Practical Test Bed Research Articles

IRS-Enabled Breath Tracking With Colocated Commodity WiFi Transceivers

Intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRSs) are a key enabler of various new applications in 6G smart radio environments. This article aims to enhance self-interference (SI) cancellation for breath tracking with commodity WiFi devices by utilizing an IRS prototype system. SI suppression is a crucial requirement for breath tracking with a single antenna site, as the SI severely limits the radio sensing range by shadowing the received signal with its own transmit signal. To this end, we propose to assist SI cancellation by exploiting an IRS to form a suitable cancellation signal in the analog domain. Building upon a 256-element IRS prototype, we present results of breath tracking with IRS-assisted SI cancellation from a practical testbed. We use inexpensive WiFi hardware to extract the channel state information (CSI) in the 5-GHz band and analyze the phase change between a colocated transmitter and receiver with added local oscillator (LO) synchronization. As a result, we can track the breath of a test subject regardless of position in an indoor environment with a room-level range. The presented case study achieves promising performance in capturing the breath frequency and breathing patterns.

A Delay-Tolerant Network for Antarctica

Antarctica is the land of science. Every year, many studies are carried out in diverse disciplines. Some of these studies collect relevant data for their research with sensors. However, Antarctica's lack of telecommunication technologies hardens the possibility of automatizing this data collection. In most cases, the collection is done manually, limiting research projects' time and space scopes. Over the last years, some alternatives have been studied to deploy remote wireless sensor networks in Antarctica. Near-Vertical Incidence Skywave (NVIS) communications are an example of these alternatives. However, NVIS presents problems that cannot guarantee persistent end-to-end connectivity. For this reason, this article assesses adapting a delay-tolerant network protocol, the Bundle Protocol, to deliver sensor data reliably through an NVIS network. The scenario is developed and tested in the Riverbed Modeler simulator, and performance is evaluated through a trustworthiness model. A practical testbed is also presented.

Experimental witnessing for entangled states with limited local measurements

We experimentally demonstrate a method for detection of entanglement via construction of entanglement witnesses from a limited fixed set of local measurements ( M ). Such a method does not require a priori knowledge about the form of the entanglement witnesses. It is suitable for a scenario where a full state tomography is not available, but the only resource is a limited set of M . We demonstrate the method on pure two-qubit entangled states and mixed two-qubit entangled states, which emerge from photonic implementation of controllable quantum noisy channels. The states we select are motivated by realistic experimental conditions, and we confirm it works well for both cases. Furthermore, possible generalizations to higher-dimensional bipartite systems have been considered, which can potentially detect both decomposable and indecomposable entanglement witnesses. Our experimental results show perfect validity of the method, which indicates that even a limited set of local measurements can be used for quick entanglement detection and further provide a practical test bed for experiments with entanglement witnesses.

Sequence of operations for real‐time control of microgrids and networked microgrids

Microgrids (MGs) provide a potential solution to accommodating renewable and distributed energy resources (DERs). MGs and the networked form of MGs, that is, networked MGs or NMGs, have received significant attention in the past two decades. However, several details that need to be considered for the practical operations of MGs and NMGs are often neglected in the literature. First, there is a need for a step-by-step sequence of operations (SOO) that clearly defines the procedures for changing the operation modes of MGs and NMGs for their reliable and resilient operation. Second, there is a need to develop a new control strategy for power exchange between networked MGs to ensure the information privacy and respect the electrical boundary of each MG. Third, there is a need for developing the model of MGs and NMGs in a real-time simulator to safely evaluate the performance of the microgrid master controller (MMC) in making real-time decisions and following the SOO. This paper proposes solutions for these three requirements and presents results to evaluate the performance of the proposed solutions. The IIT Campus Microgrid (ICM) and Bronzeville Community Microgrid (BCM), as well as their networked form, are selected as the practical testbeds and are modelled in real-time digital simulator (RTDS). The RTDS model is interfaced with the MMC for real-time data exchange and the operation of the MMC is tested to illustrate the importance of SOO in the real-time control of MGs and NMGs.

