Open Access
Implementation of context aware e-health environments based on social sensor networks
(MDPI, 2016) Aguirre Gallego, Erik; Led Ramos, Santiago; López Iturri, Peio; Azpilicueta Fernández de las Heras, Leyre; Serrano Arriezu, Luis Javier; Falcone Lanas, Francisco; Ingeniería Eléctrica y Electrónica; Ingeniaritza Elektrikoa eta Elektronikoa; Gobierno de Navarra / Nafarroako Gobernua
In this work, context aware scenarios applied to e-Health and m-Health in the framework of typical households (urban and rural) by means of deploying Social Sensors will be described. Interaction with end-users and social/medical staff is achieved using a multi-signal input/output device, capable of sensing and transmitting environmental, biomedical or activity signals and information with the aid of a combined Bluetooth and Mobile system platform. The devices, which play the role of Social Sensors, are implemented and tested in order to guarantee adequate service levels in terms of multiple signal processing tasks as well as robustness in relation with the use wireless transceivers and channel variability. Initial tests within a Living Lab environment have been performed in order to validate overall system operation. The results obtained show good acceptance of the proposed system both by end users as well as by medical and social staff, increasing interaction, reducing overall response time and social inclusion levels, with a compact and moderate cost solution that can readily be largely deployed.
Open Access
Deterministic wireless channel characterization towards the integration of communication capabilities to enable context aware industrial internet of thing environments
(Springer, 2022) Picallo Guembe, Imanol; López Iturri, Peio; Celaya Echarri, Mikel; Azpilicueta Fernández de las Heras, Leyre; Falcone Lanas, Francisco; Ingeniaritza Elektrikoa, Elektronikoaren eta Telekomunikazio Ingeniaritzaren; Institute of Smart Cities - ISC; Ingeniería Eléctrica, Electrónica y de Comunicación
In order to provide interactive capabilities within the context of Internet of Thing (IoT) applications, wireless communication systems play a key role, owing to in-herent mobility, ubiquity and ease of deployment. However, to comply with Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of Experience (QoE) metrics, coverage/capacity analysis must be performed, to account for the impact of signal blockage as well as multiple interference sources. This analysis is especially complex in the case of indoor scenarios, such as those derived from Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). In this work, a fully volumetric approach based on hybrid deterministic 3D Ray Launching is employed providing precise wireless channel characterization and hence, system level analysis of indoor scenarios. Coverage/capacity, interference mapping and time domain characterization estimations will be derived, considering different frequencies of operation below 6 GHz. The proposed methodology will be tested against a real measurement scenario, providing full flexibility and scalability for adoption in a wide range of IIoT capable environments.
Open Access
From 2G to 5G spatial modeling of personal RF-EMF exposure within urban public trams
(IEEE, 2020) Celaya Echarri, Mikel; Azpilicueta Fernández de las Heras, Leyre; Karpowicz, Jolanta; López Iturri, Peio; Falcone Lanas, Francisco; Ingeniaritza Elektrikoa, Elektronikoaren eta Telekomunikazio Ingeniaritzaren; Institute of Smart Cities - ISC; Ingeniería Eléctrica, Electrónica y de Comunicación
The upcoming design and implementation of the new generation of 5G cellular systems, jointly with the multiple wireless communication systems that nowadays coexist within vehicular environments, leads to Heterogeneous Network challenging urban scenarios. In this framework, user's Radiofrequency Electromagnetic Fields (RF-EMF) radiation exposure assessment is pivotal, to verify compliance with current legislation thresholds. In this work, an in-depth study of the E-field characterization of the personal mobile communications within urban public trams is presented, considering different cellular technologies (from 2G to 5G). Specifically, frequency bands in the range of 5G NR frequency range 1 (FR1) and millimeter wave (mm-wave) bands within frequency range 2 (FR2) have been analyzed for 5G scenarios, considering their dispersive material properties. A simulation approach is presented to assess user mobile phone base station up-link radiation exposure, considering all the significant features of urban transportation trams in terms of structure morphology and topology or the materials employed. In addition, different user densities have been considered at different frequency bands, from 2G to 5G (FR1 and FR2), by means of an in-house developed deterministic 3D Ray-Launching (3D-RL) technique in order to provide clear insight spatial E-field distribution, including the impact in the use of directive antennas and beamforming techniques, within realistic operation conditions. Discussion in relation with current exposure limits have been presented, showing that for all cases, E-Field results are far below the maximum reference levels established by the ICNIRP guidelines. By means of a complete E-field campaign of measurements, performed with both, a personal exposimeter (PEM) and a spectrum analyzer within a real tram wagon car, the proposed methodology has been validated showing good agreement with the experimental measurements. In consequence, a simulation-based analysis methodology for dosimetry estimation is provided, aiding in the assessment of current and future cellular deployments in complex heterogeneous vehicular environments.
