Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Wireless Communications, Energy Efficiency, Green Networks'

Multi-radio multi-channel wireless mesh networks (WMNs) have been the focus of numerous research efforts during the past few years. These efforts aimed at extending the utilization of technologies based on the IEEE 802.11 standard in large-scale communities and even for city wide networking. However, mesh nodes in these networks are typically limited in their resources (e.g., bandwidth, power and radio interfaces). Such a limitation has led to an unsatisfactory network performance as well as users dissatisfaction. This dissertation addresses three important performance issues related to WMNs, namely, network performance enhancement, network survivability and green communications. To address the first issue, a novel quality of service (QoS) aware joint channel assignment (CA) and routing algorithm is developed. The proposed algorithm employs both dynamic and static CA techniques and corresponding link schedules that maximize the network throughput and minimize the delay and packet loss ratio. Next, the thesis addresses the problem of network survivability and theoretically analyzes the effects of node failure probabilities on the ability of the remaining network nodes to maintain their connectivity. A tight upper bound on the node failure probabilities needed to maintain full network connectivity on the one hand is first developed. On the other hand, a lower bound, at which the system loses connectivity, is also derived. We show that these bounds are dependent only on the nodes' geometric distribution and density. Based on the premise that failure of nodes in a small area may lead to failure of dependent nodes in other areas due to the quick divergence of traffic in these areas, an efficient node failure backup scheme is presented. The scheme relies on the capacity of the surviving network components in order to find new paths that do not overload the neighbours of the failed node which reduces the probability of generating congestion. Finally, the thesis addresses the problem of realizing energy-efficient WMNs that can operate using renewable energy sources. In these systems, batteries are often used to store and regulate the use of the supplied green energy to transmit the received data at each network router in order to overcome the problem of supply fluctuating of various energy sources. To realize these networks, the behaviour of the residual energy of the battery at a heavily loaded green wireless mesh node with a general traffic arrival and energy charging functions is first analyzed. Based on obtained theoretical results, both an online and an offline QoS aware packet scheduling schemes are proposed to minimize the probability of depleting the battery. Each of the aforementioned contributions is supported with various experimental evaluations to demonstrate the achieved performance enhancements.

Solving the key issue of sustainability of battery-powered sensors continues to attract significant research attention. The prevailing theme of this research is to address this concern using energy-efficient protocols based on a form of simple cooperative transmission (CT) called the opportunistic large arrays (OLAs), and intelligent exploitation of energy harvesting and hybrid energy storage systems (HESSs). The two key contributions of this research, namely, OLA with transmission threshold (OLA-T) and alternating OLA-T (A-OLA-T), offer an signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) advantage (i.e., benefits of diversity and array (power) gains) in a multi-path fading environment, thereby reducing transmit powers or extending range. Because these protocols do not address nodes individually, the network overhead remains constant for high density networks or nodes with mobility. During broadcasting across energy-constrained networks, while OLA-T saves energy by limiting node participation within a single broadcast, A-OLA-T optimizes over multiple broadcasts and drains the the nodes in an equitable fashion. Another important contribution of this research is the design and analysis of a novel routing metric called communications using HESS (CHESS), which extends the rechargeable battery (RB)-life by relaying exclusively with supercapacitor (SC) energy, and is asymptotically optimal with respect to the number of nodes in the network.

The rapid growth in global mobile phone users has resulted in an ever-increasing demand for bandwidth and enhanced quality-of-service (QoS). Several consortia comprising major international mobile operators, infrastructure manufacturers, and academic institutions are working to develop the next generation wireless communication systems fifth generation (5G) - to support high data rates and increased QoS. 5G systems are also expected to represent a greener alternative for communication systems, which is important because power consumption from the information and communication technology (ICT) sector is forecast to increase significantly by 2030. The deployment of ultra-dense heterogeneous small cell networks (SCNs) is expected to play a major role in meeting the explosive growth of user traffic demand in 5G wireless communication systems. However, while the concept of small cells in heterogeneous networks (HetNets) largely addresses the bandwidth scarcity problem, unless otherwise carefully managed, a large number of uncoordinated and lightly loaded SCNs will significantly increase the access network power consumption, contrary to the green communication target of 5G systems. In addition, to cater for the huge volumes of traffic, the backhaul network power consumption will also increase. This thesis addresses the research challenges facing 5G systems in regard to energy efficiency and QoS. The thesis examines ways to reduce power consumption in access networks, how to design green backhauling solutions, how to develop synergy between wired and wireless backhauling options, and how to increase energy efficiency in a weather-dependent backhaul network without hindering network QoS. Different system models and solution techniques are investigated in order to successfully minimize overall power consumption in 5G HetNets while maintaining network QoS. The thesis contributes as follows: first, an energy-efficient resource management system is introduced to minimize access network power consumption; second, two green backhauling solutions, one for wired optical backhaul and the other for wireless millimeter wave (mmWave) backhaul, are presented; third, a synergy is developed between two energy-efficient backhauling solutions to reduce power consumption; fourth, the impacts of SCN topology and mmWave spectrum are presented; and finally, a hybrid free-space optics (FSO)/mmWave channel model is introduced to minimize power consumption for weather-dependent channels. Each phase of the research listed above also investigates the network QoS, i.e., average delay and jitter for 5G HetNets. The research presented in this thesis therefore contributes new knowledge in energy efficiency and QoS for next generation wireless communication networks and makes important contributions to this field by investigating different system models and proposing solutions to significant issues.

