About Omnet Project Team

Future machine to machine (M2M) communications need to support a massive number of devices communicating with each other with little or no human intervention. Random access techniques were originally proposed to enable M2M multiple access, but suffer from severe congestion and access delay in an M2M system with a large number of devices. In this paper, we propose a novel multiple access scheme for M2M communications based on the capacity-approaching analog fountain code to efficiently minimize the access delay and satisfy the delay requirement for each device.

This is achieved by allowing M2M devices to transmit at the same time on the same channel in an optimal probabilistic manner based on their individual delay requirements. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme achieves a near optimal rate performance and at the same time guarantees the delay requirements of the devices. We further propose a simple random access strategy and characterize the required overhead. Simulation results show that the proposed approach significantly outperforms the existing random access schemes currently used in long term evolution advanced (LTEA) standard in terms of the access delay.

Information Centric Networking (ICN) has been a popular research topic in the last few years, but has not attracted industry attention because of its disruptive view; this is expected considering the evolution from PSTN to IP. Towards its adoption, ICN should not only address challenges raised by current applications, but also enable a compelling service framework for next generation of networking. We envision that in the next generation networks, the network narrow waist will allow an efficient distribution of intelligence across terminals, access, edge and core network. This will enable new applications, services and future business models to be realized. Two other technologies, NFV and SDN, which in essence are frameworks that enable service-centric networking, fit well with the objective of information-centric networking, where the delivered content is a result of contextual interaction between consumers and services orchestrated to meet service objectives.

Most significant benefit of this interaction will be in the network-edge considering sensitivity to service latency, customization, and contextualization. This paper provides an overview of an ICN based edge service framework, with comprehensive discussion on service composition, orchestration, and routing logic with mapping to resources in the underlying substrate. We also provide a discussion of the prototype to realize this platform and a network based conferencing system scalable to large number of participants; however the platform itself is generic to handle any service type including content distribution, video conferencing, and M2M applications.

IoT (Internet of Things) is expected to usher in an era of closely connected world through advanced connectivity of devices, systems and services. IoT goes beyond M2M (Machine to Machine) communication and covers a wide variety of protocols, domains and applications. It is estimated that more than 50 billion devices will be connected to the Internet of Things by 2020. The Internet of Things promises a technological revolution, but for it to work well, all the devices need to speak the same language. But, currently the ecosystem is fragmented with too many protocols.

The talk focuses on the various protocols that are currently dominating the IoT landscape. There are protocols like MQTT used for collecting device data and communicating it to servers, XMPP used for connecting devices to People, AMQP which is a queuing system designed to connect servers to each other, CoAP which is a specialized web transfer protocol for use in constrained nodes and networks, 6lowPAN which is protocol for using IPv6 over low power and lossy networks, HTTPasRESTful API, Zigbee Standards, AllJoyn Framework, Bluetooth, Wifi, UPnP, DNP3 etc. Some of these have already gained traction, while some of them are fast picking up in the IoT landscape.

Ambient Intelligence is the vision of future in which environments support the people living in them. This environment is self-effacing, interconnected, adaptable, dynamic, embedded, and intelligent. The vision is to disappear the technology instead processors and sensors are integrated in everyday objects. To develop such an environment wherein technology is invisible to the user and environment directly communicates with the user. A completely interactive environment that could assists the users in every possible manner.

In order to design and develop such an environment, there is a need to shift technology from machine to human communication to machine to machine communication (M2M). For such communication there is the requirement of real time data, energy and the decision making concepts which are considered as the main objectives that needs to be fulfilled. In this paper we present the major contribution of various researchers in this field. Further we have also discussed the major challenges and risks associated with such intelligent environment and a methodology to overcome with the challenges in AmI environment.

WiFi Peer to Peer (P2P) aka WiFi Direct enables devices to communicate with each other in a peer to peer manner without requiring any Access Point at typical WiFi speed with WPA2 security. With its huge prospect in revolutionizing device to device communication, WiFi P2P can potentially play a much larger role amid the growing interest in M2M communication and Internet of Things. However, unlike a conventional P2P network which operates on mesh topology, WiFi P2P requires one of its group members to act as Group Owner, with whom all the other devices in the group stay associated. The group suffers from a temporary network disruption when the Group Owner suddenly leaves the group without any prior notice.

In addition, restoration of the group connectivity consumes much time which is intolerable for most delay sensitive applications. In this paper, we address this issue using our proposed concept of Seamless Group Reformation which helps in maintaining near continuous connectivity and alleviates over dependence of the group on the Group Owner. The concept is seconded by the proposed mechanism of Dormant Backend Links to cut down the total group-disruption time. We implement the mechanism of Dormant Backend Links on a practical WiFi P2P testbed and present an experimental evaluation.

