Dual-Beam Steerable TMAs Combining AM and PM Switched Time-Modulation.

Wireless sensor networks (WSN) are increasingly requiring directional antennas that not only provide higher capacity, security, transmission range or robustness against interference, but also contribute with smart antenna capabilities such as adaptive beamforming or multi beam radiation patterns. Standard phased arrays provide these features, but employing feeding networks based on digitally controlled variable phase shifters (VPSs) which have the disadvantage of high cost and limited angular resolution. Instead, time-modulated arrays (TMAs) use switched feeding networks governed by digital periodic sequences which allow harmonic patterns to be radiated and endows (TMAs) with attractive multifunctional capabilities. In this paper, we analyze and properly combine (TMA) switched feeding networks capable of time-modulating an antenna array with discretized amplitude modulation (AM) and phase modulation (PM) waveforms. The advantages of the proposed innovative dual-beam (TMA) with respect to the competing architectures are, on the one hand, its power efficiency and beamsteering (BS) phase sensitivity and, on the other, its hardware simplicity, which allows for an excellent relative cost advantage.

Coded Aperture Hyperspectral Image Reconstruction.

In this work, we study and analyze the reconstruction of hyperspectral images that are sampled with a CASSI device. The sensing procedure was modeled with the help of the CS theory, which enabled efficient mechanisms for the reconstruction of the hyperspectral images from their compressive measurements. In particular, we considered and compared four different type of estimation algorithms: OMP, GPSR, LASSO, and IST. Furthermore, the large dimensions of hyperspectral images required the implementation of a practical block CASSI model to reconstruct the images with an acceptable delay and affordable computational cost. In order to consider the particularities of the block model and the dispersive effects in the CASSI-like sensing procedure, the problem was reformulated, as well as the construction of the variables involved. For this practical CASSI setup, we evaluated the performance of the overall system by considering the aforementioned algorithms and the different factors that impacted the reconstruction procedure. Finally, the obtained results were analyzed and discussed from a practical perspective.

JSCC-Cast: A Joint Source Channel Coding Video Encoding and Transmission System with Limited Digital Metadata.

This work considers the design and practical implementation of JSCC-Cast, a comprehensive analog video encoding and transmission system requiring a reduced amount of digital metadata. Suitable applications for JSCC-Cast are multicast transmissions over time-varying channels and Internet of Things wireless connectivity of end devices having severe constraints on their computational capabilities. The proposed system exhibits a similar image quality compared to existing analog and hybrid encoding alternatives such as Softcast. Its design is based on the use of linear transforms that exploit the spatial and temporal redundancy and the analog encoding of the transformed coefficients with different protection levels depending on their relevance. JSCC-Cast is compared to Softcast, which is considered the benchmark for analog and hybrid video coding, and with an all-digital H.265-based encoder. The results show that, depending on the scenario and considering image quality metrics such as the structural similarity index measure, the peak signal-to-noise ratio, and the perceived quality of the video, JSCC-Cast exhibits a performance close to that of Softcast but with less metadata and not requiring a feedback channel in order to track channel variations. Moreover, in some circumstances, the JSCC-Cast obtains a perceived quality for the frames comparable to those displayed by the digital one.

First report in pre-Columbian mummies from Bolivia of Enterobius vermicularis infection and capillariid eggs: A contribution to Paleoparasitology studies.

OBJECTIVE: This study was designed to search for ancient parasites in abdominal content and coprolites from Bolivian mummies. MATERIALS: Twelve mummified individuals from the Andean highlands, housed at the National Museum of Archaeology (MUNARQ) in La Paz, Bolivia. METHODS: Microscopic analysis of rehydrated samples (coprolites and abdominal content), following Lutz's spontaneous sedimentation technique. RESULTS: Eggs of Enterobius vermicularis were identified in coprolites from one mummy, and capillariid eggs in the organic abdominal content from another individual. CONCLUSIONS: This is the first evidence of ancient intestinal parasites in Bolivian mummies. SIGNIFICANCE: This pioneering study focused on the search of ancient intestinal parasites in human remains of the Bolivian Andes and contributes to greater knowledge of paleoparasitology in South America. LIMITATIONS: All mummies in the MUNARQ belonged to the Andean Bolivian highlands (post-Tiwanaku era or Late Intermediate Period), although the exact provenance of the material and the associated contexts are not well recorded. SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH: Considering the great number of well-known archaeological sites and other unexplored sites in Bolivia, in addition to large collections in museums, further paleopathological and paleoparasitological molecular studies in mummies and skeletons are called for.

