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Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have been widely utilized to identify hand gestures from surface electromyography (sEMG) signals. However, due to the nonstationary characteristics of sEMG, the classification accuracy usually degrades significantly in the daily living environment involving complex hand movements. To further improve the reliability of a classifier, unconfident classifications are expected to be identified and rejected. In this study, we propose a novel approach to estimate the probability of correctness for each classification. Specifically, a confidence estimation model is established to generate confidence scores (ConfScore) based on posterior probabilities of CNN, and an objective function is designed to train the parameters of this model. In addition, a comprehensive metric that combines the true acceptance rate (TAR) and the true rejection rate (TRR) is proposed to evaluate the rejection performance of ConfScore, so that the tradeoff between system security and control lag could be fully considered. The effectiveness of ConfScore is verified using data from public databases and our online platform. The experimental results illustrate that ConfScore can better reflect the correctness of CNN classifications than traditional confidence features, i.e., maximum posterior probability and entropy of the probability vector. Moreover, the rejection performance is observed to be less sensitive to variations in rejection thresholds.

In this paper, we present an overview of Nearest neighbour (NN) methods, which are frequently employed for solving classification problems using supervised learning. The article concisely introduces the theoretical background, algorithmic, and implementation aspects along with the key applications. From an application standpoint, this article explores the challenges related to the 5G and beyond wireless networks which can be solved using NN classification techniques.

Grasp classification using data gloves can enable therapists to monitor patients efficiently by providing concise information about the activities performed by these patients. Although, classical machine learning algorithms have been applied in grasp classification, they require manual feature extraction to achieve high accuracy. In contrast, convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have outperformed popular machine learning algorithms in several classification scenarios because of their ability to extract features automatically from raw data. However, they have not been implemented on grasp classification using a data glove. In this study, we apply a CNN in grasp classification using a piezoresistive textile data glove knitted from conductive yarn and an elastomeric yarn. The data glove was used to collect data from five participants who grasped thirty objects each following Schlesinger’s taxonomy. We investigate a CNN’s performance in two scenarios where the validation objects are known and unknown. Our results show that a simple CNN architecture outperformed k-nn, Gaussian SVM, and Decision Tree algorithms in both scenarios in terms of the classification accuracy.

Many machine-learning-enabled approaches towards anomaly detection depend on the availability of vast training data. Our data are formed from power readings of cycles from domestic appliances, such as dishwashers or washing machines, and contain no known examples of anomalous behaviour. Moreover, we are limited to the machine’s voltage, amperage, and current readings, drawn from a retrofitted power outlet in 60-s samples. No rich sensor data or previous insights are available as a training basis, limiting our ability to leverage the existing work. We design a system to monitor the behaviour of electrical appliances. This system requires special consideration as different power cycles from the same machine can exhibit different behaviours, and it accounts for this by clustering unseen cycle patterns into siloed training datasets and corresponding learned parameters. They are then passed in real-time to an autoencoder ensemble for reconstruction-based anomaly detection, using the error in reconstruction as a means to flag anomalous points in time. The system correctly identifies and trains appropriate cycle clusters of data streams on a real-world machine dataset injected with stochastic, proportionate anomalies.

The rising number of technological advanced devices making network coverage planning very challenging tasks for network operators. The transmission quality between the transmitter and the end users has to be optimum for the best performance out of any device. Besides, the presence of coverage hole is also an ongoing issue for operators which cannot be ignored throughout the whole operational stage. Any coverage hole in network operators' coverage region will hamper the communication applications and degrade the reputation of the operator's services. Presently, there are techniques to detect coverage holes such as drive test or minimization of drive test. However, these approaches have many limitations. The extreme costs, outdated information about the radio environment and high time consumption do not allow to meet the requirement competently. To overcome these problems, we take advantage of Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and Q-learning to autonomously detect coverage hole in a given area and then deploy UAV based base station (UAV-BS) by considering wireless back-haul with the core network and users demand. This machine learning mechanism will help the UAV to eliminate human-in-the-loop (HiTL) model. Later, we formulate an optimisation problem for 3D UAV-BS placement at various angular positions to maximise the number of users associated with the UAV-BS. In summary, we have illustrated a cost-effective as well as time saving approach of detecting coverage hole and providing on-demand coverage in this article.

Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) are envisioned to transform the propagation space into a smart radio environment (SRE) to realize the diverse applications of sixth-generation (6G) wireless communication. By smartly tuning the massive number of elements via controller, an RIS can passively phase-shift the electromagnetic (EM) waves to enhance the system performance. The absence of radio-frequency (RF) chains makes RIS an energy-efficient and cost-effective solution for future wireless networks. In this paper, we explore the state-of-the-art research on different aspects of RIS-assisted communication. Specifically, we first introduce the fundamentals of RIS, including the RIS's structure, operating principle, and deployment strategies. We then comprehensively discuss the emerging applications of RISs for 6G wireless networks. In addition, we elaborate on the crucial challenges for RIS-assisted networks, namely, RIS channel state information (CSI) acquisition and passive beamforming optimization. Furthermore, we present the recent research contributions leveraging the artificial intelligence (AI) based techniques for channel estimation, phase-shift optimization, and resource allocation in RIS-assisted networks. Finally, to provide effective guidance for future research, we highlight important research directions for realizing RIS-assisted network.

In this paper, we introduce a method to estimate the range of an intruder and track its trajectory by utilizing the received signal strength of the heat flux for pyroelectric infrared (PIR) sensors. To this end, we first develop a mathematical model of the received heat flux signal strength and the corresponding PIR signal for a moving intruder. The algorithm uses only two PIR sensors and the geometry of the field of views (FOVs) to perform the estimation and tracking process without any knowledge of the intruder's parameters. The tracking algorithm shows remarkable performance in estimating the intruder's parameters. The intruder heat flux was accurately estimated even at large separation distances as was the intruder path angle. Finally, the intruder's location was also very accurately estimated with sub-meter error for large separation distances.

This paper presents an analytical framework for performance characterization of a novel Stienen cell based user-centric architecture operating in millimeter wave spectrum. In the proposed architecture, at most one remote radio head (RRH) is activated within non overlapping user equipment (UE)-centric Stienen cells (S-cells) generated within the Voronoi region around each UE. Under the presented framework, we derive analytical models for the three key performance indicators (KPIs): i) SINR distribution (used as an indicator for quality of service (QoS)), ii) area spectral efficiency (ASE), and iii) energy efficiency (EE) as a function of the three major design parameters in the proposed architecture, namely UE service probability, S-cell radius coefficient and RRH deployment density. The analysis is validated through extensive Monte Carlo simulations. The simulation results provide practical design insights into the interplay among the three design parameters, tradeoffs among the three KPIs, sensitivity of each KPI to the design parameters as well as optimal range of the design parameters. Results show that compared to current non user-centric architectures, the proposed architecture not only offers significant SINR gains, but also the flexibility to meet diverse UE specific QoS requirements and trade between EE and ASE by dynamically orchestrating the design parameters.

This special issue (SI) aims to present recent advances in the design and analysis of communication interfaces for Industry 4.0. The Industry 4.0 paradigm aims to integrate advanced manufacturing techniques with Industrial Internet-of-Things (IIoT) to create an agile digital manufacturing ecosystem. The main goal is to instrument production processes by embedding sensors, actuators and other control devices which autonomously communicate with each other throughout the value-chain [1] .

