Cooperative ITS communications architecture: the FOTsis project approach and beyond

With the continuous development in the fields of sensors, advanced data processing and communications, road transport oriented intelligent applications and services have reached a significant maturity and complexity. Cooperative ITS services, based on the idea of sharing accurate information among road entities, are currently being tested on a large scale by different initiatives. The field operational test (FOTsis) project contributes to the deployment environment with services that involve a significant number of entities out of the vehicle. This made necessary the specification of an architecture which, based on the ISO ITS station reference architecture for communications, could support the requirements of the services proposed in the project. During the project, internal implementation tests and external interoperability tests have resulted in the validation of the proposed architecture. At the same time, these tests have had as a result the awareness of areas in which the FOTsis architecture could be completed, mainly to take full advantage of all the emerging and foreseeable data sources which may be relevant in the road environment. In this study, the authors will outline an approach that, based on the current cooperative ITS architecture and the SmartCities and Internet Of Things (IoT) architectures, can provide a common convergence platform to maximise the information available for ITS purposes.

Self-adaptive strategy based on fuzzy control systems for improving performance in wireless sensors networks

The solutions to cope with new challenges that societies have to face nowadays involve providing smarter daily systems. To achieve this, technology has to evolve and leverage physical systems automatic interactions, with less human intervention. Technological paradigms like Internet of Things (IoT) and Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) are providing reference models, architectures, approaches and tools that are to support cross-domain solutions. Thus, CPS based solutions will be applied in different application domains like e-Health, Smart Grid, Smart Transportation and so on, to assure the expected response from a complex system that relies on the smooth interaction and cooperation of diverse networked physical systems. The Wireless Sensors Networks (WSN) are a well-known wireless technology that are part of large CPS. The WSN aims at monitoring a physical system, object, (e.g., the environmental condition of a cargo container), and relaying data to the targeted processing element. The WSN communication reliability, as well as a restrained energy consumption, are expected features in a WSN. This paper shows the results obtained in a real WSN deployment, based on SunSPOT nodes, which carries out a fuzzy based control strategy to improve energy consumption while keeping communication reliability and computational resources usage among boundaries.

Context modelling for natural Human Computer Interaction applications in e-health

The conception of IoT (Internet of Things) is accepted as the future tendency of Internet among academia and industry. It will enable people and things to be connected at anytime and anyplace, with anything and anyone. IoT has been proposed to be applied into many areas such as Healthcare, Transportation，Logistics, and Smart environment etc. However, this thesis emphasizes on the home healthcare area as it is the potential healthcare model to solve many problems such as the limited medical resources, the increasing demands for healthcare from elderly and chronic patients which the traditional model is not capable of. A remarkable change in IoT in semantic oriented vision is that vast sensors or devices are involved which could generate enormous data. Methods to manage the data including acquiring, interpreting, processing and storing data need to be implemented. Apart from this, other abilities that IoT is not capable of are concluded, namely, interoperation, context awareness and security & privacy. Context awareness is an emerging technology to manage and take advantage of context to enable any type of system to provide personalized services. The aim of this thesis is to explore ways to facilitate context awareness in IoT. In order to realize this objective, a preliminary research is carried out in this thesis. The most basic premise to realize context awareness is to collect, model, understand, reason and make use of context. A complete literature review for the existing context modelling and context reasoning techniques is conducted. The conclusion is that the ontology-based context modelling and ontology-based context reasoning are the most promising and efficient techniques to manage context. In order to fuse ontology into IoT, a specific ontology-based context awareness framework is proposed for IoT applications. In general, the framework is composed of eight components which are hardware, UI (User Interface), Context modelling, Context fusion, Context reasoning, Context repository, Security unit and Context dissemination. Moreover, on the basis of TOVE (Toronto Virtual Enterprise), a formal ontology developing methodology is proposed and illustrated which consists of four stages: Specification & Conceptualization, Competency Formulation, Implementation and Validation & Documentation. In addition, a home healthcare scenario is elaborated by listing its well-defined functionalities. Aiming at representing this specific scenario, the proposed ontology developing methodology is applied and the ontology-based model is developed in a free and open-source ontology editor called Protégé. Finally, the accuracy and completeness of the proposed ontology are validated to show that this proposed ontology is able to accurately represent the scenario of interest.

