Wi-Dia: Data-Driven Wireless Diagnostic Using Context Recognition

The recent densification of Wi-Fi networks is exacerbating the effects of well-known pathologies including hidden nodes and flow starvation. This paper provides an automatic diagnostic tool for detecting the source roots of performance impairments by recognizing the wireless operating context. Our tool for Wi-Fi diagnostic, named Wi-Dia, exploits machine learning methods and uses features related to network topology and channel utilization, without impact on regular network operations and working in real-time. Real-time per-link Wi-Fi diagnosis enables recovering actions for context-specific treatments. Wi-Dia classifier recognizes different classes of interference; it is jointly trained us…

MAC–Engine: a new architecture for executing MAC algorithms on commodity WiFi hardware

In this demo, we prove that the flexibility supported by off–the–shelf IEEE 802.11 hardware can be significantly ex- tended if we move the control of the MAC programming interface from the driver to the firmware, i.e. from the host CPU to the card CPU. To this purpose, we introduce the concept of MAC–Engine, that is an executor of Pro- grammable Finite State Machines (PFSM) implemented at the firmware level: we show how the card itself can support different protocol logics thanks to PFSM bytecode repre- sentations that can be dynamically injected inside the card memory at run-time without incurring in down time issues or network disconnect events. We provide different PFSM examples in order…

Learning from Errors: Detecting ZigBee Interference in WiFi Networks

In this work we show how to detect ZigBee interference on commodity WiFi cards by monitoring the reception errors, such as synchronization errors, invalid header formats, too long frames, etc., caused by ZigBee transmissions. Indeed, in presence of non-WiFi modulated signals, the occurrence of these types of errors follows statistics that can be easily recognized. Moreover, the duration of the error bursts depends on the transmission interval of the interference source, while the error spacing depends on the receiver implementation. On the basis of these considerations, we propose the adoption of hidden Markov chains for characterizing the behavior of WiFi receivers in presence of controlle…

SHARP: Environment and Person Independent Activity Recognition with Commodity IEEE 802.11 Access Points

In this article we present SHARP, an original approach for obtaining human activity recognition (HAR) through the use of commercial IEEE 802.11 (Wi-Fi) devices. SHARP grants the possibility to discern the activities of different persons, across different time-spans and environments. To achieve this, we devise a new technique to clean and process the channel frequency response (CFR) phase of the Wi-Fi channel, obtaining an estimate of the Doppler shift at a radio monitor device. The Doppler shift reveals the presence of moving scatterers in the environment, while not being affected by (environment-specific) static objects. SHARP is trained on data collected as a person performs seven differe…

Integration of WiFi ToF Positioning System in the Open, Flexible and Adaptive WiSHFUL Architecture

We integrate a prototypeWiFi Time-of-Flight (ToF) ranging and positioning system in the WiSHFUL software platforms and hardware radios for experimental prototyping. Users have access to ToF measurements as well as computed positions through unified programming interfaces that make possible to investigate innovative positioning and networking solutions. TRUE pub

Impact of Spreading Factor Imperfect Orthogonality in LoRa Communications

In this paper we study the impact of imperfect-orthogonality in LoRa spreading factors (SFs) in simulation and real-world experiments. First, we analyze LoRa modulation numerically and show that collisions between packets of different SFs can indeed cause packet loss if the interference power received is strong enough. Second, we validate such findings using commercial devices, confirming our numerical results. Third, we modified and extended LoRaSim, an open-source LoRa simulator, to measure the impact of inter-SF collisions and fading (which was not taken into account previously in the simulator). Our results show that non-orthogonality of the SFs can deteriorate significantly the perform…

WiSHFUL : enabling coordination solutions for managing heterogeneous wireless networks

The paradigm shift toward the Internet of Things results in an increasing number of wireless applications being deployed. Since many of these applications contend for the same physical medium (i.e., the unlicensed ISM bands), there is a clear need for beyond-state-of-the-art solutions that coordinate medium access across heterogeneous wireless networks. Such solutions demand fine-grained control of each device and technology, which currently requires a substantial amount of effort given that the control APIs are different on each hardware platform, technology, and operating system. In this article an open architecture is proposed that overcomes this hurdle by providing unified programming i…

