Established in 2006, TATA Africa Services (Nigeria) Limited operates as the nodal point for Tata businesses in West Africa. TATA Africa Services (Nigeria) Limited has a strong presence in Nigeria with investments exceeding USD 10 million. The company was established in Lagos, Nigeria as a subsidiary of TATA Africa Holdings (SA) (Pty) Limited, South Africa and serves as the hub of Tata’s operations in Nigeria and the rest of West Africa.

What About Us

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) provides access to information on a variety of topics related to the environment and strives to inform citizens of health risks. The EPA also has an extensive library network that consists of 26 libraries throughout the United States, which provide access to a plethora of information to EPA employees, scientists, and researchers. The EPA implemented a reorganization project to digitize their materials so they would be more accessible to a wider range of users, but this plan was drastically accelerated when the EPA was threatened with a budget cut. It chose to close and reduce the hours and services of some of their libraries. As a result, the agency was accused of denying users the “right to know” by making information unavailable, not providing an adequate strategic plan, and discarding vital materials. This case study explores the background of the digitization project, the practices implemented, and the critiques of the project.

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The Environmental Protection Agency

As we are moving towards the Internet of Things (IoT), the number of sensors deployed around the world is growing at a rapid pace. Market research has shown a significant growth of sensor deployments over the past decade and has predicted a significant increment of the growth rate in the future. These sensors continuously generate enormous amounts of data. However, in order to add value to raw sensor data we need to understand it. Collection, modelling, reasoning, and distribution of context in relation to sensor data plays critical role in this challenge. Context-aware computing has proven to be successful in understanding sensor data. In this paper, we survey context awareness from an IoT perspective. We present the necessary background by introducing the IoT paradigm and context-aware fundamentals at the beginning. Then we provide an in-depth analysis of context life cycle. We evaluate a subset of projects (50) which represent the majority of research and commercial solutions proposed in the field of context-aware computing conducted over the last decade (2001-2011) based on our own taxonomy. Finally, based on our evaluation, we highlight the lessons to be learnt from the past and some possible directions for future research. The survey addresses a broad range of techniques, methods, models, functionalities, systems, applications, and middleware solutions related to context awareness and IoT. Our goal is not only to analyse, compare and consolidate past research work but also to appreciate their findings and discuss their applicability towards the IoT.

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Context Aware Computing for The Internet of Things: A Survey

This document provides updates to IEEE Std 802.16's MIB for the MAC, PHY and asso- ciated management procedures in order to accommodate recent extensions to the standard.

IEEE Standard for Local and Metropolitan Area Networks Part 16: Air Interface for Fixed Broadband Wireless Access Systems Draft Amendment: Management Information Base Extensions

Bluetooth (over IEEE 802.15.1), ultra-wideband (UWB, over IEEE 802.15.3), ZigBee (over IEEE 802.15.4), and Wi-Fi (over IEEE 802.11) are four protocol standards for short- range wireless communications with low power consumption. From an application point of view, bluetooth is intended for a cordless mouse, keyboard, and hands-free headset, UWB is oriented to high-bandwidth multimedia links, ZigBee is designed for reliable wirelessly networked monitoring and control networks, while Wi-Fi is directed at computer-to-computer connections as an extension or substitution of cabled networks. In this paper, we provide a study of these popular wireless communication standards, evaluating their main features and behaviors in terms of various metrics, including the transmission time, data coding efficiency, complexity, and power consumption. It is believed that the comparison presented in this paper would benefit application engineers in selecting an appropriate protocol.

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A Comparative Study of Wireless Protocols: Bluetooth, UWB, ZigBee, and Wi-Fi

Due to the expansion of distributed renewable energy resources, peer to peer energy trading (P2P DET) is expected to be one of the key elements of next generation power systems. P2P DET can provide various benefits such as creating a competitive energy market, reducing power outages, increasing overall efficiency of power systems and supplementing alternative sources of energy according to user preferences. Because of these promising advantages, P2P DET has attracted the attention of several researchers. Current research related to P2P DET include demand response optimization, power routing, network communication, security and privacy. This paper presents a review of the main research topics revolving around P2P DET. Particularly, we present a comprehensive survey of existing demand response optimization models, power routing devices and power routing algorithms. We also identify some key challenges faced in realizing P2P DET. Furthermore, we discuss state of the art enabling technologies such as Energy Internet, Blockchain and Software Defined Networking (SDN) and we provide insights into future research directions.

Peer to Peer Distributed Energy Trading in Smart Grids: A Survey

Ad hoc and sensor networks is a new area of research which is rapidly growing due to the development of new technologies in inexpensive sensors. These electronic devices have increased capabilities in processing speed, memory, communication and networking [21][22]. Such sensor networks have a vast amount of applications including environmental monitoring, military, ecology, agriculture, inventory control, robotics and health care. This paper discusses the issues and challenges in the use of this new and very promising technology in the protection and monitoring of the critical and essential infrastructures of pipelines carrying oil, gas, water, and other important resources. The paper presents an architectural model that can be used to provide this monitoring and control functions. The model includes an overview of networking and routing protocols that can be used to provide the necessary communications. In addition, the paper provides discussions and recommendations concerning network reliability and the use of different wireless sensor technologies and protocols.

A framework for pipeline infrastructure monitoring using wireless sensor networks

A system and method are provided for analyzing and transmitting video over a switched network. According to an aspect of the invention, two phases are generally provided: an analysis phase performed before transmission of the video; and a transmission phase performed after analyzing the video stream. During the pre-transmission video analysis phase, the video stream is analyzed in order to determine the needed traffic control parameters, such as the peak cell rate, the sustained cell rate, and the maximum burst size. The goal of the analysis phase is to select a transmission traffic contract for the encoded video stream that will minimize the utilization of network resources and permit the quality of the video to be maintained. After the analysis phase, the transmission phase is performed to transmit the video over the network in accordance with the selected traffic control parameters. During the transmission phase, a model of the decoder buffer is kept at the source and is first pre-filled by transmitting data at the sustained cell rate. Thereafter, the video stream data is transmitted at the peak cell rate or the sustained cell rate depending on the availability of tokens.

System and method for analyzing and transmitting video over a switched network

The authors propose an agile, softwarized infrastructure for the flexible, cost-effective, secure, and privacy-preserving deployment of Internet of Things systems for smart healthcare applications and services.

Softwarization of Internet of Things Infrastructure for Secure and Smart Healthcare

Wireless local area networking standard (Wi-Fi) and the WPAN standard (Bluetooth and Zigbee) products utilize the same unlicensed 2.4 GHz ISM band. Co-existence between such wireless technologies within the same frequency spectrum is crucial to ensure that each wireless technology maintains and provide its desired performance requirements. In this paper, we investigate the co-existence of WLAN (IEEE 802.11g) with Zigbee (IEEE 802.15.4) standard. The paper focuses on quantifying potential interferences between Zigbee and IEEE 802.11g by examining the impact on the throughput performance of IEEE 802.11g and Zigbee devices when co-existing within a particular environment. In addition, the effect of Zigbee on IEEE 802.11g was compared with the effect of Bluetooth under the same operating conditions.

Khaled Shuaib

Papers

Peer to Peer Distributed Energy Trading in Smart Grids: A Survey

A framework for pipeline infrastructure monitoring using wireless sensor networks

System and method for analyzing and transmitting video over a switched network

Softwarization of Internet of Things Infrastructure for Secure and Smart Healthcare

Co-existence of Zigbee and WLAN - a performance study