Pedro S. Rodríguez-Hernández

A Review of Aeronautical Electronics and Its Parallelism With Automotive Electronics

Aeronautical electronics and communication technologies have evolved from the analog domain to the digital domain, and nowadays, planes are complex structures serviced by many standalone systems that communicate through data buses. Many of these systems have found applicability in other sectors. This paper reviews the most recent technologies in modern aircraft and identifies their application in the automotive sector. It also identifies automotive electronics as applied in planes.

Performance analysis of IEEE 802.11p in urban environments using a multi-agent model

IEEE 802.11p is a technology used for communication between cars, related to security issues, warning of incidents or mere exchange of different types of information. Future cars will have the ability to communicate to other cars and roadside data systems to spread information about congestion, road conditions and accidents. They will also access travel-related Internet services, publicity from business nearby, tourist information or even exchange user files. In this paper a highly configurable agent based simulator that models communication between cars in an urban environment will be presented. Using it, different measurements will be taken, which will allow us to analyze this technology in different scenarios.

A Java/CORBA virtual machine architecture for remote execution of optimization solvers in heterogeneous networks

Virtual machines for remote execution are a useful tool for utilizing light user interfaces and intensive application cores in different physical machines connected through the Internet. In a virtual machine, application cores are distributed in a network. Specific locations, operating systems and hardware characteristics are hidden by virtual machines. They make it possible to use a PC to execute user interfaces and (a few) high‐performance computers for application cores.

Wireless Remote Monitoring of Toxic Gases in Shipbuilding

Large-scale wireless sensor networks have not achieved market impact, so far. Nevertheless, this technology may be applied successfully to small-scale niche markets. Shipyards are hazardous working environments with many potential risks to worker safety. Toxic gases generated in soldering processes in enclosed spaces (e.g., cargo holds) are one such risk. The dynamic environment of a ship under construction makes it very difficult to plan gas detection fixed infrastructures connected to external monitoring stations via wired links. While portable devices with gas level indicators exist, they require workers to monitor measurements, often in situations where they are focused on other tasks for relatively long periods. In this work, we present a wireless multihop remote gas monitoring system for shipyard environments that has been tested in a real ship under construction. Using this system, we validate IEEE 802.15.4/Zigbee wireless networks as a suitable technology to connect gas detectors to control stations outside the ships. These networks have the added benefit that they reconfigure themselves dynamically in case of network failure or redeployment, for example when a relay is moved to a new location. Performance measurements include round trip time (which determines the alert response time for safety teams) and link quality indicator and packet error rate (which determine communication robustness).

QR-Maps: An efficient tool for indoor user location based on QR-Codes and Google maps

An increasing number of new geolocation services are exploiting the new capabilities of smartphones, most of which incorporate GPS location. There are fewer applications for providing indoor location, partly due to the cost of the required infrastructure. In this paper, we present QR-Maps, a simple and efficient tool that can be used in smartphones to obtain accurate indoor user locations. This tool employs QR-Codes containing a short text which indicates locations shown within a custom Google map. The proposed solution is cheaper than other approaches based on wireless technologies.

On sequential and parallel non-monotone derivative-free algorithms for box constrained optimization

This paper proposes a space decomposition scheme for non-monotone (NM) derivative-free parallel and sequential algorithms for solving the box-constrained optimization problem (BCOP). Convergence to Karush Kuhn Tucker points is proved under the same conditions for NM and monotone algorithms for solving unconstrained and BCOPs. The parallel algorithm has two unique features: all processors exchange information on discrete quasi-minimal points, and are able to sample function values on the whole set of directions that conform to non-negative spanning sets for each decomposed subspace. The parallel algorithm has a high degree of fault tolerance: convergence prevails even if only one processor remains running. Preliminary results are encouraging for solving small- and medium-sized problems.

A New M-commerce Concept: m-Mall

In this paper, we propose a new m-commerce concept, m-Mall. Its users are walking individuals that shop in stores nearby, or interact with the stands in an exhibition. m-Mall servers know user location in real-time, by means of an auxiliary Bluetoothnet work, and push information into user handhelds, regardless of their technology. Network-side location allows the implementation of new services that cannot be supported by previous m-commerce solutions, where users were responsible of providing their position.

Providing IoT Services in Smart Cities through Dynamic Augmented Reality Markers

Smart cities are expected to improve the quality of life of citizens by relying on new paradigms, such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and its capacity to manage and interconnect thousands of sensors and actuators scattered across the city. At the same time, mobile devices widely assist professional and personal everyday activities. A very good example of the potential of these devices for smart cities is their powerful support for intuitive service interfaces (such as those based on augmented reality (AR)) for non-expert users. In our work, we consider a scenario that combines IoT and AR within a smart city maintenance service to improve the accessibility of sensor and actuator devices in the field, where responsiveness is crucial. In it, depending on the location and needs of each service, data and commands will be transported by an urban communications network or consulted on the spot. Direct AR interaction with urban objects has already been described; it usually relies on 2D visual codes to deliver object identifiers (IDs) to the rendering device to identify object resources. These IDs allow information about the objects to be retrieved from a remote server. In this work, we present a novel solution that replaces static AR markers with dynamic markers based on LED communication, which can be decoded through cameras embedded in smartphones. These dynamic markers can directly deliver sensor information to the rendering device, on top of the object ID, without further network interaction.

Cellular Network for Real-Time Mobile Auction

Auctions are an ancient form of economic activity and, as such, have evolvedwith technology. However, some forms of traditional auction have survived unchanged, even inareas of great economic interest, until modern regulations imposed a change. We present thedesign of a specialized cellular network that has recently replaced traditional fishauctions in Galicia (Spain).

Nonlinear Optimization of IEEE 802.11 Mesh Networks

In this paper, we propose a novel optimization model to plan IEEE 802.11 broadband access networks. From a formal point of view, it is a mixed integer non-linear optimization model that considers both co-channel and inter-channel interference in the same compact formulation. It may serve as a planning tool by itself or to provide a performance bound to validate simpler planning models such as those in [3].