The agriculture sector holds paramount importance in Pakistan due to the intrinsic agrarian nature of the economy. Pakistan has its GDP based on agriculture, however it relies on manual monitoring of crops, which is a labour intensive and ineffective method. In contrast to this, several cutting edge technology-based solutions are being employed in the developed countries to enhance the crop yield with the optimal use of resources. To this end, we have proposed an integrated approach for monitoring crop health using IoT, machine learning and drone technology. The integration of these sensing modalities generate heterogeneous data which not only varies in nature (i.e. observed parameter) but also has different temporal fidelity. The spatial resolution of these methods is also different, hence, the optimal integration of these sensing modalities and their implementation in practice are addressed in the proposed system. In our proposed solution, the IoT sensors provide the real-time status of environmental parameters impacting the crop, and the drone platform provide the multispectral data used for generating Vegetation Indices (VIs) such as Normalized Difference vegetation Index (NDVI) for analyzing the crop health. The NDVI provides information about the crop based on the chlorophyll content, which offers limited information regarding the crop health. In order to obtain a rich and detailed knowledge about crop health, the variable length time series data of IoT sensors and multispectral images were converted to a fixed-sized representation to generate crop health maps. A number of machine and deep learning algorithms were applied on the collected data wherein deep neural network with two hidden layers was found to be the most optimal model among all the selected models, providing an accuracy of (98.4%). Further, the health maps were validated through ground surveys and by agriculture experts due to the absence of reference data. The proposed research is basically an indigenous, technology based agriculture solution capable of providing important insights into the crop health by extracting complementary features from multi-modal data set, and minimizing the crop ground survey effort, particularly useful when the agriculture land is large in size.

Noise-like artifacts, which are caused by incomplete and randomly sampled data, spread over the whole ambiguity domain, and thus seriously obscure the true time-frequency signature of the data. In this paper, a new design for the signal-dependent adaptive kernel is proposed, which is robust with missing data. The method relies on the properties of chirps whose auto-terms only reside in a fixed half of the ambiguity domain. The important thing is that this half excludes the Doppler axis, where the chirps’ noise-like artifacts concentrate. By cutting out this region when performing the optimization problem, a better signal-dependent kernel for chirps is obtained, which efficiently suppresses not only the cross-terms but also the missing sample artifacts. Moreover, since any windowed non-stationary signals can be approximated as a sum of chirps, the proposed approach can be applied to other types of non-stationary signals. It is shown in the simulation that our method outperforms other reduced interference time-frequency distributions of incomplete observations.

In this research article, the design and fabrication of a miniaturized flexible rectifier at 24 GHz for wireless power transfer to wearables is presented. The proposed circuit consists of a shunt topology rectifier including a single stub impedance matching network. Conventional PCB fabrication technique is used for the prototyping of the proposed flexible rectifier. It has a total footprint of 5.29 cm2. The proposed rectifier exhibits a good trade-off between compactness and RF-to-DC conversion efficiency. The implementation on a very thin substrate (130 µm) makes it durable for wearables applications. Experimental results of the proposed rectifier show an output DC voltage of 2.0 V across an optimal load resistance of 250 Ω and measured RF-DC conversion efficiency of 23% for an input power of 17 dBm at 24 GHz.

Recently, convolutional neural network (CNN) has been widely investigated to decode human intentions using surface Electromyography (sEMG) signals. However, a pre-trained CNN model usually suffers from severe degradation when testing on a new individual, and this is mainly due to domain shift where characteristics of training and testing sEMG data differ substantially. To enhance inter-subject performances of CNN in the wrist kinematics estimation, we propose a novel regression scheme for supervised domain adaptation (SDA), based on which domain shift effects can be effectively reduced. Specifically, a two-stream CNN with shared weights is established to exploit source and target sEMG data simultaneously, such that domain-invariant features can be extracted. To tune CNN weights, both regression losses and a domain discrepancy loss are employed, where the former enable supervised learning and the latter minimizes distribution divergences between two domains. In this study, eight healthy subjects were recruited to perform wrist flexion-extension movements. Experiment results illustrated that the proposed regression SDA outperformed fine-tuning, a state-of-the-art transfer learning method, in both single-single and multiple-single scenarios of kinematics estimation. Unlike fine-tuning which suffers from catastrophic forgetting, regression SDA can maintain much better performances in original domains, which boosts the model reusability among multiple subjects.

