Rate Maximization of Decode-and-Forward Relaying Systems with RF Energy Harvesting

We consider a three-node decode-and-forward (DF) half-duplex relaying system, where the source first harvests RF energy from the relay, and then uses this energy to transmit information to the destination via the relay. We assume that the information transfer and wireless power transfer phases alternate over time in the same frequency band, and their time fraction (TF) may change or be fixed from one transmission epoch (fading state) to the next. For this system, we maximize the achievable average data rate. Thereby, we propose two schemes: (1) jointly optimal power and TF allocation, and (2) optimal power allocation with fixed TF. Due to the small amounts of harvested power at the source, the two schemes achieve similar information rates, but yield significant performance gains compared to a benchmark system with fixed power and fixed TF allocation.

A framework for experimental determination of localised vertical pedestrian forces on full-scale structures using wireless attitude and heading reference systems

A major weakness among loading models for pedestrians walking on flexible structures proposed in recent years is the various uncorroborated assumptions made in their development. This applies to spatio-temporal characteristics of pedestrian loading and the nature of multi-object interactions. To alleviate this problem, a framework for the determination of localised pedestrian forces on full-scale structures is presented using a wireless attitude and heading reference systems (AHRS). An AHRS comprises a triad of tri-axial accelerometers, gyroscopes and magnetometers managed by a dedicated data processing unit, allowing motion in three-dimensional space to be reconstructed. A pedestrian loading model based on a single point inertial measurement from an AHRS is derived and shown to perform well against benchmark data collected on an instrumented treadmill. Unlike other models, the current model does not take any predefined form nor does it require any extrapolations as to the timing and amplitude of pedestrian loading. In order to assess correctly the influence of the moving pedestrian on behaviour of a structure, an algorithm for tracking the point of application of pedestrian force is developed based on data from a single AHRS attached to a foot. A set of controlled walking tests with a single pedestrian is conducted on a real footbridge for validation purposes. A remarkably good match between the measured and simulated bridge response is found, indeed confirming applicability of the proposed framework.

Audit report on the Wireless E-911 Emergency Communications Fund of the Iowa Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management for the year ended June 30, 2015

Audit report on the Wireless E-911 Emergency Communications Fund of the Iowa Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management for the year ended June 30, 2015

OFDM-based schemes for next generation wireless systems

The purpose of this study is to investigate two candidate waveforms for next generation wireless systems, filtered Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (f-OFDM) and Unified Filtered Multi-Carrier (UFMC). The evaluation is done based on the power spectral density analysis of the signal and performance measurements in synchronous and asynchronous transmission. In f-OFDM we implement a soft truncated filter with length 1/3 of OFDM symbol. In UFMC we use the Dolph-Chebyshev filter, limited to the length of zero padding (ZP). The simulation results demonstrates that both waveforms have a better spectral behaviour compared with conventional OFDM. However, the induced inter-symbol interference (ISI) caused by the filter in f-OFDM, and the inter-carrier interference (ICI) induced in UFMC due to cyclic prefix (CP) reduction , should be kept under control. In addition, in a synchronous transmission case with ideal parameters, f-OFDM and UFMC appear to have similar performance with OFDM. When carrier frequency offset (CFO) is imposed in the transmission, UFMC outperforms OFDM and f-OFDM.

Wireless Sensor Network Deployment

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are widely used for various civilian and military applications, and thus have attracted significant interest in recent years. This work investigates the important problem of optimal deployment of WSNs in terms of coverage and energy consumption. Five deployment algorithms are developed for maximal sensing range and minimal energy consumption in order to provide optimal sensing coverage and maximum lifetime. Also, all developed algorithms include self-healing capabilities in order to restore the operation of WSNs after a number of nodes have become inoperative. Two centralized optimization algorithms are developed, one based on Genetic Algorithms (GAs) and one based on Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). Both optimization algorithms use powerful central nodes to calculate and obtain the global optimum outcomes. The GA is used to determine the optimal tradeoff between network coverage and overall distance travelled by fixed range sensors. The PSO algorithm is used to ensure 100% network coverage and minimize the energy consumed by mobile and range-adjustable sensors. Up to 30% - 90% energy savings can be provided in different scenarios by using the developed optimization algorithms thereby extending the lifetime of the sensor by 1.4 to 10 times. Three distributed optimization algorithms are also developed to relocate the sensors and optimize the coverage of networks with more stringent design and cost constraints. Each algorithm is cooperatively executed by all sensors to achieve better coverage. Two of our algorithms use the relative positions between sensors to optimize the coverage and energy savings. They provide 20% to 25% more energy savings than existing solutions. Our third algorithm is developed for networks without self-localization capabilities and supports the optimal deployment of such networks without requiring the use of expensive geolocation hardware or energy consuming localization algorithms. This is important for indoor monitoring applications since current localization algorithms cannot provide good accuracy for sensor relocation algorithms in such indoor environments. Also, no sensor redeployment algorithms, which can operate without self-localization systems, developed before our work.

