PhD Defence: “Study and development of wireless sensor network architecture tolerant to delays”, Yosra Zguira, Est Amphitheater, Humanities Building, 20th of December 2018, at 14h00

Title

Study and development of wireless sensor network architecture tolerant to delays

Abstract

Transport has become fundamental in the cities to the well functioning of the economy and the welfare of the city population. For several years, transportation faces many issues such as traffic jamming, high accidents rate, unhealthy life due to smoke and dust, air pollution as a result of carbon emission, etc. To deal with these matters, researches integrate digital technologies to ground transportation which is known as Intelligent Transport System (ITS). ITS can sense, analyze, collect, control and communicate different data. This thesis investigates and proposes a new protocol for data collection applications in an urban environment.

We make three main contributions: firstly, we propose a new protocol denoted the “Internet of Bikes” IoB-DTN protocol which applies Delay/Disruption Tolerant Network (DTN) paradigm to the Internet of Things (IoT) applications running a data collection application on urban bike sharing system based sensor network. The protocol is evaluated on a realistic scenario by assessing the buffer management policies, the number of copies sprayed in the network as well as the number of bicycles used. Secondly, a comparative evaluation of the performance of the multi-hop IoB-DTN protocol with a low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) technology, LoRa/LoRaWAN type is investigated. LPWAN have been designed to provide cost-effective wide area connectivity for small throughput IoT applications: multiyear lifetime and multikilometer range for battery-operated mobile devices. This part of our work aims at providing network designers and managers insights on the most relevant technology for their urban applications that could run on bike sharing systems. Finally, we propose an efficient IoB-DTN protocol based on data aggregation mechanism. We propose three variants of IoB-DTN: IoB based on spatial aggregation (IoB-SA), IoB based on temporal aggregation (IoB-TA) and IoB based on spatio-temporal aggregation (IoB-STA). We compare the three variants with the multi-hop IoB-DTN protocol without aggregation and the low-power long-range technology, LoRa type. Comparison results verify that the three variants of IoB-DTN based on data aggregation improve several metrics such as the delivery rate, energy consumption and throughput.

 

Jury

  • Nathalie MITTON, Directrice de recherche Inria, Rapporteure
  • Mohamed MOSBAH, Professeur des Universités, Bordeaux INP, Rapporteur
  • Bertrand DUCOURTHIAL, Professeur des Universités, UTC, Examinateur
  • Alexandre GUITTON, Professeur des Universités, Clermont Auvergne, Examinateur
  • Hervé RIVANO, Professeur des Universités, INSA Lyon, Co-directeur de thèse
  • Aref MEDDEB, Professeur des Universités, ENISO Sousse, Directeur de thèse

CITI is hiring an intern

Déploiement d’un laboratoire 6lowpan

 

Ce stage a pour objectif la mise en place et l’administration d’un réseau d’objets connectés (IoT) ainsi que le développement d’applications qui seront utilisées au sein du réseau. Les objets reposeront sur le protocole 6lowpan (802.15.4 pour la couche PHY et MAC) pour communiquer. Enfin les objets déployés seront majoritairement des Raspberry PI 2 et 3 équipés de dongles pour émettre et recevoir les paquets. Un dernier objectif consistera à écouter de manière discrète le trafic ainsi généré par les applications.

 

Fiche complète ici : stage-6lowpan-citi


CITI Talk: “On combining Networking with Computing and Research with Innovation”, Pascale Vicat-Blanc (INRIA-Agora) on December 12th at 2pm

Title:

On combining Networking with Computing and Research with Innovation

Summary:

Integrating virtualised network, caching and computing into one system is becoming a natural trend to support very demanding emerging mobile applications.
I have been exploring and contributing to these ideas since many years in the context of high-performance computing (HPC), DataGrids, Cloud infrastructures, Software as a service and the Internet of Things. In this talk, I propose to articulate the researches and developments I had the chance to conduct on this topic in academic, start-up and industrial environments, and to summarise the lessons learned from these experiences. I will then briefly present my new perspectives in the field of augmented intelligence for analysing and optimising fog systems integrating tightly networking and computing.

