Krystof Zeman

Implementation of True IoT Vision

Internet of Things (IoT) is expected to become a driver in an emerging era of interconnected world through the advanced connectivity of smart devices, systems, and services. IoT goes beyond a broad range of Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communication technologies and covers a wide variety of networking protocols. There exist solutions like MQTT or SIP collecting data from sensors, CoAP for constrained devices and networks, or XMPP for interconnecting devices and people. Also there is a plethora of standards and frameworks (OSGi, AllJoyn) bringing closer the paradigm of IoT vision. However, the main constraint of most existing platforms is their limited mutual interoperability. To this end, we provide a comprehensive description of protocols suitable to support the IoT vision. Further, we advocate an alternative approach to already known principles and employ the SIP protocol as a container for M2M data. We provide description of data structures and practical implementation principles of the proposed structures (JSON and Protocol Buffers are discussed in detail) transmitted by SIP as a promising enabler for efficient M2M communication in the IoT world. Our reported findings are based on extensive hands-on experience collected after the development of advanced M2M smart home gateway in cooperation with the operator Telekom Austria Group.

User performance gains by data offloading of LTE mobile traffic onto unlicensed IEEE 802.11 links

Today, one of the most engaging challenges for mobile operators is the question how to manage the data traffic in mobile networks which is increasing exponentially; mainly due to the growing popularity of applications for mobile devices. Mobile data offloading represents the idea of cost-efficient technology to release the overloaded parts of RAN in cellular networks. This emerging solution introduces the concept of offloading the mobile data from primary cellular communication technology to the IEEE 802.11 infrastructure with aim to gain extra capacity (higher throughput) and improve the overall network performance and user experience. The strategy what, when and for how long to offload data from one communication system to another is non-trivial and therefore already active research in this domain should continue to find the answers for open questions. This paper addresses two the most discussed solutions for offloading between the LTE cellular network and WiFi when the performance needs/requirements exceed the threshold for providing the services via LTE network under an agreed-upon QoS (Quality of Services). In detail, the implementation of SNR (Signal-to-Noise Ratio) threshold based handover and network throughput based handover solutions following the 3GPP standard for Access Network Discovery and Selection Function framework for WiFi offloading in simulation environment NS-3 is proposed. Our simulation results confirm that the concept when the SNR and throughput thresholds can be used to control the mobile data offloading process.

Wireless M-BUS: An Attractive M2M Technology for 5G-Grade Home Automation

The aggressive introduction of new smart devices for households is considered today as one of the most challenging issues in the Internet of Things (IoT) world. According to the wide variety of radio technologies used for communication between smart devices, there is a growing need to answer the question of which communication standard can be used to drive communication in smart homes and intelligent buildings as part of the emerging 5G ecosystem. To this end, we provide in this paper a performance analysis of Wireless M-BUS communication protocol which has recently increased its popularity especially in smart-metering domain in Western Europe. First, the developed WM-BUS module in Network Simulator 3 (NS-3) is described. Further, we investigate in detail the obtained simulation results which are compared with the real data from Kamstrup smart metering devices. Especially, the attention is focused on the packet delivery ratio and interference between smart devices. In particular, we demonstrate that our constructed module provides adequate correlation between the results obtained from the simulation and those from real-world measurements.

Remote networking technology for IoT: Cloud-based access for AllJoyn-enabled devices

The Internet of Things (IoT) represents a vision of a future communication between users, systems, and daily objects performing sensing and actuating capabilities with the goal to bring unprecedented convenience and economical benefits. Today, a wide variety of developed solutions for IoT can be seen through the all industry fields. Each of the developed systems is based on the proprietary SW implementation unable (in most cases) to share collected data with others. Trying to offer common communication platform for IoT, AllSeen Alliance introduced Alljoyn framework - interoperable platform for devices (sensors, actuators, etc.) and applications to communicate among themselves regardless of brands, transport technologies, and operating systems. In this paper, we discuss an application for remote management of light systems built as an extension of Alljoyn Framework - developed application is independent on communication technologies (e.g., ZigBee or WiFi). Besides provided communication independence, the presented framework can run on both major SoC architectures ARM and MIPS. To this end, we believe that our application (available as open source on GitHub) can serve as building block in future IoT / Smart home implementations.

A Trial of Yoking-Proof Protocol in RFID-based Smart-Home Environment

Owing to significant progress in the Internet of Things (IoT) within both academia and industry, this breakthrough technology is increasingly penetrating our everyday lives. However, the levels of user adoption and business revenue are still lagging behind the original expectations. The reasons include strong security and privacy concerns behind the IoT, which become critically important in the smart home environment. Our envisioned smart home scenario comprises a variety of sensors, actuators, and end-user devices interacting and sharing data securely. Correspondingly, we aim at investigating and verifying in practice the Yoking-proof protocol, which is a multi-factor authentication solution for smart home systems with an emphasis on data confidentiality and mutual authentication. Our international team conducted a large trial featuring the Yoking-proof protocol, RFID technology, as well as various sensors and user terminals. This paper outlines the essentials of this trial, reports on our practical experience, and summarizes the main lessons learned.

