yes / This is the eleventh workshop to be organised under the postgraduate programmes in electrical and electronic engineering (EEE). In total, thirty-five papers from sixty-seven submissions have been selected for the Proceedings. Over the past eleven years, the Research Seminar Series has provided a snapshot of the research agenda. In this, the 11th issue of the Workshop Proceedings, the importance of sustainable energy generation and the emerging influence of cloud computing, the growing number of applications of wireless sensors and the ubiquitous nature of the World Wide Web are in evidence. / None

The Internet of Things (IoT) is widely adopted across various fields due to its flexibility and low cost. Energy-harvesting Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are becoming a building block of many IoT applications and provide a perpetual source of energy to power energy-constrained IoT devices. However, the dynamic and stochastic nature of the available harvested energy drives the need for adaptive energy management solutions. Duty cycling is among the most prominent adaptive approaches that help consolidate the effort of energy management solutions at the routing and application layers to ensure energy sustainability and, hence, continuous network operation.  The IEEE 802.15.4 standard defines the physical layer and the Medium Access Control (MAC) sub-layer of low-data-rate wireless devices with limited energy consumption requirements. The MAC sub-layer’s functionalities include the scheduling of the duty cycle of individual devices. However, the scheduling of the duty cycle is left open to the industry. Various computational mechanisms are used to compute the duty cycle of IoT nodes to ensure optimal performance in energy sustainability and Quality of Service (QoS). Reinforcement Learning (RL) is the most employed mechanism in this context.  The literature depicts various RL-based solutions to adjust the duty cycle of IoT devices to adapt to changes in the IoT environment. However, these solutions are usually tailored to specific scenarios or focus mainly on one aspect of the problem, namely QoS performance or energy limitation. This work proposes a generic adaptive duty cycling solution and evaluates its performance under different energy generation and traffic conditions. Moreover, it emphasizes the energy sustainability aspect while taking the QoS performance into account.  While different approaches exist to achieve energy sustainability, Energy Neutral Operation (ENO)-based solutions provide the most prominent approach to ensure energy-sustainable performance. Nevertheless, these approaches do not necessarily guarantee optimal performance in QoS. This work adopts a Markov Decision Process (MDP) model from the literature that aims to minimize the distance from energy neutrality given the energy harvesting and ENO conditions. We introduce QoS penalties to the reward formulation to improve QoS performance.  We start by examining the performance in QoS against the benchmarking solution. Then, we analyze the performance using different energy harvesting and consumption profiles to further assess QoS performance and determine if energy sustainability is still maintained under different conditions. The results prove more efficient utilization of harvested energy when available in abundance. However, one limitation to our solution occurs when energy demand is high, or harvested energy is scarce. In such cases, we observe degradation in QoS due to IoT nodes adopting a low-duty cycle to avoid energy depletion. We further study the effect this limitation has on the solution's scalability. We also attempt to address this problem by assessing the performance using a routing solution that balances load distribution and, hence, energy demand across the network.

