Omnet++ Research Papers

Mobile multi machine work environments, in general, consist of varying types of machines driving across a site to complete a moving or manipulation task. As the view from the machines over the environment can be limited due to the structure of the machines, the environment, and the moved/manipulated items, there is a risk of collision between machines. In this paper, we propose a situation awareness system aimed as a driver/operator assistive system to enhance the safety and efficiency of multi machine work environments. The system consists of the pose estimation of the machines, the M2M communication based on IEEE 802.11p, the future pose prediction of the machines, and a graphical user interface.

The system is designed to be general enough to be applicable in diverse work environments, which is most easily implemented as a retrofit for existing machines. In this paper, the implementation of the system presented is a proof of concept, and the focus is on how the overall system works in a real harbor environment during operation, ultimately aiming for the collision avoidance of harbor machines. The field tests show promising results, particularly regarding the applicability of the M2M communication technology in a very challenging and uncertain harbor environment.

Fog Computing is a recent computing paradigm that is extending cloud computing towards the edge of network. Due to its proximity to end-users, dense geographical distribution, open platform and support for high mobility, Fog Computing platforms can provide services with reduced latency and improved QoS. Thus it is becoming an important enabler for consumer centric Internet of Things based applications and services that require real time operations e.g. connected vehicles, smart road intersection management and smart grid.

The paper discusses one such architecture for connected vehicles with Road Side Units (RSUs) and M2M gateways including the Fog Computing Platform. M2Mdata processing with semantics, discovery and management of connected vehicles are briefly discussed as consumer centric IoT services enabled by the distinct characteristics of Fog Computing.

The current wireless cellular networks can be used to provide machine-to-machine (M2M) communication services. However, the Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks, which are designed for human users, may not be able to handle a large number of bursty random access requests from machine-type communication (MTC) devices. In this paper, we propose a scheme that uses both access class barring (ACB) and timing advance information to prevent random access overload inM2M systems. We formulate an optimization problem to determine the optimal ACB parameter, which maximizes the expected number of MTC devices successfully served in each random access slot. Hence, the number of random access slots required to serve all MTC devices can be minimized.

To reduce the computational complexity and improve the practicability of the proposed scheme, we propose a closed-form approximate solution to the optimization problem and present an algorithm to estimate the number of active MTC devices requiring access in each random access slot. The correctness of the analytical model and the accuracy of the estimation algorithm are validated via simulations. Results show that both numerical and approximate solutions provide the same performance. Our proposed scheme can reduce nearly half of the random access slots required to serve all MTC devices compared to the existing schemes, which use timing advance information only, ACB only, or cooperative ACB.

In this paper, we compare performance of fixed-grid Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) and Elastic Optical Networks (EONs) in dynamic provisioning of many-to-many (m2m) flows. Currently, with a growth of services relying on many-to-many communication paradigm such as distributed computing, inter-Data Center communication, content delivery networking or other requiring high-bandwidth in group communication, it is vital to deliver new solutions facilitating these demanding transmissions.

Therefore, the authors investigate provisioning of m2m traffic in high-performance optical networks. This work focuses on dynamic Routing and Wavelength Assignment (RWA) problem in WDM networks as well as Routing and Spectrum Allocation (RSA) problem in EONs for m2m flows using replicated communication through auxiliary rendezvous servers.

The tremendous growth of machine-to-machine (M2M) applications has been a great attractor to cellular network operators to provide machine-type communication services. One of the important challenges for cellular systems supporting M2M terminals is coverage, because terminals can be located in spaces in buildings and structures suffering from significant penetration losses. Since these terminals are also often stationary, they are permanently without cellular coverage .

To address this critical issue, the third generation partnership project (3GPP), and in particular its radio access network technical specification group, commenced work on coverage enhancement (CE) for long-term evolution (LTE) systems in June 2013. This article reviews the CE objectives defined for LTE machine-type communication and presents CE methods for LTE down-link and up-link channels discussed in this group. The presented methods achieve CE in a spectrally efficient manner and without notably affecting performance for legacy (non- M2M) devices.

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.