Open Access
Spatial characterization of personal RF-EMF exposure in public transportation buses
(IEEE, 2019) Celaya Echarri, Mikel; Azpilicueta Fernández de las Heras, Leyre; López Iturri, Peio; Aguirre Gallego, Erik; Miguel Bilbao, Silvia de; Ramos, Victoria; Falcone Lanas, Francisco; Ingeniería Eléctrica, Electrónica y de Comunicación; Institute of Smart Cities - ISC; Ingeniaritza Elektrikoa, Elektronikoaren eta Telekomunikazio Ingeniaritzaren
New services and applications within vehicular environments employ multiple wireless communication systems, within a Heterogeneous Network framework. In this context, evaluation of electromagnetic field impact is compulsory, in order to warrant compliance with current exposure limits. In this work, E-field strength distribution within urban transportation buses is studied, in which different types of buses as well as network configurations are considered. E-field estimations are obtained within the complete interior volume of the urban buses, considering all of the characteristics in terms of bus structure and materials employed, by means of an in-house developed deterministic 3D Ray-Launching (3D-RL) code. In this way, relevant phenomena in terms of electromagnetic propagation and interaction are considered, such as multipath propagation and shadowing, which determine exposure levels as a function of transceiver location within the bus scenarios. The behavior in terms of E-field distribution of wireless Public Land Mobile communication systems within transportation buses have been analyzed by means of measurement campaigns employing personal exposimeter devices. In addition, E-field volumetric distributions by means of 3D-RL simulations have been obtained as a function of user distribution within the buses, with the aim of analyzing the impact of user presence within complex intra-vehicular indoor scenarios such as urban transportation buses. A comparison with current exposure limits given by currently adopted standards is obtained, showing that E-field levels were below the aforementioned limits. The use of deterministic simulation techniques based on 3D-RL enables E-field exposure analysis in complex indoor scenarios, offering an optimized balance between accuracy and computational cost. These results and the proposed simulation methodology, can aid in an adequate assessment of human exposure to non-ionizing radiofrequency fields in public transportation buses, considering the impact of the morphology and the topology of vehicles, for current as well as for future wireless technologies and exposure limits.
Open Access
Design and empirical validation of a Bluetooth 5 fog computing based industrial CPS architecture for intelligent industry 4.0 shipyard workshops
(IEEE, 2020) Fraga Lamas, Paula; López Iturri, Peio; Celaya Echarri, Mikel; Blanco Novoa, Óscar; Azpilicueta Fernández de las Heras, Leyre; Varela Barbeito, José; Falcone Lanas, Francisco; Fernández Caramés, Tiago M.; Ingeniaritza Elektrikoa, Elektronikoaren eta Telekomunikazio Ingeniaritzaren; Institute of Smart Cities - ISC; Ingeniería Eléctrica, Electrónica y de Comunicación
Navantia, one of largest European shipbuilders, is creating a fog computing based Industrial Cyber-Physical System (ICPS) for monitoring in real-time its pipe workshops in order to track pipes and keep their traceability. The deployment of the ICPS is a unique industrial challenge in terms of communications, since in a pipe workshop there is a significant number of metallic objects with heterogeneous typologies. There are multiple technologies that can be used to track pipes, but this article focuses on Bluetooth 5, which is a relatively new technology that represents a cost-effective solution to cope with harsh environments, since it has been significantly enhanced in terms of low power consumption, range, speed and broadcasting capacity. Thus, it is proposed a Bluetooth 5 fog computing based ICPS architecture that is designed to support physically-distributed and low-latency Industry 4.0 applications that off-load network traffic and computational resources from the cloud. In order to validate the proposed ICPS design, one of the Navantia's pipe workshops was modeled through an in-house developed 3D-ray launching radio planning simulator that allows for estimating the coverage provided by the deployed Bluetooth 5 fog computing nodes and Bluetooth 5 tags. The experiments described in this article show that the radio propagation results obtained by the simulation tool are really close to the ones obtained through empirical measurements. As a consequence, the simulation tool is able to reduce ICPS design and deployment time and provide guidelines to future developers when deploying Bluetooth 5 fog computing nodes and tags in complex industrial scenarios.
