WP2 - High-performance data transfer and networking for open sensing

Wp Leader: Paulo P. Monteiro

Smart Open Campus will be supported by a high-performance communications infrastructure, enabling the transport of large amounts of data to the users as well as from diverse sensing devices. Moreover, it will serve as a testbed for most of the technologies that are currently being developed by the research groups of DETI, as well as an integrated showcase for most of what is DETI’s research and high-end training.

The WP addresses mainly the following activities:

Data Milestones Description
2017-10-16 Infrastructure development based on ORCIP (M3-M20) At the physical level it includes the communication infrastructure, where fast bi-directional data transport will rely on the optical-radio convergence paradigm. Smart Open Campus will use part of the infrastructure named ORCIP (Optical Radio Convergence Infrastructure for Communications and Power Delivering) and included in the Portuguese Roadmap of Research Infrastructures, combines optical and radio communications to achieve the high throughput and coverage necessary [Orcip_2016]. It is a hybrid testbed that combines the realism of physical testing with the scalability and flexibility of simulations. The hybrid testbed will be a set of remote radio heads (RRHs) / sensors deployed within the University of Aveiro Campus and connected through optical fibre to a central location where, acquisition and processing is performed. Smart Open Campus will contribute in developing the communication part (transceivers) of sensing nodes to be integrated in ORCIP infrastructure. The data produced by the sensing nodes will be used at WP 4 (Data Processing) and also at WP 5 and WP 6. The use of the interfaces developed in this activity will allow the reconfiguration for scenarios including personal and future M2M communications using multiple protocol stacks. Various simulator types, providing a parallel and distributed multi-tool simulation framework will be developed and plugged in ORCIP infrastructure.
2017-10-16 Infrastructure optimization and network virtualization (M8-M27) Smart Open Campus will also contribute in developing management strategies for the physical radio and optical resources which will be validated in the communication infrastructure to be deployed. The aim is to provide flexible infrastructure that can be reconfigurable on the fly to provide an optimum usage of resources and the best quality and reliability for services running on top of it. To achieve that appropriate optimization algorithms will be developed to determine the best network topologies and virtualization strategies to maximize the spectrum and physical resource usages, minimize the access block and drop probabilities and provide maximum flexibility. This physical oriented resource management strategies will be critical to properly feed the overall infrastructure management performed inside Task 3.1.
2017-10-16 Wireless power transmission and electromagnetic energy harvesting (M3-M27) Any large scale effort to sense persons and their environment must necessarily address the power problem: how to deliver power to all sensor devices without unaffordable maintenance and energy costs. In other words, how to attain a sustainable, autonomous sensor network. The solution combines wireless power transmission and electromagnetic energy harvesting. The project proposes to bring new concepts of electromagnetic energy harvesting, re-utilizing the energy that is already broadcasted to the air, in this sense signals like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, ZigBee, GSM, 3G, 4G and in the future 5G could be harvested to power up those sensors. Other approaches will consider a new paradigm, where the wireless sensors will use a different structure for communications with improved and low power architectures like backscattering solutions been developed similar to what is already used in RFIDs but with a better energy/spectrum efficiency. The project will also discuss and implement solutions based on wireless power transmission, where the electromagnetic energy beam is clearly beamed to a sensor, allowing that way the powering up of the sensor remotely, which in certain situations and applications can be an optimum solution.