Ana Verónica Medina

Indoor Position System Based on BitCloud Stack for Ambient Living and Smart Buildings

Nowadays there is a research on ambient living and smart building applications to make people life more confortable. This kind of applications, in general, requires the position where a person is in a building to act according it and to any physical parameters that are measured from the person, to determine, for instance, if the air condition has to be switched on or off, the room temperature has to be put up or down or the music has to be changed from classical to pop, or vice versa. This paper presents an indoor position solution based on BitCloud Stack, a full-featured, second generation embedded software stack from Atmel.

Implementing IEC 60870-5 data link layer for an open and flexible remote unit

This paper presents an open source implementation for a data-link layer protocol specified in IEC 60870, protocol specification for telecontrol networks. It has been tested over LEON an embedded system with a Linux based operating system. Protocol engineering methods have been used in order to implement the protocol. The standard is in natural language so a formal language is needed to describe its behavior. A prototype has also been created to simulate the protocol behavior. The protocol has been tested on a real environment, using PCs and LEON as primary and secondary stations, and different physical layers, serial cable, radio frequency and GSM.

Design and Implementation of a Prototype with a Standardized Interface for Transducers in Ambient Assisted Living

Solutions in the field of Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) do not generally use standards to implement a communication interface between sensors and actuators. This makes these applications isolated solutions because it is so difficult to integrate them into new or existing systems. The objective of this research was to design and implement a prototype with a standardized interface for sensors and actuators to facilitate the integration of different solutions in the field of AAL. Our work is based on the roadmap defined by AALIANCE, using motes with TinyOS telosb, 6LoWPAN, sensors, and the IEEE 21451 standard protocol. This prototype allows one to upgrade sensors to a smart status for easy integration with new applications and already existing ones. The prototype has been evaluated for autonomy and performance. As a use case, the prototype has been tested in a serious game previously designed for people with mobility problems, and its advantages and disadvantages have been analysed.

Upgrading of Traditional Electric Meter into Wireless Electric Meter Using ZigBee Technology

Since the electric generating, distributing and marketing has been possible; the Electric Meter was introduced and developed along the years, but never like this time. The digital technology, the wireless communication, and the computer systems have dramatically changed the Electric meter generation from Traditional Meter to Automatic Meter and now to Smart Meter. Their differences lie in how to collect and process information, and the amount of information they can provide. Even so the traditional meter reading has been long used, and it is still one of the most common ways for meter reading. This method, however, has their disadvantages which are the result of human basis reading method that uses. If the reading problem is solved by adding a simple circuit, which makes it automatic it will be still useful method of reading. In this paper it is described a prototype for Automatic Meter Reading (AMR) system that uses a Traditional meter, ZigBee modules, and Mesh network. As result the system gives, full capability of automatic meter even some features of smart meter too. This experiment has an important result for developing country like Ethiopia, which almost 99% its meters are the Traditional meters.

Fingerprint indoor location simulator for AAL

In AAL environments, a key issue is to know the location of a user in order to provide the required services quickly and efficiently. A good location system is the one that is able to locate an individual in the shortest time, with acceptable accuracy and spending the least resources as possible. In this context, it seems interesting to analyze in depth the existing location systems in order to optimize both their location procedures and the cost due to deployment. There are many ways to locate an individual indoors. This research is focused on Fingerprint based location procedure, making a comprehensive analysis of it, generating a broad and diverse set of assumptions and issues related to all the elements of the location process based on it. A tool called PosSimulator has been developed to help designers and AAL system evaluators choose the best deployment for a specific environment, taking into account the economic and installation cost and the position accuracy. PosSimulator has been designed regardless the technology used to acquire the information required to locate. It has been used in a test environment. There has been carried out an extensive battery of tests to extract answers or approaches to all the issues raised and research hypotheses, looking for clear trends in the accuracy of the location and observable connections among the various parameters in which the fingerprint based localization process is divided. For the test environment, it has been determined the best combination of all parameters.

A Standard-Based Body Sensor Network System Proposal

Body Area Networks are a solution to remote monitoring in order to acquire vital signals of patients. Actual sensors provide its own interface which makes more difficult to integrate them in a system. Using standardized protocols and interfaces increases the usability and the integration of different sensors, to achieve this goal the IEEE 1451 standard has been defined. This paper presents a proposal of a telemedicine system, with an open implementation of the IEEE 1451 standard, to be used in several different situations.

Using laboratory to improve understanding of 802.3 physical characteristics

When teaching computer networks as part of a computer engineering degree, emphasis is placed on higher-layer protocols while physical and data-link layers usually play a secondary role. Physical aspects of data communication are sometimes taught as an independent, not-related, topic whereas data-link concepts are ¿hard¿ to our students. We propose a new lab experience in which students can see IEEE 802.3 frames in a new way; by using standard digital oscilloscope we are able to go deeper into lower-level layers. The lab session will be divided into two parts, focusing on topics that are usually considered ¿hard¿ by our students. The first part will focus on physical aspects of a frame transmission whereas the second will focus on MAC-layer. For example, topics like physical layer synchronization, signal attenuation, 5-4-3 rule and even interframe gap are exercised at the lab session. This experience has been tested with a group of last year students; we have analyzed students ¿own perception¿ of previous knowledge of some related topics, the results from a evaluation questionnaire (a small exam given out to students) and students evaluation of this exercise.