L’émergence de l’Internet des Objets révolutionne les réseaux locaux sans fil et inspirent de nombreuses applications. L’une des problématiques majeures pour les réseaux locaux sans fil est l’accès et le partage du médium radio sans fil. Plusieurs protocoles MAC mono-canal ont été proposés et abordent cette problématique avec des solutions intéressantes. Néanmoins, certains problèmes majeurs liés à l’accès au canal (nœud caché, synchronisation, propagation des RDV…) pour un contexte de transmission multi-saut, persistent encore et font toujours l’objet d’intenses études de la communauté scientifique, surtout lorsqu’il s’agit de réseaux de capteurs sans fil distribués sur des topologies étendues. Certains travaux de recherches ont proposé des protocoles MAC multi-canal, traitant souvent le cas idéal, où tous les nœuds dans le réseau sont à portée les uns des autres. Les émissions et réceptions des trames de données sont généralement précédées de trames des contrôles pour l’établissement de Rendez-vous (RDV) entre les nœuds concernés. Nous constatons que les RDV ne garantissent pas la réservation des canaux de façon déterministe sans conflit entre les nœuds dans le réseau, et peuvent rendre difficile les transmissions en multi-saut. Une solution complexe serait de propager ces RDV vers les voisins du nœud récepteur au-delà de 2 sauts. C’est face à cette complexité de gestion de RDV multi-sauts que s’inscrit notre contribution. Il s’agit pour nous de proposer une méthode d’accès multi-canal aléatoire sans RDV, en topologie multi-saut. Notre solution est implémentée sur un testbedréel constitué de nœuds WiNo mono-interface, elle est basée sur la méthode ALOHA slottée améliorée pour notre contexte multi-canal, dont nous évaluons les performances qui sont comparées au cas mono-canal. Un modèle analytique lié au contexte multi-canal sans RDV a été développé également, et comparé aux résultats de notre testbed. / The emergence of the Internet of Thingsrevolutionizeswireless local area networks and inspiringnumerous applications. One of the main issues for wirelessLANsis the access and sharing of the wireless radio medium. Several single-channel MAC protocols have been proposed and addressthis issue withinteresting solutions. However, some major problemsrelated to the channelaccess (hiddennode, synchronization, propagation of RDV) for a multi-hop transmission context, persist and are still the subject of intensive studies by the scientificcommunity, especiallywhenitcomes to a distributedwirelesssensors networks over extended topologies. Someresearch has proposed multi-channel MAC protocols, oftenaddressingthe ideal case, where all nodes in the network are within range of eachother. The transmissions and receptions of the data frames aregenerallypreceded by controls frames for the establishment of Rendez-Vous (RDV) among the nodesconcerned. Wefindthat the RDVs do not guarantee the channelsreservation in a deterministicwaywithoutconflictamong the nodes in the network, and maymakeitdifficult the multi-hop transmissions. A complex solution wouldbe to propagatetheseRDVs to the neighbors of the receivernodebeyond 2 hops. Facedwiththiscomplexity of multi-hop RDV management thatmakesour contribution. It is important for us to propose arandom multi-channelaccessmethodwithout RDV, in multi-hop topology. Our solution isimplemented on a real testbed made of multi-channel single-interface “WiNo” nodes, of whichweevaluate the performance that are compared to the single-channel case. An analytical model related to the multi-channelcontextwithout RDV wasalsodeveloped, and compared to the results of ourtestbed.

This thesis work deals with the development of three different categories of interrogation techniques for Fiber Bragg Grating based sensor networks. Such networks are used for structural health monitoring and other applications. A bulk grating based interrogation system is described first, which includes an optical source, switch, circulator, embedded controller, and software. The center wavelength determination technique employed is detailed and is shown to be highly accurate from test data. The comparison with resistance strain gauges is presented which shows that the system developed provides an accurate strain reconstruction. The system is also compared with a commercial optical spectrum analyzer and is found to exhibit good accuracy and fidelity. The system has been field tested on an aircraft structure with 14 sensors spread over 4 channels. Strain data reconstruction from these tests is shown to accurately reproduce the loading conditions. A second system developed is based on the matched filter technique using a mechanical fiber stretcher; the details of this system are presented with a mathematical treatment of the technique. The design of the fiber stretcher is also described. This design is regarded to be novel since it tries to provide large interrogation bandwidths using a parallel topology. The results of tests have shown good resolution and comparative tests with resistance strain gauges have shown accurate reproduction of strain. Finally, an interrogation system based on a wavelength tunable source is presented. This system is a precursor to a time division multiplexed interrogation system, which has also been described. Three laser configurations have been set up and characterized. The laser sweep tests have been performed on two configurations and a sensor grating reconstruction test has also been carried out.

