencia City as background. Specific sensors for intelligent municipal heritage management were selected and four telecommunication traffic sources were modelled according to real-life requirements and sensors datasheet. Different simulations were performed to find the proper CIR (Committed Information Rate) and PIR (Peak Information Rate) values and to study the effects of limited bandwidth networks. Packet loss, throughput, delay, and jitter were used to evaluate the network¿s performance. Consequently, the result was the selection of the minimum values for PIR and CIR that ensured QoS and thus optimized the traffic telecommunication costs associated with an intelligent municipal heritage management service.This work was partially supported by Spanish Government Projects TIN2013-47272-C2-1-R and TEC2015-71932-REDTRodríguez-Hernández, MA.; Jiang, Z.; Gomez-Sacristan, Á.; Pla, V. (2019). Intelligent Municipal Heritage Management Service in a Smart City: Telecommunication Traffic Characterizationand Quality of Service. Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing (Online). 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1155/2019/8412542S11

Evaluation of Quality of Service in Smart-Hospital Communications

The concept of Smart-Hospital is generally associated with a comprehensive care model capable of responding to the needs of health institutions, companies and patients in an optimum way in terms of economic, operative and environmental aspects aiming the improvement of care quality and sustainable use of resources. In this context, a Smart-Hospital is a technological and hyper-connected hospital in terms of telecommunications. Ahuge range of systems and devices generate information of a heterogeneous nature. In many cases, for reasons of efficiency and availability, this information is stored and processed in architectures external to the hospital itself. Centralized services housed in Cloud architectures or telemedicine / tele-assistance services are proof of this. Guaranteeing an adequate level of quality of service is a complex task when approached from an analytical point of view due to the large number of sources and their heterogeneous nature. The use of simulation tools allows this task to be undertaken and using different hypotheses in less time and at a reasonable cost. This article presents the results obtained, in terms of quality of communications, for a Smart-Hospital with an arbitrary collection of heterogeneous services connected by Metro-Ethernet access. The results obtained: loss of information, delays and jitter will be used to outline the capacities to be contracted from the telecommunications supplier.This work was supported by Spanish Government MEC Project TIN2013-47272-C2-1-R and by ITACA (Universitat Politecnica de Valencia).Gomez Sacristan, Á.; Rodríguez-Hernández, MA.; Sempere Paya, VM. (2015). Evaluation of Quality of Service in Smart-Hospital Communications. Journal of Medical Imaging and Health Informatics. 5(8):1864-1869. https://doi.org/10.1166/jmihi.2015.1660S186418695

Virtual Laboratory for QoS Study in Next-Generation Networks With Metro Ethernet Access

Teaching in university engineering departments is currently facing a number of challenges, especially for those involved in the most innovative and dynamic areas of information and communication technology. Learning model developments that place greater weight on laboratory activities require investment in specific equipment that is often very expensive, difficult to manage, and soon obsolete. This paper describes a virtual laboratory education platform, QoSLab, for training in and research into quality-of-service (QoS) mechanisms used for Metro Ethernet access in next-generation networks (NGNs). QoSLab integrates three experiments and 21 tasks with a pedagogical model to help students achieve learning goals; it also promoting student teamwork, iteration with lecturers, and autonomy. QoSLab was developed using OMNeT++, an open-source framework environment that allows students to run the code on their personal computers. Evaluations have shown that since 2013, QoSLab has produced a significant increase in student grades on NGN-related topics, as well as good results in student satisfaction surveys.This work was supported by Spanish Government MEC Project TIN2013-47272-C2-1-R.Gomez Sacristan, Á.; Sempere Paya, VM.; Rodríguez-Hernández, MA. (2016). Virtual Laboratory for QoS Study in Next-Generation Networks With Metro Ethernet Access. IEEE Transactions on Education. 59(3):187-193. https://doi.org/10.1109/TE.2015.2498120S18719359