 

Short Bio:

Pascale Vicat-Blanc is senior scientist at Inria. After a career as Assistant Professor at Ecole Centrale de Lyon, she joined INRIA at ENS Lyon. As the head of the RESO project team she has supervised a dozen of thesis on advanced networking and Internet protocols and co-authored 150+ articles. She had a leading role in many national and EU initiatives like eToile with EDF and CEA, DataGrid with CERN, Geysers with SAP or SAIL with Ericsson and Orange. She helped with the creation of the national Grid5000 instrument as well as of the INRIA-Bell Labs with Nokia. She received the Joliot-Curie Award from the Ministry of Research in 2011 and the Innovation Award from Académie des Sciences, INRIA and Dassault Systems in 2013. In 2010, with a team of four PhD students she launched the Lyatiss startup for valorising their research results in the domain of IT infrastructure virtualisation and orchestration. Then, they launched a SaaS (Software as a Service) company in USA, CloudWeaver, extending the technology developed by Lyatiss with TCP sensors and machine learning tools to provide network performance insights to AWS and GCE customers. Then, acquired by F5 networks (FFIV), they integrated CloudWeaver analytics pipeline with the F5’s MANO platform. After that, Pascale was appointed as the F5 IoT initiative leader to define the IoT strategy and products of the company. Since September 2018, Pascale Vicat-Blanc is back to France and INRIA. Member of the Agora team, CITI lab at INSA, she is starting new researches in the domain of fog computing and networking for smart cities.


[Pop’Sciences Forum] Big Data, Big City, Big Mother

Venez poser un regard critique et constructif sur les enjeux, les opportunités et les limites des transformations de l’urbain par le numérique.

 

C’est Lundi 3 Décembre au Tuba à Lyon, plus d’info ici.

Au programme :

• 09H00 – 19H00 | Atelier créatif : QUI VA PAYER LA VILLE INTELLIGENTE ?
• 19H00 | Carte-blanche à Marie-Cécile Paccard, designer : LA VILLE DE DEMAIN, PLUTÔT “SMART” QUE “BIG MOTHER” !
• 19H45 | Pop’Cast (émission radio participative) : BIG DATA EN VILLE – Opportunités et limites pour la vie privée et les biens communs.
• 21H15 | Ciné-débat : IS BIG DATA WATCHING US ? Black-mirror donne le change


PhD Defence: “Radio Access and Core Functionalities in Self-deployable Mobile Networks”, Jad Oueis, Amphitheater, Chappe Building, 27th of October 2018, at 10h00

Title

Radio Access and Core Functionalities in Self-deployable Mobile Networks

Abstract

Self-deployable mobile networks are a novel family of cellular networks, that can be rapidly deployed, easily installed, and operated on demand, anywhere, anytime. They target diverse use cases and provide network services when the classical network fails, is not suitable, or simply does not exist: when the network saturates during crowded events, when first responders need private broadband communication in disaster-relief and mission-critical situations, or when there is no infrastructure in areas with low population density.

 

These networks are challenging a long-standing vision of cellular networks by eliminating the physical separation between the radio access network (RAN) and the core network (CN). In addition to providing RAN functionalities, such as radio signal processing and radio resource management, a base station can also provide those of the CN, such as session management and routing, in addition to housing application servers. As a result, a base station with no backhaul connection to a traditional CN can provide local services to users in its vicinity. To cover larger areas, several base stations must interconnect. With the CN functions co-located with the RAN, the links interconnecting the BSs form the backhaul network. Being setup by the BSs, potentially in an ad hoc manner, the latter may have a limited bandwidth.

 

In this thesis, we build on the properties distinguishing self-deployable networks to revisit classical RAN problems but in the self-deployable context, and address the novel challenges created by the core network architecture. Starting with the RAN configuration, we propose an algorithm that sets a frequency and power allocation scheme. The latter outperforms conventional frequency reuse schemes in terms of the achieved user throughput and is robust facing variations in the number of users and their distribution in the network. Once the RAN is configured, we move to the CN organization, and address both centralized and distributed CN functions placements. For the centralized placement, building on the shortages of state of the art metrics, we propose a novel centrality metric that places the functions in a way that maximizes the traffic that can be exchanged in the network. For the distributed placement, we evaluate the number of needed instances of the CN functions and their optimal placement, considering the impact on the backhaul bandwidth. We further highlight the advantages of distributing CN functions, from a backhaul point of view. Accordingly, we tackle the user attachment problem to determine the CN instances serving each user when the former are distributed. Finally, with the network ready to operate, and users starting to arrive, we tackle the user association problem. We propose a novel network-aware association policy adapted to self-deployable networks, that outperforms a traditional RAN-based policy. It jointly accounts for the downlink, the uplink, the backhaul and the user throughput request.