Fabrication and microfluidic analysis of graphene-based molecular communication receiver for Internet of Nano Things (IoNT)

Bio-inspired molecular communications (MC), where molecules are used to transfer information, is the most promising technique to realise the Internet of Nano Things (IoNT), thanks to its inherent biocompatibility, energy-efficiency, and reliability in physiologically-relevant environments. Despite a substantial body of theoretical work concerning MC, the lack of practical micro/nanoscale MC devices and MC testbeds has led researchers to make overly simplifying assumptions about the implications of the channel conditions and the physical architectures of the practical transceivers in developing theoretical models and devising communication methods for MC. On the other hand, MC imposes unique challenges resulting from the highly complex, nonlinear, time-varying channel properties that cannot be always tackled by conventional information and communication tools and technologies (ICT). As a result, the reliability of the existing MC methods, which are mostly adopted from electromagnetic communications and not validated with practical testbeds, is highly questionable. As the first step to remove this discrepancy, in this study, we report on the fabrication of a nanoscale MC receiver based on graphene field-effect transistor biosensors. We perform its ICT characterisation in a custom-designed microfluidic MC system with the information encoded into the concentration of single-stranded DNA molecules. This experimental platform is the first practical implementation of a micro/nanoscale MC system with nanoscale MC receivers, and can serve as a testbed for developing realistic MC methods and IoNT applications.

QoS‐aware trust establishment for cloud federation

AbstractCloud federation enables inter‐layer resource exchanges among multiple, heterogeneous cloud service providers. This article proposes a Quality of Service (QoS) aware trust model for effective resource allocation in response to the various user requests within the Clouds4Coordination (C4C) federation system. This QoS mainly comprises of nine parameters combined into three categories: (i) node profile, (ii) reliability, and (iii) competence. Numerical values for these parameters are computed every ‘t’ seconds for each cloud provider. All values measured over an interval Δt are further processed by the proposed model to evaluate the utility associated with a provider (referred to as a discipline in the presented case study). The decision about interacting with a discipline in a collaborative project is based on this utility value. The systems architecture, evaluation methodology, proposed model, and experimental evaluation on a practical test bed is outlined. The proposed QoS‐aware trust evaluation mechanism allows selection of the most useful (based on a utility value) providers. The proposed approach can be used to support federation of cloud services across a number of different application domains.

Using an interdisciplinary demonstration platform for teaching Industry 4.0

Abstract Industry 4.0 is based on a set of concepts, technologies and organizational processes affects various areas in engineering education and beyond. It includes internet-based networking of digitalized mechatronics components on the shop floor with management and business platforms by applying technologies from the IT sector. Even social aspects are targeted, as the human being is also considered to be a part of Industrial Cyber-Physical System (ICPS). The challenge for educational institutions is to deal with this broad spectrum. Departments and institution with different specialization are required to work more closely with each other to be able to teach the topic of Industry 4.0 in all its dimensions. One of the approaches of the University of Applied Sciences Emden/Leer is to build a platform, where different departments can work on, collaborate and use it to teach the various aspects of Industry 4.0. This platform is called the “Automated Class Room” and is a physical demonstrator, which consists of many different modules from different departments, such as mechatronic machines, simulation tools, management tools, logistics systems which are integrated into an Industry 4.0 compliant ICT (information-communication technologies) architecture. This paper provides an overview about the platform and discusses in depth how it is currently used for teaching Industry 4.0 to different target audiences. It describes in which parts the individual departments and specific courses set their focus and how they can demonstrate the benefits of Industry 4.0 for students but also for visitors of the university and enterprises. Furthermore, the “Automated Class Room” is used as a practical test bed, where students from different departments can learn together how to implement Industry 4.0 concepts and technologies. The paper also gives an overview about how the platform is going to evolve in the future.

AIF: An Artificial Intelligence Framework for Smart Wireless Network Management

To solve the policy optimizing problem in many scenarios of smart wireless network management using a single universal algorithm, this letter proposes a universal learning framework, which is called AI framework based on deep reinforcement learning (DRL). This framework can also solve the problem that the state is painful to design in traditional RL. This AI framework adopts convolutional neural network and recurrent neural network to model the potential spatial features (i.e., location information) and sequential features from the raw wireless signal automatically. These features can be taken as the state definition of DRL. Meanwhile, this framework is suitable for many scenarios, such as resource management and access control due to DRL. The mean value of throughput, the standard deviation of throughput, and handover counts are used to evaluate its performance on the mobility management problem in the wireless local area network on a practical testbed. The results show that the framework gets significant improvements and learns intuitive features automatically.