FDD Channel Estimation via Covariance Estimation in Wideband Massive MIMO Systems.

A method for channel estimation in wideband massive MIMO systems using hybrid digital analog architectures is developed. The proposed method is useful for FDD at either sub-6 GHz or mmWave frequency bands and takes into account the beam squint effect caused by the large bandwidth of the signals. To circumvent the estimation of large channel vectors, the posed algorithm relies on the slow time variation of the channel spatial covariance matrix, thus allowing for the utilization of very short training sequences. This is possibledue to the exploitation of the channel structure. After identifying the channel covariance matrix, the channel is estimated on the basis of the recovered information. To that end, we propose a novel method that relies on estimating the tap delays and the gains as sociated with each path. As a consequence, the proposed channel estimator achieves low computational complexity and significantly reduces the training overhead. Moreover, our numerical simulations show better performance results compared to the minimum mean-squared error solution.

Transmission of Still Images Using Low-Complexity Analog Joint Source-Channel Coding.

An analog joint source-channel coding (JSCC) system designed for the transmission of still images is proposed and its performance is compared to that of two digital alternatives which differ in the source encoding operation: Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) and JPEG without entropy coding (JPEGw/oEC), respectively, both relying on an optimized channel encoder-modulator tandem. Apart from a visual comparison, the figures of merit considered in the assessment are the structural similarity (SSIM) index and the time required to transmit an image through additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and Rayleigh channels. This work shows that the proposed analog system exhibits a performance similar to that of the digital scheme based on JPEG compression with a noticeable better visual degradation to the human eye, a lower computational complexity, and a negligible delay. These results confirm the suitability of analog JSCC for the transmission of still images in scenarios with severe constraints on power consumption, computational capabilities, and for real-time applications. For these reasons the proposed system is a good candidate for surveillance systems, low-constrained devices, Internet of things (IoT) applications, etc.

Design and Experimental Validation of a LoRaWAN Fog Computing Based Architecture for IoT Enabled Smart Campus Applications.

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 m 2 ), 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.

Clock Frequency Impact on the Performance of High-Security Cryptographic Cipher Suites for Energy-Efficient Resource-Constrained IoT Devices.

Modern Internet of Things (IoT) systems have to be able to provide high-security levels, but it is difficult to accommodate computationally-intensive cryptographic algorithms on the resource-constrained hardware used to deploy IoT end nodes. Although this scenario brings the opportunity for using advanced security mechanisms such as Transport Layer Security (TLS), several configuration factors impact both the performance and the energy consumption of IoT systems. In this study, two of the most used TLS authentication algorithms (ECDSA and RSA) were compared when executed on a resource-constrained IoT node based on the ESP32 System-on-Chip (SoC), which was tested at different clock frequencies (80, 160 and 240 MHz) when providing different security levels (from 80 to 192 bits). With every tested configuration, energy consumption and average time per transaction were measured. The results show that ECDSA outperforms RSA in all performed tests and that certain software implementations may lead to scenarios where higher security-level alternatives outperform cryptosystems that are theoretically simpler and lighter in terms of energy consumption and data throughput. Moreover, the performed experiments allow for concluding that higher clock frequencies provide better performance in terms of throughput and, in contrast to what may be expected, less energy consumption.

Design, Implementation and Practical Evaluation of an IoT Home Automation System for Fog Computing Applications Based on MQTT and ZigBee-WiFi Sensor Nodes.