Cognitive strategies for reducing energy consumption in wireless sensor networks

El consumo energético de las Redes de Sensores Inalámbricas (WSNs por sus siglas en inglés) es un problema histórico que ha sido abordado desde diferentes niveles y visiones, ya que no solo afecta a la propia supervivencia de la red sino que el creciente uso de dispositivos inteligentes y el nuevo paradigma del Internet de las Cosas hace que las WSNs tengan cada vez una mayor influencia en la huella energética. Debido a la tendencia al alza en el uso de estas redes se añade un nuevo problema, la saturación espectral. Las WSNs operan habitualmente en bandas sin licencia como son las bandas Industrial, Científica y Médica (ISM por sus siglas en inglés). Estas bandas se comparten con otro tipo de redes como Wi-Fi o Bluetooth cuyo uso ha crecido exponencialmente en los últimos años. Para abordar este problema aparece el paradigma de la Radio Cognitiva (CR), una tecnología que permite el acceso oportunista al espectro. La introducción de capacidades cognitivas en las WSNs no solo permite optimizar su eficiencia espectral sino que también tiene un impacto positivo en parámetros como la calidad de servicio, la seguridad o el consumo energético. Sin embargo, por otra parte, este nuevo paradigma plantea algunos retos relacionados con el consumo energético. Concretamente, el sensado del espectro, la colaboración entre los nodos (que requiere comunicación adicional) y el cambio en los parámetros de transmisión aumentan el consumo respecto a las WSN clásicas. Teniendo en cuenta que la investigación en el campo del consumo energético ha sido ampliamente abordada puesto que se trata de una de sus principales limitaciones, asumimos que las nuevas estrategias deben surgir de las nuevas capacidades añadidas por las redes cognitivas. Por otro lado, a la hora de diseñar estrategias de optimización para CWSN hay que tener muy presentes las limitaciones de recursos de estas redes en cuanto a memoria, computación y consumo energético de los nodos. En esta tesis doctoral proponemos dos estrategias de reducción de consumo energético en CWSNs basadas en tres pilares fundamentales. El primero son las capacidades cognitivas añadidas a las WSNs que proporcionan la posibilidad de adaptar los parámetros de transmisión en función del espectro disponible. La segunda es la colaboración, como característica intrínseca de las CWSNs. Finalmente, el tercer pilar de este trabajo es teoría de juegos como algoritmo de soporte a la decisión, ampliamente utilizado en WSNs debido a su simplicidad. Como primer aporte de la tesis se presenta un análisis completo de las posibilidades introducidas por la radio cognitiva en materia de reducción de consumo para WSNs. Gracias a las conclusiones extraídas de este análisis, se han planteado las hipótesis de esta tesis relacionadas con la validez de usar capacidades cognitivas como herramienta para la reducción de consumo en CWSNs. Una vez presentada las hipótesis, pasamos a desarrollar las principales contribuciones de la tesis: las dos estrategias diseñadas para reducción de consumo basadas en teoría de juegos y CR. La primera de ellas hace uso de un juego no cooperativo que se juega mediante pares de jugadores. En la segunda estrategia, aunque el juego continúa siendo no cooperativo, se añade el concepto de colaboración. Para cada una de las estrategias se presenta el modelo del juego, el análisis formal de equilibrios y óptimos y la descripción de la estrategia completa donde se incluye la interacción entre nodos. Con el propósito de probar las estrategias mediante simulación e implementación en dispositivos reales hemos desarrollado un marco de pruebas compuesto por un simulador cognitivo y un banco de pruebas formado por nodos cognitivos capaces de comunicarse en tres bandas ISM desarrollados en el B105 Lab. Este marco de pruebas constituye otra de las aportaciones de la tesis que permitirá el avance en la investigación en el área de las CWSNs. Finalmente, se presentan y discuten los resultados derivados de la prueba de las estrategias desarrolladas. La primera estrategia proporciona ahorros de energía mayores al 65% comparados con una WSN sin capacidades cognitivas y alrededor del 25% si la comparamos con una estrategia cognitiva basada en el sensado periódico del espectro para el cambio de canal de acuerdo a un nivel de ruido fijado. Este algoritmo se comporta de forma similar independientemente del nivel de ruido siempre que éste sea espacialmente uniformemente. Esta estrategia, a pesar de su sencillez, nos asegura el comportamiento óptimo en cuanto a consumo energético debido a la utilización de teoría de juegos en la fase de diseño del comportamiento de los nodos. La estrategia colaborativa presenta mejoras respecto a la anterior