Distributed Sensing | Doctoral Program - Information Engineering and Computer Science

Distributed Sensing

Energy-efficient and Pervasive Ultra-wideband Localization

Pablo Corbalan Pelegrin

Publications | p.corbalanpelegrin [at] unitn.it (Email)

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Localization is of utmost importance for many context-aware services and applications. Nonetheless, in GPS-denied environments, there is still no mainstream solution that satisfies the varying application demands. Ultra-wideband (UWB) communications have recently emerged as a promising localization technology, providing cm-level ranging accuracy. The energy consumption of UWB radios, however, is still prohibitive for key motivating applications. Our research aims to lay the ground for accurate, fast, energy-efficient, and pervasive UWB localization, while simultaneously integrating the required networking support.

Exploiting the synergy between wireless sensor networks and remote sensing

A remote sensing approach to understand and model the impact of vegetation on low-power wireless communications

Silvia Demetri

Publications | silvia.demetri [at] unitn.it (Email)

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The widespread adoption of Wireless Sensor Networks for monitoring natural ecosystems is hindered by their unpredictability. Vegetation affects radio connectivity in unique ways, rendering the effective deployment of the network challenging and costly. We aim at developing a Remote Sensing framework to enable automatic and scalable network planning.

Exploiting Ultra Low Power Wake-up Radios to enable Low Energy Internet of Things (LE-IoT)

Rajeev Kumar Piyare

Publications | rajeevkumar.piyare [at] unitn.it (Email) | Website

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Duty cycling Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols have been extensively applied in WSNs to reduce energy consumption by periodically putting the main radio into sleep mode. However, these protocols suffer from overhearing and idle listening causing considerable energy waste. This energy wastage can be greatly reduced by using a secondary ultra-low power wake-up radio to completely switch off the main radio and only wake it up when there is communication. To exploit the full potential of wake-up radios, cross-layer integration at the higher level is required. My research work focuses on the design of novel MAC and Routing protocols with evaluation using test-beds and real-life deployments.

Interference-resistant ultra-low power data collection and actuation in wireless sensor networks

Matteo Trobinger

Publications | matteo.trobinger [at] unitn.it (Email)

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In the last decade, WSN have become increasingly popular (i.e.: smart cities, IoT). The majority of WSN applications need reliable and fast transmissions, yet require devices to be battery-based and hence have energy efficiency as a priority. These requirements struggle with the fact that most of WSN protocols are designed to work in the crowded and lightly regulated 2.4GHz ISM band, where several kinds of interference proliferate. Indeed, radio interference impacts the performance of sensornet communications, leading to packet loss and reduced energy-efficiency. Therefore, strong is the need to develop new protocol stacks able to improve network dependability in presence of channel’s noise.