Special section on industrial wireless sensor networks

No abstract availablehttp://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/RecentIssue.jsp?punumber=9424hb201

An energy-efficient smart comfort sensing system based on the IEEE 1451 standard for green buildings

In building automation, comfort is an important aspect, and the real-time measurement of comfort is notoriously complicated. In this paper, we have developed a wireless, smart comfort sensing system. The important parameters in designing the prevalent measurement of comfort systems, such as portability, power consumption, reliability, and system cost, were considered. To achieve the target design goals, the communication module, sensor node, and sink node were developed based on the IEEE1451 standard. Electrochemical and semiconductor sensors were considered for the development of the sensor array, and the results of both technologies were compared. The sensor and sink nodes were implemented using the ATMega88 microcontroller. Microsoft Visual Studio 2013 preview was used to create the graphical user interface in C#. The sensors were calibrated after the signal processing circuit to ensure that the standard accuracy of the sensor was achieved. This paper presents detailed design solutions to problems that existed in the literature.http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/RecentIssue.jsp?punumber=7361hj201

Introduction to industrial control networks

An industrial control network is a system of interconnected equipment used to monitor and control physical equipment in industrial environments. These networks differ quite significantly from traditional enterprise networks due to the specific requirements of their operation. Despite the functional differences between industrial and enterprise networks, a growing integration between the two has been observed. The technology in use in industrial networks is also beginning to display a greater reliance on Ethernet and web standards, especially at higher levels of the network architecture. This has resulted in a situation where engineers involved in the design and maintenance of control networks must be familiar with both traditional enterprise concerns, such as network security, as well as traditional industrial concerns such as determinism and response time. This paper highlights some of the differences between enterprise and industrial networks, presents a brief history of industrial networking, gives a high level explanation of some operations specific to industrial networks, provides an overview of the popular protocols in use and describes current research topics. The purpose of this paper is to serve as an introduction to industrial control networks, aimed specifically at those who have had minimal exposure to the field, but have some familiarity with conventional computer networks.http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/RecentIssue.jsp?punumber=9739hb2016Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineerin

A survey of cognitive radio handoff schemes, challenges and issues for industrial wireless sensor networks (CR-IWSN)

Industrial wireless sensor network (IWSN) applications are mostly time-bound, mission-critical and highly delay sensitive applications therefore IWSN defines strict, stringent and unique QoS requirements such as timeliness, reliability and availability. In IWSN, unlike other sensor networks, late arrival of packets or delay or disruption to an on-going communication are considered as critical failure. Also, because IWSN is deployed in the overcrowded industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM) band it is difficult to meet this unique QoS requirements due to stiff competition for bandwidth from other technologies operating in ISM band resulting in scarcity of spectrum for reliable communication and/or disruption of ongoing communication. However, cognitive radio (CR) provides more spectral opportunities through opportunistic-use of unused licensed spectrum while ensuring minimal interference to licensed users. Similarly, spectrum handoff, which is a new type of handoff in cognitive radio, has the potential to offer increase bandwidth, reliable, smooth and interference-free communication for IWSNs through opportunistic-use of spectrum, minimal switching-delays, and efficient target channel selection strategies as well as effective link recovery maintenance. As a result, a new paradigm known as cognitive radio industrial wireless sensor network (CR-IWSN) has become the interest of recent research efforts. In this paper, we highlight and discuss important QoS requirements of IWSN as well as efforts of existing IWSN standards to address the challenges. We discuss the potential and how cognitive radio and spectrum handoff can be useful in the attempt to provide real-time reliable and smooth communication for IWSNs.The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), South Africa [ICT: Meraka].http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jnca2018-11-01hj2017Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineerin

Actor coordination using info-gap decision theory in wireless sensor and actor networks

Mobile, unmanned, power and resource-rich devices, called actors, deployed within a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) application area, enable faster response times to events. Due to cost constraints, only a few actors can be placed within a WSN application area. Determining which actor or set of actors should respond to an event is important, because the correct decision will increase the event response time, and reduce energy expenditure. Since the mobile actors are widely dispersed over the application area, the actors' accurate location and energy details will not always be available. In this paper, we show that using info-gap decision theory to choose the correct actors to respond to an event when uncertainty about an actor's location and/or energy exists, ensures that the actors chosen can adequately respond to the event. The robustness of the decision choice of the set of actor(s) assigned to respond to an event means that all chosen actor(s) have sufficient energy to respond to the event in real-time.http://www.inderscience.com/browse/index.php?journalCODE=ijsnetai201

Fast convergence cooperative dynamic spectrum access for cognitive radio networks