Open Access
Design, implementation, and empirical validation of an IoT smart irrigation system for fog computing applications based on Lora and Lorawan sensor nodes
(MDPI, 2020) Froiz Míguez, Iván; López Iturri, Peio; Fraga Lamas, Paula; Celaya Echarri, Mikel; Blanco Novoa, Óscar; Azpilicueta Fernández de las Heras, Leyre; Falcone Lanas, Francisco; Fernández Caramés, Tiago M.; Ingeniaritza Elektrikoa, Elektronikoaren eta Telekomunikazio Ingeniaritzaren; Institute of Smart Cities - ISC; Ingeniería Eléctrica, Electrónica y de Comunicación
Climate change is driving new solutions to manage water more efficiently. Such solutions involve the development of smart irrigation systems where Internet of Things (IoT) nodes are deployed throughout large areas. In addition, in the mentioned areas, wireless communications can be difficult due to the presence of obstacles and metallic objects that block electromagnetic wave propagation totally or partially. This article details the development of a smart irrigation system able to cover large urban areas thanks to the use of Low-Power Wide-Area Network (LPWAN) sensor nodes based on LoRa and LoRaWAN. IoT nodes collect soil temperature/moisture and air temperature data, and control water supply autonomously, either by making use of fog computing gateways or by relying on remote commands sent from a cloud. Since the selection of IoT node and gateway locations is essential to have good connectivity and to reduce energy consumption, this article uses an in-house 3D-ray launching radio-planning tool to determine the best locations in real scenarios. Specifically, this paper provides details on the modeling of a university campus, which includes elements like buildings, roads, green areas, or vehicles. In such a scenario, simulations and empirical measurements were performed for two different testbeds: a LoRaWAN testbed that operates at 868 MHz and a testbed based on LoRa with 433 MHz transceivers. All the measurements agree with the simulation results, showing the impact of shadowing effects and material features (e.g., permittivity, conductivity) in the electromagnetic propagation of near-ground and underground LoRaWAN communications. Higher RF power levels are observed for 433 MHz due to the higher transmitted power level and the lower radio propagation losses, and even in the worst gateway location, the received power level is higher than the sensitivity threshold (–148 dBm). Regarding water consumption, the provided estimations indicate that the proposed smart irrigation system is able to reduce roughly 23% of the amount of used water just by considering weather forecasts. The obtained results provide useful guidelines for future smart irrigation developers and show the radio planning tool accuracy, which allows for optimizing the sensor network topology and the overall performance of the network in terms of coverage, cost, and energy consumption.
Open Access
Performance analysis of ZigBee wireless networks for AAL through hybrid ray launching and collaborative filtering
(Hindawi, 2016) López Iturri, Peio; Casino, Fran; Aguirre Gallego, Erik; Azpilicueta Fernández de las Heras, Leyre; Falcone Lanas, Francisco; Solanas, Agustí; Ingeniaritza Elektrikoa eta Elektronikoa; Institute of Smart Cities - ISC; Ingeniería Eléctrica y Electrónica
This paper presents a novel hybrid simulation method based on the combination of an in-house developed 3D ray launching algorithm and a collaborative filtering (CF) technique, which will be used to analyze the performance of ZigBee-based wireless sensor networks (WSNs) to enable ambient assisted living (AAL). The combination of Low Definition results obtained by means of a deterministic ray launching method and the application of a CF technique leads to a drastic reduction of the time and computational cost required to obtain accurate simulation results. The paper also reports that this kind of AAL indoor complex scenario withmultiple wireless devices needs a thorough and personalized radioplanning analysis as radiopropagation has a strong dependence on the network topology and the specific morphology of the scenario. The wireless channel analysis performed by our hybrid method provides valuable insight into network design phases of complex wireless systems, typical in AAL-oriented environments.Thus, it results in optimizing network deployment, reducing overall interference levels, and increasing the overall system performance in terms of cost reduction, transmission rates, and energy efficiency.
