Logistics and especially road transportation account for a major proportion of global greenhouse gas emissions. Thus, increasing eco-sustainability is particularly important in this sector. Green information systems can support the transition towards more eco-sustainable business processes in logistics. To date research in Green IS has been dominated by conceptual and empirical studies, while the community has been reluctant to do design science research developing IS artifacts. Addressing this gap, we develop and evaluate a Green IS artifact for GHG emission tracking in road transportation processes – named Carbon Tracker. The design process was guided by design principles derived from prior Green IS literature. The artifact enables more eco-sustainable practices in logistics to emerge as it provides detailed information about GHG emissions that is indispensable for advanced organizational sense- and decision-making. The evaluation shows that the use of Carbon Tracker leads to more accurate and detailed information on emissions as well as more seamless and efficient workflows than today’s best-practice approaches. Thus, the paper demonstrates how Green IS can be leveraged for more eco-sustainable and efficient business processes and paves the way for further design-oriented research in the Green IS domain.

/pdf/leveraging-green-is-in-logistics-yp5g6p0zax.pdf

Leveraging Green IS in Logistics

Calculating product carbon footprints (PCF) is a central function of Environmental Management Information Systems (EMIS). Collecting accurate data for EMIS in general and PCF in particular is a critical issue. Nowadays, emission data of transportation processes are mostly based on averages and estimations, as data on actual emissions of transportation processes are costly to collect. In this paper, we propose a cost-efficient system for real-time data gathering for PCF in transportation processes based on vehicle on-board systems and smartphones. We present the system architecture, outline the application logic and - based on a generic multi-echelon transportation network - we specify its application and integration into EMIS.

Real-Time Data Collection for Product Carbon Footprints in Transportation Processes Based on OBD2 and Smartphones

https://www.iris.sssup.it/bitstream/11382/200071/1/2007_JSTQE_Scaffardi_published.pdf

Photonics in switching: Architectures, systems and enabling technologies

High-performance interconnection networks are required for inter-board, intra-board, and on-chip data communication. With the growth of data communication, the requirements for high bandwidth density, high scalability, low latency, and low power consumption are becoming more stringent, making optical solutions appealing. Such requirements should be achieved not only by the hardware architecture but also by the electronic scheduler that is in charge of deciding the packet transmissions and controlling the optical devices. In particular, low-latency schedulers are of paramount importance—especially for optical interconnection networks whose switching capabilities may be constrained by the optical domain. This paper focuses on the hardware implementation and optimization of a scheduler suitable for optical interconnection networks. Parallel, iterative scheduling algorithms are considered for high computational efficiency. More specifically, an iterative parallel implementation of the longestqueue- first algorithm (ipLQF) is proposed and compared to the well-known iSLIP algorithm. Hardware optimization is carried out to improve their implementation efficiency. Although ipLQF achieves better network performance in terms of packet latency, the hardware implementation indicates that iSLIP stands for execution time and resource utilization in commercial field programmable gate array boards.

Simulation and FPGA-based implementation of iterative parallel schedulers for optical interconnection networks

Array waveguide grating (AWG)-based optical switching fabrics are receiving increasing attention due to their simplicity and good performance. However, AWGs are affected by coherent crosstalk that can significantly impair system operation when the same wavelength is used simultaneously on several input ports. To permit large port counts in a N × N AWG, a possible solution is to schedule data transmissions across the AWG preventing switch configurations that generate large crosstalk. We study the properties and the existence conditions of switch configurations able to control coherent crosstalk. The presented results show that, by running a properly constrained scheduling algorithm to avoid or minimize crosstalk, it is possible to operate an AWG-based switch with large port counts without significant performance degradation.

/pdf/crosstalk-preventing-scheduling-in-single-and-two-stage-awg-1jp6n1b9de.pdf

Crosstalk-preventing scheduling in single-and two-stage AWG-based cell switches

In this paper, we review the state of the art of two key hardware technologies that support vehicular applications: on-board embedded systems and wireless sensor networks (WSN) We focus on pre-competitive or state-of-the-art hardware, and illustrate its use with two case studies: on-line navigation assistance and data collection in a mobile WSN In the first case (based on a joint collaboration within project FUNCMOV PGIDIT05TIC00501CT, Xunta de Galicia, Spain), we describe our development experience with automotive embedded systems In the second case, we analyze the feasibility of wake-up schema to gather data from highly dispersed sensor nodes The goal of the paper is to offer a perspective on the current possibilities of these hardware systems

Base technologies for vehicular networking applications: review and case studies

Packet switches with optical fabrics can potentially scale to higher capacities. It is also potentially possible to improve their reliability, and reduce both their footprint and power consumption. A well-known alternative for implementing hardwired switches is Arrayed Waveguide Grating (AWG). Ideally, AWG insertion losses do not depend on the number of input-output ports, meaning that scalability is theoretically infinite. However, accurate second-order assessment has demonstrated that in-band crosstalk exponentially increases the power penalty, limiting the realistic useful size of AWG commercial devices to about 10-15 ports (13-18 dB) [1]. On the other hand, the in-band crosstalk at AWG outputs depends on the connection pattern set by the scheduling algorithm and this port count limitation is calculated for worst-case scenarios. In this paper, we show that distributed schedulers with predetermined connection patterns can be used to avoid these harmful arrangements. We also show that the probability of worst-case patterns is very low, allowing us to set a more realistic port limit for general centralized schedulers and very small losses. With these results, we calculate more realistic port count limits for both scheduler types.

Practical Scalability of Wavelength Routing Switches

In this paper we propose an enhanced parallel iterative scheduler for IBWR synchronous slotted OPS switches in SCWP mode. It obtains a maximal matching of packet demands without resource conflicts. The analytical and numerical results are highly competitive regarding previous work.

/pdf/enhanced-parallel-iterative-schedulers-for-ibwr-optical-3ptk777s3k.pdf

Enhanced parallel iterative schedulers for IBWR optical packet switches

The load balanced Birkhoffvon Neumann switch is an elegant VOQ architecture with two outstanding characteristics: (i) it has a computational cost of O(1) iterations and (ii) input controllers do no...

Decoupled parallel hierarchical matching schedulers

Optical switching fabrics are gaining interest as in multi Terabit switching devices; the advantages over their electronic equivalents are mainly their information density and power consumption. Arrayed Waveguide Gratings (AWGs) are promising optical devices proposed by the academic and industrial community to build optical switching fabrics. Because of their wavelength routing property, AWGs allow wavelength reuse over different ports introducing in-band crosstalk which strongly limits scalability of AWG-based backplanes. However, this effect can be mitigated or even completely avoided by means of proper scheduling algorithms. In this paper, we present several modified scheduling algorithms which limit the effect of coherent crosstalk in AWG-based switching fabrics and achieve good performance in terms of throughput and delay.

/pdf/crosstalk-limiting-schedulers-in-awg-based-optical-switches-18oik8ep6d.pdf

M. Rodelgo-Lacruz

Papers

Base technologies for vehicular networking applications: review and case studies

Practical Scalability of Wavelength Routing Switches

Enhanced parallel iterative schedulers for IBWR optical packet switches

Decoupled parallel hierarchical matching schedulers

Crosstalk Limiting Schedulers in AWG Based Optical Switches