Dependable Wireless Communication Research Articles

Dependable wireless communications: applications and practices

Dependable wireless communications: applications and practices

Design of a portable and multifunctional dependable wireless communication platform for smart health care

The future of dependable wireless communication will encompass a much eclectic range of applications. Not only are traditional telecommunication facilities such as text messaging, audio and video calling, video download and upload, web browsing, and social networking being improved but also a wide range of sensors and devices in the “Internet of things,” such as “smart cities” and smart hospital applications are being adopted. Researchers are trying hard to ensure timely detection of various diseases anytime and anywhere. In this research, a portable and multifunctional software-defined radio (SDR) platform is designed to detect different activities of human life, in particular for the monitoring of health. The wireless channel state information (WCSI) in the presence of the human body is investigated to capture movements using different frequency bands and is the key idea of this work. Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) with 64 subcarriers and the magnitude and phase responses in the frequency domain are used to capture the WCSI of the activity. The design is validated through simulation and real-time experiments. However, it is widely accepted that simulation results fail to capture real-life situations. Extensive and repeated real-time experiments are carried out on the hardware platform to ensure that the activity is detected accurately. The results achieved by detecting hand motion activity ensure that the system is capable of detecting human body motions and vital signs.

IEEE Access Special Section Editorial: Wireless Body Area Networks

Wearable devices and wireless communications, combined with personalized health management, are future trends that healthcare practices and procedures are heading toward. To facilitate this progress, new technologies and methods are required to provide reliable measurements, end-to-end communications, and data analysis mechanisms from the data source to medical health records. The wireless body area network (WBAN) is the major element in this process. This Special Section is not only limited to on-body WBAN devices but also focuses on benefitting technologies which can distribute vital information inside a human body or allow control of implantable gadgets. Dependable wireless communications combined with versatile application areas, such as accurate localization or behavior analysis techniques, remote monitoring, adoption of vital sensors, and actuators, can benefit the increased use of new WBAN technologies in various healthcare-related studies. In the end, this will make healthcare processes more effective and user friendly, and simultaneously increase the safety of (out)patients. This Special Section focuses on various theoretical and experimental views on WBAN applications, technologies, implementations, and utilizations based on invited, extended versions of the best-evaluated articles from BodyNets 2018, held at Oulu, Finland, in October 2018, as well as quality articles submitted from the Open Call. This Special Section includes 16 accepted articles which have undergone a rigorous peer-review process. Three of the accepted articles were invited extensions of the articles presented at the BodyNets 2018 conference. The total number of submissions we received for this Special Section was 45; thus, the acceptance rate was 36%.

Dependable wireless connectivity: insights and methods for 5G and beyond

Dependability is a measure of availability and reliability of systems/services. In the context of communication systems, dependability is governed by the coverage probability of the network under prescribed service requirements, by the latency of data transmissions as well as by the transmission error probability. Achieving dependable connectivity can be very challenging, especially within wireless mobile communications, where the transmission channel is often prone to severe fading and strong interference. Current generations of cellular mobile communication systems (4G and below) can mainly provide best effort services and are not well equipped to achieve a sufficiently high level of dependability as required by many novel applications, such as, road-safety relevant information exchange in vehicular communications, as well as, wireless remote operation of robots and drones. Standardization bodies have already recognized the market potential of such use-cases for mobile communications, and correspondingly efforts are ongoing to enhance the fifth generation of cellular systems (5G) towards ultra-reliable low-latency transmission. In this paper, we provide insights gained by our research work within the Christian Doppler Laboratory for Dependable Wireless Connectivity for the Society in Motion with respect to factors influencing the dependability of 5G mobile cellular systems, and we present our achievements over the past two years for enhancing the robustness, reliability and efficiency of dependable wireless communications.

Guest Editorial Introduction to the Special Issue on Dependable Wireless Vehicular Communications for Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS)

Over the past couple of decades, transportation systems have begun to receive widespread attention from the scientific community and emerged toward Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). Effective vehicular connectivity techniques can significantly enhance efficiency of travel, reduce traffic incidents and improve safety, and alleviate the impact of congestion; devising the ITS experience. Furthermore, during the past decades, the volume and density of vehicles increased significantly, especially the road traffic; this lead to a dramatic increase in the number of accidents and congestion, with negative impacts on the economy, environment, and quality of people’s lives. In particular, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), road traffic injuries are estimated to be the leading cause of death for young people aged 15–29 and the ninth cause of death worldwide in 2015. The enabling communication technologies are intended to realize the frameworks that will spur an array of applications and use cases in the domain of road safety, traffic efficiency, and driver’s assistance. Although these applications will allow the dissemination and gathering of useful information among vehicles and between transportation infrastructure and vehicles in pursuance of assisting drivers to travel safely and comfortably, much effort is required to implement these practices for the success of these applications.