Security is always an important issue in wireless communications. Physical layer encryption (PLE) is an effective way to enhance wireless communication security and prevent eavesdropping. Rather than replacing cryptography at higher layers, PLE's benefit is to enable using lightweight cryptosystems or provide enhanced security at the signal level. The upper cryptography is faced with a noise-free channel, and the processing object is bit data. In PLE, the effects of channel and noise can be exploited to enhance security and prevent deciphering. In addition, since the processing object is complex vector signals, there are more operational functions to select and design for PLE. The mathematical models, design frameworks, and cryptographic primitives of PLE are established. Two design frameworks are proposed: stream PLE and block PLE. For stream PLE, a new 3D security constellation mapping is derived. For block PLE, two types of sub-transforms are defined: isometry transformations and stochastic transformations. Furthermore, a practical system operation mode PLE-block chaining (PBC) is proposed to enhance the practical system security. The proposed PLE framework can resist known plaintext attacks and chosen-plaintext attacks. The simulation shows that the proposed isometry transformation method has good performances in terms of bit error ratio (BER) penalty and confusion degree.

Rehabilitation of stroke survivors can be expedited by employing an exoskeleton. The exercises are designed such that both hands move in synergy. In this regard, often, motion capture data from the healthy hand is used to derive control behavior for the exoskeleton. Therefore, data gloves can provide a low-cost solution for the motion capture of the joints in the hand. However, current data gloves are bulky, inaccurate, or inconsistent. These disadvantages are inherited because the conventional design of a glove involves an external attachment that degrades overtime and causes inaccuracies. This article presents a weft knit data glove whose sensors and support structure are manufactured in the same fabrication process, thus removing the need for an external attachment. The glove is made by knitting multifilament conductive yarn and an elastomeric yarn using WholeGarment technology. Furthermore, we present a detailed electromechanical model of the sensors alongside its experimental validation. In addition, the reliability of the glove is verified experimentally. Finally, machine learning algorithms are implemented for classifying the posture of hand on the basis of sensor data histograms.

In human-machine interfaces (HMI), deep learning (DL) techniques such as convolutional neural networks (CNN), long-short term memory networks (LSTM) and the hybrid CNN-LSTM framework have been exploited for hand kinematics estimation using surface electromyography (sEMG). However, these DL techniques only capture the relationship between sEMG and hand kinematics, but ignores the prior knowledge of the system. By contrast, Kalman filter (KF) can apply Kalman gain to combine the internal transition model and the observation model effectively. To this end, we propose a novel architecture named deep Kalman filter network (DKFN), in which we utilize CNN to extract high-level features from sEMG and employ a LSTM-based Kalman filter process (LSTM-KF) to conduct sequential regression. In particular, LSTM-KF adopts the computational graph of KF but estimates parameters of the transition/observation model and the Kalman gain from data using LSTM modules. With this process, the advantages of KF and LSTM can be exploited jointly. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed DKFN can outperform CNN and CNN-LSTM in the sequential regression for wrist/fingers kinematics estimation.