Exploratory approach for network behavior clustering in LoRaWAN

AbstractThe interest in the Internet of Things (IoT) is increasing both as for research and market perspectives. Worldwide, we are witnessing the deployment of several IoT networks for different applications, spanning from home automation to smart cities. The majority of these IoT deployments were quickly set up with the aim of providing connectivity without deeply engineering the infrastructure to optimize the network efficiency and scalability. The interest is now moving towards the analysis of the behavior of such systems in order to characterize and improve their functionality. In these IoT systems, many data related to device and human interactions are stored in databases, as well as I…

MAC design on real 802.11 devices: From exponential to Moderated Backoff

In this paper we describe how a novel backoff mechanism called Moderated Backoff (MB), recently proposed as a standard extension for 802.11 networks, has been prototyped and experimentally validated on a commercial 802.11 card before being ratified. Indeed, for performance reasons, the time critical operations of MAC protocols, such as the backoff mechanism, are implemented into the card hardware/firmware and cannot be arbitrarily changed by third parties or by manufacturers only for experimental reasons. Our validation has been possible thanks to the availability of the so called Wireless MAC Processor (WMP), a prototype of a novel wireless card architecture in which MAC protocols can be p…

FLUMO: FLexible Underwater MOdem

The last years have seen a growing interest in underwater acoustic communications because of its applications in marine research, oceanography, marine commercial operations, the offshore oil industry and defense. High-speed communication in the underwater acoustic channel has been challenging because of limited bandwidth, extended multipath, refractive properties of the medium, severe fading, rapid time variation and large Doppler shifts. In this paper, we show an implementation of a flexible Software-Defined Acoustic (SDA) underwater modem, where modulation parameters are completely tunable to optimize performance. In particular, we develop the system architecture following two key ideas. …

Coexistence between IEEE802.15.4 and IEEE802.11 through cross-technology signaling

When different technologies use the same frequency bands in close proximity, the resulting interference typically results in performance degradation. Coexistence methods exist, but these are often technology specific and requiring technology specific interference detection methods. To remove the root cause of the performance degradation, devices should be able to negotiate medium access even when using different technologies. To this end, this paper proposes an architecture that allows crosstechnology medium access by means of a Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) scheme. In order to achieve cross-technology synchronization, which is required for the TDMA solution, an energy pattern beacon…

Learning From Errors: Detecting Cross-Technology Interference in WiFi Networks

In this paper, we show that inter-technology interference can be recognized using commodity WiFi devices by monitoring the statistics of receiver errors. Indeed, while for WiFi standard frames the error probability varies during the frame reception in different frame fields (PHY, MAC headers, and payloads) protected with heterogeneous coding, errors may appear randomly at any point during the time the demodulator is trying to receive an exogenous interfering signal. We thus detect and identify cross-technology interference on off-the-shelf WiFi cards by monitoring the sequence of receiver errors (bad PLCP, bad FCS, invalid headers, etc.) and propose two methods to recognize the source of in…

Designing the 5G network infrastructure: a flexible and reconfigurable architecture based on context and content information

5G networks will have to offer extremely high volumes of content, compared to those of today’s. Moreover, they will have to support heterogeneous traffics, including machine-to-machine, generated by a massive volume of Internet-of-Things devices. Traffic demands will be variable in time and space. In this work, we argue that all this can be achieved in a cost-effective way if the network is flexible and reconfigurable. We present the Flex5Gware network architecture, designed to meet the above requirements. Moreover, we discuss the links between flexibility and reconfigurability, on the one side, and context awareness and content awareness, on the other; we show how two of the building…

MAC-Engine

In this demo, we prove that the flexibility supported by off-the-shelf IEEE 802.11 hardware can be significantly extended if we move the control of the MAC programming interface from the driver to the firmware, i.e. from the host CPU to the card CPU. To this purpose, we introduce the concept of MAC--Engine, that is an executor of Programmable Finite State Machines (PFSM) implemented at the firmware level: we show how the card itself can support different protocol logics thanks to PFSM bytecode representations that can be dynamically injected inside the card memory at run-time without incurring in down time issues or network disconnect events. We provide different PFSM examples in order to t…

Demo - MAC learning: Enabling automatic combination of elementary protocol components

