WARP: A ICN architecture for social data

Social network companies maintain complete visibility and ownership of the data they store. However users should be able to maintain full control over their content. For this purpose, we propose WARP, an architecture based upon Information-Centric Networking (ICN) designs, which expands the scope of the ICN architecture beyond media distribution, to provide data control in social networks. The benefit of our solution lies in the lightweight nature of the protocol and in its layered design. With WARP, data distribution and access policies are enforced on the user side. Data can still be replicated in an ICN fashion but we introduce control channels, named \textit{thread updates}, which ensures that the access to the data is always updated to the latest control policy. WARP decentralizes the social network but still offers APIs so that social network providers can build products and business models on top of WARP. Social applications run directly on the user's device and store their data on the user's \textit{butler} that takes care of encryption and distribution. Moreover, users can still rely on third parties to have high-availability without renouncing their privacy

Smart home energy management

The new challenges on Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in Automatic Home Systems (AHS) focus on the methods useful to monitor, control, and optimize the data management flow and the use of energy. An AHS is a residential dwelling, in some cases with a garden or an outdoor space, equipped with sensors and actuators to collect data and send controls according to the activities and expectations of the occupants/users. Home automation provides a centralized or distributed control of electrical appliances. Adding intelligence to the home environment, it would be possible to obtain, not only excellent levels of comfort, but also energy savings both inside and outside the dwelling, for instance using smart solutions for the management of the external lights and of the garden

An Overview of Vehicular Communications

The transport sector is commonly subordinate to several issues, such as traffic congestion and accidents. Despite this, in recent years, it is also evolving with regard to cooperation between vehicles. The fundamental objective of this trend is to increase road safety, attempting to anticipate the circumstances of potential danger. Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V), Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) and Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) technologies strive to give communication models that can be employed by vehicles in different application contexts. The resulting infrastructure is an ad-hoc mesh network whose nodes are not only vehicles but also all mobile devices equipped with wireless modules. The interaction between the multiple connected entities consists of information exchange through the adoption of suitable communication protocols. The main aim of the review carried out in this paper is to examine and assess the most relevant systems, applications, and communication protocols that will distinguish the future road infrastructures used by vehicles. The results of the investigation reveal the real benefits that technological cooperation can involve in road safety. Document type: Articl

A Solution Based on Bluetooth Low Energy for Smart Home Energy Management

The research and the implementation of home automation are getting more popular because the Internet of Things holds promise for making homes smarter through wireless technologies. The installation of systems based on wireless networks can play a key role also in the extension of the smart grid towards smart homes, that can be deemed as one of the most important components of smart grids. This paper proposes a fuzzy-based solution for smart energy management in a home automation wireless network. The approach, by using Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), introduces a Fuzzy Logic Controller (FLC) in order to improve a Home Energy Management (HEM) scheme, addressing the power load of standby appliances and their loads in different hours of the day. Since the consumer is involved in the choice of switching on/off of home appliances, the approach introduced in this work proposes a fuzzy-based solution in order to manage the consumer feedbacks. Simulation results show that the proposed solution is efficient in terms of reducing peak load demand, electricity consumption charges with an increase comfort level of consumers. The performance of the proposed BLE-based wireless network scenario are validated in terms of packet delivery ratio, delay, and jitter and are compared to IEEE 802.15.4 technology

New Solutions Based On Wireless Networks For Dynamic Traffic Lights Management: A Comparison Between IEEE 802.15.4 And Bluetooth

Abstract The Wireless Sensor Networks are widely used to detect and exchange information and in recent years they have been increasingly involved in Intelligent Transportation System applications, especially in dynamic management of signalized intersections. In fact, the real-time knowledge of information concerning traffic light junctions represents a valid solution to congestion problems. In this paper, a wireless network architecture, based on IEEE 802.15.4 or Bluetooth, in order to monitor vehicular traffic flows near to traffic lights, is introduced. Moreover, an innovative algorithm is proposed in order to determine dynamically green times and phase sequence of traffic lights, based on measured values of traffic flows. Several simulations compare IEEE 802.15.4 and Bluetooth protocols in order to identify the more suitable communication protocol for ITS applications. Furthermore, in order to confirm the validity of the proposed algorithm for the dynamic management of traffic lights, some case studies have been considered and several simulations have been performed

On the Feasibility of Social Network-based Pollution Sensing in ITSs

Intense vehicular traffic is recognized as a global societal problem, with a multifaceted influence on the quality of life of a person. Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) can play an important role in combating such problem, decreasing pollution levels and, consequently, their negative effects. One of the goals of ITSs, in fact, is that of controlling traffic flows, measuring traffic states, providing vehicles with routes that globally pursue low pollution conditions. How such systems measure and enforce given traffic states has been at the center of multiple research efforts in the past few years. Although many different solutions have been proposed, very limited effort has been devoted to exploring the potential of social network analysis in such context. Social networks, in general, provide direct feedback from people and, as such, potentially very valuable information. A post that tells, for example, how a person feels about pollution at a given time in a given location, could be put to good use by an environment aware ITS aiming at minimizing contaminant emissions in residential areas. This work verifies the feasibility of using pollution related social network feeds into ITS operations. In particular, it concentrates on understanding how reliable such information is, producing an analysis that confronts over 1,500,000 posts and pollution data obtained from on-the- field sensors over a one-year span.Comment: 10 pages, 15 figures, Transaction Forma

Deadline-Aware Scheduling Perspectives in Industrial Wireless Networks: A Comparison between IEEE 802.15.4 and Bluetooth

In industrial contexts, most of process control applications use wired communication networks. The reliability of wired networks is indisputable and extensively demonstrated by several studies in the literature. However, it is important to consider several disadvantages provided by the use of wired technologies, like high deployment and maintenance costs and low network scalability. Although it is difficult to fully replace wired networks, wireless communication protocols have features which could undeniably affect in positive way the production mechanisms in factories. The wireless networks (WNs) are effectively used to detect and exchange information. The main communication protocols, currently available for WNs, however, do not support real-time periodic traffic flows which, as known, mainly characterize industrial networks. In this paper, we will analyze a real-time scheduling algorithm for both periodic and aperiodic traffic management, applied to networks based on IEEE 802.15.4 and Bluetooth, respectively. The main purpose of this research is to reduce, as much as possible, the packet loss on the channel, increasing at the same time the reliability of the wireless technology. Furthermore, the comparison between IEEE 802.15.4 and Bluetooth will allow to identify the more suitable communication protocol for industrial process control systems

Power Consumption Reduction for Wireless Sensor Networks Using A Fuzzy Approach

The increasing complexity of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) is leading towards the deployment of complex networked systems and the optimal design of WSNs can be a very difficult task because several constraints and requirements must be considered, among all the power consumption. This paper proposes a novel fuzzy logic based mechanism that according to the battery level and to the ratio of Throughput to Workload determines the sleeping time of sensor devices in a Wireless Sensor Network for environmental monitoring based on the IEEE 802.15.4 protocol. The main aim here is to find an effective solution that achieves the target while avoiding complex and computationally expensive solutions, which would not be appropriate for the problem at hand and would impair the practical applicability of the approach in real scenarios. The results of several real test-bed scenarios show that the proposed system outperforms other solutions, significantly reducing the whole power consumption while maintaining good performance in terms of the ratio of throughput to workload. An implementation on off-the-shelf devices proves that the proposed controller does not require powerful hardware and can be easily implemented on a low-cost device, thus paving the way for extensive usage in practice