Indoor air quality typically encompasses the ambient conditions inside buildings and public facilities that may affect both the mental and respiratory health of an individual. Until the COVID-19 outbreak, indoor air quality monitoring was not a focus area for public facilities such as shopping complexes, hospitals, banks, restaurants, educational institutes, and so forth. However, the rapid spread of this virus and its consequent detrimental impacts have brought indoor air quality into the spotlight. In contrast to outdoor air, indoor air is recycled constantly causing it to trap and build up pollutants, which may facilitate the transmission of virus. There are several monitoring solutions which are available commercially, a typical system monitors the air quality using gas and particle sensors. These sensor readings are compared against well known thresholds, subsequently generating alarms when thresholds are violated. However, these systems do not predict the quality of air for future instances, which holds paramount importance for taking timely preemptive actions, especially for COVID-19 actual and potential patients as well as people suffering from acute pulmonary disorders and other health problems. In this regard, we have proposed an indoor air quality monitoring and prediction solution based on the latest Internet of Things (IoT) sensors and machine learning capabilities, providing a platform to measure numerous indoor contaminants. For this purpose, an IoT node consisting of several sensors for 8 pollutants including NH3, CO, NO2, CH4, CO2, PM 2.5 along with the ambient temperature &amp, air humidity is developed. For proof of concept and research purposes, the IoT node is deployed inside a research lab to acquire indoor air data. The proposed system has the capability of reporting the air conditions in real-time to a web portal and mobile app through GSM/WiFi technology and generates alerts after detecting anomalies in the air quality. In order to classify the indoor air quality, several machine learning algorithms have been applied to the recorded data, where the Neural Network (NN) model outperformed all others with an accuracy of 99.1%. For predicting the concentration of each air pollutant and thereafter predicting the overall quality of an indoor environment, Long and Short Term Memory (LSTM) model is applied. This model has shown promising results for predicting the air pollutants&rsquo, concentration as well as the overall air quality with an accuracy of 99.37%, precision of 99%, recall of 98%, and F1-score of 99%. The proposed solution offers several advantages including remote monitoring, ease of scalability, real-time status of ambient conditions, and portable hardware, and so forth.

Weft knitted conductive fabrics can act as excellent textile strain sensors for human motion capture. The loop architecture dictates the overall electrical properties of weft knit strain sensors. Therefore, research into loop architecture is relevant for comprehensively investigating the design space of e-textile sensors. There are three main types of knit stitches, Knitted loop stitch, Miss stitch, and Tuck stitch. Nevertheless, most of the research into weft knit strain sensors has largely focused on fabrics with only knitted loop stitches. Miss and tuck stitches will affect the contact points in the sensor and, consequently, its piezoresistivity. Therefore, this paper investigates the impact of incorporating miss and tuck stitches on the piezoresistivity of a weft knit sensor. Particularly, the electromechanical models of a miss stitch and a tuck stitch in a weft knit sensor are proposed. These models were used in order to develop loop configurations of sensors that consist of various percentages of miss or tuck stitches. Subsequently, the developed loop configurations were simulated while using LTspice and MATLAB software, and, verified experimentally through a tensile test. The experimental results closely agree with the simulated results. Furthermore, the results reveal that increases in the percentage of tuck or miss stitches in weft knit sensor decrease the initial and average resistance of the sensor. In addition, it was observed that, although the piezoresistivity of a sensor with tuck or miss stitches is best characterised as a quadratic polynomial, increases in the percentage of tuck stitches in the sensor increase the linearity of the sensor&rsquo, s piezoresistivity.

Software Defined Networking (SDN) provides us with the capability of collecting network traffic information and managing networks proactively. Therefore, SDN facilitates the promotion of more robust and secure networks. Recently, several Machine Learning (ML)/Deep Learning (DL) intrusion detection approaches have been proposed to secure SDN networks. Currently, most of the proposed ML/DL intrusion detection approaches are based on supervised learning approach that required labelled and well-balanced datasets for training. However, this is time intensive and require significant human expertise to curate these datasets. These approaches cannot deal well with imbalanced and unlabeled datasets. In this paper, we propose a hybrid unsupervised DL approach using the stack autoencoder and One-class Support Vector Machine (SAE-1SVM) for Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack detection. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can achieve an average accuracy of 99.35 % with a small set of flow features. The SAE-1SVM shows that it can reduce the processing time significantly while maintaining a high detection rate. In summary, the SAE-1SVM can work well with imbalanced and unlabeled datasets and yield a high detection accuracy.