Exponential growth in the volume of wireless data, boosted by the growing popularity of mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets, is forcing telecommunication industries to rethink network design, and focus on developing high capacity mobile broadband networks. Accordingly, researchers have undertaken developmental work for an integrated wireless-optical broadband access network (WOBAN). Passive optical networks (PONs) and fourth generation (4G) wireless networks are two major candidate technologies for the WOBAN. PON is a wired access technology, well-known for its high capacity, whereas 4G is a wireless broadband access technology, popular for its ease of deployment and ability to offer mobility. Integration of PON and 4G technologies, as a wireless-optical broadband access network, offers advantages such as extension of networks in rural areas, support for mobile broadband services, and rapid deployment of broadband networks. However, these two technologies have different design architectures for handling broadband services which require Quality of Service (QoS), for example, 4G networks use traffic classification for supporting different QoS demands whereas PON does not differentiate between traffic types. This integrated network must also be energy efficient, as a green broadband access network, without hindering QoS. While these technologies both use sleep mode, they differ in their power saving mechanisms. This thesis first addresses a QoS solution for the incompatibility between these technologies. Service class mapping is proposed in Chapter 3 for the integrated WOBAN, based on the M/G/1 queuing model supported by an innovative priority scheduler. Once class mapping is deployed, a power saving mechanism can be devised by exploiting traffic differentiation. Specifically, a class-based strategy is proposed which helps optimise the sleep period for the terminal units of the optical network, without compromising QoS. Since the optical network involves control and terminal nodes, both of which consume power, this thesis proposes an energy efficient mechanism that involves both components. In contrast, other published strategies (Chapter 2) have only considered the terminal units. Chapter 4 presents the mechanism for enabling global sleep (control and terminal nodes) and local sleep (terminal nodes), based on the available traffic's class structure. This mechanism enables sleep for different components within the bandwidth allocation by adapting the switching between predefined polling cycle lengths. As the WOBAN is comprised of both wireless and optical parts, a dynamic resource management mechanism is needed which responds to changing daily traffic patterns across a green integrated network. Consequently, Chapter 5 proposes a mechanism which dynamically adapts the polling cycles, of the optical and wireless parts of the network, to the changing traffic volume and class composition. Tailored sleep durations for the components of the WOBAN are facilitated within the resource management regime, as these components differ in their ability to function efficiently if management of the sleep periods is not responsive to the changing traffic volumes and class composition. This dissertation creates new knowledge by seamlessly integrating the two parts of WOBAN and introducing differentiated, class-based sleep for the components of the hybrid network to help realise a green WOBAN.

The widespread application of wireless services and the requirements of ubiquitous access have recently triggered rapidly booming energy consumption in wireless communications networks. Such escalation of energy consumption in wireless networks causes high operational expenditure from electricity bills for operators, unsatisfactory user experience due to limited battery capacity of wireless devices, and a large amount of greenhouse gas emission. Green radio (GR), which emphasizes both energy efficiency (EE) and spectral efficiency (SE), has been proposed as an effective solution and is becoming the mainstream for future wireless network design. Unfortunately, EE and SE do not always coincide and may even sometimes conflict. In this dissertation, we focus on energy-efficient transmission and resource allocation techniques for orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) networks and the joint energy-efficient design of OFDMA and other promising wireless communications techniques, such as cognitive radio (CR) and two-way relay. Firstly, we investigate the principles of energy-efficient design for pure OFDMA networks. As the first step, we study the fundamental interrelationship between EE and SE in downlink OFDMA networks and analyze the impacts of channel gain and circuit power on the EE-SE relationship. We establish a general EE-SE optimization framework, where the overall EE, SE and per-user quality-of-service (QoS) are all considered. Under this framework, we find that EE is quasiconcave in SE and decreases with SE when SE is large enough. These findings are very helpful guidelines for designing energy- and spectral-efficient OFDMA. To facilitate the application of energy-efficient resource allocation, we then investigate the energy-efficient resource allocation in both downlink and uplink OFDMA networks. For the downlink transmission, the generalized EE is maximized while for the uplink case the minimum individual EE is maximized, both under prescribed per-user minimum data rate requirements. For both transmission scenarios, we first provide the optimal solution and then develop an computationally efficient suboptimal approach by exploring the inherent structure and property of the energy-efficient design. Then we study energy-efficient design in downlink OFDMA networks with effective capacity-based delay provisioning for delay-sensitive traffic. By integrating information theory with the concept of effective capacity, we formulate and solve an EE optimization problem with statistical delay provisioning. We also analyze the tradeoff between EE and delay, the relationship between spectral-efficient and energy-efficient designs, and the impact of system parameters, including circuit power and delay exponents, on the overall performance. Secondly, we consider joint energy-efficient design of OFDMA and CR and two-way relay, respectively, to further enhance the EE and SE of wireless networks. We study energy-efficient opportunistic spectrum access strategies for an OFDMA-based CR network with multiple secondary users (SUs). Both worst EE and average EE of the SUs are considered and optimized subject to constraints including maximum transmit power and maximum interference to primary user (PU) system. For both cases, we first find the optimal solution and then propose a low-complexity suboptimal alternative. The results show that the energy-efficient CR strategies significantly boost EE compared with the conventional spectral-efficient CR ones while the low-complexity suboptimal approaches can well balance the performance and complexity. Then we study energy-efficient resource allocation for OFDMA-based two-way relay, which aims at maximizing the aggregated EE utility while provisioning proportional fairness in EE among different terminal pairs. Different from most exist energy-efficient design, we consider a new circuit power model, where the dynamic circuit power is proportional to the number of active subcarrier. For low-complexity solution, we propose an EE-oriented sequential subchannel assignment policy and discover the sufficient condition for early termination of the sequential subchannel assignment without losing the EE optimality. It is found that the energy-efficient transmission does not necessarily make all the subcarriers active, which is another useful principle for practical energy-efficient system design.