Bevielio jutiklių tinklo valdymo protokolas. Baigiamasis magistro darbas elektronikos inžinerijos laipsniui. Vilniaus Gedimino technikos universitetas. Vilnius, 2009, 63 p., 27 iliustr., 13 lent., 23 bibl., 3 priedų. Baigiamojo magistro darbo tikslas – sukurti ir ištirti energijos išteklius taupantį protokolą, skirtą jutiklių duomenims perduoti bevieliu būdu. Išanalizuoti skirtingų protokolo konfigūracijų ir funkcionalumo įtaką jutiklio veikimo laikui iš riboto energijos šaltinio. Protokolą sukurti pagal iš anksto užsibrėžtus kriterijus bendradarbiaujant su UAB „Teltonika“. Sukurtas bevielio jutiklių tinklo protokolas veikia IEEE 802.15.4 standarto pagrindu ir atitinka visas reikalaujamas specifikacijas. Jis pasižymi sparčiu naujų jutiklių tinkle tapatumo nustatymu, sumaniais energijos taupymo sprendimais, lanksčiu konfigūravimu, priklausomai nuo norimų charakteristikų ir funkcionalumo bei turi patogią programų sąsają. Dinaminis neveikos (angl. sleep) režimo laiko parinkimas leidžia jutikliams veikti iki 2 metų (esant tam tikromis sąlygomis ir ilgiau) iš ribotos energijos (1,5 Wh) maitinimo šaltinio. / Wireless sensors network protocol. Final Master Work of electronics engineering degree. Vilnius Gediminas Technical University. Vilnius, 2009, 63 p., 27 illustrations. 13 tables., 23 bibliographical sources, 3 appendixes. The main aim of this project is to create and explore low power, energy-efficient protocol for wireless sensors, to analyze the different protocol configurations and the impact on the sensor lifetime of different system functionality using limited energy power source. Protocol designed to meet specified technical criteria in cooperation with the "Teltonika" Inc. Wireless sensors network protocol is based on IEEE 802.15.4 standard and meets all required specifications. Main protocol advantages are: fast new sensor authentication, smart battery management solutions, flexible configuration, depending on the desired characteristics and functionality and a convenient software interface. Dynamic sleep mode time selection allows the sensors to operate for up to 2 years (and more, under certain conditions) from the limited energy (1.5 Wh) power source.

Στην παρούσα διδακτορική διατριβή εξετάζονται οι δυνατότητες που προσφέρουν τα έξυπνα κινητά τηλέφωνα (smartphones) στην παροχή υπηρεσιών φροντίδας σε άτομα με χρόνιες παθήσεις, μέσω των τεχνολογιών τηλεματικής. Για το σκοπό αυτό μελετήθηκε, σχεδιάστηκε και αναπτύχθηκε ένα δίκτυο φορετών ασύρματων αισθητήρων για την αναγνώριση της φυσικής δραστηριότητας, το οποίο καταγράφει δεδομένα της κίνησης και βιολογικά σήματα, τα οποία στη συνέχεια επεξεργάζονται για την αναγνώριση της δραστηριότητας που εκτελείται, σε πραγματικό χρόνο. Σε σχέση με τις μέχρι σήμερα προσεγγίσεις, στην παρούσα εργασία γίνεται συγκριτική μελέτη πολλαπλών τεχνικών αναγνώρισης προτύπων καθώς και τεχνικών που δεν έχουν χρησιμοποιηθεί μέχρι σήμερα, ενώ γίνεται εξέταση των αποτελεσμάτων που προκύπτουν κάνοντας χρήση του συνδυασμού μικρότερου αριθμού δεδομένων. Η πληροφορία της αναγνώρισης της φυσικής δραστηριότητας συνδυάζεται στη συνέχεια με περιβαλλοντικά δεδομένα, ώστε να μελετηθούν τα μοτίβα της καθημερινής δραστηριότητας υγειών ατόμων και ατόμων με χρόνιες παθήσεις. Με την αναζήτηση Emerging Patterns στα αποθηκευμένα δεδομένα, εξετάζεται ο βαθμός συμμόρφωσης στις ιατρικές οδηγίες, αλλά οι δυνατότητες πρόβλεψης των βραχυπρόθεσμων και μακροπρόθεσμων επιπλοκών των χρόνιων παθήσεων. / The present PhD thesis examines the potentials of the usage of the smartphones in order to offer health services to patients with chronic diseases. A wearable wireless sensor network designed and developed in order to record body movement and biosignal data. Physical activity recognition techniques are applied to the recorded data, so that to extract the actual activities performed, in real time. In contrast to the research that has been carried out till today, an extensive comparison between different pattern recognition techniques is performed using all the recorded data and a reduced number of them, applying newly proposed pattern recognition. Furthermore, the recognized physical activities are combined with environmental data, in order to study the daily activity patterns of healthy persons and persons with chronic diseases. Searching for Emerging Patterns in the data, patient conformance to the medical advices, along with short and long term complications of chronic diseases are examined.

