1,721,086 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
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
IFRS harmonization and foreign direct investment
No full textIFRS refers to International Financial Reporting Standards, which are the guidelines that provide the framework for accounting works. The principles are also known as the International Accounting Standards (IAS). This global financial concept was first introduced in 2001 to equip investors with analyzed ac- counting statements. In this Chapter we review the relation between IFRS and Foreign Direct Investments (FDIs). We review the relevant literature that analyses the effects on IFRS on FDIs and cross-border acquisitions. The economic literature states that the introduction of IFRS has presented an important increase in FDIs. The evidence shows that IFRS adopting countries attract investments from countries that implemented IFRS and non-IFRS implementing countries.Depto. de Organización de EmpresasFac. de Ciencias Económicas y EmpresarialesTRUEpu
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
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Edge-AI Platform for Realtime Wildlife Repelling
No full textIn this paper, we present the architecture of a Smart Industry inspired platform designed for Agriculture 4.0 applications and, specifically, to optimize an ecosystem of SW and HW components for animal repelling. The platform implementation aims to obtain reliability and energy efficiency in a system aimed to detect, recognize, identify, and repel wildlife by generating specific ultrasound signals. The wireless sensor network is composed of OpenMote hardware devices coordinated on a mesh network based on the 6LoWPAN protocol, and connected to an FPGA-based board. The system, activated when an animal is detected, elaborates the data received from a video camera connected to FPGA-based hardware devices and then activates different ultrasonic jammers belonging to the OpenMotes network devices. This way, in real-time wildlife will be progressively moved away from the field to be preserved by the activation of specific ultrasonic generators. To monitor the daily behavior of the wildlife, the ecosystem is expanded using a time series database running on a Cloud platform
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Open CLORO: An open testbed for cloud robotics
No full textThe introduction of the Cloud paradigm has rapidly changed IT-infrastructures in modern organizations. The application of Cloud systems to manage a growing number of IoT devices such as sensors is continually unfolding and revealing new opportunities. A notable field of research is related to the development of models, applications and real testbed on robots that can be managed and coordinated remotely at a higher layer involving network communications. In this paper, we present Open CLORO: an open testbed for Cloud robotics. We propose Open CLORO, which serves as a benchmark for real experiments for various network applications in which the Robots are equipped with programmable devices that also provide network connectivity and grant access from remote. We provide a detailed overview of the proposed architecture that can be effective for developing and testing not only robots-related experiments but also a wide number of network applications such as distributed coordination, vehicle-to-vehicle communications, and Cloud-based management services
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