In recent years, the improvement of wireless protocols, the development of cloud services and the lower cost of hardware have started a new era for smart homes. One such enabling technologies is fog computing, which extends cloud computing to the edge of a network allowing for developing novel Internet of Things (IoT) applications and services. Under the IoT fog computing paradigm, IoT gateways are usually utilized to exchange messages with IoT nodes and a cloud. WiFi and ZigBee stand out as preferred communication technologies for smart homes. WiFi has become very popular, but it has a limited application due to its high energy consumption and the lack of standard mesh networking capabilities for low-power devices. For such reasons, ZigBee was selected by many manufacturers for developing wireless home automation devices. As a consequence, these technologies may coexist in the 2.4 GHz band, which leads to collisions, lower speed rates and increased communications latencies. This article presents ZiWi, a distributed fog computing Home Automation System (HAS) that allows for carrying out seamless communications among ZigBee and WiFi devices. This approach diverges from traditional home automation systems, which often rely on expensive central controllers. In addition, to ease the platform's building process, whenever possible, the system makes use of open-source software (all the code of the nodes is available on GitHub) and Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) hardware. The initial results, which were obtained in a number of representative home scenarios, show that the developed fog services respond several times faster than the evaluated cloud services, and that cross-interference has to be taken seriously to prevent collisions. In addition, the current consumption of ZiWi's nodes was measured, showing the impact of encryption mechanisms.

A Cost-Effective IoT System for Monitoring Indoor Radon Gas Concentration.

Radon is a noble gas originating from the radioactive decay chain of uranium or thorium. Most radon emanates naturally from the soil and from some building materials, so it can be found in many places around the world, in particular in regions with soils containing granite or slate. It is almost impossible for a person to detect radon gas without proper tools, since it is invisible, odorless, tasteless and colorless. The problem is that a correlation has been established between the presence of high radon gas concentrations and the incidence of lung cancer. In fact, the World Health Organization (WHO) has stated that the exposure to radon is the second most common cause of lung cancer after smoking, and it is the primary cause of lung cancer among people who have never smoked. Although there are commercial radon detectors, most of them are either expensive or provide very limited monitoring capabilities. To tackle such an issue, this article presents a cost-effective IoT radon gas remote monitoring system able to obtain accurate concentration measurements. It can also trigger events to prevent dangerous situations and to warn users about them. Moreover, the proposed solution can activate mitigation devices (e.g., forced ventilation) to decrease radon gas concentration. In order to show its performance, the system was evaluated in three different scenarios corresponding to representative buildings in Galicia (Spain), a region where high radon gas concentrations are common due to the composition of the soil. In addition, the influence of using external hardware (i.e., WiFi transceivers and an embedded System-on-Chip (SoC)) next to the radon gas sensor is studied, concluding that, in the tested scenarios, they do not interfere with the measurements.

A Practical Evaluation of a High-Security Energy-Efficient Gateway for IoT Fog Computing Applications.

Fog computing extends cloud computing to the edge of a network enabling new Internet of Things (IoT) applications and services, which may involve critical data that require privacy and security. In an IoT fog computing system, three elements can be distinguished: IoT nodes that collect data, the cloud, and interconnected IoT gateways that exchange messages with the IoT nodes and with the cloud. This article focuses on securing IoT gateways, which are assumed to be constrained in terms of computational resources, but that are able to offload some processing from the cloud and to reduce the latency in the responses to the IoT nodes. However, it is usually taken for granted that IoT gateways have direct access to the electrical grid, which is not always the case: in mission-critical applications like natural disaster relief or environmental monitoring, it is common to deploy IoT nodes and gateways in large areas where electricity comes from solar or wind energy that charge the batteries that power every device. In this article, how to secure IoT gateway communications while minimizing power consumption is analyzed. The throughput and power consumption of Rivest-Shamir-Adleman (RSA) and Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) are considered, since they are really popular, but have not been thoroughly analyzed when applied to IoT scenarios. Moreover, the most widespread Transport Layer Security (TLS) cipher suites use RSA as the main public key-exchange algorithm, but the key sizes needed are not practical for most IoT devices and cannot be scaled to high security levels. In contrast, ECC represents a much lighter and scalable alternative. Thus, RSA and ECC are compared for equivalent security levels, and power consumption and data throughput are measured using a testbed of IoT gateways. The measurements obtained indicate that, in the specific fog computing scenario proposed, ECC is clearly a much better alternative than RSA, obtaining energy consumption reductions of up to 50% and a data throughput that doubles RSA in most scenarios. These conclusions are then corroborated by a frame temporal analysis of Ethernet packets. In addition, current data compression algorithms are evaluated, concluding that, when dealing with the small payloads related to IoT applications, they do not pay off in terms of real data throughput and power consumption.

Towards the Internet of Smart Trains: A Review on Industrial IoT-Connected Railways.