Open Access
Estimation of radiofrequency power leakage from microwave ovens for dosimetric assessment at nonionizing radiation exposure levels
(Hindawi, 2015) López Iturri, Peio; Miguel Bilbao, Silvia de; Aguirre Gallego, Erik; Azpilicueta Fernández de las Heras, Leyre; Falcone Lanas, Francisco; Ramos González, Victoria; Ingeniería Eléctrica y Electrónica; Ingeniaritza Elektrikoa eta Elektronikoa
The electromagnetic field leakage levels of nonionizing radiation from a microwave oven have been estimated within a complex indoor scenario. By employing a hybrid simulation technique, based on coupling full wave simulation with an in-house developed deterministic 3D ray launching code, estimations of the observed electric field values can be obtained for the complete indoor scenario. The microwave oven can be modeled as a time- and frequency-dependent radiating source, in which leakage, basically from the microwave oven door, is propagated along the complete indoor scenario interacting with all of the elements present in it. Thismethod can be of aid in order to assess the impact of such devices on expected exposure levels, allowing adequate minimization strategies such as optimal location to be applied.
Open Access
Analysis of low power wide area network wireless technologies in smart agriculture for large-scale farm monitoring and tractor communications
(Elsevier, 2022) Klaina, Hicham; Picallo Guembe, Imanol; López Iturri, Peio; Campo-Bescós, Miguel; Azpilicueta Fernández de las Heras, Leyre; Aghzout, Otman; Falcone Lanas, Francisco; Ingeniaritza Elektrikoa, Elektronikoaren eta Telekomunikazio Ingeniaritzaren; Institute of Smart Cities - ISC; Ingeniería Eléctrica, Electrónica y de Comunicación
In this paper, the assessment of multiple scenario cases for large-scale farm monitoring using Low-Power Wide-Area Network (LPWAN) based near-ground sensor nodes with the interaction of both tractors and farmers are presented. The proposed scenario under analysis considers multiple communication links, namely nodes to infrastructure, nodes to tractor, nodes to farmer, tractor to infrastructure and farmer to infrastructure communications. Moreover, these scenarios are proposed for tractors and agricultural equipment performance improvement and tracking, as well as resources management within the farm field. Different link type configurations are tested in order to consider the impact of ground, spatial distribution as well as infrastructure elements. The results show that LPWAN-based WSNs can provide better performance in terms of coverage and radio link quality results than ZigBee for a non-flat large-scale farm field in both cases of near-ground fixed nodes and moving tractor and farmer. The proposed systems are validated by cloud-based platforms for LoRaWAN, Sigfox and NB-IoT communications, providing flexible and scalable solutions to enable interactive farming applications.
Open Access
Implementation and analysis of a wireless sensor network-based pet location monitoring system for domestic scenarios
(MDPI, 2016) Aguirre Gallego, Erik; López Iturri, Peio; Azpilicueta Fernández de las Heras, Leyre; Astrain Escola, José Javier; Villadangos Alonso, Jesús; Santesteban Martínez de Morentin, Daniel; Falcone Lanas, Francisco; Ingeniaritza Elektrikoa eta Elektronikoa; Institute for Advanced Materials and Mathematics - INAMAT2; Ingeniería Eléctrica y Electrónica
The flexibility of new age wireless networks and the variety of sensors to measure a high number of variables, lead to new scenarios where anything can be monitored by small electronic devices, thereby implementing Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN). Thanks to ZigBee, RFID or WiFi networks the precise location of humans or animals as well as some biological parameters can be known in real-time. However, since wireless sensors must be attached to biological tissues and they are highly dispersive, propagation of electromagnetic waves must be studied to deploy an efficient and well-working network. The main goal of this work is to study the influence of wireless channel limitations in the operation of a specific pet monitoring system, validated at physical channel as well as at functional level. In this sense, radio wave propagation produced by ZigBee devices operating at the ISM 2.4 GHz band is studied through an in-house developed 3D Ray Launching simulation tool, in order to analyze coverage/capacity relations for the optimal system selection as well as deployment strategy in terms of number of transceivers and location. Furthermore, a simplified dog model is developed for simulation code, considering not only its morphology but also its dielectric properties. Relevant wireless channel information such as power distribution, power delay profile and delay spread graphs are obtained providing an extensive wireless channel analysis. A functional dog monitoring system is presented, operating over the implemented ZigBee network and providing real time information to Android based devices. The proposed system can be scaled in order to consider different types of domestic pets as well as new user based functionalities.