Cognition as a way to deal with the challenges of future wireless networks has been largely considered by the recent literature, with a main focus on physical layer adaptability and dynamic spectrum access. In this demo, we show how a simple cognition mechanism can be also applied at the MAC layer, by exploiting the emerging paradigm of programmable wireless cards. The idea is using the formal definition of simple MAC protocol components and platform-independent representation of channel events gathered from the wireless node, for emulating the behavior of protocols which are not currently running on the network, learning about their expected performance, and dynamically reconfiguring the w…

Discovery privacy threats via device de-anonymization in LoRaWAN

LoRaWAN (Long Range WAN) is one of the well-known emerging technologies for the Internet of Things (IoT). Many IoT applications involve simple devices that transmit their data toward network gateways or access points that, in their turn, redirect data to application servers. While several security issues have been addressed in the LoRaWAN specification v1.1, there are still some aspects that may undermine privacy and security of the interconnected IoT devices. In this paper, we tackle a privacy aspect related to LoRaWAN device identity. The proposed approach, by monitoring the network traffic in LoRaWAN, is able to derive, in a probabilistic way, the unique identifier of the IoT device from…

Testbed implementation of the meta-MAC protocol

The meta-MAC protocol is a systematic and automatic method to dynamically combine any set of existing MAC protocols into a single higher layer MAC protocol. We present a proof-of-concept implementation of the meta-MAC protocol by utilizing a programmable wireless MAC processor (WMP) on top of a commodity wireless card in combination with a host-level software module. The implementation allows us to combine, with certain constraints, a number of protocols each represented as an extended finite state machine. To illustrate the combination principle, we combine protocols of the same type but with varying parameters in a wireless mesh network. Specifically, we combine TDMA protocols with all po…

'Good to Repeat': Making Random Access Near-Optimal with Repeated Contentions

Recent advances on WLAN technology have been focused mostly on boosting network capacity by means of a more efficient and flexible physical layer. A new concept is required at MAC level to exploit fully the new capabilities of the PHY layer. In this article, we propose a contention mechanism based on Repeated Contentions (ReCo) in frequency domain. It provides a simple-to-configure, robust and short-term fair algorithm for the random contention component of the MAC protocol. The throughput efficiency of ReCo is not sensitive to the number of contending stations, so that ReCo does not require adaptive tuning of the access parameters for performance optimization. Efficiency and robustness is …

Design, Implementation and Experimental Evaluation of a Wireless MAC Processor over commercial WIFI cards

In this thesis we face the problem of wireless network programmability as a solution for coping with context-dependent optimizations, moving from one-for-all standard solutions to the concept of programmable wireless interfaces. Although the wireless research and academic community has proposed interesting platforms (e.g. based on Software Defined Radio) for pushing forward dynamic reprogrammability of devices, we argue that it is important to identify a tradeoff between programmability space and usability of the programmable interface. In this direction, we introduce the concept of Wireless MAC Processor and developed a running prototype over an ultra-cheap wireless card. Wireless MAC proc…

Enabling a win-win coexistence mechanism for WiFi and LTE in unlicensed bands

The problem of WiFi and LTE coexistence has been significantly debated in the last years, with the emergence of LTE extensions enabling the utilization of unlicensed spectrum for carrier aggregation. Since the two technologies employ com-pletely different access protocols and frame transmission times, supporting coexistence with minimal modifications on existing protocols is not an easy task. Current solutions are often based on LTE unilateral adaptations, being LTE in unlicensed bands still under definition. In this paper, we demonstrate that it is possible to avoid a subordinated role for WiFi nodes, by simply equipping WiFi nodes with a sensing mechanism based on adaptive tunings of the …

Wireless MAC processors: programming MAC protocols on commodity hardware

Programmable wireless platforms aim at responding to the quest for wireless access flexibility and adaptability. This paper introduces the notion of wireless MAC processors. Instead of implementing a specific MAC protocol stack, Wireless MAC processors do support a set of Medium Access Control “commands” which can be run-time composed (programmed) through software-defined state machines, thus providing the desired MAC protocol operation. We clearly distinguish from related work in this area as, unlike other works which rely on dedicated DSPs or programmable hardware platforms, we experimentally prove the feasibility of the wireless MAC processor concept over ultra-cheap commodity WLAN hardw…

