1,721,072 research outputs found
Network Performance Evaluation of a LoRa-based IoT System for Crop Protection against Ungulates
No full textInternet of Things (IoT) applications are deeply revolutionizing our lives, due to the continuous, outstanding development of innovative platforms including, for instance, accurate sensors, cloud solutions, and involving relevant advancements in standards and protocols. One of the recent trends of IoT applications is smart agriculture, which is evolving to solve several relevant problems from producers. In this paper, we present an IoT solution for precision agriculture aimed at repelling ungulates and preventing damages to crop fields. Moreover, this paper provides an in-depth technical description of a complete architecture we designed and deployed for this application, that consists of the low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) and the backend system. The deployment also explores the performance of LoRa network in terms of its reliability in a rural area under different scenarios, i.e., in an open, dense and very dense vegetation environments. Experimental results show that vegetations have high impact on LoRa performance. Finally, this paper discusses how the proposed technology is the right one for smart agriculture in relation to crop protection
A Monitoring Application for Animal Repelling Devices in Smart Agriculture
No full textMonitoring the operational status of IoT devices is a fundamental task for the deployment of reliable IoT-based applications. This task is even more crucial when such applications are deployed in rural environments, as typically occurs in Smart Agriculture, due to the long distance and wide area to be covered for implementing cost-effective solutions. Starting from an innovative IoT deployment for defending crops against ungulates attacks, this paper provides a comprehensive description about the design, development, and assessment of a monitoring application for IoT animal repelling devices. To achieve the maximum level of flexibility and scalability, modern virtualization technologies (i.e., containers) have been adopted for the development of the monitoring application. Finally, experimental results obtained from the utilization of the monitoring application in a realworld scenario are reported
Quantum Networking for Secure and Reliable Communication in Space Exploration
No full textIn the coming years, space missions will increasingly require communication systems capable of ensuring high-performance, safe, and reliable data transmission between ground stations and spacecraft. Since classical communication systems will be inadequate and have enormous limitations, this article intends to analyze the potential of quantum networking in addressing future challenges of space communications. We introduce well-known phenomena of quantum mechanics, such as non-cloning, entanglement, quantum measurement, and quantum teleportation, which open up a completely new scenario in the design of the communication network. Finally, we propose a network architecture for space exploration, aiming to take a look at the potential of quantum technology to establish communication between Earth and spacecraft by integrating terrestrial and non-terrestrial quantum networks
GymHydro: An Innovative Modular Small-Scale Smart Agriculture System for Hydroponic Greenhouses
Full text linkIn response to the challenges posed by climate change, including extreme weather events, such as heavy rainfall and droughts, the agricultural sector is increasingly seeking solutions for the efficient use of resources, particularly water. Pivotal aspects of smart agriculture include the establishment of weather-independent systems and the implementation of precise monitoring and control of plant growth and environmental conditions. Hydroponic cultivation techniques have emerged as transformative solutions with the potential to reduce water consumption for cultivation and offer a sheltered environment for crops, protecting them from the unpredictable impacts of climate change. However, a significant challenge lies in the frequent need for human intervention to ensure the efficiency and effectiveness of these systems. This paper introduces a novel system with a modular architecture, offering the ability to incorporate new functionalities without necessitating a complete system redesign. The autonomous hydroponic greenhouse, designed and implemented in this study, maintains stable environmental parameters to create an ideal environment for cultivating tomato plants. Actuators, receiving commands from a cloud application situated at the network’s edge, automatically regulate environmental conditions. Decision-making within this application is facilitated by a PID control algorithm, ensuring precision in control commands transmitted through the MQTT protocol and the NGSI-LD message format. The system transitioned from a single virtual machine in the public cloud to edge computing, specifically on a Raspberry Pi 3, to address latency concerns. In this study, we analyzed various delay aspects and network latency to better understand their significance in delays. This transition resulted in a significant reduction in communication latency and a reduction in total service delay, enhancing the system’s real-time responsiveness. The utilization of LoRa communication technology connects IoT devices to a gateway, typically located at the main farm building, addressing the challenge of limited Internet connectivity in remote greenhouse locations. Monitoring data are made accessible to end-users through a smartphone app, offering real-time insights into the greenhouse environment. Furthermore, end-users have the capability to modify system parameters manually and remotely when necessary. This approach not only provides a robust solution to climate-induced challenges but also enhances the efficiency and intelligence of agricultural practices. The transition to digitization poses a significant challenge for farmers. Our proposed system not only represents a step forward toward sustainable and precise agriculture but also serves as a practical demonstrator, providing farmers with a key tool during this crucial digital transition. The demonstrator enables farmers to optimize crop growth and resource management, concretely showcasing the benefits of smart and precise agriculture
Comparative analysis of different endovascular modalities to treat splenic artery aneurysms
