1,720,966 research outputs found
A Novel OMNeT++-Based Simulation Tool for Vehicular Cloud Computing in ETSI MEC-Compliant 5G Environments
Full text linkVehicular cloud computing is gaining popularity thanks to the rapid advancements in next generation wireless communication networks. Similarly, Edge Computing, along with its standard proposals such as European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC), will play a vital role in these scenarios, by enabling the execution of cloud-based services at the edge of the network. Together, these solutions have the potential to create real micro-datacenters at the network edge, favoring several benefits like minimal latency, real-time data processing, and data locality. However, the research community has not yet the opportunity to use integrated simulation frameworks for the easy testing of applications that exploit both the vehicular cloud paradigm and MEC-compliant 5G deployment environments. In this paper, we present our simulation tool as a platform for researchers and engineers to design, test, and enhance applications utilizing the concepts of vehi cular and edge cloud. The tool implements our ETSI MEC-compliant architecture that leverages resources provided by vehicles. Moreover, the paper analyzes and reports performance results for our simulation platform, as well as provides a use case where our simulator is used to support the design, test, and validation of an algorithm to distribute MEC application components on vehicular cloud resources
A digital twin decision support system for the urban facility management process
Full text linkThe ever increasing pace of IoT deployment is opening the door to concrete implementa-tions of smart city applications, enabling the large-scale sensing and modeling of (near-)real-time digital replicas of physical processes and environments. This digital replica could serve as the basis of a decision support system, providing insights into possible optimizations of resources in a smart city scenario. In this article, we discuss an extension of a prior work, presenting a detailed proof-of-concept implementation of a Digital Twin solution for the Urban Facility Management (UFM) process. The Interactive Planning Platform for City District Adaptive Maintenance Operations (IPPODAMO) is a distributed geographical system, fed with and ingesting heterogeneous data sources originating from different urban data providers. The data are subject to continuous refinements and algorithmic processes, used to quantify and build synthetic indexes measuring the activity level inside an area of interest. IPPODAMO takes into account potential interference from other stakeholders in the urban environment, enabling the informed scheduling of operations, aimed at minimizing interference and the costs of operations
A Layered Architecture Enabling Metaverse Applications in Smart Manufacturing Environments
No full textThe steady rollout of Industrial IoT (IIoT) technology in the manufacturing domain embodies the potential to implement smarter and more resilient production processes. To this end, it is expected that there will be a strong reliance of manufacturing processes on cloud/edge services so as to act intelligently and flexibly. While automation is necessary to handle the environment's complexity, human-in-the-loop design approaches are paramount. In this context, Digital Twins play a crucial role by allowing human operators to inspect and monitor the environment to ensure stability and reliability. Integrating the IIoT with the Metaverse enhances the system's capabilities even further, offering new opportunities for efficiency and collaboration while enabling integrated management of assets and processes. This article presents a layered conceptual architecture as an enabler for smart manufacturing metaverse environments, targeting real-time data collection and representations from shopfloor assets and processes. At the bottom layer, our proposal relies on middleware technology, serving differentiated Quality of Service (QoS) needs of the Operation Technology (OT) monitoring processes. The latter contributes to feeding a virtual layer where data processes reside, creating representations of the monitored phenomena at different timescales. Metaverse applications can consume data by tapping into the metaverse engine, a microservice-oriented and accelerated Platform as a Service (PaaS) layer tasked with bringing data to life. Without loss of generality, we profile different facets of our proposal by relying on two different proof-of-concept inspection applications aimed at real-time monitoring of the network fabric activity and a visual asset monitoring one
A Novel Design for Advanced 5G Deployment Environments with Virtualized Resources at Vehicular and MEC Nodes
Full text linkIoT and edge computing are profoundly changing the information era, bringing a hyper-connected and context-aware computing environment to reality. Connected vehicles are a critical outcome of this synergy, allowing for the seamless interconnection of autonomous mobile/fixed objects, giving rise to a decentralized vehicle-to-everything (V2X) paradigm. On this front, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) proposed the Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC) standard, addressing the execution of cloud-like services at the very edge of the infrastructure, thus facilitating the support of low-latency services at the far-edge. In this article, we go a step further and propose a novel ETSI MEC-compliant architecture that fully exploits the synergies between the edge and far-edge, extending the pool of virtualized resources available at MEC nodes with vehicular ones found in the vicinity. In particular, our approach allows vehicle entities to access and partake in a negotiation process embodying a rewarding scheme, while addressing resource volatility as vehicles join and leave the resource pool. To demonstrate the viability and flexibility of our proposed approach, we have built an ETSI MEC-compliant simulation model, which could be tailored to distribute application requests based on the availability of both local and remote resources, managing their transparent migration and execution. In addition, the paper reports on the experimental validation of our proposal in a 5G network setting, contrasting different service delivery modes, by highlighting the potential of the dynamic exploitation of far-edge vehicular resources
Charting the Route: Fine-grained Road Topology Construction for Logistics Digital Twins
No full textSmart logistics is paramount within the multifaceted framework of smart cities. The evolving landscape of sales channels has intensified the demand for efficient logistics solutions capable not only of optimizing the delivery process but also of controlling the environmental impact within the urban setting. Digital Twin solutions have emerged as promising tools to navigate the complexities of modern logistics scenarios. Acc2Twin is an ongoing project, targeting the optimization of the pallet wrapping cycle for package delivery, reducing plastic waste. The solution accurately reconstructs delivery routes and relies on driving profiles to infer the physical forces experienced by delivery trucks, used to assess the stretch and integrity of the plastic film. In this article, we focus our attention on RouteVel, a system component adopted to enrich topological data by augmenting point density through a mix of interpolation techniques, enabling precise analysis of acceleration profiles used as input to the physics-based Digital Twin to assess the pallet wrapping cycle stability. The paper also provides insight into the performance assessment of the tool to understand its potential and the potential points for improvement
IPPODAMO: A digital twin support for smart cities facility management
No full textThe steady deployment of IoT is paving the road toward concrete implementations of the smart city concept, allowing public/private institutions to sense and model (near) real-time digital replicas of physical processes and environments. This Digital Twin (DT) could be used proactively, as a decision support system, providing insights into possible optimizations of processes in a smart city context. In this article, we present the design and main building blocks of a DT solution for the Urban Facility Management (UFM) process in the metropolitan area of Bologna, Italy. The Interactive Planning Platform for city District Adaptive Maintenance Operations (IPPODAMO) is a proof of concept solution consisting of a (distributed) multi-layer geographical system, fed with heterogeneous data sources originating from different urban data providers. The data are subject to continuous refinements and algorithmic processes, used to quantify and predict near-to-long term evolution of the urban activity level, exploited for planning purposes, scheduling urban maintenance operations and interventions
A Simulation-based Decision Support System for Urban Traffic Management
No full textOne common challenge faced by smart cities is traffic congestion, caused also unintentionally by city planners, which significantly impacts urban life and the environment. To address these issues, various strategies and approaches are explored, including advanced traffic management methods, communication systems, and predictive modeling. In this study, we introduce a Digital Twin decision support system that focuses on accurately modeling a city's road network and replicating traffic patterns for specific time frames. Central to this project is SUMO, a microscopic vehicular traffic simulator used to create the reference road model. Our research presents a flexible and viable methodology for generating SUMO-compliant simulations that leverage real vehicular data from the city to analyze urban traffic and its conditions. To illustrate our approach, we apply it to a specific case study centered on examining environmental emissions in the city of Bologna, Italy. This approach shows promise in enhancing traffic management and overall urban efficiency within the broader context of smart cities
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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