Structural Health Monitoring Inside Concrete and Grout Using the Wireless Identification and Sensing Platform (WISP)

This research investigates the implementation of battery-less RFID sensing platforms inside lossy media, such as, concrete and grout. Both concrete and novel grouts can be used for nuclear plant decommissioning as part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) cleanup projects. Our research examines the following: (1) material characterization, (2) analytical modeling of transmission and propagation losses inside lossy media, (3) maximum operational range of RFID wireless sensors embedded inside concrete and grout, and (4) best positioning of antennas for achieving longer communication range between RFID antennas and wireless sensors. Our research uses the battery-less Wireless Identification and Sensing Platform (WISP) which can be used to monitor temperature, and humidity inside complex materials. By using a commercial Agilent open-ended coaxial probe (HP8570B), the measurements of the dielectric permittivity of concrete and grout are performed. Subsequently, the measured complex permittivity is used to formulate analytical Debye models. Also, the transmission and propagation losses of a uniform plane wave inside grout are calculated. Our results show that wireless sensors will perform better in concrete than grout. In addition, the maximum axial and radial ranges for WISP are experimentally determined. Our work illustrates the feasibility of battery-less wireless sensors that are embedded inside concrete and grout. Also, our work provides information that can be used to optimize the power management, sampling rate, and antenna design of such sensors.

Measuring QoS in an aeronautical opportunistic network architecture with limited access to a satellite communications backhaul

We measure quality of service (QoS) in a wireless network architecture of transoceanic aircraft. A distinguishing characteristic of the network scheme we analyze is that it mixes the concept of Delay Tolerant Networking (DTN) through the exploitation of opportunistic contacts, together with direct satellite access in a limited number of the nodes. We provide a graph sparsification technique for deriving a network model that satisfies the key properties of a real aeronautical opportunistic network while enabling scalable simulation. This reduced model allows us to analyze the impact regarding QoS of introducing Internet-like traffic in the form of outgoing data from passengers. Promoting QoS in DTNs is usually really challenging due to their long delays and scarce resources. The availability of satellite communication links offers a chance to provide an improved degree of service regarding a pure opportunistic approach, and therefore it needs to be properly measured and quantified. Our analysis focuses on several QoS indicators such as delivery time, delivery ratio, and bandwidth allocation fairness. Obtained results show significant improvements in all metric indicators regarding QoS, not usually achievable on the field of DTNs.

Study of the Electromagnetic Interference Generated by Wireless Power Transfer Systems

This paper presents a study related with measuring of radio frequency emissions. The purpose is to determine the level of interference generated by wireless power transfer equipment in a specific frequency range, and to compare those levels to the existing standards. The technology of wireless power transfer, especially for electric vehicles batteries charging, is rapidly developing in the recent years. An increasing use of this technology in industrial and consumer electronic products has raised concerns about the possible unfavorable health-effects onto the human being. Another concern is raised from the high intensity fields produced by wireless power transfer systems which will generate highly undesired influence on other electrical and electronic equipment. As a protection against the potential health effects, the governments imposed limits on the occupational and general public exposure to the radio frequencies. These limitations are set out in national and international safety guidelines, standards and regulations. The measurement and evaluation of the human exposure to electromagnetic fields are essential to guarantee occupational and general public safety.

A novel approach to Non-Orthogonal Random Access with application to NB-IoT NTN systems

In the Massive IoT vision, millions of devices need to be connected to the Internet through a wireless access technology. However, current IoT-focused standards are not fully prepared for this future. In this thesis, a novel approach to Non-Orthogonal techniques for Random Access, which is the main bottleneck in high density systems, is proposed. First, the most popular wireless access standards are presented, with a focus on Narrowband-IoT. Then, the Random Access procedure as implemented in NB-IoT is analyzed. The Non-Orthogonal Random Access technique is presented next, along with two potential algorithms for the detection of non-orthogonal preambles. Finally, the performance of the proposed solutions are obtained through numerical simulations.

Risk optimization of a steel frame communications tower subject to tornado winds

The structural engineering community in Brazil faces new challenges with the recent occurrence of high intensity tornados. Satellite surveillance data shows that the area covering the south-east of Brazil, Uruguay and some of Argentina is one of the world most tornado-prone areas, second only to the infamous tornado alley in central United States. The design of structures subject to tornado winds is a typical example of decision making in the presence of uncertainty. Structural design involves finding a good balance between the competing goals of safety and economy. This paper presents a methodology to find the optimum balance between these goals in the presence of uncertainty. In this paper, reliability-based risk optimization is used to find the optimal safety coefficient that minimizes the total expected cost of a steel frame communications tower, subject to extreme storm and tornado wind loads. The technique is not new, but it is applied to a practical problem of increasing interest to Brazilian structural engineers. The problem is formulated in the partial safety factor format used in current design codes, with all additional partial factor introduced to serve as optimization variable. The expected cost of failure (or risk) is defined as the product of a. limit state exceedance probability by a limit state exceedance cost. These costs include costs of repairing, rebuilding, and paying compensation for injury and loss of life. The total expected failure cost is the sum of individual expected costs over all failure modes. The steel frame communications, tower subject of this study has become very common in Brazil due to increasing mobile phone coverage. The study shows that optimum reliability is strongly dependent on the cost (or consequences) of failure. Since failure consequences depend oil actual tower location, it turn,,; out that different optimum designs should be used in different locations. Failure consequences are also different for the different parties involved in the design, construction and operation of the tower. Hence, it is important that risk is well understood by the parties involved, so that proper contracts call be made. The investigation shows that when non-structural terms dominate design costs (e.g, in residential or office buildings) it is not too costly to over-design; this observation is in agreement with the observed practice for non-optimized structural systems. In this situation, is much easier to loose money by under-design. When by under-design. When structural material cost is a significant part of design cost (e.g. concrete dam or bridge), one is likely to lose significantmoney by over-design. In this situation, a cost-risk-benefit optimization analysis is highly recommended. Finally, the study also shows that under time-varying loads like tornados, the optimum reliability is strongly dependent on the selected design life.