No full textBACKGROUND: Endovascular treatment of splenic artery aneurysms (SAAs) is widely applied in the current clinical practice. The aim of this paper was to describe our single center experience on endovascular treatment of SAAs, comparing the outcomes obtained with two different METHODS: Between January 2010 and December 2021, 35 patients with certain diagnosis of non-ruptured SAA were admitted to our center. Twenty-eight patients treated with packing or sandwich techniques were included in the study analysis. Primary outcome measures analyzed were 30-day mortality and mean hospital stay. Secondary outcome measures analyzed were freedom from splenectomy, and the rate of postembolization syndrome. Chi-square test was used to compare the two endovascular techniques. Statistical significance was defined as P value <0.05. RESULTS: The mean age was 56.5 +/- 12.8 years. Most of patients were females (22, 78.6%). Eighteen patients underwent sandwich technique (Group A), and the remaining 10 packing technique (Group B). Technical success was 100%. Intraoperative and 30-day mortality were 0 in both groups. Mean hospital stay was 4.2 +/- 4.0 days in Group A, and 2.3 +/- 3.9 days in Group B (P=0.93). Postembolization syndrome occurred in 9 cases (50%) in Group A, and in 4 cases (40%) in Group B (P=0.521). Only one patient in Group A (5.5%) required splenectomy (P=0.392). CONCLUSIONS: Packing and sandwich techniques seem to be similarly safe and effective in treating SAAs and have no statistically significant differences in terms of early mortality and morbidity. (Cite this article as: Bertagna G, Troisi N, Torri L, Canovaro F, Tomei F, Adami D, et al. Comparative analysis of different endovascular modalities to treat splenic artery aneurysms. Ital J Vasc Endovasc Surg 2023;30:7-10. DOI: 10.23736/S1824-4777.22.01569-8
Resource management and QoS architectures in DAMA satellite access networks
No full textIn the last years, the development of a multiservice network, integrated in the multiplexing and switching strategies, has converged to an IP-based infrastructure, reducing the relevance of other network solutions, such as a B-ISDN based on ATM. However, to develop an IP-based commercial network, the issues related to the Quality of Service (QoS) support must be addressed. These problems are particularly relevant when a satellite access solution is considered, since the network resources can be limited and expensive. At the same time, Demand Assignment Multiple Access (DAMA) protocols permit to better exploit the satellite resources dynamically allocating system bandwidth in response to user requests. In this scenario, the paper discusses the application to a DAMA satellite access network of the different QoS architectures proposed by the IETF and the scientific community. The main novelty of the paper consists in the selection, among the different alternatives, of the most suitable solution to be applied to a satellite access network. Furthermore, the advantages and the drawbacks of the proposed architectures are analyzed in detail and the interaction between the control plane of the MAC layer and the resource management at IP layer Is highlighted
Experimental evaluation of a Lora wildlife monitoring network in a forest vegetation area
No full textSmart agriculture and wildlife monitoring are one of the recent trends of Internet of Things (IoT) applications, which are evolving in providing sustainable solutions from producers. This article details the design, development and assessment of a wildlife monitoring application for IoT animal repelling devices that is able to cover large areas, thanks to the low power wide area networks (LPWAN), which bridge the gap between cellular technologies and short range wireless technologies. LoRa, the global de-facto LPWAN, continues to attract attention given its open specification and ready availability of off-the-shelf hardware, with claims of several kilometers of range in harsh challenging environments. At first, this article presents a survey of the LPWAN for smart agriculture applications. We proceed to evaluate the performance of LoRa transmission technology operating in the 433 MHz and 868 MHz bands, aimed at wildlife monitoring in a forest vegetation area. To characterize the communication link, we mainly use the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), received signal strength indicator (RSSI) and packet delivery ratio (PDR). Findings from this study show that achievable performance can greatly vary between the 433 MHz and 868 MHz bands, and prompt caution is required when taking numbers at face value, as this can have implications for IoT applications. In addition, our results show that the link reaches up to 860 m in the highly dense forest vegetation environment, while in the not so dense forest vegetation environment, it reaches up to 2050 m
Design, Development and Evaluation of an Intelligent Animal Repelling System for Crop Protection Based on Embedded Edge-AI
Full text linkIn recent years, edge computing has become an essential technology for real-time application development by moving processing and storage capabilities close to end devices, thereby reducing latency, improving response time and ensuring secure data exchange. In this work, we focus on a Smart Agriculture application that aims to protect crops from ungulate attacks, and therefore to significantly reduce production losses, through the creation of virtual fences that take advantage of computer vision and ultrasound emission. Starting with an innovative device capable of generating ultrasound to drive away ungulates and thus protect crops from their attack, this work provides a comprehensive description of the design, development and assessment of an intelligent animal repulsion system that allows to detect and recognize the ungulates as well as generate ultrasonic signals tailored to each species of the ungulate. Taking into account the constraints coming from the rural environment in terms of energy supply and network connectivity, the proposed system is based on IoT platforms that provide a satisfactory compromise between performance, cost and energy consumption. More specifically, in this work, we deployed and evaluated various edge computing devices (Raspberry Pi, with or without a neural compute stick, and NVIDIA Jetson Nano) running real-time object detector (YOLO and Tiny-YOLO) with custom-trained models to identify the most suitable animal recognition HW/SW platform to be integrated with the ultrasound generator. Experimental results show the feasibility of the intelligent animal repelling system through the deployment of the animal detectors on power efficient edge computing devices without compromising the mean average precision and also satisfying real-time requirements. In addition, for each HW/SW platform, the experimental study provides a cost/performance analysis, as well as measurements of the average and peak CPU temperature. Best practices are also discussed and lastly, this article discusses how the combined technology used can help farmers and agronomists in their decision making and management process
Elastic Load Balancing in Software Defined Satellite Networks
No full textSoftware Defined Networking (SDN) is a key technology for enabling satellite networks and, more specifically, their Ground Segment Network (GSN), with innovative services. The most important entity of the SDN architecture is the controller that enables network programmability. In this paper, we present the design and development of a new SDN controller for the GSN. The core of the controller is a new application for handling the traffic load over the GSN links and, in case of failures, for automatically rerouting traffic flows. We also propose an elastic load balancing policy that leverages on a parametric approach for assigning the cost to the GSN links thus allowing network administrators to adjust the links load by establishing a threshold between consolidation and balancing. To assess the effectiveness of our load control policy, we carried out experimental tests using the Mininet emulation environment
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