Submitted by Emanuel Varela Cardoso (emanuel.varela@ufcg.edu.br) on 2018-08-24T20:51:57Z No. of bitstreams: 1 RUAN DELGADO GOMES – TESE (PPGEEI) 2017.pdf: 20190080 bytes, checksum: c170f5c01c9d6fd739d197414aee12e7 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-24T20:51:57Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 RUAN DELGADO GOMES – TESE (PPGEEI) 2017.pdf: 20190080 bytes, checksum: c170f5c01c9d6fd739d197414aee12e7 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-06-14 / O uso de Redes de Sensores sem Fio Industriais (RSSFIs) para implementar aplicações de monitoramento ou controle apresenta vantagens em comparação ao uso de redes cabeadas, como a maior flexibilidade e o menor custo de implantação. No entanto, é necessário lidar com problemas típicos das redes sem fio, como interferência e o alto nível de atenuação em pequena e larga escala. Além disso, as características do canal sem fio variam com o tempo e uma RSSFI deve ser capaz de se adaptar a essas variações para manter boa qualidade de serviço durante sua operação. Estratégias adaptativas, como a alocação dinâmica de canais, permitem lidar com os problemas mencionados. Para isso, o primeiro passo é estimar a qualidade dos enlaces, de modo que os nós da rede possam decidir se uma mudança de canal é necessária. Esta tese apresenta como contribuição um novo estimador de qualidade de enlace (LQE) e um novo tipo de nó, o nó LQE, que estima a qualidade dos enlaces em tempo real, usando informações obtidas a partir do transceptor, e informações extraídas de pacotes de dados recebidos. O estimador proposto considera problemas causados pelo perfil de multipercurso do ambiente na qualidade do canal,interferência e assimetria. Um protótipo foi desenvolvido e a solução foi validada por meio de experimentos em um ambiente industrial real. Diferente de outros LQEs encontrados na literatura, a solução proposta não gera tráfego extra na rede e não causa sobrecarga nos nós finais. Com base no LQE proposto, um novo protocolo de acesso ao meio foi desenvolvido. O protocolo usa adaptação de canal para a transmissão de pacotes de dados e salto em frequência para a transmissão de pacotes em broadcast. A taxa de recepção de pacote média na camada de aplicação permaneceu perto do pico para todos os cenários avaliados com o protocolo proposto, mesmo considerando as variações na qualidade dos canais ao longo do tempo. Os resultados indicam que o protocolo proposto apresenta desempenho superior aos protocolos de acesso ao meio definidos pelos padrões para RSSFI, em termos de confiabilidade e determinismo. Vários resultados experimentais obtidos em ambientes industriais também são descritos e é proposto um novo modelo para simulação de protocolos multicanais. O modelo é capaz de capturar os efeitos de atenuação por multipercurso, sombreamento, assimetria, as características não estacionárias do canal sem fio e a descorrelação entre diferentes canais. / Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks (IWSNs), that is used to implement monitoring and control applications, presents certain advantages when compared to wired networks, including higher flexibility and lower deployment costs. However, it is necessary to deal with typical problems of wireless networks, such as interference and a high attenuation, in small and large scale. In addition, the characteristics of the wireless channel may change over time, and an IWSN needs to self adapt to these variations to maintain a good quality of service during its operation. Adaptive mechanisms, such as, dynamic channel allocation, are used to deal with the aforementioned problems. For this, the first step is to estimate the link quality, so that the network nodes can decide if a channel change is needed. This thesis presents as a contribution a novel Link Quality Estimator (LQE), and a new type of node, the LQE node, that estimates the quality of the links in real-time, using information obtained from the transceiver, and information