Urban centers across the globe are under immense environmental distress due to an increase in air pollution, industrialization, and elevated living standards. The unmanageable and mushroom growth of industries and an exponential soar in population has made the ascent of air pollution intractable. To this end, the solutions that are based on the latest technologies, such as the Internet of things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are becoming increasingly popular and they have capabilities to monitor the extent and scale of air contaminants and would be subsequently useful for containing them. With centralized cloud-based IoT platforms, the ubiquitous and continuous monitoring of air quality and data processing can be facilitated for the identification of air pollution hot spots. However, owing to the inherent characteristics of cloud, such as large end-to-end delay and bandwidth constraint, handling the high velocity and large volume of data that are generated by distributed IoT sensors would not be feasible in the longer run. To address these issues, fog computing is a powerful paradigm, where the data are processed and filtered near the end of the IoT nodes and it is useful for improving the quality of service (QoS) of IoT network. To further improve the QoS, a conceptual model of distributed fog computing and a machine learning based data processing and analysis model is proposed for the optimal utilization of cloud resources. The proposed model provides a classification accuracy of 99% while using a Support Vector Machines (SVM) classifier. This model is also simulated in iFogSim toolkit. It affords many advantages, such as reduced load on the central server by locally processing the data and reporting the quality of air. Additionally, it would offer the scalability of the system by integrating more air quality monitoring nodes in the IoT network.

Software Defined Networking (SDN) is developing as a new solution for the development and innovation of the Internet. SDN is expected to be the ideal future for the Internet, since it can provide a controllable, dynamic, and cost-effective network. The emergence of SDN provides a unique opportunity to achieve network security in a more efficient and flexible manner. However, SDN also has original structural vulnerabilities, which are the centralized controller, the control-data interface and the control-application interface. These vulnerabilities can be exploited by intruders to conduct several types of attacks. In this paper, we propose a deep learning (DL) approach for a network intrusion detection system (DeepIDS) in the SDN architecture. Our models are trained and tested with the NSL-KDD dataset and achieved an accuracy of 80.7% and 90% for a Fully Connected Deep Neural Network (DNN) and a Gated Recurrent Neural Network (GRU-RNN), respectively. Through experiments, we confirm that the DL approach has the potential for flow-based anomaly detection in the SDN environment. We also evaluate the performance of our system in terms of throughput, latency, and resource utilization. Our test results show that DeepIDS does not affect the performance of the OpenFlow controller and so is a feasible approach.

With the rapid development of wireless communication technology and the emergence of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT)s applications, high-precision Indoor Positioning Services (IPS) are urgently required. While the Global Positioning System (GPS) has been a key technology for outdoor localization, its limitation for indoor environments is well known. UltraWideBand (UWB) can help provide a very accurate position or localization for indoor harsh propagation environments. This paper focuses on improving the accuracy of the UWB indoor localization system including the Line-of-Sight (LoS) and NonLine-of-Sight (NLoS) conditions by developing a Machine Learning (ML) algorithm. In this paper, a Naive Bayes (NB) ML algorithm is developed for UWB IPS. The performance of the developed algorithm is evaluated by Receiving Operating Curves (ROC)s. The results indicate that by employing the NB based ML algorithm significantly improves the localization accuracy of the UWB system for both the LoS and NLoS environment.

Multiple-input multiple-output orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (MIMO-OFDM) is a key technology component in the evolution towards cognitive radio (CR) in next-generation communication in which the accuracy of timing and frequency synchronization significantly impacts the overall system performance. In this paper, we propose a novel scheme leveraging extreme learning machine (ELM) to achieve high-precision synchronization. Specifically, exploiting the preamble signals with synchronization offsets, two ELMs are incorporated into a traditional MIMO-OFDM system to estimate both the residual symbol timing offset (RSTO) and the residual carrier frequency offset (RCFO). The simulation results show that the performance of the proposed ELM-based synchronization scheme is superior to the traditional method under both additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and frequency selective fading channels. Furthermore, comparing with the existing machine learning based techniques, the proposed method shows outstanding performance without the requirement of perfect channel state information (CSI) and prohibitive computational complexity. Finally, the proposed method is robust in terms of the choice of channel parameters (e.g., number of paths) and also in terms of "generalization ability" from a machine learning standpoint., Comment: 13 pages, 12 figures, has been accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Cognitive Communications and Networking

