Razvan Craciunescu

Big Data, Internet of Things and Cloud Convergence --- An Architecture for Secure E-Health Applications

Big data storage and processing are considered as one of the main applications for cloud computing systems. Furthermore, the development of the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm has advanced the research on Machine to Machine (M2M) communications and enabled novel tele-monitoring architectures for E-Health applications. However, there is a need for converging current decentralized cloud systems, general software for processing big data and IoT systems. The purpose of this paper is to analyze existing components and methods of securely integrating big data processing with cloud M2M systems based on Remote Telemetry Units (RTUs) and to propose a converged E-Health architecture built on Exalead CloudView, a search based application. Finally, we discuss the main findings of the proposed implementation and future directions.

eWALL: An Intelligent Caring Home Environment Offering Personalized Context-Aware Applications Based on Advanced Sensing

Independent living of senior citizens is one of the main challenges linked to the ageing population. Senior citizens may suffer from a number of diseases, including the decline in cardiopulmonary conditions, weaker muscle functions and a declined neuromuscular control of the movements, which result in a higher risk of fall and a higher vulnerability for cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases. With respect to cognitive functions, senior citizens may suffer from a decline of memory function, less ability to orientate and a declined ability to cope with complex situations. This is by itself a big societal challenge with impact in multiple sectors. In this paper we present an innovative ICT solution, named eWALL, that aims to address these challenges by means of an advanced ICT infrastructure and home sensing environment; thus differentiating from existing eHealth and eCare solutions. The system of eWALL will extend the state-of-the-art of Assistive Platforms and will significantly increase the independent living of seniors.

Public versus private cloud adoption — A case study based on open source cloud platforms

The traditional way of IT in a company can be very problematic. As changes in the business environment occur, so appears the need to implement more efficient enterprise systems. Cloud Computing technology represents the next enterprise computing paradigm and a solution to most current enterprise IT problems. This article examines how Cloud technology has evolved and the way it affects related performances by presenting a case study based on SlapOS open source Cloud platform.

Wireless ZigBee home automation system

The home automation system concept existed for many years but in the last decade, due to the rapid development of sensors and wireless technologies, a large number of various such “intelligent homes” have been developed. The purpose of the present paper is to demonstrate the flexibility, reliability and affordability of home automation projects, based on a simple and affordable implementation. A wireless sensing and control system have been developed and tested, having a number of basic functionalities such as switching on/off the light according to ambient lighting and turning on/off the central heating. The system has been built around low power microcontrollers and ZigBee modems for wireless communication, using a set of Vishay 640 thermistor sensors for temperature measurements and Vishay LDR07 photo-resistor for humidity measurements. A trigger is activated when the temperature or light measurements are above/below a given threshold and a command is transmitted to the central unit through the ZigBee radio module. All the data processing is performed by a low power microcontroller both at the sensing device and at the control unit.

Implementation of Fog computing for reliable E-health applications

This paper addresses the current technical challenge of an impedance mismatch between the requirements of smart connected object applications within the sensing environment and the characteristics of todays cloud infrastructure. We investigate the possibility to offload cloud tasks, such as storage and data signal processing to the edge of the network, thus decreasing the latency associated with performing those tasks within the cloud. The research scenario is an e-Health laboratory implementation where the real-time processing is performed by the home PC, while the extracted metadata is sent to the cloud for further processing.

Small Cells in Cellular Networks: Challenges of Future HetNets

Due to their low cost and easy deployment, small cells provide a viable and cost-effective way of improving the cellular coverage and capacity both for homes and enterprises, both in metropolitan and rural areas. Stimulated by their attractive features and advantages, the ongoing development and deployment of small cells by manufacturers and mobile network operators have seen a surge in recent years. Together with macro-cells, they form, what are called Heterogeneous Networks or HetNets. However, the successful rollout and operation of small cells are still facing significan issues. In this paper the need for, challenges and solutions of small cell deployments are analyzed. This analysis is conducted with respect to self-organizing features, interference coordination, energy efficiency and spectrum efficiency. The analysis is complemented with numerical results based on system simulations in Macro-only and HetNet scenarios and also on real measurements performed on an mobile operator network. Results show the clear improvement that a HetNet brings in term of user throughput and also the amunt of spectrum waste that is present in nowadays’ operator networks.

Big data fusion for eHealth and Ambient Assisted Living Cloud Applications

Senior citizens may suffer from a number of diseases, including but not limited to mild dementia and cognitive disabilities, which require either the institutionalization or the constant support from care-givers. To successfully help the senior citizens, usually a monitoring system is needed that can gather and process data from various sensors about the healthcare condition of the user and environment parameters (noise level, light, humidity and temperature). In this paper we describe a cloud-based approach for monitoring the healthcare condition of senior citizens and the fusion of big data from heterogeneous information flows coming from the sensors. Furthermore, because context understanding is not easily done with a single source of metadata, we analyze metadata available from various online sources, aiming to understand the context of its users, in order to offer them personalized eHealth services.

Guard Interval effects on OFDM /BPSK transmissions over fading channels

This paper presents the performances BPSK / OFDM systems in terms of Bit Error Rate (BER) as a function of Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) using different types and lengths of Guard Interval. The simulations were carried out over AWGN and Rayleigh fading channels, and the results have been compared with the theoretical ones. Based on those results, a number of conclusions have been highlighted in the last chapter of the paper.

Performances of LMS/NLMS algorithms for CDMA RAKE receivers

This paper presents an innovative technique that identifies the most significant paths of the multipath channels based on the Last Mean Square (LMS) and Normalized Least Mean Squares (NLMS) algorithms applied to RAKE receiver. Simulations have been carried out for a DS-CDMA signal with QPSK modulation, and the performances have been evaluated in terms of the number of taps detected as a function of number of samples processed for different values of the noise variance and different threshold values.

Approaches for environmental monitoring sensor networks

ZigBee was and continues to be a surprisingly low cost solution in terms of wireless networking, with a tendency to become even more affordable as time goes by and technology is pushed further. Furthermore, ZigBee networks facilitate many applications, such as home automation, healthcare medical monitoring, environmental monitoring and so on. Energy consumption, security, latency and reliability are critical performance measurements in most monitoring systems. This paper focuses on two approaches in building an environmental monitoring sensor network: one built around a low power microcontroller and two radio modules communicating through the ZigBee protocol and one cloud-connected solution, with integrated sensors and data being transmitted through wireless communications in a ZigBee network infrastructure. The results showed that both implementations provide similar results, but each one has advantages and disadvantages.