Jose M. Barcelo-Ordinas

Generation and Analysis of a Large-Scale Urban Vehicular Mobility Dataset

The surge in vehicular network research has led, over the last few years, to the proposal of countless network solutions specifically designed for vehicular environments. A vast majority of such solutions has been evaluated by means of simulation, since experimental and analytical approaches are often impractical and intractable, respectively. The reliability of the simulative evaluation is thus paramount to the performance analysis of vehicular networks, and the first distinctive feature that has to be properly accounted for is the mobility of vehicles, i.e., network nodes. Notwithstanding the improvements that vehicular mobility modeling has undergone over the last decade, no vehicular mobility dataset is publicly available today that captures both the macroscopic and microscopic dynamics of road traffic over a large urban region. In this paper, we present a realistic synthetic dataset, covering 24 hours of car traffic in a 400-km2 region around the city of Köln, in Germany. We describe the generation process and outline how the dataset improves the traces currently employed for the simulative evaluation of vehicular networks. We also show the potential impact that such a comprehensive mobility dataset has on the network protocol performance analysis, demonstrating how incomplete representations of vehicular mobility may result in over-optimistic network connectivity and protocol performance.

A survey of visual sensor network platforms

Recent developments in low-cost CMOS cameras have created the opportunity of bringing imaging capabilities to sensor networks. Various visual sensor platforms have been developed with the aim of integrating visual data to wireless sensor applications. The objective of this article is to survey current visual sensor platforms according to in-network processing and compression/coding techniques together with their targeted applications. Characteristics of these platforms such as level of integration, data processing hardware, energy dissipation, radios and operating systems are also explored and discussed.

Exact Decoding Probability Under Random Linear Network Coding

In this letter, we compute the exact probability that a receiver obtains N linearly independent packets among K ≥ N received packets, when the sender/s use/s random linear network coding over a Galois Field of size q. Such condition maps to the receivers capability to decode the original information, and its mathematical characterization helps to design the coding so to guarantee the correctness of the transmission. Our formulation represents an improvement over the current upper bound for the decoding probability, and provides theoretical grounding to simulative results in the literature.

Optimal deployment of charging stations for electric vehicular networks

In a smart city environment, we look at a new, upcoming generation of vehicles running on electric power supplied by on-board batteries. Best recharging options include charging at home, as well as charging at public areas. In this setting, electric vehicles will be informed about public charging stations using wireless communications. As the charging stations are shared resources, cooperating electric vehicles have the potential to avoid unbalanced use of recharging stations and lengthy waiting times. We present a model for electric vehicles and their battery depletion, vehicle mobility, charging stations, and give a solution for optimal placement of charging stations in a smart city. Our placement approach is based on genetic programming and simulation of electric vehicles which move on a real map of a European city. We show that after a few evolution steps, an optimal solution of the charging infrastructure is derived based on mean trip times of electric vehicles.

Cooperative download in urban vehicular networks

We target urban scenarios where vehicular users can download large files from road-side Access Points (APs), and define a framework to exploit opportunistic encounters between mobile nodes to increase their transfer rate. We first devise a technique for APs deployment, based on vehicular traffic flows analysis, which fosters cooperative download. Then, we propose and evaluate different algorithms for carriers selection and chunk scheduling in carry&forward data transfers. Results obtained under realistic road topology and vehicular mobility conditions show that coupling our APs deployment scheme with probabilistic carriers selection and redundant chunk scheduling yields a worst-case 2x gain in the average download rate with respect to direct download, as well as a 10x reduction in the rate of undelivered chunks with respect to a blind carry&forward.