DEPENDABLE INTERNET OF THINGS FOR NETWORKED CARS

The Internet of Things (IoT) extends the Internet to include also wireless embedded computers that are often equipped with sensors and actuators to monitor and control their physical environment. The IoT is increasingly used for safety-critical applications such as smart factories or networked cars, where a failure of the IoT may lead to catastrophic consequences. The IoT is therefore in urgent need of dependability, where reliability, availability, and security properties can be guaranteed even in harsh environments (e.g., radio interference) and under deliberate attacks (e.g., exploiting side channels). In this paper we give an overview of recent research activities in the LEAD project “Dependable Internet of Things in Adverse Environments” towards a dependable IoT, specifically dependable wireless communication and localization using Ultra-Wide-Band technology, secure execution of real-time software, protocol testing and verification, and dependable networked control. We also present the TruckLab testbed, where our research results can be integrated and validated in a platooning use case. In this testbed, model trucks are automatically controlled to follow a lead truck.

Design Study for a Quasisynchronous CDMA Sensor Data Collection System: An LEO Satellite Uplink Access Technique Based on GPS

With the development of the LEO satellite communication technology, highly dependable wireless communication and sensor data collection using LEO satellites have been getting much attention for emergency, marine research, and forest fire disaster in the remote region. The satellite system is expected to have the following features: rapid production, low cost, and fast construction of the satellite network. In this paper, a QS-CDMA uplink access technique in the LEO satellite is presented and discussed, which is focused on the local clocks using GPS 1PPS timing signals and the Doppler compensation for terminal uplink. The spreading code with length of 1023, which is used for the uplink preamble, selects the shift-m-sequence that can greatly reduce the MAI and increase the number of simultaneous access users. A novel analysis method for the accuracy of clock synchronization and a novel method for the estimation of Doppler shift and propagation delay are presented. These methods are used to guide the specific hardware implementation of the QS-CDMA LEO satellite sensor data collection system. Through simulations and experiments, it results in that this system structure can drastically reduce the complexity in implementing the acquisition in the satellite and increase the adaptability of the satellite system in different environments.

A Cross-Layer Reliability Design Methodology for Efficient, Dependable Wireless Receivers

Continued progressive downscaling of CMOS technologies threatens the reliability of chips for future embedded systems. We developed a novel design methodology for dependable wireless communication systems which exploits the mutual trade-offs of system performance, hardware reliability, and implementation complexity. Our cross-layer approach combines resilience techniques on hardware level with algorithmic techniques exploiting the available flexibility in the receiver. The overhead is minimized by recovering only from those hardware errors that have a strong impact on the system behavior. We apply our new methodology on a double-iterative MIMO-BICM receiver which belongs to the most complex systems in current communication standards.

Measurement of a Tunnel-Like Structure for Wireless Communications [Measurements Corner

This paper attempts to analyze the behavior of a radio signal inside a partially open drain environment using the empirical approach. The proposed research topic concerns a unique situation in several Asian countries, because the drainage systems in these countries differ notably from those in the US and Europe, in that the former are partially open on the top while the latter are primarily below ground and covered. A series of measurements at 900 MHz, 2.4 GHz, and 5.8 GHz have been conducted inside one drain, as well as on the ground next to the drain, located on the Sunway University campus. The differences between the measurement results at the three frequencies are discussed, along with the measurement results collected from the ground next to the drain. Understanding the complicated wave-propagation behavior inside the partially open drain and the ground nearby serves as a useful indicator in designing reliable wireless communication systems, especially in environments where such drains are present. Additionally, knowledge gained from the measurement results will aid in improving the accuracy of radio-propagation prediction, which, in turn, can help in establishing dependable wireless communication networks in urban and other complex propagation environments.

An Experimental Evaluation of IEEE 802.15.4a Ultra Wide Band Technology for Precision Indoor Ranging

Ultra Wide Band (UWB) wireless transmission has recently been the object of considerable attention in the field of next generation location aware wireless sensor networks (WSNs). This is due to its fine time resolution, energy efficiency and robustness to interference in harsh environments. This paper presents a thorough applied examination of prototype IEEE 802.15.4a impulse UWB transceiver technology to quantify the effect of line of sight (LOS) and non line of sight (NLOS) ranging in real indoor and outdoor environments. The results included draw on an extensive array of experiments that fully characterize the 802.15.4a UWB transceiver technology, its reliability and ranging capabilities for the first time. The goal of this work is to validate the technology as a dependable wireless communication mechanism for the subset of sensor network localization applications where reliability and precision positions are key concerns.

Software Defined Radio Technology for Highly Reliable Wireless Communications

This paper introduces the concept of highly dependable wireless communications for wireless robotics based on software defined radio (SDR) technologies. The features and advantages of SDR technologies are initially explained, whereupon the research and development activities of KDDI R&D Laboratories are presented. Advanced applications of SDR for telerobotic control, which require highly reliable wireless communications and for multi-mode wireless sensor networks are proposed as potential markets for wireless robotics and machine to machine communication. Finally, the current status and research issues of SDR are summarized and this paper is concluded.