This paper presents the design and implementation of efficient & compact flexible rectennas (antenna + rectifier) for wireless power transfer to wearable IoT sensor nodes at 24 GHz. Two different rectifier configurations i.e. shunt and voltage doubler have been analyzed for performance comparison. Experimental results of complete rectenna have also been demonstrated for conformal surfaces. The proposed flexible rectifiers is fabricated through conventional PCB manufacturing method. Measured RF-DC conversion efficiency of 31% and DC voltage of up to 2.4 V is achieved for 20 dBm input power across an optimal load resistance of 300Ω at 24 GHz.

In this article, we develop a statistical framework to quantify the area spectral efficiency (ASE) and the energy efficiency (EE) performance of a user-centric cloud based radio access network (UC-RAN) downlink. We propose a user-centric remote radio head (RRH) clustering mechanism, which: 1) provides significant improvement in the received signal-to-interference-ratio through selection diversity; 2) enables efficient interference protection by inducing repulsion among scheduled user-centric RRH clusters; and 3) can self-organize the cluster radius to deal with spatio-temporal variations in user densities. It is shown that under the proposed user-centric clustering mechanism, the ASE (bits/s/Hz/m2) maximizes at an optimal cluster size. It is observed that this cluster size is sensitive to changes in both RRH and user densities and, hence, must be adapted with variations in these parameters. Next, we formulate the cost paid for the UC-RAN capacity gains in terms of power consumption, which is then translated into the EE (bits/s/Joule) of the UC-RAN. It is observed that the cluster radius which maximizes the EE of the UC-RAN is relatively larger as compared with that which yields maximum ASE. Consequently, we notice that the tradeoff between the ASE and the EE of UC-RAN manifests itself in terms of cluster radius selection. Such tradeoff can be exploited by leveraging a simple two player cooperative game. Numerical results show that the optimal cluster radius obtained from the Nash bargaining solution of the modeled bargaining problem may be adjusted through an exponential weightage parameter that offers a mechanism to utilize the inherent ASE-EE tradeoff in a UC-RAN. Furthermore, in comparison with existing state-of-the-art non user-centric network models, our proposed scheme, by virtue of selective RRH activation and non overlapping user-centric RRH clusters, offers higher and adjustable system ASE and EE, particularly in dense deployment scenarios.

The increased deployment of robots to automate repetitive, high precision, and difficult tasks is a key enabler for the Industry 4.0 paradigm. Robots and autonomous systems (RAS) provide significant productivity gains by allowing flexible production lines that can be dynamically reconfigured to manufacture highly customized products. However, such flexibility can only be harnessed when RAS are intelligent enough to adapt, communicate, and interact with one another and the operators, regardless of the operational environment.

The Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa government is about to pass a legislation (Police Bill 2016) to replace the colonial police law. Moreover, the provincial police administration has already taken certain measures to introduce modern information technology in the policing system. These measures were taken in the larger backdrop of provincial government’s interest in introducing egovernance in the province. In this article we discuss these measures with a focus on whether the police performance and human rights conditions have improved with them.

While stochastic geometric models based on Poisson point processes (PPPs) provide a tractable approach for the analysis of uniform two-tier network deployments, the performance evaluation of a non-uniform deployment remains an open issue, which we address in this paper. This is due to the fact that smaller cells can be more efficiently deployed in areas where the QoS of traditional macro base stations is poor. Therefore, in this paper, we introduce Stienen’s model, which allows us to analyse such non-uniform deployment. In contrast to traditional PPP-based analysis, performance characterization under the Stienen model is more challenging due to location and density dependencies. However, we demonstrate that the performance can be approximated in a tractable manner. The developed statistical framework is employed to characterize the gains in terms of energy efficiency (EE) for non-uniform deployments. Results show an achievable 19% to 124% improvement in the macrocell coverage as compared to a uniform deployment, while the femtocell coverage and system EE are of the same order of magnitude for both deployments. These results are complemented with the fact that OPEX and CAPEX are reduced due to a lesser number of FAPs deployed.

