Ultra-Low Power and Non-intrusive Wireless Monitoring for Smart Buildings

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) offer a new solution for distributed monitoring, processing and communication. First of all, the stringent energy constraints to which sensing nodes are typically subjected. WSNs are often battery powered and placed where it is not possible to recharge or replace batteries. Energy can be harvested from the external environment but it is a limited resource that must be used efficiently. Energy efficiency is a key requirement for a credible WSNs design. From the power source's perspective, aggressive energy management techniques remain the most effective way to prolong the lifetime of a WSN. A new adaptive algorithm will be presented, which minimizes the consumption of wireless sensor nodes in sleep mode, when the power source has to be regulated using DC-DC converters. Another important aspect addressed is the time synchronisation in WSNs. WSNs are used for real-world applications where physical time plays an important role. An innovative low-overhead synchronisation approach will be presented, based on a Temperature Compensation Algorithm (TCA). The last aspect addressed is related to self-powered WSNs with Energy Harvesting (EH) solutions. Wireless sensor nodes with EH require some form of energy storage, which enables systems to continue operating during periods of insufficient environmental energy. However, the size of the energy storage strongly restricts the use of WSNs with EH in real-world applications. A new approach will be presented, which enables computation to be sustained during intermittent power supply. The discussed approaches will be used for real-world WSN applications. The first presented scenario is related to the experience gathered during an European Project (3ENCULT Project), regarding the design and implementation of an innovative network for monitoring heritage buildings. The second scenario is related to the experience with Telecom Italia, regarding the design of smart energy meters for monitoring the usage of household's appliances.

Performance analysis of ray-tracing assisted beamforming techniques for future mm-wave wireless systems.

Il progetto di tesi riguarda principalmente la progettazione di moderni sistemi wireless, come 5G o WiGig, operanti a onde millimetriche, attraverso lo studio di una tecnica avanzata detta Beamforming, che, grazie all'utilizzo di antenne direttive e compatte, permette di superare limiti di link budget dovuti alle alte frequenze e introdurre inoltre diversità spaziale alla comunicazione. L'obiettivo principale del lavoro è stato quello di valutare, tramite simulazioni numeriche, le prestazioni di alcuni diversi schemi di Beamforming integrando come tool di supporto un programma di Ray Tracing capace di fornire le principali informazioni riguardo al canale radio. Con esso infatti è possibile sia effettuare un assessment generale del Beamforming stesso, ma anche formulare i presupposti per innovative soluzioni, chiamate RayTracing-assisted- Beamforming, decisamente promettenti per futuri sviluppi così come confermato dai risultati.

Minimized cardiopulmonary bypass combined with a smart suction device: the future of cardiopulmonary bypass?

OBJECTIVE: The standard heart-lung machine is a major trigger of systemic inflammatory response and the morbidity attributed to conventional extracorporeal circulation (CECC) is still significant. Reduction of blood-artificial surface contact and reduction of priming volume are principal aims in minimized extracorporeal circulation (MECC) cardiopulmonary bypass systems. The aim of this paper is to give an overview of the literature and to present our experience with the MECC-smart suction system. METHODS AND RESULTS: At our institution, 1799 patients underwent isolated coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) surgery, 1372 with a MECC-smart suction system and 427 with CECC. All in-hospital data were assessed and the results were compared between the 2 groups. Patient characteristics and the distribution of EuroSCORE risk profile in our collective were similar between both groups. Average age in the MECC collective was 67.5 +/- 11.4 years and average EuroSCORE was 5.0 +/- 1.5. Average number of distal anastomoses was similar to the average number encountered in patients undergoing CABG surgery with CECC (3.3 +/- 1.0 for MECC versus 3.2 +/- 1.1 for CECC; P = ns). Myocardial protection is superior in MECC patients with lower postoperative maximal cTnI values (11.0 +/- 10.8 micromol/L for MECC versus 24.7 +/- 25.3 micromol/L for CECC; P < .05). Postoperative recovery was faster in patients operated on with the MECC-smart suction system and discharge from the hospital was earlier than for CECC patients (7.4 +/- 1.9 days for MECC versus 8.8 +/- 3.8 days for CECC; P < .05). CONCLUSIONS: The MECC-smart suction system is a safe perfusion technique for CABG surgery. In patients operated on with this system, the clinical outcome seems to be better than in patients operated on with CECC. This promising and less damaging perfusion technology has the potential to replace CECC systems in CABG surgery.