Les xarxes de sensors sense fils (WSNs) han esdevingut un dels sistemes de comunicació amb més projecció d'aquesta dècada. Abasten una àmplia varietat d’aplicacions tals com la monitorització del medi ambient, la predicció de desastres naturals, en medicina, en transport, posicionament en interiors, i tasques militars. Els nodes que composen la xarxa, són típicament de baix cost, cosa que atorga una sèrie de limitacions en termes d’energia, velocitat de càlcul i d’ample de banda. Amb els avenços de les comunicacions sense fils i la creixent demanda de noves i més complexes aplicacions, les WSNs s’han d’optimitzar per tal de minimitzar aquestes limitacions. Aquesta tesi proposa un conjunt de tècniques que proporcionen a una WSN les següents característiques: 1. Implementació distribuïda sense necessitat de senyalització entre nodes sensors. 2. Comunicacions energèticament eficients. 3. Poca complexitat als nodes sensors. 4. Empra pocs recursos (temps, ample de banda, etc.) 5. Presenta un error quadràtic mig baix en reconstrucció al receptor. 6. Comunicacions secretes a capa física. Primer, s’estudia la transmissió seqüencial de mostreig reduït. Aquesta tècnica permet la disminució del nombre de transmissions i, per tant, reduir la despesa energètica associada a la comunicació a la xarxa. En particular, s’estudia el rendiment dels codificadors determinístics, probabilístics i condicionals de mostreig reduït per senyals autoregressius. S’obtenen expressions tancades de l’error quadràtic mig pel cas de mostreig reduït determinístic i probabilístic, mentre que pel cas condicional es deriven aproximacions ajustades. A continuació, s’analitza la compressió de la informació per WSNs grans. Pel cas on els paràmetres de correlació del senyal són desconeguts a priori, es proposen dos estimadors millorats: i) un per la predicció emprant el filtre de Wiener i ii) un per l’error quadràtic mig obtingut. Ambdós estimadors s’empren pels dos passos claus de l’algorisme de codificació distribuïda de canal. Aquests estimadors milloren notablement el rendiment de l’algorisme en comparació amb els estimadors de mostres clàssics, especialment quan la dimensió del vector d’observacions és comparable en magnitud amb el nombre de mostres usades a la fase d’entrenament de l’algorisme. Posteriorment, es proposa un esquema de comunicació distribuïda i energèticament eficient anomenat Amplify-and-Forward Compressed Sensing. Aquest esquema es basa en la tècnica de sensat comprimit i aprofita la correlació existent al senyal rebut per tal de reduir tant el nombre de recursos emprats com les despeses energètiques del sistema. Específicament, el sistema es dissenya seguint una funció de cost que controla el compromís existent entre error quadràtic i consum energètic de la xarxa. Per aconseguir aquest disseny, es deriva un model simple que aproxima el rendiment de l’esquema proposat en termes d’error quadràtic mig. A més, es contribueix a la teoria de sensat comprimit amb una nova i més ajustada relació entre el mínim nombre de mesures necessàries donades unes determinades propietats del senyal. Finalment, s’estudia l’esquema proposat Amplify-and-Forward Compressed Sensing des d’un punt de vista de secretisme a capa física. Es demostra que aquest esquema assoleix secretisme perfecte sota la presència d’un o d’un grup reduït d’espies, mentre que per un nombre més gran, és possible deteriorar notablement les seves capacitats d’espionatge gràcies a una tècnica proposta especialment dissenyada per introduir un extra d’incertesa solament a l’estimació dels espies.
Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have emerged as one of the most promising wireless communication systems in the last decade. They can be used in a wide variety of applications such as environmental monitoring, natural disaster prediction, healthcare, transportation, indoor positioning, and military tasks. The cost and the complexity of the nodes within a WSN are typically low, which results in constraints such as energy limitation, low computational speed, and reduced communication bandwidth. With the advances in wireless communications and the growing demand of new and more complex applications, WSNs must be optimized in order to overcome their intrinsic limitations in terms of complexity and power. In this dissertation, and according to these constraints, we propose a set of techniques that provide to a WSN the following interesting features: 1. Distributed operation without the need of signaling among sensing nodes. 2. Energy-efficient communications. 3. Low complexity at the sensing nodes. 4. Low resource (i.e., bandwidth, time, etc.) utilization. 5. Low distortion level at the receiver. 6. Secret communications at the physical layer. First, we study the zero-delay downsampling transmission. This technique allows the system to reduce the number of transmissions and hence decrease the total energy spent. In particular, we study the performance of deterministic, probabilistic and conditional downsampling encoding-decoding pairs for the case of the autoregressive signal model. We obtain closed form expressions for the quadratic error of the deterministic and probabilistic encoder-decoders, while accurate approximations are derived for the quadratic error of the conditional downsampling schemes. Second, we analyze data compression applied to large WSNs. For the realistic case where the correlation parameters are not known a priori, we obtain two enhanced correlation estimators: i) one for the linear Wiener filter vector and ii) one for the achieved mean square error. Both estimators are employed in the two key steps of the distributed source coding algorithm. These estimators notably improve the performance of the algorithm in comparison to the application of classical sample estimators, specially when the dimension of the observation vector is comparable in magnitude to the number of samples used in the training phase. Then, we propose a distributed and energy-efficient communication scheme named Amplify-and-Forward Compressed Sensing. This scheme is based on compressed sensing and exploits the correlation present in the signal in order to reduce both the resource utilization and the energy consumption. More specifically, the system is designed according to a cost function that controls the trade-off between the quadratic error in the reconstruction and the energy consumption of the network. In order to aid the system design, a simple model that accurately approximates the performance of the proposed scheme in terms of the quadratic error has been derived. Furthermore, we contribute to the compressed sensing theory with a tighter relationship between the minimum number of measurements that are required for a given network dimension and the sparsity level of the transmitted signal. Finally, the proposed Amplify-and-Forward Compressed Sensing scheme is also studied in terms of secrecy and wiretap distortion at the physical layer. It is shown that the proposed scheme is perfectly secret in the presence of one or even a small group of eavesdroppers whereas for a larger eavesdropping set, it is still possible to notably deteriorate its espionage capabilities thanks to a proposed technique specifically designed to introduce extra uncertainty only in the channel estimation of the eavesdroppers.

Wireless access networks today consume 0.5 percent of the global energy. Rapidly growing demand for capacity will further increase the energy consumption. Thus, improving energy efficiency has a great importance not only for environmental awareness but also to lower the operational cost of network operators. However, current networks which are optimized based on non-energy related objectives introduce challenges towards green wireless access networks. In this thesis we investigate the solutions at the deployment level and handle energy efficiency assessment issues in wireless access networks. The precise characterization of the power consumption of the whole network has a crucial importance in order to obtain consistent conclusions from any proposed solution at the network level. For this purpose, we propose a novel power consumption model  considering  the impact of backhaul for two established technologies, i.e., fiber and microwave, which is often ignored in the literature. We show that there is a tradeoff between the power saved by using low power base stations and the excess power that has to be spent for backhauling their traffic which therefore needs to carefully be included into energy efficiency analysis. Furthermore, among the solutions that are analyzed, fiber-based backhaul solution is identified to outperform microwave regardless of the considered topology. The proposed model is then used to gain a general insight regarding the important design parameters and their possible impact on energy- and cost oriented network design. To this end, we present a  high-level framework to see the main tradeoffs between energy, infrastructure cost, spectrum and show that future high-capacity systems are increasingly limited by infrastructure and energy costs where spectrum has a strong positive impact on both. We then investigate different network deployment strategies to improve the energy efficiency where we focus on the impact of various base station types, cell size, power consumption parameters and the capacity demand. We propose a refined power consumption model where the parameters are determined in accordance with cell size. We show that network densification can only be justified when capacity expansion is anticipated and over-provisioning of the network is not plausible for greener network. The improvement through heterogeneous networks is indicated to be highly related to the traffic demand where up to 30% improvement is feasible for high area throughput targets. Furthermore, we consider the problem of energy efficiency assessment at the network level in order to allow operators to know their current status and quantify the potential energy savings of different solutions to establish future strategies. We propose elaborate metric forms that can characterize the efficiency and a methodology that indicate how to perform a reliable and accurate measurement considering the complexity of wireless networks. We show the weakness of the current metrics reporting the "effectiveness" and how these might indicate disputable improvement directions unless they are properly revised. This illustrates the need for a standardized network level energy efficiency evaluation methodology towards green wireless access.

QC 20121109

Energy-efficient wireless networking (eWIN)

Thesis (Ph.D)--Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2010.
Committee Chair: Li, Geoffrey Ye; Committee Member: Ma, Xiaoli; Committee Member: Stuber, Gordon; Committee Member: Wardi, Yorai; Committee Member: Yu, Xingxing. Part of the SMARTech Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Collection.