We investigate distributed combining techniques for distributed detection in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) over Rayleigh fading multiple access channel (MAC). The MAC also suffers from with path loss and additive noise. The WSN is modelled as a Poisson point process (PPP). Two distributed transmit combining techniques are proposed to mitigate fading; distributed equal gain transmit combining (ddEGTC) and distributed maximum ratio transmit combining (dMRTC). The performance of the previous methods is analysed using stochastic geometry tools, where the mean and variance of the detector’s test statistic are found thus enabling the fitting of the received signal distribution by a log-normal distribution. Surprisingly, simulation results show a that ddEGTC outperforms dMRTC.

In this paper we consider the problem in which a single antenna mobile robot (MR) is required to maintain reliable communication with a base station (BS) while following a given trajectory. The wireless communication channel is assumed to experience time-varying small-scale fading with time-varying coherence time. To achieve high reliability and low latency of the communication link, compensation for the small-scale fading is required. Since the MR has to stay on the predefined trajectory, we propose to compensate for the fading by continuously adjusting the position of the antenna on a revolving platform on-board the MR. This is done by a closed-loop antenna controller which optimises the position of the antenna at all times without modifying the trajectory to be followed by the MR. Results show that this technique can effectively compensate for the small-scale fading without introducing delays in data reception.

Internet of Things (IoT)-based automation of agricultural events can change the agriculture sector from being static and manual to dynamic and smart, leading to enhanced production with reduced human efforts. Precision Agriculture (PA) along withWireless Sensor Network (WSN) are the main drivers of automation in the agriculture domain. PA uses specific sensors and software to ensure that the crops receive exactly what they need to optimize productivity and sustainability. PA includes retrieving real data about the conditions of soil, crops and weather from the sensors deployed in the fields. High-resolution images of crops are obtained from satellite or air-borne platforms (manned or unmanned), which are further processed to extract information used to provide future decisions. In this paper, a review of near and remote sensor networks in the agriculture domain is presented along with several considerations and challenges. This survey includes wireless communication technologies, sensors, and wireless nodes used to assess the environmental behaviour, the platforms used to obtain spectral images of crops, the common vegetation indices used to analyse spectral images and applications of WSN in agriculture. As a proof of concept, we present a case study showing how WSN-based PA system can be implemented. We propose an IoT-based smart solution for crop health monitoring, which is comprised of two modules. The first module is a wireless sensor network-based system to monitor real-time crop health status. The second module uses a low altitude remote sensing platform to obtain multi-spectral imagery, which is further processed to classify healthy and unhealthy crops. We also highlight the results obtained using a case study and list the challenges and future directions based on our work.

In this article, we develop a comprehensive framework to characterize the performance of drone assisted Backscatter communication based Internet of things (IoT) sensor network. We consider a scenario such where drone transmits RF carrier which is modulated by IoT sensor node (SN) to transmit its data. The SN implements load modulation which results in amplitude shift keying (ASK) type modulation for the impinging RF carrier. In order to quantify the performance of the considered network, we characterize the coverage probability for the ground based SN node. The statistical framework developed to quantify the coverage probability explicitly accommodates dyadic backscatter channel which experiences deeper fades than that of the one-way Rayleigh channel. Our model also incorporates Line of Sight (LoS) and Non-LoS (NLoS) propagation states for accurately modeling large-scale path-loss between drone and SN. We consider spatially distributed SNs which can be modelled using spatial Binomial Point process (BPP). We practically implement the proposed system using Software Defined Radio (SDR) and a custom designed SN tag. The measurements of parameters such as noise figure, tag reflection coefficient etc., are used to parametrize the developed framework. Lastly, we demonstrate that there exists an optimal set of parameters which maximizes the coverage probability for the SN.