Cooperative Download in Vehicular Environments

We consider a complex (i.e., nonlinear) road scenario where users aboard vehicles equipped with communication interfaces are interested in downloading large files from road-side Access Points (APs). We investigate the possibility of exploiting opportunistic encounters among mobile nodes so to augment the transfer rate experienced by vehicular downloaders. To that end, we devise solutions for the selection of carriers and data chunks at the APs, and evaluate them in real-world road topologies, under different AP deployment strategies. Through extensive simulations, we show that carry&forward transfers can significantly increase the download rate of vehicular users in urban/suburban environments, and that such a result holds throughout diverse mobility scenarios, AP placements and network loads.

Review: Security on VANETs: Privacy, misbehaving nodes, false information and secure data aggregation

This article is a position paper on the current security issues in Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANETs). VANETs face many interesting research challenges in multiple areas, from privacy and anonymity to the detection and eviction of misbehaving nodes and many others in between. Multiple solutions have been proposed to address those issues. This paper surveys the most relevant while discussing its benefits and drawbacks. The paper explores the newest trends in privacy, anonymity, misbehaving nodes, the dissemination of false information and secure data aggregation, giving a perspective on how we foresee the future of this research area. First, the paper discusses the use of Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) (and certificates revocation), location privacy, anonymity and group signatures for VANETs. Then, it compares several proposals to identify and evict misbehaving and faulty nodes. Finally, the paper explores the differences between syntactic and semantic aggregation techniques, cluster and non-cluster based with fixed and dynamic based areas, while presenting secure as well as probabilistic aggregation schemes.

Node Clustering Based on Overlapping FoVs for Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks

Wireless Multimedia Sensor nodes sense areas that are uncorrelated to the areas covered by radio neighbor sensors. Thus, node clustering for coordinating multimedia sensing and processing cannot be based on classical sensor clustering algo-rithms. This paper presents a clustering mechanism for Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks based on overlapped Field of View (FoV) areas. Today, for random deployments, dense networks of low cost, low resolution and low power multimedia nodes are preferred than sparse cases of high cost, high resolution and high power nodes. Overlapping FoVs in dense networks causes wasting power of system because of redundant sensing of area. The main aim of the proposed clustering method is energy conservation and prolonging network lifetime. This aim is achiev-ed through coordination of nodes belonging to the same cluster in assigned tasks, avoiding redundant sensing or processing.

Power saving trade-offs in Delay/Disruptive Tolerant Networks

Wireless nodes such as smart-phones in which the WiFi wireless card is continuously on, consume battery energy in just a few hours. Moreover, in many scenarios, an always-on wireless card is useless because there is often no need for transmission and/or reception. This fact is exacerbated in Delay/Disruptive Tolerant Network (DTN) environments, in which nodes exchange Delay Tolerant Objects (DTO) when they meet. Power Saving Management (PSM) techniques enable the lifetime of the nodes to be extended. This paper analyses the trade-offs that appear when wireless nodes periodically turn off the wireless card in order to save battery in DTN environments. The paper shows the conditions in which a node can switch off the battery without impacting the peer-to-peer contact probability, and those in which this contact probability is decreased. For example, it is shown that node lifetime can be doubled while keeping the peer-to-peer contact probability equal to one. But, further increase of the node lifetime quickly decreases peer-to-peer contact probability. Finally, the impact of power savings in DTO dissemination time is also analyzed.

A method for clustering and cooperation in wireless multimedia sensor networks.

Wireless multimedia sensor nodes sense areas that are uncorrelated to the areas covered by radio neighbouring sensors. Thus, node clustering for coordinating multimedia sensing and processing cannot be based on classical sensor clustering algorithms. This paper presents a clustering mechanism for Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks (WMSNs) based on overlapped Field of View (FoV) areas. Overlapping FoVs in dense networks cause the wasting of power due to redundant area sensing. The main aim of the proposed clustering method is energy conservation and network lifetime prolongation. This objective is achieved through coordination of nodes belonging to the same cluster to perform assigned tasks in a cooperative manner avoiding redundant sensing or processing. A paradigm in this concept, a cooperative scheduling scheme for object detection, is presented based on the proposed clustering method.