Nowadays, the railway industry is in a position where it is able to exploit the opportunities created by the IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things) and enabling communication technologies under the paradigm of Internet of Trains. This review details the evolution of communication technologies since the deployment of GSM-R, describing the main alternatives and how railway requirements, specifications and recommendations have evolved over time. The advantages of the latest generation of broadband communication systems (e.g., LTE, 5G, IEEE 802.11ad) and the emergence of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) for the railway environment are also explained together with the strategic roadmap to ensure a smooth migration from GSM-R. Furthermore, this survey focuses on providing a holistic approach, identifying scenarios and architectures where railways could leverage better commercial IIoT capabilities. After reviewing the main industrial developments, short and medium-term IIoT-enabled services for smart railways are evaluated. Then, it is analyzed the latest research on predictive maintenance, smart infrastructure, advanced monitoring of assets, video surveillance systems, railway operations, Passenger and Freight Information Systems (PIS/FIS), train control systems, safety assurance, signaling systems, cyber security and energy efficiency. Overall, it can be stated that the aim of this article is to provide a detailed examination of the state-of-the-art of different technologies and services that will revolutionize the railway industry and will allow for confronting today challenges.

VineSens: An Eco-Smart Decision-Support Viticulture System.

This article presents VineSens, a hardware and software platform for supporting the decision-making of the vine grower. VineSens is based on a wireless sensor network system composed by autonomous and self-powered nodes that are deployed throughout a vineyard. Such nodes include sensors that allow us to obtain detailed knowledge on different viticulture processes. Thanks to the use of epidemiological models, VineSens is able to propose a custom control plan to prevent diseases like one of the most feared by vine growers: downy mildew. VineSens generates alerts that warn farmers about the measures that have to be taken and stores the historical weather data collected from different spots of the vineyard. Such data can then be accessed through a user-friendly web-based interface that can be accessed through the Internet by using desktop or mobile devices. VineSens was deployed at the beginning in 2016 in a vineyard in the Ribeira Sacra area (Galicia, Spain) and, since then, its hardware and software have been tested to prevent the development of downy mildew, showing during its first season that the system can led to substantial savings, to decrease the amount of phytosanitary products applied, and, as a consequence, to obtain a more ecologically sustainable and healthy wine.

Time Modulated Arrays: From their Origin to Their Utilization in Wireless Communication Systems.

Time-modulated arrays (TMAs) are electromagnetic systems whose radiated power pattern is controlled by the application of variable-width periodical pulses to the individual elements. The nonlinear nature of the array operation causes the appearance of radiation patterns at the harmonic frequencies of such periodic pulses. The technique can be used for improving the side-lobe level (SLL) topology of the radiation pattern at the central frequency and/or to profitably exploit the harmonic patterns in order to supply smart antenna capabilities. Among the latter features, the TMA harmonic beamforming takes on special importance due to its attractive trade-off performance-hardware complexity. From this perspective, TMAs are sensors capable of transforming the spatial diversity of a communication channel into frequency diversity, thus improving the performance of a wireless communication. In addition to a walk through the origins of the concept, and a brief analysis of the mathematical fundamentals, this paper organizes the prolific state of the art of TMAs in two major thematic blocks: (1) TMA design from an antenna perspective; and (2) TMA design from a signal processing perspective.

An Electricity Price-Aware Open-Source Smart Socket for the Internet of Energy.

The Internet of Energy (IoE) represents a novel paradigm where electrical power systems work cooperatively with smart devices to increase the visibility of energy consumption and create safer, cleaner and sustainable energy systems. The implementation of IoE services involves the use of multiple components, like embedded systems, power electronics or sensors, which are an essential part of the infrastructure dedicated to the generation and distribution energy and the one required by the final consumer. This article focuses on the latter and presents a smart socket system that collects the information about energy price and makes use of sensors and actuators to optimize home energy consumption according to the user preferences. Specifically, this article provides three main novel contributions. First, what to our knowledge is the first hardware prototype that manages in a practical real-world scenario the price values obtained from a public electricity operator is presented. The second contribution is related to the definition of a novel wireless sensor network communications protocol based on Wi-Fi that allows for creating an easy-to-deploy smart plug system that self-organizes and auto-configures to collect the sensed data, minimizing user intervention. Third, it is provided a thorough description of the design of one of the few open-source smart plug systems, including its communications architecture, the protocols implemented, the main sensing and actuation components and the most relevant pieces of the software. Moreover, with the aim of illustrating the capabilities of the smart plug system, the results of different experiments performed are shown. Such experiments evaluate in real-world scenarios the system's ease of use, its communications range and its performance when using HTTPS. Finally, the economic savings are estimated for different appliances, concluding that, in the practical situation proposed, the smart plug system allows certain energy-demanding appliances to save almost €70 per year.