In this thesis, our objective is to improve the energy efficiency and load balance for wireless networks. We first study the relationships between the base station (BS) on/off operation and traffic distribution. A cooperative power saving method called clustering BS-off (CBSO) scheme is proposed. Instead of adopting a unified and consistent BS-off scheme in the whole network, the proposed centralized and distributed CBSO schemes can adaptively group BSs in several clusters based on the traffic fluctuations with space and time. Second, to further improve the network load balance and energy efficiency in distributed manner, we propose a power efficient self-organized virtual small networking (VSN) protocol. A heuristic firefly algorithm is applied to arrange the BSs' operation in small groups based on the traffic level. By jointly considering the load balance, the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is demonstrated based on the average and min-max traffic levels of BSs' groups. Finally, the importance of detailed BS operation between active and sleep modes is considered. The operating procedure of femtocell base station, i.e., HeNB, is modeled as an MAP/PH/1/k queueing system. Such queueing analysis particularly focuses on the HeNB vacation process with user priorities. The HeNB's power on/off scheme is modeled as alternative service and vacation periods. The hybrid access is regarded as high and low priority users in the queuing system. We further propose the adaptive service rate and vacation length (ASV) method, so that the HeNB can work in a more energy-efficient way while satisfying QoS requirements such as blocking probability and users waiting time. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed strategies and the overall network energy efficiency can be improved significantly.
October 2016

Abstract This thesis focuses on the timely problem of energy-efficient transmission for wireless multiantenna cellular systems. The emphasis is on transmit beamforming (BF) and active antenna set optimization to maximize the network-wide energy efficiency (EE) metric, i.e., the number of transmitted bits per energy unit. The fundamental novelty of EE optimization is that it incorporates the transceivers' processing power in addition to the actual transmit power in the BF design. The key features of the thesis are that it focuses on sophisticated power consumption models (PCMs), giving useful insights into the EE of current cellular systems in particular, and provides mathematical tools for EE optimization in future wireless networks generally. The BF problem is first studied in a multiuser multiple-input single-output system by using a PCM scaling with transmit power and the number of active radio frequency (RF) chains. To find the best performance, a globally optimal solution based on a branch-reduce-and-bound (BRB) method is proposed, and two efficient designs based on zero-forcing and successive convex approximation (SCA) are derived for practical applications. Next, joint BF and antenna selection (JBAS) is studied, which can switch off some RF chains for further EE improvements. An optimal BRB method and efficient SCA-based algorithms exploiting continuous relaxation (CR) or sparse BF are proposed to solve the resulting mixed-Boolean nonconvex problem (MBNP). In a multi-cell system, energy-efficient coordinated BF is explored under two optimization targets: 1) the network EE maximization and 2) the weighted sum EEmax (WsumEEmax). A more sophisticated PCM scaling also with the data rate and the associated computational complexity is assumed. The SCA-based methods are derived to solve these problems in a centralized manner, and distributed algorithms relying only on the local channel state information and limited backhaul signaling are then proposed. The WsumEEmax problem is solved using SCA combined with an alternating direction method of multipliers, and iterative closed-form algorithms having easily derivable computational complexity are developed to solve both problems. The work is subsequently extended to a multi-cell multigroup multicasting system, where user groups request multicasting data. For the MBNP, a modeling method to improve the performance of the SCA for solving the CR is proposed, aiming at encouraging the relaxed Boolean variables to converge at the binary values. A second approach based on sparse BF, which introduces no Boolean variables, is also derived. The methods are then modified to solve the EE and sum rate trade-off problem. Finally, the BF design with multiantenna receivers is considered, where the users can receive both unicasting and multicasting data simultaneously. The performances of the developed algorithms are assessed via thorough computer simulations. The results show that the proposed algorithms provide 30-300% EE improvements over various conventional methods in the BF optimization, and that JBAS techniques can offer further gains of more than 100%
Tiivistelmä Tämä väitöskirja keskittyy ajankohtaiseen energiatehokkaaseen lähetinsuunnitteluun langattomissa solukkoverkoissa, joissa suorituskykymittarina käytetään energiatehokkuuden (energy efficiency (EE)) maksimointia, eli kuinka monta bittiä pystytään lähettämään yhtä energiayksikköä kohti. Työn painopiste on lähettimien keilanmuodostuksen (beamforming (BF)) ja aktiivisten lähetinantennien optimoinnissa. EE-optimoinnin uutuusarvo on ottaa lähettimien prosessoinnin tehonkulutus huomioon keilanmuodostuksen suunnittelussa, varsinaisen lähetystehon lisäksi. Työ antaa hyvän käsityksen erityisesti tämänhetkisten solukkoverkkojen energiatehokkuudesta, ja luo työkaluja EE-optimointiin tulevaisuuden järjestelmissä. Ensin suunnitellaan keilanmuodostus yksisolumallissa, jossa tehonkulutus kasvaa lähetystehon ja aktiivisten radiotaajuusketjujen lukumäärän mukana. Ongelmaan johdetaan optimaalinen ratkaisu, ja kaksi käytännöllistä menetelmää perustuen nollaanpakotukseen tai peräkkäinen konveksi approksimaatio (successive convex approximation (SCA)) -ideaan. Seuraavaksi keskitytään keilanmuodostuksen ja antenninvalinnan yhteisoptimointiin (joint beamforming and antenna selection (JBAS)), jossa radiotaajuusketjuja voidaan sulkea EE:n parantamiseksi. Tähän ehdotetaan optimaalinen menetelmä ja kaksi käytännöllistä SCA-menetelmää perustuen binääristen ja jatkuvien muuttujien yhteisoptimointiongelman relaksaatioon, tai harvan vektorin optimointiin. Monisoluverkon EE-optimoinnissa käytetään yksityiskohtaisempaa tehonkulutusmallia, joka skaalautuu myös datanopeuden ja prosessoinnin monimutkaisuuden mukaan. Työssä käytetään kahta suorituskyvyn mittaria: 1) koko verkon energiatehokkuuden, ja 2) painotettujen energiatehokkuuksien summien maksimointia (weighted sum EEmax (WsumEEmax)). Ensin johdetaan keskitetyt ratkaisut SCA-ideaa käyttäen. Tämän jälkeen keskitytään hajautettuun optimointiin, joka pystytään toteuttamaan paikallisen kanavatiedon avulla, kun matalanopeuksinen skalaariarvojen jako on käytettävissä tukiasemien välillä. Ensin WsumEEmax-ongelma ratkaistaan yhdistämällä SCA ja kerrointen vaihtelevan suunnan menetelmä, ja lisäksi ehdotetaan iteratiivinen suljetun muodon ratkaisu molempiin ongelmiin, joka mahdollistaa tarkan laskennallisen monimutkaisuuden määrityksen. Lopussa työ laajennetaan monisoluverkkoon, jossa tukiasemat palvelevat käyttäjäryhmiä ryhmälähetyksenä. Keskittymällä JBAS-ongelmaan, ensin ehdotetaan lähestymistapa parantaa SCA-menetelmän suorituskykyä yhteisoptimointiongelman relaksaation ratkaisemisessa. Toinen yksinkertaisempi lähestymistapa perustuu harvan vektorin optimointiin, joka ei vaadi binäärisiä muuttujia. Lisäksi menetelmiä muunnellaan myös energiatehokkuuden ja summadatanopeuden kompromissin optimointiin. Lopussa työ ottaa huomioon vielä moniantennivastaanottimet, joka mahdollistaa sekä täsmälähetyksen että ryhmälähetyksen samanaikaisesti. Menetelmien suorituskykyä arvioidaan laajamittaisilla tietokonesimulaatioilla. Tulokset näyttävät väitöskirjan menetelmien lisäävän energiatehokkuutta 30-300% verrattuna lukuisiin perinteisiin menetelmiin BF-optimoinnissa, ja JBAS-menetelmät antavat vielä yli 100% lisää suorituskykyä

