Gianluca Aloi

Enabling IoT interoperability through opportunistic smartphone-based mobile gateways

In the near future, all our everyday things and objects will be both connected to the Internet and equipped with enough sensing, acting and processing capabilities to exploit the full potential benefits of the so called Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm. Even the simplest objects will become smart because they will be interconnected to other objects to share and collect data from the environments in which they are placed thus paving the way to novel application services, computing and communication scenarios.In this context, interoperability among different standards and communication technologies is still a significant challenge that we have started to address by proposing a smartphone-based mobile gateway acting as a flexible and transparent interface between different IoT devices and the Internet. The presented unified, high-level and extendible software architecture supports opportunistic IoT devices discovery, control and management coupled with data processing, collection and diffusion functionalities.A specific testbed on common smartphones with different hardware and software capabilities was deployed to evaluate the real feasibility of the designed solution measuring the system performance in terms of energy consumption, memory and CPU usage in high and low load scenarios. According to the obtained results, the implemented software architecture for multi-standard and multi-technology interoperation presents a reduced use of hardware resources in front of a relatively high energy consumption value, mostly due to the simultaneously active radio interfaces combined with a small battery capacity, that limits the smartphone lifetime. Nevertheless, the presented general approach is still remarkable because this latter aspect will most likely be exceeded, in a short time, thanks to daily technological advancements in both batteries and radio interfaces.

Disaster monitoring and mitigation using aerospace technologies and integrated telecommunication networks

How space technologies and new integrated telecommunication networks can mitigate the impact of natural and man-made disasters. The objective is to design new, potentially attractive telecommunication architectures to better manage a disaster scenario. The strengths and the weaknesses of the proposed space-based telecommunication architectures for the emergency and recovery will be outlined also, to individuate the needs for an optimal provision of information and accessibility of space-related services in case of disaster.

Cloud-based Activity-aaService cyber–physical framework for human activity monitoring in mobility

Abstract This paper proposes Activity as a Service (Activity-aaService), a full-fledged cyber–physical framework to support community, on-line and off-line human activity recognition and monitoring in mobility. Activity-aaService is able to address the current lack of Cloud-Assisted Body Area Networks platforms and applications supporting monitoring and analysis of human activity for single individuals and communities. Activity-aaService is built atop the BodyCloud platform so enabling efficient BSN-based sensor data collection and local processing (Body-side), high performance computing of collected sensor data and data storing on the Cloud (Cloud-side), workflow-based programming of data analysis (Analyst-side), and advanced visualization of results (Viewer-side). Specifically, it provides specific, powerful and flexible programming abstractions for the rapid prototyping of efficient human activity-oriented applications. The effectiveness of the proposed framework has been demonstrated through the development of several prototypes related to physical activity monitoring, step counting, physical energy estimation, automatic fall detection, and smart wheelchair support. Finally, performance evaluation of the proposed framework at the Body-side of the activity classification has been carried out by analyzing processing load, data transmission time, CPU usage, memory footprint, and battery consumption using four heterogeneous mobile devices representing low, medium and high performance mobile platforms.

An integrated satellite-HAP-terrestrial system architecture: resources allocation and traffic management issues

This paper explains the potential role of an integrated satellite-HAP (high altitude platform)-terrestrial system. A simple and suitable architecture is presented. The proposed architecture consists of three layers: the terrestrial layer, HAP layer and GEO layer. The terrestrial layers terminals, within the same HAP coverage area, have to use a HAP transponder and HAP master control station (HMCS) to send and receive data amongst themselves. Moreover the HAP gateway stations (HGTW) guarantees communications among users belonging to different HAP coverage areas using the GEO satellite links. Since high quality multimedia application support is a key objective for upcoming communication systems, this paper investigates the issues related to this topic. In order to guarantee an adequate quality of service to these kinds of service requires an efficient resources allocation and traffic management algorithm to be implemented inside the HMCS and HGTW stations.

Efficient real-time multimedia connections handling over DVB-RCS satellite system

The main objective of this work is the proposal of a new connection admission control (CAC) algorithm guaranteeing both a high connection multiplexing level and, in particular, a good quality of service (QoS) for real-time multimedia traffic sources mapped over the service classes of the DVB-RCS standard. In this paper, we suppose a DVB-RCS system architecture using a multi-spot beam geostationary satellite with regenerative payload. We also suppose IP traffic to be carried, in return and forward directions, via DVB/MPEG-2 traffic streams instead of to the obsolete ATM encapsulation. Simulation results show that, even if the real time multimedia connections are more sensitive to the delay jitter, the agreed QoS is always guaranteed, even when the system load increases; moreover, using the proposed algorithm, a high system throughput is obtainable.