A 3-D Radio Irregularity Model (3DRIM) for Wireless Sensor Network

Localization in wireless sensor network will be adversely effected due to radio irregularity. This makes the localization procedure more complex and as a result most of the localization techniques are based on the regular radio patterns and isotropic propagation model. In order to address this problem, we propose a three dimensional radio irregularity model, that takes into account non-isotropic radio model along with radio irregularity and also considers the three dimensional aspects. For this proposed model three dimensional degree of irregularity (3-D DOI) is calculated by forming a practical test bed and finally with the simulations are carried out to validate the theoretical model and effect of increase in distance on 3-D DOI.

Online Algorithms for Information Aggregation From Distributed and Correlated Sources

There is a fundamental trade-off between the communication cost and latency in information aggregation. Aggregating multiple communication messages over time can alleviate overhead and improve energy efficiency on one hand, but inevitably incurs information delay on the other hand. In the presence of uncertain future inputs, this trade-off should be balanced in an online manner, which is studied by the classical dynamic TCP ACK problem for a single information source. In this paper, we extend dynamic TCP ACK problem to a general setting of collecting aggregate information from distributed and correlated information sources. In this model, distributed sources observe correlated events, whereas only a small number of reports are required from the sources. The sources make online decisions about their reporting operations in a distributed manner without prior knowledge of the local observations at others. Our problem captures a wide range of applications, such as in-situ sensing, anycast acknowledgement and distributed caching. We present simple threshold-based competitive distributed online algorithms under different settings of intercommunication. Our algorithms match the theoretical lower bounds in order of magnitude. We observe that our algorithms can produce satisfactory performance in simulations and practical testbed.

Data-Aware Retrodiction for Asynchronous Harmonic Measurement in a Cyber-Physical Energy System.

Cyber-physical energy systems provide a networked solution for safety, reliability and efficiency problems in smart grids. On the demand side, the secure and trustworthy energy supply requires real-time supervising and online power quality assessing. Harmonics measurement is necessary in power quality evaluation. However, under the large-scale distributed metering architecture, harmonic measurement faces the out-of-sequence measurement (OOSM) problem, which is the result of latencies in sensing or the communication process and brings deviations in data fusion. This paper depicts a distributed measurement network for large-scale asynchronous harmonic analysis and exploits a nonlinear autoregressive model with exogenous inputs (NARX) network to reorder the out-of-sequence measuring data. The NARX network gets the characteristics of the electrical harmonics from practical data rather than the kinematic equations. Thus, the data-aware network approximates the behavior of the practical electrical parameter with real-time data and improves the retrodiction accuracy. Theoretical analysis demonstrates that the data-aware method maintains a reasonable consumption of computing resources. Experiments on a practical testbed of a cyber-physical system are implemented, and harmonic measurement and analysis accuracy are adopted to evaluate the measuring mechanism under a distributed metering network. Results demonstrate an improvement of the harmonics analysis precision and validate the asynchronous measuring method in cyber-physical energy systems.

Q-learning 모델을 이용한 IoT 기반 주차유도 시스템의 설계 및 구현

This paper proposes an optimal dynamic resource allocation method in IoT (Internet of Things) parking guidance system using Q-learning resource allocation model. In the proposed method, a resource allocation using a forecasting model based on Q-learning is employed for optimal utilization of parking guidance system. To demonstrate efficiency and availability of the proposed method, it is verified by computer simulation and practical testbed. Through simulation results, this paper proves that the proposed method can enhance total throughput, decrease penalty fee issued by SLA (Service Level Agreement) and reduce response time with the dynamic number of users.