A Smart TCP Acknowledgment Approach for Multihop Wireless Networks

Reliable data transfer is one of the most difficult tasks to be accomplished in multihop wireless networks. Traditional transport protocols like TCP face severe performance degradation over multihop networks given the noisy nature of wireless media as well as unstable connectivity conditions in place. The success of TCP in wired networks motivates its extension to wireless networks. A crucial challenge faced by TCP over these networks is how to operate smoothly with the 802.11 wireless MAC protocol which also implements a retransmission mechanism at link level in addition to short RTS/CTS control frames for avoiding collisions. These features render TCP acknowledgments (ACK) transmission quite costly. Data and ACK packets cause similar medium access overheads despite the much smaller size of the ACKs. In this paper, we further evaluate our dynamic adaptive strategy for reducing ACK-induced overhead and consequent collisions. Our approach resembles the sender side's congestion control. The receiver is self-adaptive by delaying more ACKs under nonconstrained channels and less otherwise. This improves not only throughput but also power consumption. Simulation evaluations exhibit significant improvement in several scenarios

DESIGN AND IMPLEMENT DYNAMIC PROGRAMMING BASED DISCRETE POWER LEVEL SMART HOME SCHEDULING USING FPGA

With the development and capabilities of the Smart Home system, people today are entering an era in which household appliances are no longer just controlled by people, but also operated by a Smart System. This results in a more efficient, convenient, comfortable, and environmentally friendly living environment. A critical part of the Smart Home system is Home Automation, which means that there is a Micro-Controller Unit (MCU) to control all the household appliances and schedule their operating times. This reduces electricity bills by shifting amounts of power consumption from the on-peak hour consumption to the off-peak hour consumption, in terms of different “hour price”. In this paper, we propose an algorithm for scheduling multi-user power consumption and implement it on an FPGA board, using it as the MCU. This algorithm for discrete power level tasks scheduling is based on dynamic programming, which could find a scheduling solution close to the optimal one. We chose FPGA as our system’s controller because FPGA has low complexity, parallel processing capability, a large amount of I/O interface for further development and is programmable on both software and hardware. In conclusion, it costs little time running on FPGA board and the solution obtained is good enough for the consumers.

Enterprise Integration of Smart Objects using Semantic Service Descriptions

Integrating physical objects (smart objects) and enterprise IT systems is still a labor intensive, mainly manual task done by domain experts. On one hand, enterprise IT backend systems are based on service oriented architectures (SOA) and driven by business rule engines or business process execution engines. Smart objects on the other hand are often programmed at very low levels. In this paper we describe an approach that makes the integration of smart objects with such backends systems easier. We introduce semantic endpoint descriptions based on Linked USDL. Furthermore, we show how different communication patterns can be integrated into these endpoint descriptions. The strength of our endpoint descriptions is that they can be used to automatically create REST or SOAP endpoints for enterprise systems, even if which they are not able to talk to the smart objects directly. We evaluate our proposed solution with CoAP, UDP and 6LoWPAN, as we anticipate the industry converge towards these standards. Nonetheless, our approach also allows easy integration with backend systems, even if no standardized protocol is used.

Comparative antibacterial efficacies of hydrodynamic and ultrasonic irrigation systems in vitro

INTRODUCTION To ensure root canal treatment success, endodontic microbiota should be efficiently reduced. The in vitro bactericidal effects of a hydrodynamic system and a passive ultrasonic irrigation system were compared. METHODS Single-rooted extracted teeth (n = 250) were contaminated with suspensions of Enterococcus faecalis ATCC 29212, mixed aerobic cultures, or mixed anaerobic cultures. First, the antibacterial effects of the hydrodynamic system (RinsEndo), a passive ultrasonic irrigation system (Piezo smart), and manual rinsing with 0.9% NaCl (the control) were compared. Colony-forming units were counted. Second, the 2 systems were used with 1.5% sodium hypochlorite (NaOCl) alone or NaOCl + 0.2% chlorhexidine (CHX). The colony-forming units in the treated and untreated roots were determined during a period of 5 days. RESULTS Both irrigation systems reduced bacterial numbers more effectively than manual rinsing (P < .001). With NaCl, ultrasonic activated irrigation reduced bacterial counts significantly better than hydrodynamic irrigation (P = .042). The NaOCl + CHX combination was more effective than NaOCl alone for both systems (P < .001), but hydrodynamic irrigation was more effective with NaOCl + CHX than the passive ultrasonic irrigation system. CONCLUSIONS Both irrigation systems, when combined with NaOCl + CHX, removed bacteria from root canals.

Smart Cities – Ein Überblick!

Nach einer kurzen Begriffsfassung von Smart Cities gehen wir basierend auf den folgenden Beiträgen dieses Heftes auf verschiedene Eigenschaften einer solchen smarten Stadt ein. Dadurch versuchen wir den Ist-Zustand dieser Städte zu dokumentieren. Damit die jeweiligen Stakeholder (strategische) Entscheide treffen können, widmen wir danach ein Kapitel den Chancen und Risiken von Smart Cities. Anhand einer Studie des Europäischen Parlaments zeigen wir nachfolgend entsprechende Bestrebungen aus Europa auf. Anschliessend präsentieren wir eine Best-Practice-Roadmap für die Realisierung von Smart Cities. Zum Schluss zeichnen wir auf einer konnektivistischen Lern- und Kognitionstheorie aufbauend einen Weg zur Cognitive City der Zukunft. Dabei wird der Mensch nicht als isoliertes, sondern als vernetztes Individuum gesehen. Dies begünstigt die Weiterentwicklung von Smart Cities zu Städten, welche aktiv und selbstständig lernen und dadurch automatisch auf Veränderungen ihrer Umwelt reagieren können.