Joint Usage of Dynamic Sensitivity Control and Time Division Multiple Access in Dense 802.11ax Networks

It is well known that in case of high density deployments, Wi-Fi networks suffer from serious performance impairments due to hid- den and exposed nodes. The problem is explicitly considered by the IEEE 802.11ax developers in order to improve spectrum efficiency. In this pa- per, we propose and evaluate the joint usage of dynamic sensitivity con- trol (DSC) and time division multiple access (TDMA) for improving the spectrum allocation among overlapping 802.11ax BSSs. To validate the solution, apart from simulation, we used a testbed based on the Wireless MAC Processor (WMP), a prototype of a programmable wireless card.

WMPS: A Positioning System for Localizing Legacy 802.11 Devices

The huge success of location-aware applications calls for the quick development of a positioning system alternative to GPS for indoor localization based on existing technologies such as 802.11 wireless networks. In this paper we propose WMPS, the Wireless MAC Processor Positioning System, that is a localization system running on off-the-shelf 802.11 Access Points and based on time-of-flight ranging of users’ standard terminals. We prove through extensive experiments that propagation delays can be measured with the accuracy required by indoor applications despite the different noise components that can affect the result, like latencies of the hardware transreceivers, multi- path, ACK jitters…

Location-Aware MAC Scheduling in Industrial-Like Environment

We consider an environment strongly affected by the presence of metallic objects, that can be considered representative of an indoor industrial environment with metal obstacles. This scenario is a very harsh environment where radio communication has notorious difficulties, as metallic objects create a strong blockage component and surfaces are highly reflective. In this environment, we investigate how to dynamically allocate MAC resources in time to static and mobile users based on context awareness extracted from a legacy WiFi positioning system. In order to address this problem, we integrate our WiFi ranging and positioning system in the WiSHFUL architecture and then define a hypothesis t…

Enabling Cognitive-Radio Paradigm on Commercial Off-The-Shelf 802.11 Hardware

Cognitive Radio paradigm (CR) has been recognized as key enabler for next generation wireless networking: the pos- sibility to access the limited radio spectrum in an oppor- tunistic manner allows secondary users to boost their trans- mission performance without interfering with existing pri- mary networks. Full testing and experimenting with this paradigm, however, is still a tough task, given either the i) limited capabilities above the PHY layer of cheap SDR so- lutions, or the ii) heavy investment required for setting up multi-node testbeds powered by FPGAs. In this demo we show how we leveraged our Wireless MAC Processor archi- tecture to tackle the two issues at the same time, providi…

DEMO: Unconventional WiFi-ZigBee communications without gateways

Nowadays, the overcrowding of ISM bands is becoming an evident limitation for the performance and widespread usage of 802.11 and 802.15.4 technologies. In this demo, we prove that it is possible to opportunistically exploit the inter-technology interference between 802.11 and 802.15.4 to build an unconventional low-rate communication channel and signalling protocol, devised to improve the performance of each contending technology. Differently from previous solutions, inter-technology communications do not require the deployment of a gateway with two network interfaces, but can be activated (when needed) directly between two heterogeneous nodes, e.g. a WiFi node and a ZigBee node. This capab…

A Navigation and Augmented Reality System for Visually Impaired People

In recent years, we have assisted with an impressive advance in augmented reality systems and computer vision algorithms, based on image processing and artificial intelligence. Thanks to these technologies, mainstream smartphones are able to estimate their own motion in 3D space with high accuracy. In this paper, we exploit such technologies to support the autonomous mobility of people with visual disabilities, identifying pre-defined virtual paths and providing context information, reducing the distance between the digital and real worlds. In particular, we present ARIANNA+, an extension of ARIANNA, a system explicitly designed for visually impaired people for indoor and outdoor localizati…

A unified radio control architecture for prototyping adaptive wireless protocols

Experimental optimization of wireless protocols and validation of novel solutions is often problematic, due to limited configuration space present in commercial wireless interfaces as well as complexity of monolithic driver implementation on SDR-based experimentation platforms. To overcome these limitations a novel software architecture is proposed, called WiSHFUL, devised to allow: i) maximal exploitation of radio functionalities available in current radio chips, and ii) clean separation between the logic for optimizing the radio protocols (i.e. radio control) and the definition of these protocols.