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are distributed networks comprising small sensing devices equipped with a processor, memory, power source, and often with the capability for short range wireless communication. These networks are used in various applications, and have created interest in WSN research and commercial uses, including industrial, scientific, household, military, medical and environmental domains. These initiatives have also been stimulated by the finalisation of the IEEE 802.15.4 standard, which defines the medium access control (MAC) and physical layer (PHY) for low-rate wireless personal area networks (LR-WPAN). Future applications may require large WSNs consisting of huge numbers of inexpensive wireless sensor nodes with limited resources (energy, bandwidth), operating in harsh environmental conditions. WSNs must perform reliably despite novel resource constraints including limited bandwidth, channel errors, and nodes that have limited operating energy. Improving resource utilisation and quality-of-service (QoS), in terms of reliable connectivity and energy efficiency, are major challenges in WSNs. Hence, the development of new WSN applications with severe resource constraints will require innovative solutions to overcome the above issues as well as improving the robustness of network components, and developing sustainable and cost effective implementation models. The main purpose of this research is to investigate methods for improving the performance of WSNs to maintain reliable network connectivity, scalability and energy efficiency. The study focuses on the IEEE 802.15.4 MAC/PHY layers and the carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) based networks. First, transmission power control (TPC) is investigated in multi and single-hop WSNs using typical hardware platform parameters via simulation and numerical analysis. A novel approach to testing TPC at the physical layer is developed, and results show that contrary to what has been reported from previous studies, in multi-hop networks TPC does not save energy. Next, the network initialization/self-configuration phase is addressed through investigation of the 802.15.4 MAC beacon interval setting and the number of associating nodes, in terms of association delay with the coordinator. The results raise doubt whether that the association energy consumption will outweigh the benefit of duty cycle power management for larger beacon intervals as the number of associating nodes increases. The third main contribution of this thesis is a new cross layer (PHY-MAC) design to improve network energy efficiency, reliability and scalability by minimising packet collisions due to hidden nodes. This is undertaken in response to findings in this thesis on the IEEE 802.15.4 MAC performance in the presence of hidden nodes. Specifically, simulation results show that it is the random backoff exponent that is of paramount importance for resolving collisions and not the number of times the channel is sensed before transmitting. However, the random backoff is ineffective in the presence of hidden nodes. The proposed design uses a new algorithm to increase the sensing coverage area, and therefore greatly reduces the chance of packet collisions due to hidden nodes. Moreover, the design uses a new dynamic transmission power control (TPC) to further reduce energy consumption and interference. The above proposed changes can smoothly coexist with the legacy 802.15.4 CSMA/CA. Finally, an improved two dimensional discrete time Markov chain model is proposed to capture the performance of the slotted 802.15.4 CSMA/CA. This model rectifies minor issues apparent in previous studies. The relationship derived for the successful transmission probability, throughput and average energy consumption, will provide better performance predictions. It will also offer greater insight into the strengths and weaknesses of the MAC operation, and possible enhancement opportunities. Overall, the work presented in this thesis provides several significant insights into WSN performance improvements with both existing protocols and newly designed protocols. Finally, some of the numerous challenges for future research are described.

