Open Access
Design and experimental validation of a LoRaWAN fog computing based architecture for IoT enabled smart campus applications
(MDPI, 2019) Fraga Lamas, Paula; Celaya Echarri, Mikel; López Iturri, Peio; Castedo, Luis; Azpilicueta Fernández de las Heras, Leyre; Aguirre Gallego, Erik; Suárez Albela, Manuel; Falcone Lanas, Francisco; Fernández Caramés, Tiago M.; Ingeniaritza Elektrikoa, Elektronikoaren eta Telekomunikazio Ingeniaritzaren; Institute of Smart Cities - ISC; Ingeniería Eléctrica, Electrónica y de Comunicación
A smart campus is an intelligent infrastructure where smart sensors and actuators collaborate to collect information and interact with the machines, tools, and users of a university campus. As in a smart city, a smart campus represents a challenging scenario for Internet of Things (IoT) networks, especially in terms of cost, coverage, availability, latency, power consumption, and scalability. The technologies employed so far to cope with such a scenario are not yet able to manage simultaneously all the previously mentioned demanding requirements. Nevertheless, recent paradigms such as fog computing, which extends cloud computing to the edge of a network, make possible low-latency and location-aware IoT applications. Moreover, technologies such as Low-Power Wide-Area Networks (LPWANs) have emerged as a promising solution to provide low-cost and low-power consumption connectivity to nodes spread throughout a wide area. Specifically, the Long-Range Wide-Area Network (LoRaWAN) standard is one of the most recent developments, receiving attention both from industry and academia. In this article, the use of a LoRaWAN fog computing-based architecture is proposed for providing connectivity to IoT nodes deployed in a campus of the University of A Coruña (UDC), Spain. To validate the proposed system, the smart campus has been recreated realistically through an in-house developed 3D Ray-Launching radio-planning simulator that is able to take into consideration even small details, such as traffic lights, vehicles, people, buildings, urban furniture, or vegetation. The developed tool can provide accurate radio propagation estimations within the smart campus scenario in terms of coverage, capacity, and energy efficiency of the network. The results obtained with the planning simulator can then be compared with empirical measurements to assess the operating conditions and the system accuracy. Specifically, this article presents experiments that show the accurate results obtained by the planning simulator in the largest scenario ever built for it (a campus that covers an area of 26,000 m2), which are corroborated with empirical measurements. Then, how the tool can be used to design the deployment of LoRaWAN infrastructure for three smart campus outdoor applications is explained: a mobility pattern detection system, a smart irrigation solution, and a smart traffic-monitoring deployment. Consequently, the presented results provide guidelines to smart campus designers and developers, and for easing LoRaWAN network deployment and research in other smart campuses and large environments such as smart cities.
Open Access
Building decentralized fog computing-based smart parking systems: from deterministic propagation modeling to practical deployment
(IEEE, 2020) Celaya Echarri, Mikel; Froiz Míguez, Iván; Azpilicueta Fernández de las Heras, Leyre; López Iturri, Peio; Falcone Lanas, Francisco; Ingeniaritza Elektrikoa, Elektronikoaren eta Telekomunikazio Ingeniaritzaren; Institute of Smart Cities - ISC; Ingeniería Eléctrica, Electrónica y de Comunicación
The traditional process of finding a vacant parking slot is often inefficient: it increases driving time, traffic congestion, fuel consumption and exhaust emissions. To address such problems, smart parking systems have been proposed to help drivers to find available parking slots faster using latest sensing and communications technologies. However, the deployment of the communications infrastructure of a smart parking is not straightforward due to multiple factors that may affect wireless propagation. Moreover, a smart parking system needs to provide not only accurate information on available spots, but also fast responses while guaranteeing the system availability even in the case of lacking connectivity. This article describes the development of a decentralized low-latency smart parking system: from its conception, design and theoretical simulation, to its empirical validation. Thus, this work first characterizes a real-world scenario and proposes a fog computing and Internet of Things (IoT) based communications architecture to provide smart parking services. Next, a thorough analysis on the wireless channel properties is carried out by means of an in-house developed deterministic 3D-Ray Launching (3D-RL) tool. The obtained results are validated through a real-world measurement campaign and then the communications architecture is implemented by using ZigBee sensor nodes. The implemented architecture also makes use of Bluetooth Low Energy beacons, an Android app, a decentralized database and fog computing gateways, whose performance is evaluated in terms of response latency and processing rate. Results show that the proposed system is able to deliver information to the drivers fast, with no need for relying on remote servers. As a consequence, the presented development methodology and communications evaluation tool can be useful for future smart parking developers, which can determine the optimal locations of the wireless transceivers during the simulation stage and then deploy a system that can provide fast responses and decentralized services.

López Iturri, Peio

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