Random access with repeated contentions for emerging wireless technologies

In this paper we propose ReCo, a robust contention scheme for emerging wireless technologies, whose efficiency is not sensitive to the number of contending stations and to the settings of the contention parameters (such as the contention windows and retry limits). The idea is iterating a basic contention mechanism, devised to select a sub-set of stations among the contending ones, in consecutive elimination rounds, before performing a transmission attempt. Elimination rounds can be performed in the time or frequency domain, with different overheads, according to the physical capabilities of the nodes. Closed analytical formulas are given to dimension the number of contention rounds in order…

A Clustering approach for profiling LoRaWAN IoT devices

Internet of Things (IoT) devices are starting to play a predominant role in our everyday life. Application systems like Amazon Echo and Google Home allow IoT devices to answer human requests, or trigger some alarms and perform suitable actions. In this scenario, any data information, related device and human interaction are stored in databases and can be used for future analysis and improve the system functionality. Also, IoT information related to the network level (wireless or wired) may be stored in databases and can be processed to improve the technology operation and to detect network anomalies. Acquired data can be also used for profiling operation, in order to group devices according…

Performance of LoRa for Bike-Sharing Systems

Today bike sharing systems are becoming popular in many cities as short-distance transit vehicles. More than 18 million bicycles are available worldwide for public use and one of the main problems that afflicts such sharing systems is the loss of bikes, which can be stolen or simply left in unknown locations. Thus, many bikes are docked or tracked using GPS and costly cellular connections. In this paper, we consider the emerging Long Range (LoRa) technology for use in bike sharing systems. LoRa exploits free ISM bands and has been conceived for low power and low data rate applications. Additionally, LoRa is characterized by large cells and heterogeneous application domains, which may lead t…

An Indoor and Outdoor Navigation System for Visually Impaired People

In this paper, we present a system that allows visually impaired people to autonomously navigate in an unknown indoor and outdoor environment. The system, explicitly designed for low vision people, can be generalized to other users in an easy way. We assume that special landmarks are posed for helping the users in the localization of pre-defined paths. Our novel approach exploits the use of both the inertial sensors and the camera integrated into the smartphone as sensors. Such a navigation system can also provide direction estimates to the tracking system to the users. The success of out approach is proved both through experimental tests performed in controlled indoor environments and in r…

Wireless MAC Processor Networking: A Control Architecture for Expressing and Implementing High-Level Adaptation Policies in WLANs

The current proliferation of unplanned wireless local area networks (WLANs) is creating the need for implementing different adaptation strategies to improve network performance under mutating and evolving interference scenarios. In this article, we envision a new solution for expressing and implementing high-level adaptation policies in WLANs, in contrast to the current approaches based on vendor-specific implementations. We exploit the hardware abstraction interface recently proposed by the wireless medium access control (MAC) processor (WMP) architecture and some flow-control concepts similar to the Openflow model for defining MAC adaptation policies. A simple control architecture for dis…

Interference Cancellation for LoRa Gateways and Impact on Network Capacity

In this paper we propose LoRaSyNc (LoRa receiver with SyNchronization and Cancellation), a second generation LoRa receiver that implements Successive Interference Cancellation (SIC) and time synchronization to improve the performance of LoRa gateways. Indeed, the chirp spread spectrum modulation employed in LoRa experiences very high capture probability, and cancelling the strongest signal in case of collisions can significantly improve the cell capacity. An important feature of LoRaSyNc is the ability to track the frequency and clock drifts between the transmitter and receiver, during the whole demodulation of the interfered frame. Due to the use of low-cost oscillators on end-devices, a s…

Leakage Detection via Edge Processing in LoRaWAN-based Smart Water Distribution Networks

The optimization and digitalization of Water Distribution Networks (WDNs) are becoming key objectives in our modern society. Indeed, WDNs are typically old, worn and obsolete. These inadequate conditions of the infrastructures lead to significant water loss due to leakages inside pipes, junctions and nodes. It has been measured that in Europe the average value of lost water is about 26 %. Leakage control in current WDNs is typically passive, repairing leaks only when they are visible. Emerging Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) technologies, and especially IoT ones, can help monitor water consumption and automatically detect leakages. In this context, LoRaWAN can be the right way to deploy…