en términos de protección frente al ruido en escenarios de ruido más complejos donde aporta una mejora del 50% comparada con la estrategia anterior. ABSTRACT Energy consumption in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) is a known historical problem that has been addressed from different areas and on many levels. But this problem should not only be approached from the point of view of their own efficiency for survival. A major portion of communication traffic has migrated to mobile networks and systems. The increased use of smart devices and the introduction of the Internet of Things (IoT) give WSNs a great influence on the carbon footprint. Thus, optimizing the energy consumption of wireless networks could reduce their environmental impact considerably. In recent years, another problem has been added to the equation: spectrum saturation. Wireless Sensor Networks usually operate in unlicensed spectrum bands such as Industrial, Scientific, and Medical (ISM) bands shared with other networks (mainly Wi-Fi and Bluetooth). To address the efficient spectrum utilization problem, Cognitive Radio (CR) has emerged as the key technology that enables opportunistic access to the spectrum. Therefore, the introduction of cognitive capabilities to WSNs allows optimizing their spectral occupation. Cognitive Wireless Sensor Networks (CWSNs) do not only increase the reliability of communications, but they also have a positive impact on parameters such as the Quality of Service (QoS), network security, or energy consumption. These new opportunities introduced by CWSNs unveil a wide field in the energy consumption research area. However, this also implies some challenges. Specifically, the spectrum sensing stage, collaboration among devices (which requires extra communication), and changes in the transmission parameters increase the total energy consumption of the network. When designing CWSN optimization strategies, the fact that WSN nodes are very limited in terms of memory, computational power, or energy consumption has to be considered. Thus, light strategies that require a low computing capacity must be found. Since the field of energy conservation in WSNs has been widely explored, we assume that new strategies could emerge from the new opportunities presented by cognitive networks. In this PhD Thesis, we present two strategies for energy consumption reduction in CWSNs supported by three main pillars. The first pillar is that cognitive capabilities added to the WSN provide the ability to change the transmission parameters according to the spectrum. The second pillar is that the ability to collaborate is a basic characteristic of CWSNs. Finally, the third pillar for this work is the game theory as a decision-making algorithm, which has been widely used in WSNs due to its lightness and simplicity that make it valid to operate in CWSNs. For the development of these strategies, a complete analysis of the possibilities is first carried out by incorporating the cognitive abilities into the network. Once this analysis has been performed, we expose the hypotheses of this thesis related to the use of cognitive capabilities as a useful tool to reduce energy consumption in CWSNs. Once the analyses are exposed, we present the main contribution of this thesis: the two designed strategies for energy consumption reduction based on game theory and cognitive capabilities. The first one is based on a non-cooperative game played between two players in a simple and selfish way. In the second strategy, the concept of collaboration is introduced. Despite the fact that the game used is also a non-cooperative game, the decisions are taken through collaboration. For each strategy, we present the modeled game, the formal analysis of equilibrium and optimum, and the complete strategy describing the interaction between nodes. In order to test the strategies through simulation and implementation in real devices, we have developed a CWSN framework composed by a CWSN simulator based on Castalia and a testbed based on CWSN nodes able to communicate in three different ISM bands. We present and discuss the results derived by the energy optimization strategies. The first strategy brings energy improvement rates of over 65% compared to WSN without cognitive techniques. It also brings energy improvement rates of over 25% compared with sensing strategies for changing channels based on a decision threshold. We have also seen that the algorithm behaves similarly even with significant variations in the level of noise while working in a uniform noise scenario. The collaborative strategy presents improvements respecting the previous strategy in terms of noise protection when the noise scheme is more complex where this strategy shows improvement rates of over 50%.