Cognitive radio and dynamic spectrum access can reform the way that radiofrequency spectrum is accessed. Problems of spectrum scarcity, coexistence, and unreliable wireless communication that affect industrial wireless networks can be addressed. In this paper, a game theoretic dynamic spectrum access algorithm that improves upon on a hedonic coalition formation algorithm for spectrum sensing and access is presented. The modified algorithm is tailored for faster convergence and scalability and makes use of a novel simultaneous multichannel sensing and access technique. Results to demonstrate the performance improvements of the adapted algorithm are presented and the use of different decision rules are investigated revealing that a conservative decision rule for exploiting spectrum opportunities performs better than an aggressive decision rule in most scenarios. The algorithm that was developed could be a key enabler for future cognitive radio networks.http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/RecentIssue.jsp?punumber=9424hj2018Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineerin

A review on challenges of autonomous mobile robot and sensor fusion methods

Autonomous mobile robots are becoming more prominent in recent time because of their relevance and applications to the world today. Their ability to navigate in an environment without a need for physical or electro-mechanical guidance devices has made it more promising and useful. The use of autonomous mobile robots is emerging in different sectors such as companies, industries, hospital, institutions, agriculture and homes to improve services and daily activities. Due to technology advancement, the demand for mobile robot has increased due to the task they perform and services they render such as carrying heavy objects, monitoring, search and rescue missions, etc. Various studies have been carried out by researchers on the importance of mobile robot, its applications and challenges. This survey paper unravels the current literatures, the challenges mobile robot is being faced with. A comprehensive study on devices/sensors and prevalent sensor fusion techniques developed for tackling issues like localization, estimation and navigation in mobile robot are presented as well in which they are organised according to relevance, strengths and weaknesses. The study therefore gives good direction for further investigation on developing methods to deal with the discrepancies faced with autonomous mobile robot.http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/RecentIssue.jsp?punumber=6287639pm2021Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineerin

Unimodal and multimodal biometric sensing systems : a review

Biometric systems are used for the verification and identification of individuals using their physiological or behavioral features. These features can be categorized into unimodal and multimodal systems, in which the former have several deficiencies that reduce the accuracy of the system, such as noisy data, inter-class similarity, intra-class variation, spoofing, and non-universality. However, multimodal biometric sensing and processing systems, which make use of the detection and processing of two or more behavioral or physiological traits, have proved to improve the success rate of identification and verification significantly. This paper provides a detailed survey of the various unimodal and multimodal biometric sensing types providing their strengths and weaknesses. It discusses the stages involved in the biometric system recognition process and further discusses multimodal systems in terms of their architecture, mode of operation, and algorithms used to develop the systems. It also touches on levels and methods of fusion involved in biometric systems and gives researchers in this area a better understanding of multimodal biometric sensing and processing systems and research trends in this area. It furthermore gives room for research on how to find solutions to issues on various unimodal biometric systems.http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/RecentIssue.jsp?punumber=6287639am2017Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineerin

Deformable Object Tracking with Gated Fusion

The tracking-by-detection framework receives growing attentions through the integration with the Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs). Existing tracking-by-detection based methods, however, fail to track objects with severe appearance variations. This is because the traditional convolutional operation is performed on fixed grids, and thus may not be able to find the correct response while the object is changing pose or under varying environmental conditions. In this paper, we propose a deformable convolution layer to enrich the target appearance representations in the tracking-by-detection framework. We aim to capture the target appearance variations via deformable convolution, which adaptively enhances its original features. In addition, we also propose a gated fusion scheme to control how the variations captured by the deformable convolution affect the original appearance. The enriched feature representation through deformable convolution facilitates the discrimination of the CNN classifier on the target object and background. Extensive experiments on the standard benchmarks show that the proposed tracker performs favorably against state-of-the-art methods

Wireless capacitive-based ECG sensing for feature extraction and mobile health monitoring

In this paper, the concept of a wireless wearable device capable of measuring electrocardiogram (ECG) and respiration rate (RR) through the use of non-contact capacitive-based electrodes was designed and implemented. Both ECG and RR were measured using only the active electrodes and an analog conditioning circuit. The device utilizes Bluetooth low energy for low-power wireless communication to the remote server. The measured data is used to calculate heart rate variability, RR, and extract ECG related features. It was found that the use of non-contact active chest electrodes is a viable approach for measurement. The system focuses on user comfort and the minimization of the ratio of the number of wearable sensors to sensed physiological parameters.The National Research Foundation of South Africa under Grant IFR160118156967 and Grant RDYR160404161474.http://ieee-sensors.org/sensors-journalhj2018Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineerin