Benito Úbeda

How can we tackle energy efficiency in IoT based smart buildings

Nowadays, buildings are increasingly expected to meet higher and more complex performance requirements. Among these requirements, energy efficiency is recognized as an international goal to promote energy sustainability of the planet. Different approaches have been adopted to address this goal, the most recent relating consumption patterns with human occupancy. In this work, we analyze what are the main parameters that should be considered to be included in any building energy management. The goal of this analysis is to help designers to select the most relevant parameters to control the energy consumption of buildings according to their context, selecting them as input data of the management system. Following this approach, we select three reference smart buildings with different contexts, and where our automation platform for energy monitoring is deployed. We carry out some experiments in these buildings to demonstrate the influence of the parameters identified as relevant in the energy consumption of the buildings. Then, in two of these buildings are applied different control strategies to save electrical energy. We describe the experiments performed and analyze the results. The first stages of this evaluation have already resulted in energy savings of about 23% in a real scenario.

Monitoring the Position Integrity in Road Transport Localization Based Services

Nowadays, a new generation of civil location based services (LBS) included in the intelligent road transport systems (ITS-R) field is emerging. The reliability of positioning sensors and the communication infrastructure will be the key to the success of such services. A recommended basic onboard equipment (OBE) can include a GNSS based sensor, an embedded computer, a communication equipment and some other aiding sensors. The current GPS based sensors, operating in standard positioning service (SPS) or differential GPS (DGPS) modes, supply the level of accuracy required by many services of interest. However, the solution availability and the integrity monitoring are the main problems for GNSS based road applications, where the cost plays a significant role. In this paper, an embedded software for monitoring the availability and integrity of a GNSS positioning system is presented. The software developed allows the study of the HPLSBAS (Horizontal Protection Level) parameter as a reliable integrity indicator of the positioning system performance. Its suitability for road applications, and the importance of the geostationary satellite visibility and the GPRS/UMTS coverage are analyzed in this paper. Finally, selected results of these investigations and their conclusions are commented.

A Multiplatform OSGi Based Architecture for Developing Road Vehicle Services

Nowadays, the growing demand on the implantation of onboard services for road vehicles encourages its development as a part of the current and future vehicles. In this sense, the implementation of new facilities cannot lead to an increase of hardware devices in the driver compartment, because space limitations and the need of an easy non-distracting interface with the user must be considered. For these reasons, it is advisable to have a service architecture suitable for further developments, considering the requirements of extensibility. New services should be created using modules shareable with the rest of applications in the vehicle. For this purpose, this work shows an extensible architecture useful in the software development of road services for vehicles. The solution presented is based on the division of services in different levels of abstraction, according to the underlying hardware. This structure is placed over a general purpose computer. A wide range of sensors has been installed in our test vehicle, allowing the implementation of several context aware services, and proving the feasibility of the proposed solution. A set of examples of location based services (LBS), multimedia services, and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) has been developed as described in this paper. Index Terms—Embedded Platforms, Service Composition, OS- Gi, Location-based Services.

MagicFinger: 3D Magnetic Fingerprints for Indoor Location

Given the indispensable role of mobile phones in everyday life, phone-centric sensing systems are ideal candidates for ubiquitous observation purposes. This paper presents a novel approach for mobile phone-centric observation applied to indoor location. The approach involves a location fingerprinting methodology that takes advantage of the presence of magnetic field anomalies inside buildings. Unlike existing work on the subject, which uses the intensity of magnetic field for fingerprinting, our approach uses all three components of the measured magnetic field vectors to improve accuracy. By using adequate soft computing techniques, it is possible to adequately balance the constraints of common solutions. The resulting system does not rely on any infrastructure devices and therefore is easy to manage and deploy. The proposed system consists of two phases: the offline phase and the online phase. In the offline phase, magnetic field measurements are taken throughout the building, and 3D maps are generated. Then, during the online phase, the users location is estimated through the best estimator for each zone of the building. Experimental evaluations carried out in two different buildings confirm the satisfactory performance of indoor location based on magnetic field vectors. These evaluations provided an error of (11.34 m, 4.78 m) in the (x, y) components of the estimated positions in the first building where the experiments were carried out, with a standard deviation of (3.41 m, 4.68 m); and in the second building, an error of (4 m, 2.98 m) with a deviation of (2.64 m, 2.33 m).

Interaction of Patients with Breathing Problems through NFC in Ambient Assisted Living Environments

Near Field Communication (NFC) is one of the technologies, in conjunction with Bluetooth and 6LoWPAN, which makes feasible the wireless transmission of information from small objects and sensors to Internet-enabled devices. This presents a new technological generation, denominated Internet of Things (IoT), which is able to integrate in Internet the sensors and objects located surround us. Our research work is focused on the evaluation of the capabilities from the mentioned technologies for the integration of a continuous data transmission model. Specifically, this paper analyzes the capabilities for transmitting continuous data from NFC. This presents special considerations and constrains, since it was not originally designed for this purpose. Specifically, it has been considered, for this evaluation, a sensor with high requirements in data transmission, an electrocardiogram (ECG). Over this sensor is presented an evaluation of the performance with the native communication model from the sensor, i.e. sending via NFC all the collected data, concluding that it is necessary to perform data compression when the amount of data to send is too large, since this introduces a delay of 2 bytes for each 127 bytes. Therefore, this work also presents a solution of pre-processed and data compression to make feasible the communication with NFC technology.

An integrity navigation system based on GNSS/INS for remote services implementation in terrestrial vehicles

Nowadays, one of the most important applications of the navigation systems is the remote services. Applications such as the electronic-fee-collection, truck fleet control or antitheft devices imply millions of users through the roads of the whole world. Particularly in Europe, the development of the GALILEO system and the efforts of the European Parliament in prioritizing the toll collecting systems based on GNSS and cellular networks (GNSS/CN), enlarge highly the European market of potential users. In that million users market, no particular exceptions can be treated by a realistic solution. Most of the actual navigation systems rely mainly on the satellite navigation. Problems such as the deficit of precision, the lack of coverage or the service interruptions due to disturbances on the satellite network arouse the implementation of a more reliable solution combining GNSS and autonomous navigation systems. This paper is to present how a GNSS/INS integrated system offers the accuracy and quality assurance required in remote services. Both practical and theoretical researches about the possibilities of a single GPS receiver, the EGNOS-SISNeT/SBAS position correction improvements, the incoming GALILEO-GPS constellation and the use of a multisensor GNSS/INS integrated solution as a reliable navigation system for remote services applications are presented.

An analysis of positioning and map-matching issues for GNSS-based road user charging

The time for new paradigms for pay-per-use road use charging (RUC) has come, and it is still unclear whether or not current Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) supply reliability enough to lead the technological deployment. It is the general belief for RUC stakeholders that GNSS is the most flexible and cost-efficient technology for such a large deployment. However, the German experience of Toll Collect shows that GNSS must be strongly complemented by road side equipments to reach the necessary charging reliability standards. This paper analyzes some significant points of a GNSS-based RUC schemes, with a special emphasis on relevant map-matching issues. This analysis is complemented by our proposals for supporting GNSS with aiding onboard sensors and maps, and discussions about how the charging reliability may result affected by that. The paper finishes with a summary of the most remarkable conclusions achieved in our investigations.

Extending near field communications to enable continuous data transmission in clinical environments

There are several communication technologies that make feasible the integration of things into Internet. NFC, Bluetooth, WiFi Low Power and 6LoWPAN are some of the most extended technologies, which are making possible the wireless transmission for sensor networks communication and integrate this networks with the Internet, in order to reach an Internet of Things (IoT). These networks allow us collect a lot of information process and understand it and act, according to the situation required, effectively. Our research work is focused for the integration of NFC to control the heart status of a patient continuously. This work analyzes the capabilities from NFC to make feasible the integration of continuous data transmission. The main goal of this continuous data transmission is enable a new generation of mobile health tools that make feasible to analyze process and make a preliminary diagnosis of the state of a patients heart anytime/anywhere. For this purpose, it is presented how an electrocardiogram clinical device is integrated with a mobile phone enabled with NFC. This is evaluated the performance with the native communication model from the sensor concluding that it is necessary some preprocessing to work properly in real time. For that reason, it is also proposed, evaluated and prototyped a preprocessing module to solve the mentioned communication challenges for NFC in clinical environments.

The MIMICS project: an application for intelligent transport systems

This paper shows an ITS application developed using a framework for developing mobile robot applications. the Thinking Cap-II architecture. This framework consists of a series of modules and services developed in Java and allows the distribution of these modules over a network. A two cars convoy application has been implemented using this architecture and the Satant autonomous vehicle. This vehicle incorporates a two layer hardware architecture that provides both modularity and flexibility. Finally some experiments are presented. both in simulated and real world environments.

Penetration of ITS concepts at the university level and willingness to their introduction

It is a common belief among researchers of the Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) community that ITS applications are the key to make transportation systems safer, more comfortable, and more efficient, while reducing the environmental impact. However, there seems to be a gap between ITS community and final users. It cannot be assumed that the advantages of ITS are clear to the users, and we must bear in mind that their reluctance to use some applications and services may be a serious problem to gain the maximum benefit from the ITS research. Of special significance are those systems which reduce the role of the driver in favor of automated control systems. This paper focuses on that gap, and presents the results obtained from a survey made to find out the attitude of young Spanish undergraduate students towards ITS. Special attention is payed to Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) students, since they are expected to be a part of the ITS community in a short future. Age, gender and college degree are taken into account when analyzing the results. As an example of our study, it was found that polled Spanish undergraduates seem to be more concerned about the environment than about road safety. Furthermore, the difference of concern is even larger among students of ICT degrees. The paper concludes with some clues to understand the answers given by students.