A multi-technology location-aware wireless system for interactive fruition of multimedia contents

Nowadays, due to the increasing demands of the fast-growing consumer electronics (CEs) market, more powerful mobile consumer devices are being introduced continuously. With this evolution of CEs technologies, many sophisticated electronic applications starts to be developed and applied to context and location aware scenarios. This paper proposes a flexible communication architecture well suited for the interactive fruition of historical and artistic contents throughout a wireless network infrastructure. The designed system and the implemented low cost testbed integrate different communication technologies such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS with the aim of offering, in a transparent and reliable way, a mixed set of different multimedia and augmented reality (AR) contents to mobile users equipped with CEs devices. This communication architecture represents a first step to provide a network support to context-aware applications pushing the ubiquitous computing paradigm into the reality.

POTENTIALITIES OF USRP-BASED SOFTWARE DEFINED RADAR SYSTEMS

Software Deflned Radar is the latest trend in radar development. To handle enhanced radar signal processing techniques, advanced radars need to be able of generating various types of waveforms, such as frequency modulated or phase coded, and to perform multiple functions. The adoption of a Software Deflned Radio system makes easier all these abilities. In this work, the implementation of a Software Deflned Radar system for target tracking using the Universal Software Radio Peripheral platform is discussed. For the flrst time, an experimental characterization in terms of radar application is performed on the latest Universal Software Radio Peripheral NI2920, demonstrating a strongly improved target resolution with respect to the flrst generation platform.

Software defined radar: synchronization issues and practical implementation

The present work is focused on Software Defined Radar - (SDR) paradigm, which gives a more versatile solution when compared to classical radar systems. Thanks to this new system model, most of the fundamental operations, such as signal generation, filtering, up and down conversion, are easily implemented via software. The objective of this paper is to show the main issues related to the design of an effective Software Defined Radar device. Specifically, we will discuss and face the synchronization issues existing between a received and a transmitted signal when an open source hardware, namely the Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP), is considered.

The practical experience of implementing a GSM BTS through open software/hardware

The objective of this paper is to show the implementation experience of a GSM Base Transceiver System (BTS) by using Universal Software Radio Peripheral, which is a multipurpose motherboard for Software Defined Radio (SDR), and a Personal Computer (PC). The OpenBTS project provides a software suite, created for the GNU Radio environment, and able to mimic the behavior of a GSM BTS. In order to allow GSM users to make calls and send text messages, it is necessary to operate some hardware modifications on the SDR motherboard, to set up a Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) server, to configure the server for providing connectivity between the mobile devices and the VoIP backhaul. In this paper, we will illustrate the needed software and hardware, and the steps necessary to create a small, cheap and autonomous GSM BTS.

STEM-NET

Spontaneous wireless networks constructed out of mobile end-user devices (e.g. smartphones or tablets) are currently receiving considerable interest as they enable a wide range of novel, highly pervasive and user-centric network services and applications. In this paper, we focus on emergency-related scenarios, and we investigate the potential of spontaneous networks for providing Internet connectivity over the emergency area through the sharing of resources owned by the end-user devices. Novel and extremely flexible network deployment strategies are required in order to cope with the user mobility, the limited communication capabilities of wireless devices, and the intrinsic dynamics of traffic loads and QoS requirements. To this purpose, we propose here a novel approach toward the deployment of spontaneous networks composed by a new generation of wireless devices - called Stem Nodes (SNs) - to emphasize their ability to cover multiple network roles (e.g. gateway, router). The self-organization of the spontaneous network is then achieved through the local reconfiguration of each SN. Two complementary research contributions are provided. First, we describe the software architecture of a SN (which can be implemented on top of existing end-user devices), and we detail how a SN can manage its role set, eventually extending it through cooperation with other SNs. Second, we propose distributed algorithms, based on swarm intelligence principles, through which each SN can autonomously select its role, and self-elect to gateway or router, so that end-to-end performance are maximized while the lifetime of the spontaneous emergency network is prolonged. The ability of the proposed algorithm to guarantee adaptive and self-organizing network behaviors is demonstrated through extensive Omnet++ simulations, and through a prototype implementation of the SN architecture on a real testbed.