Moving RTS/CTS to the frequency domain: an efficient contention scheme for 802.11ax networks

In this paper, we propose a contention mechanism based on the execution of multiple contention rounds in the frequency domain (ReCHo), which is designed to offer high throughput performance and robustness with respect to imperfect carrier sensing. The main idea is using narrow tones as signalling messages for performing channel access contentions and allowing the Access Point (AP) to echo these signals, in order to extend the sensing capabilities to all the stations associated to the AP. In particular, we refer to the emerging IEEE 802.11ax standard, showing how our scheme can boost performance of random access with respect to the current version of IEEE 802.11ax OFDMA Back-Off (OBO), even …

MAClets: Active MAC Protocols over hard-coded devices

We introduce MAClets, software programs uploaded and executed on-demand over wireless cards, and devised to change the card's real-time medium access control operation. MAClets permit seamless reconfiguration of the MAC stack, so as to adapt it to mutated context and spectrum conditions and perform tailored performance optimizations hardly accountable by an once-for-all protocol stack design. Following traditional active networking principles, MAClets can be directly conveyed within data packets and executed on hard-coded devices acting as virtual MAC machines. Indeed, rather than executing a pre-defined protocol, we envision a new architecture for wireless cards based on a protocol interpr…

Error-Based Interference Detection in WiFi Networks

In this paper we show that inter-technology interference can be recognized by commodity WiFi devices by monitoring the statistics of receiver errors. Indeed, while for WiFi standard frames the error probability varies during the frame reception in different frame fields (PHY, MAC headers, payloads) protected with heterogeneous coding, errors may appear randomly at any point during the time the demodulator is trying to receive an exogenous interfering signal. We thus detect and identify cross-technology interference on off-the-shelf WiFi cards by monitoring the sequence of receiver errors (bad PLCP, bad PCS, invalid headers, etc.) and develop an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) to recognize t…

Cross-Technology WiFi/ZigBee Communications: Dealing With Channel Insertions and Deletions

In this letter, we show how cross-technology interference can be exploited to set up a low-rate bidirectional communication channel between heterogeneous WiFi and ZigBee networks. Because of the environment noise and receivers' implementation, the cross-technology channel can be severely affected by insertions and deletions of symbols, whose effects need to be taken into account by the coding scheme and communication protocol.

Deploying Virtual MAC Protocols Over a Shared Access Infrastructure Using MAClets

Network virtualization has been extensively researched in the last years as a key enabler for improving the network performance. However, virtualization in wireless networks pose some unique challenges: first, the usual over-provisioning approach for providing isolation between multiple virtual entities is not viable; second, the partitioning criteria are often ambiguous, since the actual resources perceived by each entity depend on many external (and time-varying) factors. In this demo, we show an effective virtualization solution for wireless local area networks, solving the problem of isolation and flexible resource paritioning, based on the concept of MAClets. MAClets are software progr…

BusyBee: Low Rate WiFi-ZigBee Communications without Gateways

Nowadays, the overcrowding of ISM bands is becoming an evident limitation for the performance and widespread us- age of 802.11 and 802.15.4 technologies. In this demo, we prove that it is possible to opportunistically exploit the inter- technology interference between 802.11 and 802.15.4 to build an unconventional low-rate communication channel and sig- nalling protocol, devised to improve the performance of each contending technology. Differently from previous solutions, inter-technology communications do not require the deploy- ment of a gateway with two network interfaces, but can be activated (when needed) directly between two heterogeneous nodes, e.g. a WiFi node and a ZigBee node. Thi…

A flexible and reconfigurable 5G networking architecture based on context and content information

The need for massive content delivery is a consolidated trend in mobile communications, and will even increase for next years. Moreover, while 4G maturity and evolution is driven by video contents, next generation (5G) networks will be dominated by heterogeneous data and additional massive diffusion of Internet of Things (IoT). The current network architecture is not sufficient to cope with such traffic, which is heterogeneous in terms of latency and QoS requirements, and variable in space and time. This paper proposes architectural advances to endow the network with the necessary flexibility helping to adapt to these varying traffic needs by providing content and communication services whe…