Notre travail s'inscrit dans le cadre des recherches sur le Sleeping mode. Notre contribution est structurée principalement autour deux axes : l'étude et l'évaluation de la performance des processus de mise en veille/réveil des points d'accès et la sélection du nombre minimal des points d'accès dans un milieu urbain dense. Dans un premier temps, nous étudions les processus de mise en veille/réveil des points d'accès dans un scenario classique de réseau domestique. Ce scenario suppose que le point d'accès mis en veille doit détecter la présence d'un utilisateur potentiel dans sa zone de couverture et réagir par conséquence d'une façon autonome pour se mettre en état de fonctionnement normal. Nous avons choisi quatre processus de réveil du point d'accès, et nous avons ensuite étudié chacun de ces processus, et proposé un protocole de communication qui permette à un utilisateur d'envoyer l'ordre au point d'accès de s'éteindre. Lorsque cela était possible, nous avons utilisé le protocole COAP qui est prévu pour établir des sessions de commande pour l'Internet des Objets. Nous avons ensuite mesuré les performances du point de vue de l'économie d'énergie qu'il permet de réaliser et du délai entre le moment où un utilisateur potentiel est détecté et le moment où le point d'accès devient opérationnel. Nous avons aussi étudié un réseau dense dans un milieu urbain (le centre ville de Rennes) où la zone de couverture d'un point d'accès pouvait être partiellement ou totalement couverte par d'autres points d'accès. Pour évaluer la redondance dans le réseau, nous avons collecté des informations réelles sur les points d'accès en utilisant l'application Wi2Me. Le traitement de ces informations nous a permis d'identifier les points d'accès existants dans la zone étudiée et leurs zones de couverture respectives démontrant ainsi la superposition de ces zones de couverture et le potentiel d'élimination d'un certain nombre de points d'accès sans affecter la couverture globale. Nous avons alors proposé un système centralisé qui collecte les données de couverture des points d'accès observée par les utilisateur. Nous avons donc utilisé ce simple fait pour centraliser la vue du réseau de plusieurs utilisateurs, ce qui permet d'avoir une vue assez précise de la disponibilité des points d'accès dans une zone géographie. Nous avons alors proposé une représentation de ces données de couverture à travers des matrices qui traitent les différentes erreurs de capture (coordonnées GPS non précises, réutilisation des noms de réseaux, etc). Enfin, nous avons ensuite proposé deux algorithmes permettant de sélectionner l'ensemble minimal des points d'accès requis fournissant une couverture identique à celle d'origine
The main goal of the thesis is to design an Energy Proportional Network by taking intelligent decisions into the network such as switching on and off network components in order to adapt the energy consumption to the user needs. Our work mainly focuses on reducing the energy consumption by adapting the number of APs that are operating to the actual user need. In fact, traffic load varies a lot during the day. Traffic is high in urban areas and low in the suburb during day work hours, while it is the opposite at night. Often, peak loads during rush hours are lower than capacities of the networks. Thus they remain lightly utilized for long periods of time. Thus keeping all APs active all the time even when the traffic is low causes a huge waste of energy. Our goal is to benefit from low traffic periods by automatically switch off redundant cells, taking into consideration the actual number of users, their traffic and the bandwidth requested to serve them. Ideally we wish to do so while maintaining reliable service coverage for existing and new coming users. First we consider a home networking scenario. In this case only one AP covers a given area. So when this AP is switched off (when no users are present), there will be no other AP to fill the gap of coverage. Moreover, upon the arrival of new users, no controller or other mechanism exists to wake up the AP. Consequently, new arriving users would not be served and would remain out of coverage. The study of the state of the art allowed us to have a clear overview of the existing approaches in this context. As a result, we designed a platform to investigate different methods to wake up an AP using different technologies. We measure two metrics to evaluate the Switching ON/OFF process for the different methods. The first is the energy consumed by the AP during the three phases it goes through. The second is the delay of time for the AP to wake up and be operational to serve the new users. In the second case we consider a dense network such as the ones found in urban cities, where the coverage area of an AP is also covered by several other APs. In other words, the gap resulting from switching off one or several APs can be covered by other neighbouring ones. Thus the first thing to do was to evaluate the potential of switching off APs using real measurements taken in a dense urban area. Based on this collected information, we evaluate how many APs can be switched off while maintaining the same coverage. To this end, we propose two algorithms that select the minimum set of APs needed to provide full coverage. We compute several performance parameters, and evaluate the proposed algorithms in terms of the number of selected APs, and the coverage they provide

The rapid expansion of mobile services and the emerging demand for multimedia applications have led to an impressive traffic growth. To this end, Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) seek to extend their infrastructure by installing more Base Stations (BSs), in an effort to increase the network capacity and meet the pressing traffic demands. Furthermore, to fulfill the escalated demands, Heterogeneous Networks (HetNets), which consist of Small Cells (SCs) and the traditional BSs, constitute the new trend of next generation networks. The deployed infrastructure implies a rise in the Capital Expenditures and has a direct impact on the network energy consumption, thus resulting in higher Operational Expenditures. Hence, the investigation of energy efficient solutions will bring down the energy consumption and the network cost. Since the BS is the most power hungry component, the research community has shifted towards the investigation of BS deactivation schemes. These schemes propose that part of the infrastructure can be temporarily switched off, when the traffic is low, while the active BSs extend their coverage to serve the network. Based on a comprehensive review of the state-of-the-art, a set of research opportunities were identified. This thesis provides contributions to the field of BS switching off strategies for wireless macro BSs networks and HetNets of single and multiple MNOs by proposing mechanisms that enhance different aspects of the network performance. The BSs deactivation, the innovative trend of infrastructure sharing and the financially driven collaboration among the involved parties of the current and future networks promise significant improvements in terms of energy and cost savings. The main thesis contributions are divided into three parts, described next. The first part of the thesis introduces innovative BS switching off approaches in single-operator environments, where only macro BSs are deployed. The proposed strategies exploit the inherit characteristics of the traffic load pattern (e.g., distribution of the users, traffic volume, etc.) and the distinctive features of the wireless cellular networks (e.g., BSs position, topology, etc.). Theoretical analysis and computer-based simulations show the performance improvement offered by the switching off strategies with respect to energy efficiency. The second part of the thesis explores a different challenge in network planning. The coexistence of multiple MNOs in the same geographical area has motivated a new business model, known as infrastructure sharing. A roaming-based deactivation scheme is proposed, by taking into account the rationality and the conflicting interests of the MNOs. The proposed game theoretic framework enables the MNOs to take individual switching off decisions, thus bypassing potential complicated agreements. The theoretical and simulation results show that our proposal significantly improves the energy efficiency, guaranteeing at the same time the throughput in realistic scenarios. Moreover, the proposed scheme provides higher cost efficiency and fairness compared to the state-of-the-art algorithms, motivating the MNOs to adopt game theoretic strategies. The third part of the thesis focuses on the exploitation of HetNets and the proposal of energy and cost effective strategies in SC networks with multiple MNOs. We effectively address the cost sharing by proposing accurate cost models for the SCs to share the network cost. Taking into account the impact of the traffic on the cost, we propose novel cost sharing policies that provide a fair outcome. In continuation, innovative auction-based schemes within multiobjective optimization framework are introduced for data offloading from the BSs, owned by the MNOs, to the third-party SC networks. The proposed solution captures the conflicting interests of the MNOs and the third-party companies and the obtained results show that the benefit of proposing switching off approaches for HetNets.
La rápida expansión de los servicios móviles y de la demanda emergente de aplicaciones multimedia han dado lugar a un impresionante crecimiento del tráfico. Operadores de redes móviles (MNOs) tratará de extender su infraestructura mediante la instalación de más estaciones base (BSs), en un esfuerzo por aumentar la capacidad de la red y satisfacer las apremiantes demandas de tráfico. Además, para cumplir con las exigencias escalada, redes heterogéneas (HetNets), constituyen la nueva tendencia de las redes de próxima generación. La infraestructura implica un aumento en los gastos de capital y tiene un impacto directo en el consumo de energía a la red, lo que resulta en un aumento de los gastos operacionales. La investigación de soluciones de eficiencia energética hará bajar el consumo de energía y el coste de la red. La comunidad científica se ha desplazado hacia la investigación de los sistemas de desactivación de BSs. Estos esquemas proponen que parte de la infraestructura se puede cdesectivarse, cuando el tráfico es bajo, mientras que los BSs activas extender su cobertura al servicio de la red. Esta tesis ofrece contribuciones al campo de la BSs desconexión para las redes y HetNets con uno o multiples MNOs, proponiendo mecanismos que mejoran diferentes aspectos del rendimiento de la red. La desactivación de BS,s la tendencia innovadora de compartir infraestructura y la colaboración impulsada financieramente entre las partes implicadas de las redes actuales y futuras prometen mejoras significativas en términos de ahorro energético y económico. Las principales contribuciones de tesis se dividen en tres partes, que se describen a continuación. La primera parte de la tesis introduce innovadora apagar enfoques en entornos de un solo operador, donde se despliegan sólo macro BSs. Las estrategias propuestas explotan las características de tráfico (por ejemplo, la distribución de los usuarios, el volumen de tráfico, etc.) y las características distintivas de las redes (por ejemplo, la posición BS, topología, etc.). Análisis teórico y simulaciones muestran la mejora del rendimiento ofrecido por las estrategias de conmutación con respecto a la eficiencia energética. La segunda parte de la tesis explora un reto diferente en la planificación de la red. La coexistencia de múltiples operadores en la misma zona geográfica ha motivado un nuevo modelo de negocio, conocida como la compartición de infraestructura. Se propone un esquema de desactivación basada en itinerancia, teniendo en cuenta la racionalidad y los intereses en conflicto de los operadores de redes móviles. Los resultados teóricos y de simulación muestran que nuestra propuesta mejora significativamente la eficiencia energética, garantizando al mismo tiempo el rendimiento en escenarios realistas. Por otra parte, el esquema propuesto proporciona una mayor eficiencia de costes y la equidad en comparación con los algoritmos del estado de la técnica, motivar al mnos de adoptar estrategias de teoría de juegos. La tercera parte de la tesis se centra en la explotación de HetNets y la propuesta de estrategias eficaces de energía y costes en las redes con múltiples operadores. Nos dirigimos efectivamente la participación en los costos, proponiendo modelos de costos precisos para para compartir el costo de la red. Teniendo en cuenta el impacto del tráfico en el coste, proponemos políticas costos compartidos novedosas que proporcionan un resultado justo. En la continuación, los esquemas basados en subastas innovadoras dentro de marco de optimización multiobjetivo se introducen los datos que descargan de la BS. La solución propuesta recoge los intereses en conflicto de los operadores de redes móviles y las compañías de terceros y los resultados obtenidos muestran que el beneficio de proponer la desconexión se acerca para HetNets