Experimental Evaluation of Dynamic Licensed Shared Access Operation in Live 3GPP LTE System

As next-generation mobile networks are rapidly taking shape driven by the target standardization requirements and initial trial implementations, a range of accompanying technologies prepare to support them with more reliable wireless access and improved service provisioning. Among these are more advanced spectrum sharing options enabled by the emerging Licensed Shared Access (LSA) regulatory framework, which aims to efficiently employ the capacity of underutilized frequency bands in a controlled manner. The concept of LSA promises to equip network operators with the much needed additional spectrum on the secondary basis and thus brings changes to the existing cellular network management. Hence, additional research is in prompt demand to determine the required levels of Quality of Service (QoS) and service provisioning reliability, especially in cases of dynamic geographical and temporal LSA sharing. Motivated by this recent urge and having at our disposal a fully-functional 3GPP LTE cellular deployment, we have committed to implement and trial the principles of dynamic LSA-compatible spectrum management. This paper is our first disclosure on the comprehensive experimental evaluation of this promising technology. We expect that these unprecedented practical results together with the key lessons learned will become a valuable reference point for the subsequent integration of flexible LSA-based services, suitable for inter-operator and multi-tenant spectrum sharing.

A Practical Perspective on 5G-Ready Highly Dynamic Spectrum Management with LSA

A diversity of wireless technologies will collaborate to support the fifth-generation (5G) communication networks with their demanding applications and services. Despite decisive progress in many enabling solutions, next-generation cellular deployments may still suffer from a glaring lack of bandwidth due to inefficient utilization of radio spectrum, which calls for immediate action. To this end, several capable frameworks have recently emerged to all help the mobile network operators (MNOs) leverage the abundant frequency bands that are utilized lightly by other incumbents. Along these lines, the recent Licensed Shared Access (LSA) regulatory framework allows for controlled sharing of spectrum between an incumbent and a licensee, such as the MNO, which coexist geographically. This powerful concept has been subject to several early technology demonstrations that confirm its implementation feasibility. However, the full potential of LSA-based spectrum management can only become available if it is empowered to operate dynamically and at high space-time-frequency granularity. Complementing the prior efforts, we in this work outline the functionality that is required by the LSA system to achieve the much needed flexible operation as well as report on the results of our respective live trial that employs a full-fledged commercial-grade cellular network deployment. Our practical results become instrumental to facilitate more dynamic bandwidth sharing and thus promise to advance on the degrees of spectrum utilization in future 5G systems without compromising the service quality of their users.

Emerging 5G applications over mmWave: Hands-on assessment of WiGig radios

Nowadays, many emerging technologies, such as Augmented and Virtual reality, require extremely high-rate data transmissions. This imposes an increasing demand on the network throughput, which currently surpasses the capabilities of commercially available wireless communication systems. To address this constraint, some companies are considering the implementation of high-throughput wired technologies, such as optical fibers, as part of their products. This approach is effective in terms of communication link capacity, but on the other hand may bring disadvantages and constraints in terms of user mobility (i.e., the limited length of cables). Therefore, we are currently witnessing much faster development of novel high-rate wireless technologies, which are considered to be enablers for future 5G applications. This paper offers an evaluation of the emerging IEEE 802.11ad (WiGig) wireless technology capable of delivering multi-gigabit data transfer rates. This hands-on assessment aims at real-world experimentation as well as simulation-based study of selected scenarios to assess the usability of the millimeter-wave technology in prospective 5G applications. All of our practical measurements were conducted on the commercially available WiGig-ready Dell D5000 hardware platforms. The obtained data was comprehensively compared with the corresponding simulation scenario in Network Simulator 3.

Experimental evaluation of technology enablers for cutting edge wearables' applications

Nowdays, wearables are very important part of Internet of Things (IoT) concept. They share a lot of parameters with embedded devices and add some new requirements. Most of those requirements are created by their unique usage - these devices are in user proximity, mostly directly on a human body. This brings also a lot of complications for researchers and engineers. They must consider i.e. safety terms or small dimensions, which are interfering with requirements such as battery life and computational power. This paper presents a study of computational power versus power efficiency of modern System on a Chip (SoC) platform for Internet of Things (IoT). Target of this study is to determine which currently accessible SoC on the market is most suitable for usage in wearables and emerging applications like e.g. augmented reality. Three different platforms were tested and the results are presented at the end of this paper.