Saioa Arrizabalaga

Multi-residential gateway: an innovative concept and a practical approach

A new concept of multi-residential gateway (MRG) capable of managing several residential units (e.g. homes, flats) simultaneously while offering new additional services is presented. Apart from the typical recommendations proposed for residential gateways, specific new requirements are introduced in order to overcome the multi-residential challenge. A novel MRG has been developed fulfilling all the previous constrains. Both the core and the management architectures are explained, with particular emphasis on the networking aspects and its modular firewall/QoS design. An OSGi based platform has been introduced as the best management framework, and its validation is done with the addition of a MRG parental control service.

An Agent Based Semantic OSGi Service Architecture

The OSGi Framework offers a cooperative environment for the deployment and management of services for multidisciplinary software applications, achieving interoperability between systems. But even so, its service registry lack of non-syntactic information prohibits agents making this framework available for a wider range of applications. This paper proposes an agent-based novel architecture with a semantic in-memory OSGi service registry based on OWL. It enhances the potential of OSGi with semantic data extracted from services deployed in the framework, using software agents in conjunction with Java Annotations and Java Reflection API to dynamically obtain and invoke all required information. As a result, service development and deployment in the OSGi framework will get another view, avoiding the commonly used Interfaces pattern. This Architecture has been successfully applied to a domotic environment managed by a Service Residential Gateway (SRG).

Implementation and validation of an Angle of Arrival (AOA) determination system

This paper presents the implementation and validation of a complete AoA (Angle of Arrival) system. The AoA system is typically used together with smart antenna technology. In this paper the AoA system is part of a mobile wireless communication positioning system. The implementation includes the array antenna, the front ends and the AoA estimation block, which uses the MUSIC algorithm. Furthermore, a complete AoA system model has been developed, and used to find the optimum configuration of the AoA system. The AoA system has been validated using the model implemented in MATLAB.

A novel QoS architecture for multi-service provisioning in multi-residential gateways

The residential gateway (RG) is known as the connection box that provides multi-service access to the consumer networks. This work is focused on a multi-residential gateway (MRG) concept, which offers more service provisioning and management capabilities. The QoS support in this context is challenging, as new requirements must be fulfilled regarding such multi-network and multiservice environment. Both design and development processes are shown in depth and the proposed solution is tested and compared with the main trends among the state of the art. This paper provides an optimum multi-service QoS provisioning architecture for multi-residential units as the best trade off between packet loss and delay performances. The implemented test bed (with VoIP, Interactive Video, Telnet, Web, FTP and Bulk traffic provisioning through up to 20 simultaneous consuming units) validates this design and provides some interesting future works.

Wireless Communication Emulator Device and Methodology for the ETCS BTM Subsystem

Currently European Train Control System ETCS rollout is a major concern for train manufacturers and railway infrastructure managers. But available laboratory certification procedures do not completely address all the needs of the system, which leads to long and expensive field-testing. This research work proposes a new tool that reduces the required on-site testing amount. The BTM Wireless Communication Emulator WCE reproduces the potential interferers that can be found in the air-gap of the BTM wireless communication channel. That way, the laboratory testing procedures can emulate the behavior of the wireless channel in a more realistic way. The identification of the potential interferers to be included in the emulator has been done first, and the design and implementation has been carried out afterwards. Finally, the testing and validation of the tool has been completed.

Analysis of YouTube’s traffic adaptation to dynamic environments

The popular Internet service, YouTube, has adopted by default the HyperText Markup Language version 5 (HTML5). With this adoption, YouTube has moved to Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH) as Adaptive BitRate (ABR) video streaming technology. Furthermore, rate adaptation in DASH is solely receiver-driven. This issue motivates this work to make a deep analysis of YouTube’s particular DASH implementation. Firstly, this article provides a state of the art about DASH and adaptive streaming technology, and also YouTube traffic characterization related work. Secondly, this paper describes a new methodology and test-bed for YouTube’s DASH implementation traffic characterization and performance measurement. This methodology and test-bed do not make use of proxies and, moreover, they are able to cope with YouTube traffic redirections. Finally, a set of experimental results are provided, involving a dataset of 310 YouTube’s videos. The depicted results show a YouTube’s traffic pattern characterization and a discussion about allowed download bandwidth, YouTube’s consumed bitrate and quality of the video. Moreover, the obtained results are cross-validated with the analysis of HTTP requests performed by YouTube’s video player. The outcomes of this article are applicable in the field of Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of Experience (QoE) management. This is valuable information for Internet Service Providers (ISPs), because QoS management based on assured download bandwidth can be used in order to provide a target end-user’s QoE when YouTube service is being consumed.

Survey of Environmental Effects in Railway Communications.

In order to identify the different external impairments that could exist in the railway environment. A survey of these effects is presented with the aim of identifying the different phenomena that could affect to the communication channel. On one hand, common effects linked to the signal transmission over a wireless communication channel are analysed. On the other hand, as GSM-R is the current communication technology employed in ERTMS, the disturbances interfering it have been studied. Finally, some solutions to mitigate these effects are listed, in this case, focused in handover solutions.

Virtual testing of the on-board ETCS with GNSS based Train integrity determination

This paper shows the strategy and results of the simulation of the Train integrity determination system into the on-board ETCS. It first shows the Smart Train Positioning System (STPS), a GNSS based on-board system that determines the the train integrity. Then, scenarios are derived for two different routes. After that, the test setup based on the ETCS on-board unit virtual laboratory is explained. Finally, the results show that the on-board ETCS equipment is able to detect correctly the integrity loss and operates accordingly. Then, the capability of STPS of providing integrity information is proven and that leads to the conclusion that trains integrity can be determined on-board by using STPS.