테스트베드상에서 WAVE기반 차량통신 시스템의 서비스 구현

차량통신은 IT기술과 차량산업을 결합한 대표적인 융합기술이다. WAVE 기술은 전 세계적으로 널리 채택되어 사용되어지고 있는 차량통신 표준이다. 본 논문에서는 WAVE 시스템 이용하여 실제 테스트베드상에서 구현한 서비스에 대해 소개한다. 먼저 전체적인 WAVE 시스템에 대해 간략히 살펴본 후 서비스를 구현하기 위한 테트스베드에 대해 소개하고, 테스트베드상에서 구현된 차량간통신 및 차량 기지국간통신을 이용한 다양한 응용 서비스에 대해 알아본다. 실제 응용 서비스의 구현을 바탕으로 하여 실제 시스템 구현에 필요한 사항 및 다른 분야와의 융합분야에 대해서도 논의한다. Vehicular communication is one of representative convergence technology which combines information technology and vehicle industry. Wireless Access in Vehicular Environments (WAVE) technology is vehicular communication standard which is widely used in the world. In this paper, we introduce service realization of WAVE based vehicular communication systems in the practical testbed. We review the overall WAVE based systems in brief and introduce the testbed. Then, we investigate various applications using vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications. Based on realization of systems, we discuss practical implementation issues and the convergence area of WAVE systems.

Experimental analysis of MIPL based mobile IPv6 using single vs dual interface with practical test-beds

In this work, we have done a comprehensive study of dual interfaces on a practical test-bed to find out the effectiveness of dual interfaces. We have implemented a MIPL based test-bed to study the QoS (Quality of Service) parameters which affect mobile nodes and are considered to be of paramount importance in real time application running on MIPv6 mobile nodes. The hand-off latency, packet loss, data throughput and jitters are the parameters we have considered in this research work. We have also studied a vertical handover with the help of the test-bed to analyse handoff latency and packet loss. The vertical handover has been considered between Ethernet and Wi-Fi network access. We have analysed the performance during MN's handover across the networks. The results show that such type of setting could be used in various practical-oriented consumer applications that need to have mobility feature of nodes. Alongside presenting our experimental findings, we also show a comparison of performance between dual interfaces and single interface on a mobile node.

Distributed algorithm engineering for networks of tiny artifacts

In this survey, we describe the state of the art for research on experimentally-driven research on networks of tiny artifacts. The main topics are existing and planned practical testbeds, software simulations, and hybrid approaches; in addition, we describe a number of current studies undertaken by the authors.

Trust and security in virtual organisations

Technologies such as Web Services and grid computing are making it technically possible for companies to co-operate more closely, coupling their automated business processes and sharing resources dynamically and flexibly. They should make practical new business models in which small specialist companies with complementary capabilities combine flexibly to provide a range of services currently only within the scope of large corporations. A coalition of enterprises co-operating in this way is termed a virtual organisation (VO). Achieving the benefits of co-operation while retaining agility, autonomy and security remains a significant challenge. This challenge is being addressed by TrustCoM, a research collaboration involving Atos Origin sa, BAE Systems, BT, CCLRC, ETH, HLRS, IBM, Imperial College London, King's College London, European Microsoft Innovation Centre, NRCCL, SAP, SICS, SINTEF, the University of Milan, and the University of Kent. TrustCoM will provide a conceptual and architectural framework for secure and flexible co-operation plus methods and tools for implementing it in a variety of business contexts. Two practical test-beds are being constructed as part of the project -- one set in the aerospace industry, and the other concerning provision of tailored composite eLearning services by a consortium of training service providers. An important concept to emerge from TrustCoM is the VO virtual hosting environment or shell. This is an implementation of the kernel of the TrustCoM framework operated by a hosting service provider as the nucleus around which a community of enterprises may form. A community hosted by the environment -- typically operating in a particular industry or application domain -- must be bound by agreements, conventions and procedures that facilitate co-operation. The joining process involves federating the new SME's platforms with the core platform, agreeing to contracts, registering services, and so on. The environment incorporates facilities to support VO formation and secure operation, including trust-enhancing and policy enforcement mechanisms. This paper describes the main concepts and features of the TrustCoM framework as used in a virtual hosting environment.

The SAXS/WAXS software system of the DUBBLE CRG beamline at the ESRF

The small/wide-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS/WAXS) system on the DUBBLE CRG beamline at the ESRF is used for both static and time-resolved measurements. The integrated system developed for control and data reduction deals effectively with the high rates of incoming data from the different detector systems, as well as the presentation of results for the user. To ensure that the data may be used directly by a wide range of packages, they may be recorded in a number of output formats, thus serving as a practical test bed where developing standards may be compared and contrasted. The software system implements proposals raised at the canSAS meetings to promote a limited set of standard data formats for small-angle scattering studies. The system presented can cope with a volume of results in excess of 10 Gbytes of data per experiment and shows the advantages achieved by minimizing the dependence on raw-data formats.