Predicting lorawan behavior. How machine learning can help

Large scale deployments of Internet of Things (IoT) networks are becoming reality. From a technology perspective, a lot of information related to device parameters, channel states, network and application data are stored in databases and can be used for an extensive analysis to improve the functionality of IoT systems in terms of network performance and user services. LoRaWAN (Long Range Wide Area Network) is one of the emerging IoT technologies, with a simple protocol based on LoRa modulation. In this work, we discuss how machine learning approaches can be used to improve network performance (and if and how they can help). To this aim, we describe a methodology to process LoRaWAN packets a…

Cross-technology wireless experimentation: Improving 802.11 and 802.15.4e coexistence

In this demo we demonstrate the functionalities of a novel experimentation framework, called WiSHFUL, that facilitates the prototyping and experimental validation of innovative solutions for heterogeneous wireless networks, including cross-technology coordination mechanisms. The framework supports a clean separation between the definition of the logic for optimizing the behaviors of wireless devices and the underlying device capabilities, by means of a unifying platform-independent control interface and programming model. The use of the framework is demonstrated through two representative use cases, where medium access is coordinated between IEEE-802.11 and IEEE-802.15.4 networks.

Method of changing the operation of wireless network nodes

Realizing airtime allocations in multi-hop Wi-Fi networks: A stability and convergence study with testbed evaluation

Abstract REACT is a distributed resource allocation protocol used to negotiate a max–min allocation of airtime for multi-hop ad hoc wireless networks. Two approaches are proposed for a node to realize its REACT allocation in a contention-based MAC protocol. This is achieved by tuning its contention window to a value that corresponds to its allocation. Only a change in the allocation, due to a change in local traffic requirements or local network views, results in re-tuning. The approaches for tuning are implemented in commercial Wi-Fi devices and their stability and convergence are studied experimentally in the w-iLab.t wireless network testbed. These properties are also studied analyticall…

Demo abstract: Cross-technology TDMA synchronization using energy pattern beacons

When different technologies use the same frequency bands in close proximity, the resulting interference typically results in performance degradation. Coexistence methods exist, but these are often technology specific and require technology specific interference detection methods. To remove the root cause of the performance degradation, devices should be able to negotiate medium access even when using different technologies. To this end, an architecture that allows cross-technology medium access by means of a Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) scheme was devised. In order to achieve cross-technology synchronization, which is required for the TDMA solution, an energy pattern beacon is trans…

Making WiFi work in multi-hop topologies: Automatic negotiation and allocation of airtime

We propose a solution for mitigating the performance impairments of CSMA/CA protocols in multi-hop topologies based on the dynamic adaptation of the contention process experienced by nodes in a wireless network. A distributed protocol is used to negotiate the channel airtime for a node as a function of the traffic requirements of its neighbourhood, taking into account bandwidth reserved for the control operations. A mechanism is provided for a node to tune its contention window depending on its allocated airtime. Different from previous schemes, a node's contention window is fixed in size unless the traffic requirements of its neighbourhood change. The scheme is implemented on legacy commer…

Supporting Autonomous Navigation of Visually Impaired People for Experiencing Cultural Heritage

In this chapter, we present a system for indoor and outdoor localization and navigation to allow the low vision users in experiencing cultural heritage in autonomy. The system is based on the joint utilization of dead-reckoning and computer vision techniques on a smartphone-centric tracking system. The system is explicitly designed for visually impaired people, but it can be easily generalized to other users, and it is built under the assumption that special reference signals, such as colored tapes, painted lines, or tactile paving, are deployed in the environment for guiding visually impaired users along pre-defined paths. Differently from previous works on localization, which are focused …

Capture Aware Sequential Waterfilling for LoraWAN Adaptive Data Rate

LoRaWAN (Long Range Wide Area Network) is emerging as an attractive network infrastructure for ultra low power Internet of Things devices. Even if the technology itself is quite mature and specified, the currently deployed wireless resource allocation strategies are still coarse and based on rough heuristics. This paper proposes an innovative "sequential waterfilling" strategy for assigning Spreading Factors (SF) to End-Devices (ED). Our design relies on three complementary approaches: i) equalize the Time-on-Air of the packets transmitted by the system's EDs in each spreading factor's group; ii) balance the spreading factors across multiple access gateways, and iii) keep into account the c…