This thesis focuses on the emerging research topic "green (energy-efficient) mobile networks" that has drawn huge attention recently from both academia and industry. This topic is highly motivated due to important environmental, financial and quality-of-experience (QoE) considerations. The term "green" emphasizes the environmental dimension of the proposed solutions. Hence, it is not sufficient to present a cost-effective solution unless it is eco-friendly. As base stations (BS) are responsible for the large amount of energy consumed in cellular networks, energy efficient BS sleep mode techniques have the potential to save a significant amount of energy. However, assuming that BSs are able to alternate between sleeping and active states as frequently as possible may have a negative impact on network reliability, shortening BS lifetime. In this thesis a multiobjective optimization framework which is aimed at minimizing the power consumption and the number of BS sleep mode switchings in typical and heterogeneous cellular networks (HetNet) is proposed, by jointly considering Quality of Service (QoS) requirements. Both the optimization procedure and the network planning complexity considerably increases when heterogeneous networks with a mix of cell sizes are considered. With the introduction of small cell overlays, the macro cell network becomes over-provisioned due to the offload of traffic by means of small cells. The proposed sleep mode solution aims at reducing the energy consumption of the network by jointly optimizing the amount of management operations related to the addition of low-power base stations. The trade-off between power consumption, sleep mode switchings and performance of the network is shown for different energy saving solutions and traffic load cases. Moreover, the concern about energy efficiency has been growing rapidly also for manufacturers and researchers of Professional Mobile Radio (PMR) systems, like Terrestrial Trunked Radio (TETRA), which have been designed to provide voice and data services to professional users. The future convergence of PMR to the LTE system introduces a new topic in the research discussion about the energy efficiency of wireless systems. In this thesis the feasibility of energy efficient solutions for current and potentially future PMR networks is discussed, by providing a mathematical formulation of power consumption in TETRA base stations and assessing possible business models and energy saving solutions for enhanced mission-critical operations. The final part of the thesis addresses green approaches for weather monitoring. Nowadays, the air quality is getting worse in highly anthropized environments: this phenomenon stimulates a high level of interest within the scientific community and public opinion because of the known strong relationship between exposure to many air pollutants and increased adverse effects on the human health. Developments in communication technologies allow more remote, real-time weather monitoring and access. The use of plants as biosensors represents a new reliable approach for ozone monitoring. In comparison with the traditional monitoring systems, the use of biosensors has the advantage to show us the real impact of pollutants on living organisms, thus providing additional data to the electronic instruments. In this thesis an automatic method of analysis of plant electrical signals for ozone critical levels detection is introduced, based on the fundamentals of correlation theory. The proposed detection algorithm represents a novel monitoring method for detecting critical levels of ozone concentrations.

It is expected that Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) will greatly improve the quality of our life because of its myriad applications for our human beings. However, one of the challenges is to design energy efficient communication protocols to support the reliable communication as well as to prolong the network lifetime. Cooperative communications have the advantage of spatial diversity to combat multipath fading, thus improving the link reliability and boosting energy efficiency. In this thesis, we investigate the energy efficient cooperative communications for WBAN. We first analyze the outage performance of three transmission schemes, namely direct transmission, single relay cooperation, and multi-relay cooperation. To minimize the energy consumption, we then study the problem of optimal power allocation with the constraint of targeted outage probability. Two strategies of power allocation are considered: power allocation with and without posture state information. Simulation results verify the accuracy of the analysis and demonstrate that: 1) power allocation making use of the posture information can reduce the energy consumption; 2) within a possible range of the channel quality in WBAN, cooperative communication is more energy efficient than direct transmission only when the path loss between the transmission pair is higher than a threshold; and 3) for most of the typical channel quality due to the fixed transceiver locations on human body, cooperative communication is effective in reducing energy consumption.

The cognitive radio (CR) concept is expected to be adopted along with many technologies to meet the requirements of the next generation of wireless and mobile systems, the 5G. Consequently, it is important to determine the performance of the CR systems with respect to these requirements. In this thesis, after briefly describing the 5G requirements, we present three main directions in which we aim to enhance the CR performance. The first direction is the reliability. We study the achievable rate of a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) relay-assisted CR under two scenarios; an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) one-way relaying (OWR) and a fixed two-way relaying (TWR). We propose special linear precoding schemes that enable the secondary user (SU) to take advantage of the primary-free channel eigenmodes. We study the SU rate sensitivity to the relay power, the relay gain, the UAV altitude, the number of antennas and the line of sight availability. The second direction is the scalability. We first study a multiple access channel (MAC) with multiple SUs scenario. We propose a particular linear precoding and SUs selection scheme maximizing their sum-rate. We show that the proposed scheme provides a significant sum-rate improvement as the number of SUs increases. Secondly, we expand our scalability study to cognitive cellular networks. We propose a low-complexity algorithm for base station activation/deactivation and dynamic spectrum management maximizing the profits of primary and secondary networks subject to green constraints. We show that our proposed algorithms achieve performance close to those obtained with the exhaustive search method. The third direction is the energy efficiency (EE). We present a novel power allocation scheme based on maximizing the EE of both single-input and single-output (SISO) and MIMO systems. We solve a non-convex problem and derive explicit expressions of the corresponding optimal power. When the instantaneous channel is not available, we present a simple sub-optimal power that achieves a near-optimal EE. The simulations show that the sub-optimal solution is very close to the optimal one. In the MIMO case, we show that adopting more antennas is more energy efficient.