 

Jury

  • Claudio CASETTI,  Associate Professor, Politecnico di Torino, Rapporteur

  • Hakima CHAOUCHI, Professeure des Universités, Telecom Sud Paris, Rapporteure

  • Xavier LAGRANGE, Professeur des Universités, IMT Atlantique Rapporteur

  • Vania CONAN, Habilité à Diriger des Recherches, Thales, Examinateur

  • Serge FDIDA, Professeur des Universités, UPMC, Examinateur

  • Nancy PERROT, Docteure, Orange Labs, Examinatrice

  • Fabrice VALOIS, Professeur des Universités, NSA LYON, Directeur de Thèse

  • Razvan STANICA, Maître de Conférences, INSA LYON, Co-encadrant de Thèse


Seminar of Carles Antón-Haro (Telecommunications Technological Center of Catalonia) on September 27th at 9.30am

The next CITI seminar will take place on September 27th, at 9.30am in the margin of Yuqi PhD defense. This seminar entitled “Machine- and Deep-Learning for Beam Selection in Hybrid Analog Beamforming Architectures” will be presented by Carles Antón-Haro from Telecommunications Technological Center of Catalonia.

Titre : Machine- and Deep-Learning for Beam Selection in Hybrid Analog Beamforming Architectures

Abstract : This talk deals with the application of deep learning (DL) and machine learning (ML) techniques to beam selection problems in the uplink of a mmWave communication system. Specifically, we consider a hybrid beamforming architecture comprising an analog beamforming (ABF) network followed by a zero-forcing baseband processing block. The goal is to select the optimal configuration for the ABF network based on the estimated AoAs of the various user equipments. To that aim, we consider (i) two supervised machine-learning approaches: k-nearest neighbors (kNN) and support vector classifiers (SVC); and (ii) a feed-forward deep neural network: the multilayer perceptron (MLP). Computer simulations reveal that, for a well-designed codebook of analog beamformers, this task can be effectively accomplished by such data-driven schemes. Performance, in terms of sum-rate, is very close to that achievable via exhaustive search, in particular for the MLP.

Bio : Carles Antón-Haro received his PhD degree in Telecommunications Engineering from the Technical University of Catalonia in 1998 (cum-laude). He also holds a Master in Business Administration (MBA) from EADA Business School (2014, Best Final Degree Project Award). In the pursuit of his PhD degree, he was a recipient of scholarship granted by the Dept. of Universities and Research of the Generalitat de Catalunya (1995-1998). As a Research Assistant (1994-1998, UPC) and Research Associate (1998-1999, UPC), he participated in several EC Projects (Tsunami, Tsunami II, Sunbeam), as well as in other projects funded by the Spanish government. He was Teaching Assistant in the field of Computer Architecture (UPC 1994, UOC 1998-2012). In 1999, he joined Ericsson Spain, where he participated in two rollout projects of 2G and 3G mobile networks (2000, Regional Coordinator).

Currently, he is with the CTTC, where he works as a Director of R&D Programs and Senior Research Associate. Main duties, in addition to his daily research activity, include the overall coordination of CTTC’s participation in publicly-funded R&D projects and technology transfer projects, networking activities towards the establishment of strategic alliances with the industry and academia, monitoring of R&D funding programs and identification of new opportunities, and interaction with CTTC’s Scientific Committee in what concerns R&D programs. In the past, he was also in charge of the recruitment of human resources at the CTTC, and he defined the internal processes in relation with CTTC’s project portfolio. Since 2001, he has promoted or coordinated over 60 R&D projects or proposals and has been directly involved in some of them (P2P SmartTest, NEWCOM#, EXALTED, eCROPS, ADVANTAGE, WINNER, to name a few). He is an elected member of the Steering Board of the Networld2020 European Technology Platform since 2009 (formerly known as Net!works).

His research interests are in the field of signal processing for communications, this including radio interface design, multi-user MIMO, wireless sensor networks, opportunistic communications, link layer protocols (MAC, H-ARQ); and estimation theory with emphasis in state estimation for Smart Electricity Grids. He has published +20 technical papers in IEEE journals, books and book chapter; as well as +80 papers in international and national conferences. He is a recipient of the 2015 Best Paper Award of the Transmission, Access, and Optical Systems (TAOS) Technical Committee’s (Green Communications Track, ICC). He has supervised four Master Theses and five PhD Theses (two in progress). He has also acted as a reviewer of project proposals for various (inter)national funding agencies (e.g., ANEP, AGAUR, MIUR, ANR, ANVUR) and takes part in PhD Evaluation Committees on a regular basis.