MAC learning

Cognition as a way to deal with the challenges of future wireless networks has been largely considered by the recent literature, with a main focus on physical layer adaptability and dynamic spectrum access. In this demo, we show how a simple cognition mechanism can be also applied at the MAC layer, by exploiting the emerging paradigm of programmable wireless cards. The idea is using the formal definition of simple MAC protocol components and platform-independent representation of channel events gathered from the wireless node, for emulating the behavior of protocols which are not currently running on the network, learning about their expected performance, and dynamically reconfiguring the w…

Demo - A Cell-level Traffic Generator for LoRa Networks

In this demo we present and validate a LoRa cell traffic generator, able to emulate the behavior of thousands of low-rate sensor nodes deployed in the same cell, by using a single Software Defined Radio (SDR) platform. Differently from traditional generators, whose goal is creating packet flows which emulate specific applications and protocols, our focus is generating a combined radio signal, as seen by a gateway, given by the super-position of the signals transmitted by multiple sensors simultaneously active on the same channel. We argue that such a generator can be of interest for testing different network planning solutions for LoRa networks.

Exploiting programmable architectures for WiFi/ZigBee inter-technology cooperation

The increasing complexity of wireless standards has shown that protocols cannot be designed once for all possible deployments, especially when unpredictable and mutating interference situations are present due to the coexistence of heterogeneous technologies. As such, flexibility and (re)programmability of wireless devices is crucial in the emerging scenarios of technology proliferation and unpredictable interference conditions. In this paper, we focus on the possibility to improve coexistence performance of WiFi and ZigBee networks by exploiting novel programmable architectures of wireless devices able to support run-time modifications of medium access operations. Differently from software…

ARIANNA: a smartphone-based navigation system with human in the loop

In this paper we present a low cost navigation system, called ARIANNA, primarily designed for visually impaired people. ARIANNA (pAth Recognition for Indoor Assisted NavigatioN with Augmented perception) permits to find some points of interests in an indoor environment by following a path painted or sticked on the floor. The path is detected by the camera of the smartphone which also generates a vibration signal providing a feedback to the user for correcting his/her direction. Some special landmarks can be deployed along the path for coding additional information detectable by the camera. In order to study the practical feasibility of the ARIANNA system for human users that want to follow …

ErrorSense: Characterizing WiFi Error Patterns for Detecting ZigBee Interference

Recent years have witnessed the increasing adoption of heterogeneous wireless networks working in unlicensed ISM bands, thus creating serious problems of spectrum overcrowding. Although ZigBee, Bluetooth and WiFi networks have been natively designed for working in presence of interference, it has been observed that several performance impairments may occur because of heterogeneous sensitivity to detect or react to the presence of other technologies. In this paper we focus on the WiFi capability to detect interfering ZigBee links. Despite of the narrowband transmissions performed by ZigBee, in emerging scenarios ZigBee interference can have a significant impact on WiFi performance. Therefore…

A cultural heritage experience for visually impaired people

Abstract In recent years, we have assisted to an impressive advance of computer vision algorithms, based on image processing and artificial intelligence. Among the many applications of computer vision, in this paper we investigate on the potential impact for enhancing the cultural and physical accessibility of cultural heritage sites. By using a common smartphone as a mediation instrument with the environment, we demonstrate how convolutional networks can be trained for recognizing monuments in the surroundings of the users, thus enabling the possibility of accessing contents associated to the monument itself, or new forms of fruition for visually impaired people. Moreover, computer vision …

Control Architecture for Wireless MAC Processor Networking

Abstract: In these years, the proliferation of unplanned WLANs is creating the need of implementing different adaptation strategies for improving the network per- formance under mutating and evolving interference scenarios. Many vendors pro- pose undisclosed MAC/PHY optimization solutions, such as ambient noise immunity schemes, dynamic tuning of operating channels and contention parameters, etc., rely- ing on low-level implementations in the card hardware/firmware. In this paper we envision a new solution for expressing and implementing high-level adaptation policies in WLANs, in contrast to the current approaches based on vendor- specific implementations. We exploit the hardware abstracti…