Reverse Engineering and Security Evaluation of Commercial Tags for RFID-Based IoT Applications.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a distributed system of physical objects that requires the seamless integration of hardware (e.g., sensors, actuators, electronics) and network communications in order to collect and exchange data. IoT smart objects need to be somehow identified to determine the origin of the data and to automatically detect the elements around us. One of the best positioned technologies to perform identification is RFID (Radio Frequency Identification), which in the last years has gained a lot of popularity in applications like access control, payment cards or logistics. Despite its popularity, RFID security has not been properly handled in numerous applications. To foster security in such applications, this article includes three main contributions. First, in order to establish the basics, a detailed review of the most common flaws found in RFID-based IoT systems is provided, including the latest attacks described in the literature. Second, a novel methodology that eases the detection and mitigation of such flaws is presented. Third, the latest RFID security tools are analyzed and the methodology proposed is applied through one of them (Proxmark 3) to validate it. Thus, the methodology is tested in different scenarios where tags are commonly used for identification. In such systems it was possible to clone transponders, extract information, and even emulate both tags and readers. Therefore, it is shown that the methodology proposed is useful for auditing security and reverse engineering RFID communications in IoT applications. It must be noted that, although this paper is aimed at fostering RFID communications security in IoT applications, the methodology can be applied to any RFID communications protocol.

A Review on Internet of Things for Defense and Public Safety.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is undeniably transforming the way that organizations communicate and organize everyday businesses and industrial procedures. Its adoption has proven well suited for sectors that manage a large number of assets and coordinate complex and distributed processes. This survey analyzes the great potential for applying IoT technologies (i.e., data-driven applications or embedded automation and intelligent adaptive systems) to revolutionize modern warfare and provide benefits similar to those in industry. It identifies scenarios where Defense and Public Safety (PS) could leverage better commercial IoT capabilities to deliver greater survivability to the warfighter or first responders, while reducing costs and increasing operation efficiency and effectiveness. This article reviews the main tactical requirements and the architecture, examining gaps and shortcomings in existing IoT systems across the military field and mission-critical scenarios. The review characterizes the open challenges for a broad deployment and presents a research roadmap for enabling an affordable IoT for defense and PS.

Rhodium-catalyzed intramolecular [3+2+2] cycloadditions between alkylidenecyclopropanes, alkynes, and alkenes.

A Rh-catalyzed intramolecular [3+2+2] cycloaddition is reported. The cycloaddition affords synthetically relevant 5,7,5-fused tricyclic systems of type 2 from readily available dienyne precursors. The transformation takes place with moderate or good yields, high diastereoselectivity, and total chemoselectivity.

Design of stable ß-sheet-based cyclic peptide assemblies assisted by metal coordination: selective homo- and heterodimer formation.

Metal-directed supramolecular construction represents one of the most powerful tools to prepare a large variety of structures and functions. The ability of metals to organize different numbers and types of ligands with a variety of geometries (linear, trigonal, octahedral, etc.) expands the supramolecular synthetic architecture. We describe here the precise construction of homo- and heterodimeric cyclic peptide entities through coordination of a metal (Pd, Au) and to ß-sheet-type hydrogen-bonding interactions. The selective coordination properties of the appropriate metal allow control over the cross-strand interaction between the two-peptide strands.

Self-assembling properties of all γ-cyclic peptides containing sugar amino acid residues.

In this study, a novel dimer-forming cyclic peptide composed exclusively by cyclic γ-amino acids with a saccharide-like outer surface is described. The antiparallel ß-sheet type hydrogen bonding interactions responsible for the large association constant in non-polar solvents constitute a suitable model for a novel class of self-assembling peptide nanotubes.