The recent spate of natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods destroyed buildings and caused loss of lives. Many times, the loss of life is attributed to slow response and not being able to reach the survivors. In such scenarios, the staggering number of deaths in the aftermath of a disaster can be reduced if information about survivors under debris is available to first responders and rescue workers. Large-scale destruction of roads and other communication infrastructure makes it hard to deploy advanced technologies for life detection. We explore the possibility of using low-cost, low-power, short-range communication technologies to assist rescue personnel in locating life under debris. We have designed and prototyped a thermopile-based sensor and communication device that provides information about the presence of survivors. The system weighs under 20 gm and costs US $30 per unit. The device can easily be fitted on battery-powered toy bugs and robots that can autonomously maneuver under the debris. We have proposed three simple algorithms, which together detect humans with 100% to 88% accuracy for 0.5 to 4.5 m range with fewer false alarms. Our evaluation shows that the detection is robust enough under several harsh ambient conditions, temperature ranges as well and partial exposure of the human body.@en

Tactile Internet based Cyber-Physical Systems (TCPS) are highly sensitive to component and communication la- tencies and packet drops. Building a high performing TCPS, thus, necessitates experimenting with different hardware, algorithms, access technologies, and communication protocols. To facilitate such experiments, we have developed TCPSbed, a modular testbed for TCPS. TCPSbed facilitates the integration of different components, both real and simulated, to realize different TCPS applications and evaluate their latency and control performances. TCPSbed’s latency analyzer tool employs a novel method to isolate latencies of individual TCPS components such as the latencies contributed by actuation, sensing, algorithms, and by the network, all in an online fashion. TCPSbed’s method of analyzing stability is also novel. It involves the use of the step response analysis method, a classic control-theoretic method used for analyzing the stability of generic control systems. TCPSbed’s support for edge intelligence modules enables prediction of command and feedback signals at the network’s edge allowing TCPS applications to perform well in adverse network conditions. TCPSbed’s source-code, made available through our GitHub page TactileInternet, allows developers to extend its features and functionalities further. In this paper, we describe the architecture and implementation details of TCPSbed and demonstrate its features through several proof-of-concept experiments.@en

With the advent of Space-IoTs, the rate of launch of satellites has grown significantly. Alongside, the failure rate of satellites has also surged increased tremendously. Satellites are non-repairable systems in orbit, and the financial loss incurred when the satellites fail before their expected mission time is substantial. If the source of a failure is known while the satellite is in orbit, then there is a possibility to revive it by sending appropriate commands from ground stations. In this work, we present a simple, independent satellite health monitoring system called Chirper. The Chirper is equipped with multiple modules such as IMU, isolated voltage and current measurement probes, and an onboard communication channel. We present a new approach to measure low DC voltages in an isolated way, providing a resolution and accuracy of around 1 V. We evaluated the design and performance of the Chirper through simulation, testing it in space systems test facility, and by mounting it on a helium balloon. With extensive experiments we show that 90% of the time the dc voltage measurement error is within 0.8 V, and the maximum error is 0.9 V. We expect to launch the Chirper soon on a space system.

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Global Positioning System is a widely adopted localization technique. With the increasing demand for small satellites, the need for a low-power GPS for satellites is also increasing. To enable many state-of-the-art applications, the exact position of the satellites is necessary. However, building low-power GPS receivers which operate in low earth orbit pose significant challenges. This is mainly due to the high speed (∼7.8 km/s) of small satellites. While duty-cycling the receiver is a possible solution, the high relative Doppler shift between the GPS satellites and the small satellite contributes to the increase in Time To First Fix (TTFF), thus increasing the energy consumption. Further, if the GPS receiver is tumbling along with the small satellite on which it is mounted, longer TTFF may lead to no GPS fix due to disorientation of the receiver antenna. In this paper, we elucidate the design of a low-cost, low-power GPS receiver for small satellite applications. We also propose an energy optimization algorithm called F³to improve the TTFF which is the main contributor to the energy consumption during cold start. With simulations and in-orbit evaluation from a launched nanosatellite with our μGPS and high-end GPS simulators, we show that up to 96.16% of energy savings (consuming only ∼ 1/25th energy compared to the state of the art) can be achieved using our algorithm without compromising much (∼10 m) on the navigation accuracy. The TTFF achieved is at most 33 s.

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“Tactile internet” refers to a network that can support real-time interactions between human operators and remote cyber-physical systems as if they were near to each other. For this, the network should support ultra-low latency communication, often referred to as the 1ms challenge. However, we observe that network requirements, such as latency and band- width, of tactile internet based cyber-physical systems or Tactile Cyber-Physical Systems (TCPS) are not static: they severely fluctuate over time. Therefore, for TCPS, static provisioning of network resources is sub-optimal. For optimal utilization of network resources, we propose a mechanism to, per TCPS flow, dynamically create, destroy and switch network slices, based on the network resources needed at that time. Our solution consists of two main components. First, we develop a clustering algorithm to determine the slices and their specifications required to support a TCPS flow. Second, we leverage Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and P4-programmable switches to enable on- the-fly provisioning and switching of these slices.@en

High accuracy and device-free indoor localization is still a holy grail to enable smart environments. With the growing privacy concerns and regulations, it is necessary to develop methods and systems that can be low-power, device-free as well as privacy-aware. While IR-based solutions fit the bill, they require many modules to be installed in the area of interest for higher accuracy, or proper planning during installation, or they may not work if the background has multiple heat-emitting objects, etc. In this paper, we propose a custom-built miniature device called LOCI that uses IR sensing. One unit of LOCI can provide three-dimensional localization at best. LOCI uses only a thermopile and a PIR sensor built within a 5x5x2 cm³ module. Since IR-based sensing is used, LOCI consumes around 80 mW. LOCI uses analog waveform from the PIR sensor with the gain of the PIR sensor dynamically controlled through software in real-time to simulate spatial diversity. LOCI proposes low-complexity techniques with sensor fusion to eliminate the noise in the background, which has not been handled in previous works even with sophisticated signal processing techniques. Since LOCI uses raw data from the thermopile, the computations are power-efficient. We present the complete design of LOCI and the proposed methodology to estimate height and location. LOCI achieves accuracies of sub-22 cm with a confidence of 0.5 and sub-35 cm with a confidence of 0.8. The best-case location accuracy is 12.5 cm. The accuracy of height estimation is within 8 cm in majority cases. LOCI can easily be extended to recognize activities.

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In this paper, we consider Tactile Cyber Physical Systems (TCPS), which differ from typical CPS in that haptic sensory feedback is included. In particular, we design and implement a TCPS testbed, called TCPSbed, using well-defined components and interfaces glued together using APIs. In addition to real connections, our testbed supports the interconnection of components over an NS3-emulated network. The testbed also supports the integration of applications that mimic the behaviour of real-world embedded objects. Since controlling latency and ensuring stability is crucial for TCPS applications, the testbed includes tools for fine-grained characterization of latency and control performance. Finally, through proof-of-concept experiments with our testbed, we demonstrate TCPSbed's capabilities to facilitate TCPS research and development.

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Electronic Freight Security (EFS) systems are being increasingly deployed to reliably monitor the cargo in real-time and prevent theft in air cargo. As the existing technologies fall short in achieving these goals due to cost of deployment and/or higher latencies, we propose to exploit the existing infrastructure of power lines when the aircraft is on the tarmac. We propose an architecture that extends power line communications with Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) devices that are embedded on the cargo. We show that BLE mesh can extend the range by interfacing with PLC modems to achieve an IoT solution for continuous monitoring and tracking. In order to evaluate this, we also propose a novel software-defined radio based testbed that can be used to evaluate various scenarios. The novelty of our testbed includes BLE mesh network that supports high reliability and low latency communication and support for emulation of electrical loads to inject impulse noise into the powerline network. We then measure end-to-end latencies and packet delivery ratios in realistic settings for the smart cargo monitoring solution. Our results indicate that our hybrid network offers a worst case latency of 24.85ms for a 570 m distance between warehouse and cargo monitoring station.

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The constructive interference (CI) phenomenon has been exploited by a number of protocols for providing energy-efficient, low-latency, and reliable data collection and dissemination services in wireless sensor networks. These protocols consider CI to provide highly reliable packet delivery. This has attracted attention to understand the working of CI; however, the existing works present inconsistent views. Furthermore, these works do not study in the real-world settings where the physical conditions of deployment and unreliable wireless channels also impact the performance of CI. Therefore, we study the phenomenon of CI, considering a receiver's viewpoint and analyze the parameters that affect CI. We validate our arguments with results from extensive and rigorous experimentation in real-world settings. This paper presents comprehensive insights into the CI phenomenon. With the understanding, we develop the destructive interference-based power adaptation (DIPA), an energy-efficient and distributed algorithm, that adapts transmission power to improve the performance of CI. Since CI-based protocols cannot have an explicit acknowledgment packet, we make use of destructive interference on a designated byte to provide a feedback. We leverage this feedback to adapt transmission powers. We compared CI with and without DIPA in two real-life testbeds. On one testbed, we achieve around 25% lower packet losses while using only half of its transmission power for 64-B packets. On the other testbed, we achieve 25% lower packet losses while consuming only 47% of its transmission power for 128-B packets. Existing CI-based protocols can easily incorporate DIPA into them to achieve lower packet losses and higher energy efficiencies.

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