We explore the risks to security and privacy in IoT networks by setting up an inexpensive home automation network and performing a set of experiments intended to study attacks and defenses. We focus on privacy preservation in home automation networks but our insights can extend to other IoT applications. Privacy preservation is fundamental to achieving the promise of IoT, Industrial Internet and M2M.

We look at both simple cryptographic techniques and information manipulation to protect a user against an adversary inside the IoT network or an adversary that has compromised remote servers. We show how user data can be masked or selectively leaked and manipulated. We provide a blueprint for inexpensive study of IoT security and privacy using COTS products and services.

The trend of using location-based services (LBS) is not new but has evolved over long time and continues to enter into new application and service landscapes. LBS have essentially targeted outdoor scenarios, whereas GPS is the defacto standard for these cases. Indoor localization technologies are also gaining attraction.

In this paper, we present our Linux-based solution, which runs on low-cost embedded hardware, and is equipped with shortrange wireless technologies such as Bluetooth and WIFI. Using the beaconing capabilities of these technologies in combination with control over M2Mprotocols, we are able provide different applications at the point of presence (PoP).

To implement cutting-edge services such as high-resolution movie streaming and smart metering on mobile networks cost-effectively, mobile operators must meet various conflicting requirements. For example, they must manage a massive number of devices in smart-meter-type machine-to-machine (M2M) applications for which quality-of-service (QoS) requirements are quite lenient. At the same time, they need to support stringent QoS requirements in the form of a few milliseconds of delay and a high bandwidth guarantee for a smaller number of devices in video and remote surgery applications. As building a dedicated per-service physical network is very costly, network slicing by means of resource virtualization was developed to accommodate such heterogeneous services in a single physical network infrastructure. In network slicing, network resources are isolated to form slices, which then can be used to provide different services.

This slicing is helpful in accommodating conflicting, often incompatible services at the cost of losing the multiplexing gain achieved in monolithic composite service networks. The loss in multiplexing gain is not a big problem when the number of slices is relatively low. However, numerous services are provided in cellular networks, and the number is expected to be drastically higher in the 5G era. Creating per-service slices would lead to wastage of resources. In this regard, we aim at balancing the need for isolation to meet conflicting service requirements against resource usage efficiency. We investigated possible means of simultaneously achieving isolation and minimizing the loss of multiplexing gain. Our findings will aid in the development of network management architecture suitable for the 5G era and beyond.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) have several uses in civilians and military applications, such as search and rescue missions, cartography and terrain exploration, industrial plant control, surveillance, public security, firefight, and others. Swarms of UAVs may further increase the effectiveness of these tasks, since they enable larger coverage, more accurate or redundant sensed data, fault tolerance, etc. Swarms of aerial robots require real-time coordination, which is just a specific case of M2Mcollaboration. But one of the biggest challenges of UAV swarming is that this real-time coordination has to happen in a wide-area setting where it is expensive, or even impossible, to set up a dedicated wireless infrastructure for this purpose.

Instead, one has to resort to conventional 3G/4G wireless networks, where communication latencies are in the range of 50-150 ms. In this paper we tackle the problem of UAV swarm formation and maintenance in areas covered by such mobile network, and propose a bandwidth-efficient multi-robot coordination algorithm for these settings. The coordination algorithm was implemented on the top of our mobile middle ware SDDL, uses its group-cast communication capability, and was tested with simulated UAVs.

Long Term Evolution (LTE) is an attractive infrastructure for Smart Grid (SG) networks because it provides high bandwidth and low latency over a large coverage area. Although LTE networks are primary designed for Human-to-Human (H2H) communication, SG networks primarily involve Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communications. One such SG network component is the Smart Meter (SM), which utilizes M2M communications to report power consumption to a centralized control center at periodic intervals. As defined by the LTE standard, all User Equipment (UE), including SMs, need to make a connection to transmit a packet. That means, UEs need a scheduling and resource blocks (RBs).

In this paper, we introduce SM packet transmission via LTE control signaling in order to conserve resources at the eNode-B such as physical channels, scheduling and RBs. Heavy and medium load are compared to investigate packet loss at the eNode-B. With our proposed mechanism, results show that SM packets can be sent via a control signal with no scheduling or RB usage required at the eNode-B. Simulation results show that usage of the Physical Uplink Share CHannel (PUSCH), Physical Downlink Control CHannel (PDCCH), and Physical Downlink Share CHannel (PDSCH) are reduced by 2%. In addition, packets loss during heavy load at the eNode-B is decreased by 15% when compared with the LTE standard.