The next CITI seminar will take place on October 10th, at 11am in the margin of Alexis PhD defense. This seminar entitled “Radio wake-up solutions: applications, standards and developments” will be presented by Josep Paradells Aspas from Polytechnic University of Catalonia.
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.
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
Bidirectional Visible Light Communications for the Internet of Things
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.
The next CITI seminar will take place on October 18 th, at 2pm. This seminar entitled “Polen: une approche SW/HW pour la confidentialité des programmes et des données” will be presented by our former colleague Lionel MOREL from CEA Grenoble.
Titre : Polen: une approche SW/HW pour la confidentialité des programmes et des données.
Résumé : D’aucuns voudraient connecter un nombre grandissant d’objets, entre eux, mais aussi au réseau internet, pour permettre la collecte d’un nombre toujours plus grand d’informations et réaliser ainsi l’augmentation de nos vies jusque-là visiblement sous-dimensionnées. Mais connecter des objets, y stocker des informations personnelles, tout en les rendant accessibles facilement au reste du monde ouvre la voie à toute une série d’usages dangereux pour nos données et nous-mêmes.
Les approches de protection matérielles traditionnellement utilisées (eg pour la carte à puce) sont certes très efficaces, mais elles sont également très coûteuses en développement, en certification, et en déploiement. Au CEA, nous étudions comment des approches logicielles peuvent venir en complément de ces approches matérielles pour augmenter le niveau de confiance placé dans l’objet tout en limitant les coûts et en flexibilisant l’application des protections.
Dans cet exposé, je présenterai un cas particulier d’approche mêlant contre-mesures matérielles et logicielles, que nous développons actuellement. Il sera question d’attaques par canaux cachés, de reverse-engineering (un peu) de compilation dynamique, de chiffrement de code (plus), de pompe à insuline et de lampes connectées aussi, et de fin du monde peut-être.
Bio : Après une thèse sur les langages de programmation dédiés aux systèmes critiques, soutenue à Verimag en 2005 et quelques voyages scientifico-culturels en Bretagne et Finlande, Lionel Morel a intégré l’INSA Lyon en 2007 et le CITI en 2009. Il y a mené des travaux de recherche entre autres sur la programmation et l’évaluation de performances de machines parallèles, tout en enseignant les systèmes d’exploitations, l’architecture des ordinateurs et la compilation. Depuis 2017, il est détaché auprès du CEA, à Grenoble, où il travaille sur l’usage de la compilation pour la sécurité.
Ultra Narrow Band based IoT networks
Sigfox rises as a promising candidate dedicated for long-distance and low-power transmissions in the IoT backgrounds. Ultra Narrow Band (UNB), being the communication technology chosen by Sigfox, allows to transmit information through signals whose bandwidth is very limited, typically 100 Hz. Due to the imprecision restraint on electronic devices, it is impossible to transmit UNB signals in orthogonal channels. The natural radio access for this kind of system is thus random ALOHA, in both time and frequency domain. This random access can induce collisions which degrades the networks performance.
The aim of this thesis is to characterize the capacity of UNB based networks, as well as to enhance its performance, by considering the randomness in time and frequency.
The first contribution of the thesis, is the theoretical and numerical capacity evaluation under idealized and realistic channel conditions, for mono base station (BS) case. Under idealized conditions, we have quantified this capacity for generalized ALOHA case and extended for replications. We highlight the time-frequency duality in UNB systems, and that there exists an optimum replication number for a given network parameter set.
Under realistic conditions, we have taken into account the specific spectral interference of UNB systems and propagation path loss (without and with Rayleigh fading) to characterize the performance, with the aid of stochastic geometry.
The second contribution is the enhancement of UNB network performance in single BS case. We propose to use successive interference cancellation (SIC) in UNB networks, which allows to mitigate the interference. We have provided a theoretical analysis by considering both SIC and the spectral interference, for mono-BS case. We bring to light the efficiency of SIC in enhancing UNB system performance.
The third contribution is the improvement of UNB systems, by exploiting the multiple BS diversity. An analytical performance evaluation considering the simplest selection combining is conducted. In particular, we consider the interference viewed by all the BSs are correlated. Then we apply more complex signal combining technologies such as MRC (max ratio combining) and EGC (equal gain combining), and even interference cancellation across multi-BS in UNB networks. We evaluate the performance improvement that each technology can bring, and compare them with each other. We highlight the efficiency of these multi-BS technologies which allow us to achieve significant performance enhancement compared to mono-BS (e.x. 125 times better performance with global SIC).
Last but not least, we experimentally verify the the spectral interference model and network capacity on a cognitive radio testbed.