The world of information technology and communications is in a stage of continuous improvement. These new developments are accompanied by a very rapid data traffic growth, particularly for mobile wireless networks. An important effect is the increase of the consumed energy by the network, particularly the radio access section, i.e. the base station systems. This latter issue causes that operational costs associated to energy consumption become more significant for telecommunication operators. In addition to the question of the availability of energy, this problem has an ecological aspect, due to the CO2 emissions associated with the operation of the network but also an issue related to public health given the effects of electromagnetic radiation from wireless transmission. For these reasons, great research efforts in the so-called field of Green Radio are being done in the recent years. The aim of this thesis consisted of finding ways to reduce the energy consumption in wireless and mobile networks respecting the QoS levels assigned to users. After a study of the state of the art analysing the possible approaches, we proposed a set of energy efficient techniques supported on the cell breathing and hybrid cellular networks (macro/femtocells). Our proposed decision making mechanisms include distributed strategies and other features such as the use of a novel multimetric approach. In our work, we also take into account the energy consumption of mobile devices, an issue that to the best of our knowledge was not quite analysed so far. The use of renewable energy sources is also considered into our proposals. Our thesis work includes the study of the consequences of our radio resource management algorithms on the electromagnetic radiation taking into account the acceptable EM exposure thresholds. In the perspectives of future work, we can mention the improvement of our techniques with learning mechanisms and cognitive radio.

The unwanted and adverse weeds that are constantly growing in vineyards, force wine producers to repeatedly remove them through the use of mechanical and chemical methods. These methods include machinery such as plows and brushcutters, and chemicals as herbicides to remove and prevent the growth of weeds both in the inter-row and under-vine areas. Nonetheless, such methods are considered very aggressive for vines, and, in the second case, harmful for the public health, since chemicals may remain in the environment and hence contaminate water lines. Moreover, such processes have to be repeated over the year, making it extremely expensive and toilsome. Using animals, usually ovines, is an ancient practice used around the world. Animals, grazing in vineyards, feed from the unwanted weeds and fertilize the soil, in an inexpensive, ecological and sustainable way. However, sheep may be dangerous to vines since they tend to feed on grapes and on the lower branches of the vines, which causes enormous production losses. To overcome that issue, sheep were traditionally used to weed vineyards only before the beginning of the growth cycle of grapevines, thus still requiring the use of mechanical and/or chemical methods during the remainder of the production cycle. To mitigate the problems above, a new technological solution was investigated under the scope of the SheepIT project and developed in the scope of this thesis. The system monitors sheep during grazing periods on vineyards and implements a posture control mechanism to instruct them to feed only from the undesired weeds. This mechanism is based on an IoT architecture, being designed to be compact and energy efficient, allowing it to be carried by sheep while attaining an autonomy of weeks. In this context, the thesis herein sustained states that it is possible to design an IoT-based system capable of monitoring and conditioning sheep’s posture, enabling a safe weeding process in vineyards. Moreover, we support such thesis in three main pillars that match the main contributions of this work and that are duly explored and validated, namely: the IoT architecture design and required communications, a posture control mechanism and the support for a low-cost and low-power localization mechanism. The system architecture is validated mainly in simulation context while the posture control mechanism is validated both in simulations and field experiments. Furthermore, we demonstrate the feasibility of the system and the contribution of this work towards the first commercial version of the system.
O constante crescimento de ervas infestantes obriga os produtores a manter um processo contínuo de remoção das mesmas com recurso a mecanismos mecânicos e/ou químicos. Entre os mais populares, destacam-se o uso de arados e roçadores no primeiro grupo, e o uso de herbicidas no segundo grupo. No entanto, estes mecanismos são considerados agressivos para as videiras, assim como no segundo caso perigosos para a saúde pública, visto que os químicos podem permanecer no ambiente, contaminando frutos e linhas de água. Adicionalmente, estes processos são caros e exigem mão de obra que escasseia nos dias de hoje, agravado pela necessidade destes processos necessitarem de serem repetidos mais do que uma vez ao longo do ano. O uso de animais, particularmente ovelhas, para controlar o crescimento de infestantes é uma prática ancestral usada em todo o mundo. As ovelhas, enquanto pastam, controlam o crescimento das ervas infestantes, ao mesmo tempo que fertilizam o solo de forma gratuita, ecológica e sustentável. Não obstante, este método foi sendo abandonado visto que os animais também se alimentam da rama, rebentos e frutos da videira, provocando naturais estragos e prejuízos produtivos. Para mitigar este problema, uma nova solução baseada em tecnologias de Internet das Coisas é proposta no âmbito do projeto SheepIT, cuja espinha dorsal foi construída no âmbito desta tese. O sistema monitoriza as ovelhas enquanto estas pastoreiam nas vinhas, e implementam um mecanismo de controlo de postura que condiciona o seu comportamento de forma a que se alimentem apenas das ervas infestantes. O sistema foi incorporado numa infraestrutura de Internet das Coisas com comunicações sem fios de baixo consumo para recolha de dados e que permite semanas de autonomia, mantendo os dispositivos com um tamanho adequado aos animais. Neste contexto, a tese suportada neste trabalho defende que é possível projetar uma sistema baseado em tecnologias de Internet das Coisas, capaz de monitorizar e condicionar a postura de ovelhas, permitindo que estas pastem em vinhas sem comprometer as videiras e as uvas. A tese é suportada em três pilares fundamentais que se refletem nos principais contributos do trabalho, particularmente: a arquitetura do sistema e respetivo sistema de comunicações; o mecanismo de controlo de postura; e o suporte para implementação de um sistema de localização de baixo custo e baixo consumo energético. A arquitetura é validada em contexto de simulação, e o mecanismo de controlo de postura em contexto de simulação e de experiências em campo. É também demonstrado o funcionamento do sistema e o contributo deste trabalho para a conceção da primeira versão comercial do sistema.
Programa Doutoral em Informática