obtained from received data packets. The proposed LQE deals with the problems caused by the multipath profile of the environment in channel quality, interference and asymmetry. A prototype was developed and the LQE was validated by experiments in an actual industrial environment. Different from other LQEs in the literature, the solution proposed in this thesis does not cause overhead at the end-nodes and on the network. Based on the proposed LQE, a novel MAC protocol was developed. The protocol uses channel adaptation for the transmission of unicast data packets, and frequency hopping for the transmission of broadcast packets. The packet reception rate at the application layer was at the peak for all scenarios that were evaluated using the proposed protocol, even considering the variations in channel quality over time. The results indicate that the proposed protocol presents a better performance in comparison to the MAC protocols defined by the standards for IWSN, in terms of reliability and determinism. Several experimental results obtained in industrial environments are also described, and a new model for simulation of multi-channel protocols is proposed. The model includes the effects of multipath fading, shadowing, asymmetry, the non-stationary characteristics of the channel, and the uncorrelation of the different channels.

Σκοπός της εργασίας είναι να μελετηθεί ο τρόπος, οι τεχνολογίες, οι υπηρεσίες και οι περιορισμοί οι οποίοι εμφανίζονται στην παροχή υπηρεσιών υγείας σε έκτακτα περιστατικά με τη χρήση τηλεματικής. Για την επικοινωνία των φορητών συσκευών παρακολούθησης των ασθενών με τους σταθμούς βάσης επιλέχθηκε το ασύρματο δίκτυο Wi-Fi για το οποιο μελετήθηκαν μια σειρά από παραμέτρους οι οποίες συμβάλουν είτε θετικά είτε αρνητικά κατά περίπτωση. Η παρακολούθηση και η αποστολή των κρίσιμων διοδυναμικών παραμέτρων ενός ασθενούς επιτεύχθηκε με τη χρήση φορητής/φορετής Βιοιατρικής ζώνης η οποία παρέχει τον εξοπλισμό ανίχνευσης και επεξεργασίας των σημάτων καθώς επίσης και τον εξοπλισμό ασύρματης δικτύωσης με το κέντρο παρακολούθησης. Σημαντικός τομέας της μελέτης αποτελεί η πρόταση για μεταφορά δεδομένων μέσα από ασύρματα δικτύα διανομής επίγειας ψηφιακής τηλεόρασης και των γραμμών μεταφοράς ηλεκτρικής ενέργειας μέσης τάσης. Το δεύτερο κομμάτι της εργασίας επικεντρώνεται στην παροχή υπηρεσιών βίντεο για ιατρικούς σκοπούς για την αντιμετώπιση προγραμματισμένων και έκτακτων περιστατικών. Εκεί αναλύονται οι τεχνικές συμπίεσης και επεξεργασίας της εικόνας και προτείνεται η χρήση του πρωτοκόλλου MPEG-4 για την αποδοτικότητα και την πιστότητα στην αναπαραγόμενη εικόνα. Η εργασία κλείνει με τη διεξαγωγή μιας πειραματικής διαδικασίας αναλύοντας τα χαρακτηριστικά της ποιότητας της εικόνας βίντεο από μια λαπαροσκοπική επέμβαση. Ο συνδυασμός όλων των παραπάνω οδηγεί στην κατασκευή ενός υβριδικού συστήματος τηλειατρικης το οποιο έχει τη δυνατότητα να αντιμετωπίσει έκτακτα ιατρικά περιστατικά σε αντίξοες συνθήκες. / The present thesis is a full analytical study for the implementation of technologies, the services and constrains that appears in the provision of medical emergency services with the use of a telematics network. The communication of the portable monitoring equipment with a medical station is accomplished through the wireless WiFi infrastructure. Critical biosignals wireless transmission is accomplished through a wearable biomedical belt that contains the sensory as well as the processing devices. One section of in this study proposes alternative network infrastructures to be used, in particular the Digital terrestrial TV network and the transmission of IP data over the power lines. The last section deals with the provisioning of a MPEG-4 medical video service. Critical parameters are the image and compression techniques that degrade the video picture quality. A video sample from a laparoscope’s surgery is analyzed that shows how various quality parameters affect the perceived picture quality in the decomposition section.

