Data Communication Algorithms for Emerging Wearable and Urban Sensing Networks
Dhafer Ben Arbia · 2018
Emerging wearable wireless networks (WWNs) are evolving along with the ubiquitous technologies and standards. WWNs are not only used for health-care monitoring, but also in smart home and energy technologies, personal and public security, traffic and transport, environment sensing and industrial controlling. With the recent advances in Industrial Internet-of-Things (IIoT) and Big Data, WWNs have become a key enabling technology to complete the automation chain through which data is collected, transmitted, recorded and analyzed. Moreover, WWNs have been seen as an efficient candidate to substitute wireless networks when networking infrastructures are missing. Obviously, during a disaster, the wireless infrastructure networks are either damaged or over-saturated, however, rescue operations communications must rely on a reliable tactical deployable networks to cover the operations area. To that end, the WWNs could play a key role in establishing a tactical disaster relief wireless network. The established network grants disaster relief operations monitoring (i.e., deployed rescue teams and victims vital signs, air intoxication, ambient temperature, etc.). It enables also remote operations assistance from distant command center (CC) to the deployed rescuing forces (i.e., medical teams, military, police, firefighters, etc.). In this context, an efficient routing approach is important to grant data communication from CC and deployed rescue teams and vice-versa. The scope of this thesis is to address this concern with regards to the disaster relief missions operational and technical requirements. This thesis aims at: First, to study the state-of-the-art of the data communication algorithms in WWNs. Second, to implement and evaluate the existing approaches in order to conclude their limitations for this context. Third, to propose a new communication approach specifically designed for harsh environment and disaster relief operations. Fourth, to evaluate the proposed approach and compare its behavior to the existing routing approaches and validate it by simulation. Finally, to implement the new proposal on real devices as a proof of concept to validate it on a real test-bed within realistic conditions. This thesis was a part of the CROW2 project conducted by Qatar Mobility Innovations Center and the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) - Laboratory of Electronics and Information Technology (LETI), over more than three years in order to propose a complete disaster relief reliable communication solution.