Evaluation of Three State-of-the-Art Classifiers for Recognition of Activities of Daily Living from Smart Home Ambient Data

Smart homes for the aging population have recently started attracting the attention of the research community. The "health state" of smart homes is comprised of many different levels; starting with the physical health of citizens, it also includes longer-term health norms and outcomes, as well as the arena of positive behavior changes. One of the problems of interest is to monitor the activities of daily living (ADL) of the elderly, aiming at their protection and well-being. For this purpose, we installed passive infrared (PIR) sensors to detect motion in a specific area inside a smart apartment and used them to collect a set of ADL. In a novel approach, we describe a technology that allows the ground truth collected in one smart home to train activity recognition systems for other smart homes. We asked the users to label all instances of all ADL only once and subsequently applied data mining techniques to cluster in-home sensor firings. Each cluster would therefore represent the instances of the same activity. Once the clusters were associated to their corresponding activities, our system was able to recognize future activities. To improve the activity recognition accuracy, our system preprocessed raw sensor data by identifying overlapping activities. To evaluate the recognition performance from a 200-day dataset, we implemented three different active learning classification algorithms and compared their performance: naive Bayesian (NB), support vector machine (SVM) and random forest (RF). Based on our results, the RF classifier recognized activities with an average specificity of 96.53%, a sensitivity of 68.49%, a precision of 74.41% and an F-measure of 71.33%, outperforming both the NB and SVM classifiers. Further clustering markedly improved the results of the RF classifier. An activity recognition system based on PIR sensors in conjunction with a clustering classification approach was able to detect ADL from datasets collected from different homes. Thus, our PIR-based smart home technology could improve care and provide valuable information to better understand the functioning of our societies, as well as to inform both individual and collective action in a smart city scenario.

Discussion: Food security and sustainable food systems: The role of soil

There is a general consensus that healthy soils are pivotal for food security. Food production is one of the main ecosystem services provided by and thus dependent on well-functioning soils. There are also intrinsic connections between the four pillars of food security: food availability, access, utilization, and stability; with how soils are managed, accessed and secured, in particular by food insecure and vulnerable populations. On the other hand, socio-political and economic processes that precipitate inequalities and heighten vulnerabilities among poor populations often increase pressure on soils due to unsustainable forms of land use and poor agricultural practises. This has often led to scenarios that can be described as: ‘poor soils, empty stomachs (hungry people) and poor livelihoods.' In 2015, in particular, as we head towards approval of the ‘Sustainable Development Goals' (SDGs), the role of Financing for Development is debated and agreed upon and a new climate pact is signed – these three political dimensions define how a new post-2015 agenda needs to be people-smart as well as resource-smart. For proposed SDG 2 (Food Security and Hunger), there can be so resolution without addressing people, policies and institutions.

HMD - Praxis der Wirtschaftsinformatik - Smart City

Der Begriff Smart City oder Ubiquitous City bezeichnet die Nutzung von Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien in Städten und Agglomerationen, um den sozialen und ökologischen Lebensraum nachhaltig zu entwickeln. Dazu zählen z.B. Projekte zur Verbesserung der Mobilität, Nutzung intelligenter Systeme für Wasser- und Energieversorgung, Förderung sozialer Netzwerke, Erweiterung politischer Partizipation, Ausbau von Entrepreneurship, Schutz der Umwelt sowie Erhöhung von Sicherheit und Lebensqualität. Das Themenheft widmet sich der Vielfalt dieser webbasierten Entwicklungen und berichtet über erste Erfahrungen von Pionierprojekten aus den folgenden Anwendungsfeldern: Smart Mobility, Smart Energy, Smart Economy, Smart Environment, Smart Governance, Smart Participation und Smart Living. Das Heft soll dazu dienen, den State of the Art der intelligenten Nutzung von Webtechnologien für den urbanen Raum aufzuzeigen, um damit Chancen und Risiken aufzudecken.

A Bayesian strategy to enhance the performance of indoor localization systems

This work describes the probabilistic modelling af a Bayesian-based mechanism to improve location estimates of an already deployed location system by fusing its outputs with low-cost binary sensors. This mechanism takes advantege of the localization captabilities of different technologies usually present in smart environments deployments. The performance of the proposed algorithm over a real sensor deployment is evaluated using simulated and real experimental data.