The astronomical increase in the number of wireless devices such as smart phones in 21th century has revolutionized the way people communicate with one another and share information. The new wireless technologies have also enabled researchers to collect real data about how people move and meet one another in different social settings. Understanding human mobility has many applications in different areas such as traffic planning in cities and public health studies of epidemic diseases. In this thesis, we study the fundamental properties of human contact graphs in order to characterize how people meet one another in different social environments. Understanding human contact patterns in return allows us to propose a cost-effective routing algorithm for spreading information in Delay Tolerant Networks. Furthermore, we propose several contact predictors to predict the unobserved parts of contact graphs when only partial observations are available. Our results show that we are able to infer hidden contacts of real contact traces by exploiting the underlying properties of contact graphs. In the last few years, we have also witnessed an explosion in the number of people who use social media to share information with their friends. In the last part of this thesis, we study the running times of several information spreading algorithms in social networks in order to find the fastest strategy. Fast information spreading has an obvious application in advertising a product to a large number of people in a short amount of time. We prove that a fast information spreading algorithm should efficiently identify communication bottlenecks in order to speed up the running time. Finally, we show that sparsifying large social graphs by exploiting the edge-betweenness centrality measure can also speed up the information spreading rate. / Graduate

In recent years, development of various imaging, recording and stimulation tools are rapidly advancing our knowledge of the human anatomy and its underlying interconnections. As a truly non-invasive tool, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), is creating new opportunities to understand large scale biological processes with a fine detail. Furthermore, novel materials and microfabrication techniques are allowing researchers to develop tools that record bio-signal or modulate complex physiology with high temporal precision. However, these tools, when used individually can elucidate only a partial view of the human body and the brain. There is a growing need in both the research and clinical community to find ways to perform these modalities together and visualize biological systems across a vast range of spatiotemporal scale. However, severe methodological challenges act as bottlenecks for any such multimodal integration.<br><div><br></div><div>To address this critical need, I have designed an MRI-safe platform for high-fidelity bio-signal recording and electrical stimulation during concurrent MRI imaging. Central to this system are novel miniaturized microelectronic devices, that operate wirelessly in synchrony with MRI scans. The system leverages surplus functionalities of a conventional scanner to integrate with the imaging system and provide a simple and inexpensive solution towards multimodal imaging. This work also describes a systematic approach for development and evaluation of this plug-and-play system through in-vivo experiments in animal models. The clinical relevance of the multimodal imaging platform was further showcased through a study on the mechanism of SUDEP (Sudden death in epilepsy), a terminal complication associated with epilepsy. With future refinements, I expect this platform will provide affordable, accessible, and reliable solutions for multimodal imaging in animals and humans, creating unique opportunities for basic scientific research and clinical diagnosis.<br></div>