Synchronization of Discrete-Time Chaotic Systems in Bandlimited Channels

Over the last couple of decades, many methods for synchronizing chaotic systems have been proposed with communications applications in view. Yet their performance has proved disappointing in face of the nonideal character of usual channels linking transmitter and receiver, that is, due to both noise and signal propagation distortion. Here we consider a discrete-time master-slave system that synchronizes despite channel bandwidth limitations and an allied communication system. Synchronization is achieved introducing a digital filter that limits the spectral content of the feedback loop responsible for producing the transmitted signal. Copyright (C) 2009 Marcio Eisencraft et al.

A survey on key management mechanisms for distributed Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have a vast field of applications, including deployment in hostile environments. Thus, the adoption of security mechanisms is fundamental. However, the extremely constrained nature of sensors and the potentially dynamic behavior of WSNs hinder the use of key management mechanisms commonly applied in modern networks. For this reason, many lightweight key management solutions have been proposed to overcome these constraints. In this paper, we review the state of the art of these solutions and evaluate them based on metrics adequate for WSNs. We focus on pre-distribution schemes well-adapted for homogeneous networks (since this is a more general network organization), thus identifying generic features that can improve some of these metrics. We also discuss some challenges in the area and future research directions. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Adaptive Carrier Tracking for Mars to Earth Communications During Entry, Descent, and Landing

We propose a robust and low complexity scheme to estimate and track carrier frequency from signals traveling under low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) conditions in highly nonstationary channels. These scenarios arise in planetary exploration missions subject to high dynamics, such as the Mars exploration rover missions. The method comprises a bank of adaptive linear predictors (ALP) supervised by a convex combiner that dynamically aggregates the individual predictors. The adaptive combination is able to outperform the best individual estimator in the set, which leads to a universal scheme for frequency estimation and tracking. A simple technique for bias compensation considerably improves the ALP performance. It is also shown that retrieval of frequency content by a fast Fourier transform (FFT)-search method, instead of only inspecting the angle of a particular root of the error predictor filter, enhances performance, particularly at very low SNR levels. Simple techniques that enforce frequency continuity improve further the overall performance. In summary we illustrate by extensive simulations that adaptive linear prediction methods render a robust and competitive frequency tracking technique.

Distributed power control algorithm for multiple access systems based on Verhulst model

In this paper the continuous Verhulst dynamic model is used to synthesize a new distributed power control algorithm (DPCA) for use in direct sequence code division multiple access (DS-CDMA) systems. The Verhulst model was initially designed to describe the population growth of biological species under food and physical space restrictions. The discretization of the corresponding differential equation is accomplished via the Euler numeric integration (ENI) method. Analytical convergence conditions for the proposed DPCA are also established. Several properties of the proposed recursive algorithm, such as Euclidean distance from optimum vector after convergence, convergence speed, normalized mean squared error (NSE), average power consumption per user, performance under dynamics channels, and implementation complexity aspects, are analyzed through simulations. The simulation results are compared with two other DPCAs: the classic algorithm derived by Foschini and Miljanic and the sigmoidal of Uykan and Koivo. Under estimated errors conditions, the proposed DPCA exhibits smaller discrepancy from the optimum power vector solution and better convergence (under fixed and adaptive convergence factor) than the classic and sigmoidal DPCAs. (C) 2010 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.

Reachability of the synchronous state in a mutually connected PLL network

Second-order phase locked loops (PLLs) are devices that are able to provide synchronization between the nodes in a network even under severe quality restrictions in the signal propagation. Consequently, they are widely used in telecommunication and control. Conventional master-slave (M-S) clock-distribution systems are being, replaced by mutually connected (MC) ones due to their good potential to be used in new types of application such as wireless sensor networks, distributed computation and communication systems. Here, by using an analytical reasoning, a nonlinear algebraic system of equations is proposed to establish the existence conditions for the synchronous state in an MC PLL network. Numerical experiments confirm the analytical results and provide ideas about how the network parameters affect the reachability of the synchronous state. The phase-difference oscillation amplitudes are related to the node parameters helping to design PLL neural networks. Furthermore, estimation of the acquisition time depending on the node parameters allows the performance evaluation of time distribution systems and neural networks based on phase-locked techniques. (c) 2008 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.