 


CITI is hiring a Software Engineer

Software Engineer Position – Embedded Operating System Development

 

Title: Integrating Sytare persistence support in the RIOT operating system
Keywords: Embedded Software, Microcontroller, Energy Harvesting, Checkpointing
Location: CITI laboratory, INSA Lyon, France
Funding: 2-year INRIA contract (starting ASAP) with a gross salary of ∼2500€ per month.
Contact: please write to both <Tanguy.Risset@Insa-Lyon.fr> and <Guillaume.Salagnac@Insa-Lyon.fr>

Summary
The context of this work is the design and study of operating systems for the Internet of Things (IoT). We are interested in an emerging class of IoT platforms which rely on harvesting energy from their environment (solar, heat, radio). Such systems have to deal with vastly different constraints compared to more traditional networked embedded systems powered by a battery. In addition to minimizing energy consumption in general, the system must also be able to survive power failures due to unfavourable conditions. These hypotheses have a significant impact on many aspects of system design, including software development. Since 2015, the CITI lab develops Sytare, a proof-of-concept operating system layer targetted at such intermittent platforms. The goal of this project is to integrate the persistence features from Sytare in the RIOT operating system.

More information here


PhD Defence: “Bidirectional Visible Light Communications for the Internet of Things”, Alexis DUQUE, Amphitheater, Chappe Building, 9th of October 2018, at 14h00

Title

Bidirectional Visible Light Communications for the Internet of Things

Abstract

With the exponential growth of the Internet of Things, people now expect every household appliance to be smart and connected. At the same time, smartphones have become ubiquitous in our daily life. Their continuous performance improvement and their compatibility with a broad range of radio protocols as WiFi, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) or NFC make them the most convenient way to interact with these smart objects. However, providing wireless connectivity with BLE or NFC means adding an extra chipset and an antenna, increasing the object size and price. Previous works already have demonstrated the possibility of receiving information through visible light using an unmodified smartphone thanks to its camera. Also, LED-to-LED communication for smart devices like toys has been shown previously. However, past efforts in LED to camera communication for IoT device communication have been limited.

In this work, we design LightIoT, a bidirectional visible-light communication (VLC) system between a low-cost, low-power colored LED that is part of an IoT device and an off-the-shelf smartphone. The IoT device is thus able to send and receive information through its LED, while the smartphone uses its camera to receive data and its flashlight to send information. We implement and experimentally evaluate a LED-to-camera VLC system, designed specifically for small LEDs. The proposed solution exploits the rolling shutter effect of unmodified smartphone cameras and an original decoding algorithm, achieving a throughput of nearly 2 kb/s.
Based on the insight gained from an extensive experimental study, we model, for the first time in the literature, the LED-to-camera communication channel. We propose a Markov-modulated Bernoulli process model, which allows us to easily study the performance of different message retransmission strategies. We further exploit this model to implement a simulator for LED-to- Camera communications performance evaluation.

In order to achieve bi-directional communications, we evaluate flashlight-to- LED communications using non-rooted smartphones and small LEDs. With these constraints, our implementation achieves a throughput of 30 bits/second. While limited, this is enough for a feed-back channel coming to support the required redundancy mechanisms. Some of these redundancy mechanisms are based on random linear coding, never tested previously in VLC.
Therefore, we design and implement, for the first time in the literature, a pseudo random linear coding scheme especially fitted for line-of-sight LED-to-camera conditions. Experimental evaluation highlights that this type of approach increases the goodput up to twice compared to classical retransmission strategies.

Finally, we compare the energy consumption of LightIoT with the one of a BLE module with similar activity. Our results show that using the LED for communication purposes reduces the energy consumption under a normal usage behavior.

Jury

  • Emmanuel CHAPUT, Professeur des Universités, INP Toulouse, Rapporteur
  • Anne JULIEN-VERGONJANNE, Professeur des Universités Univ. Limoges, Rapporteur
  • Josep PARADELLS ASPAS, Professeur UPC, Rapporteur
  • Luc CHASSAGNE, Professeur des Universités UVSQ, Examinateur
  • Valeria LOSCRI, Chargé de Recherche INRIA Lille, Examinateur
  • Hervé RIVANO, Professeur des Universités INSA Lyon, Directeur de thèse
  • Razvan STANICA Maître de Conférences INSA Lyon, co Directeur de thèse