Interrogating Capabilities of IoT Devices

This research is supported by the UK Research Councils’ Digital Economy IT as a Utility Network+ (EP/K003569/1) and the dot.rural Digital Economy Hub (EP/G066051/1).

Interrogating Capabilities of IoT Devices

This research is supported by the UK Research Councils’ Digital Economy IT as a Utility Network+ (EP/K003569/1) and the dot.rural Digital Economy Hub (EP/G066051/1).

Characterizations of logarithmic Besov spaces in terms of differences, Fourier-analytical decompositions, wavelets and semi-groups.

We work with Besov spaces Bp,q0,b defined by means of differences, with zero classical smoothness and logarithmic smoothness with exponent b. We characterize Bp,q0,b by means of Fourier-analytical decompositions, wavelets and semi-groups. We also compare those results with the well-known characterizations for classical Besov spaces Bp,qs.

Inteligencia ambiental en el Internet de las cosas

En la actualidad, existe un concepto que está cobrando especial relevancia, el cual es conocido como IoT (Internet of Things, Internet de las Cosas) [1]. En el IoT [2] se define la interconexión digital de objetos cotidianos con internet, esto significa que no sólo “los humanos” tenemos la capacidad de conectarnos a internet, sino que caminamos hacia una nueva era donde prácticamente cualquier cosa podría ser conectada a internet, desde un reloj (smartwatch), como tenemos en la actualidad, hasta una nevera, una persiana, una sartén, etc. En este proyecto se ha querido aplicar ciertas fases del IoT, para convertir una información ambiental poco sesgada, proporcionada por una pequeña estación meteorológica, en un valor adicional a la hora de tomar decisiones basadas en las variables ambientales, para determinar, según un proceso de aprendizaje automático, la sensación que una persona percibe en relación al tiempo meteorológico en un determinado momento. Para ello utilizamos una serie de sensores que se encargan de darnos la información ambiental necesaria (como la temperatura, humedad y presión atmosférica) una fuente de procesamiento como puede ser un micro-controlador, para después poder manejarla y procesarla en la nube, de forma remota, adquiriendo así el valor añadido que se espera en el IoT. Además, en este proyecto se aplican técnicas de Inteligencia Artificial para ayudar al usuario en esa toma de decisiones, mediante un proceso de entrenamiento previo, que permite obtener información relevante para aplicarla posteriormente en el contexto meteorológico mencionado. Para manejar todos estos conceptos y elementos, se hace uso de servicios Web, bases de datos, procesamiento y aprendizaje automático, integrando todos los servicios en una misma plataforma que facilite la comunicación de todos los elementos involucrados.

Arquitetura computacional para redes orgânicas e heterogêneas: plano de controle do sistema operacional swarm.

Computational Swarms (enxames computacionais), consistindo da integração de sensores e atuadores inteligentes no nosso mundo conectado, possibilitam uma extensão da info-esfera no mundo físico. Nós chamamos esta info-esfera extendida, cíber-física, de Swarm. Este trabalho propõe uma visão de Swarm onde dispositivos computacionais cooperam dinâmica e oportunisticamente, gerando redes orgânicas e heterogêneas. A tese apresenta uma arquitetura computacional do Plano de Controle do Sistema Operacional do Swarm, que é uma camada de software distribuída embarcada em todos os dispositivos que fazem parte do Swarm, responsável por gerenciar recursos, definindo atores, como descrever e utilizar serviços e recursos (como divulgá-los e descobrí-los, como realizar transações, adaptações de conteúdos e cooperação multiagentes). O projeto da arquitetura foi iniciado com uma revisão da caracterização do conceito de Swarm, revisitando a definição de termos e estabelecendo uma terminologia para ser utilizada. Requisitos e desafios foram identificados e uma visão operacional foi proposta. Esta visão operacional foi exercitada com casos de uso e os elementos arquiteturais foram extraídos dela e organizados em uma arquitetura. A arquitetura foi testada com os casos de uso, gerando revisões do sistema. Cada um dos elementos arquiteturais requereram revisões do estado da arte. Uma prova de conceito do Plano de Controle foi implementada e uma demonstração foi proposta e implementada. A demonstração selecionada foi o Smart Jukebox, que exercita os aspectos distribuídos e a dinamicidade do sistema proposto. Este trabalho apresenta a visão do Swarm computacional e apresenta uma plataforma aplicável na prática. A evolução desta arquitetura pode ser a base de uma rede global, heterogênea e orgânica de redes de dispositivos computacionais alavancando a integração de sistemas cíber-físicos na núvem permitindo a cooperação de sistemas escaláveis e flexíveis, interoperando para alcançar objetivos comuns.

Un enfoque tolerante a interrupciones para la seguridad de la Internet de las cosas

La Internet de las cosas (IoT, Internet of Things) es un paradigma emergente que pretende la interconexión de cualquier objeto susceptible de contar con una parte de electrónica, favorecido por la miniaturización de los componentes. El estado de desarrollo de la IoT hace que no haya ninguna propuesta firme para garantizar la seguridad y la comunicación extremo a extremo. En este artículo presentamos un trabajo en progreso hacia una aproximación tolerante a retrasos (DTN, Delay and Disruption Tolerant Networks) para la comunicación en el paradigma de la IoT y planteamos la adaptación de los mecanismo de seguridad existentes en DTN a la IoT.

Legislative efforts to combat spam : joint hearing before the Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection and the Subcommittee Telecommunications and the Internet of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, House of Representatives, One Hundred Eighth Congress, first session, July 9, 2003.

"Serial no. 108-35."

Remembrance of things past: Amnesic syndrome with partial preservation of professional skills

J.L., then a 25-year-old physiotherapist, became densely amnesic following herpes simplex encephalitis. She displayed severe retrograde amnesia, category-specific semantic memory loss, and a profound anterograde amnesia affecting both verbal and visual memory. Her working memory systems were relatively spared as were most of her cognitive problem-solving abilities, but her social functioning was grossly impaired. She was able to demonstrate several previously learned physiotherapy skills, but was unable to modify her application of these procedures in accordance with patient response. She showed no memory of theoretical or propositional knowledge, and could neither plan treatment or reason clinically. Three years later, J.L. had profound impairment of anterograde and retrograde declarative memory, with relative sparing of working memory for problem solving and long-term memory of procedural skills. The theoretical and practical implications of her amnesic syndrome are discussed.