Smart cities contain intelligent things which can intelligently automatically and collaboratively enhance life quality, save people's lives, and act a sustainable resource ecosystem. To achieve these advanced collaborative technologies such as drones, robotics, artificial intelligence, and Internet of Things (IoT) are required to increase the smartness of smart cities by improving the connectivity, energy efficiency, and quality of services (QoS). Therefore, collaborative drones and IoT play a vital role in supporting a lot of smart-city applications such as those involved in communication, transportation, agriculture,safety and security, disaster mitigation, environmental protection, service delivery, energy saving, e-waste reduction, weather monitoring, healthcare, etc. This paper presents a survey of the potential techniques and applications of collaborative drones and IoT which have recently been proposed in order to increase the smartness of smart cities. It provides a comprehensive overview highlighting the recent and ongoing research on collaborative drone and IoT in improving the real-time application of smart cities. This survey is different from previous ones in term of breadth, scope, and focus. In particular, we focus on the new concept of collaborative drones and IoT for improving smart-city applications. This survey attempts to show how collaborative drones and IoT improve the smartness of smart cities based on data collection, privacy and security, public safety, disaster management, energy consumption and quality of life in smart cities. It mainly focuses on the measurement of the smartness of smart cities, i.e., environmental aspects, life quality, public safety, and disaster management.

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Survey on Collaborative Smart Drones and Internet of Things for Improving Smartness of Smart Cities

A global localization system combining odometry data with radio frequency identification (RFID) readings is proposed. RFID tags are placed at the ceiling of the environment and can be detected by a mobile robot unit traveling below them. The detection of the tags is the only information used in the proposed approach (no distance or bearing to the tag is considered available), but differently from similar localization setups reported in the literature, only a small number (about one each square meter or less) of tags are used. This is possible using a suitable tag's antenna in ultrahigh frequency band, expressly designed to obtain regular and stable RFID detection regions, which allows us to consider an efficient Kalman filtering approach to fuse RFID readings with the vehicle odometry data. A satisfactory performance is achieved, with an average position error of about 0.1 m. The hardware/software localization setup described in this paper is cheap and easy to use and may provide a satisfactory approach in several industrial and domestic scenarios.

A Passive UHF-RFID System for the Localization of an Indoor Autonomous Vehicle

As the 2.4 GHz spectrum band has become significantly congested, there is growing interest from the Wi-Fi proponents, cellular operators, and other stakeholders to use the spectrum in the 5 GHz bands. The 5 GHz bands have emerged as the most coveted bands for launching new wireless applications and services, because of their relatively favorable propagation characteristics and the relative abundance of spectrum therein. To meet the exploding demand for more unlicensed spectrum, regulators across the world such as the United States Federal Communications Commission and the European Electronic Communications Committee have recently started considerations for opening up additional spectrum in the 5 GHz bands for use by unlicensed devices. Moreover, to boost cellular network capacity, wireless service providers are considering the deployment of unlicensed long term evaluation (LTE) in the 5 GHz bands. This and other emerging wireless technologies and applications have resulted in likely deployment scenarios where multiple licensed and unlicensed networks operate in overlapping spectrum. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of the various coexistence scenarios in the 5 GHz bands. In this paper, we discuss coexistence issues between a number of important wireless technologies—viz., LTE and Wi-Fi, radar and Wi-Fi, dedicated short range communication (DSRC) and Wi-Fi, and coexistence among various 802.11 protocols operating in the 5 GHz bands. Additionally, we identify and provide brief discussions on an impending coexistence issue—one between Cellular V2X and DSRC/Wi-Fi. We summarize relevant standardization initiatives, explain existing coexistence solutions, and discuss open research problems.

Coexistence of Wireless Technologies in the 5 GHz Bands: A Survey of Existing Solutions and a Roadmap for Future Research

The Internet of Things (IoT) aims to transform the human society toward becoming intelligent, convenient, and efficient with potentially enormous economic and environmental benefits. Reliability is one of the main challenges that must be addressed to enable this revolutionized transformation. Based on the layered IoT architecture, this article first identifies reliability challenges posed by specific enabling technologies of each layer. This article then presents a systematic synthesis and review of IoT reliability-related literature. Reliability models and solutions at four layers (perception, communication, support, and application) are reflected and classified. Despite the rich body of works performed, the IoT reliability research is still in its early stage. Challenging research problems and opportunities are then discussed in relation to current underexplored behaviors and future new aspects of evolving IoT system complexity and dynamics.

Reliability in Internet of Things: Current Status and Future Perspectives

With the rapid development of Internet of Things (IoT) technology, location-based services have been widely applied in the construction of smart cities. Satellite-based location services have been utilized in outdoor environments, but they are not suitable for indoor technology due to the absence of global positioning system (GPS) signal. Therefore, many indoor localization technologies and systems have emerged by utilizing many other signals. In particular, fingerprinting localization has recently garnered attention because its promising performance. In this work, we aim to study recent indoor localization technologies and systems based on various fingerprints, which use machine learning and intelligent algorithms. We also present the architecture of intelligent localization. The development of indoor localization technology should have the ability of self-adaptation and self-learning in the future. And the architecture shows how to make localization become more “smart” by advanced techniques. The state-of-the-art localization systems’ working principles are summarized and compared in terms of their localization accuracy, latency, energy consumption, complexity, and robustness. We also discuss the challenges of existing indoor localization technologies, potential solutions to these challenges, and possible improvement measures.

Indoor Intelligent Fingerprint-Based Localization: Principles, Approaches and Challenges

Effect of Channel Load Sensing Protocol on the Nonorthogonal ALOHA System

This paper proposes a scheme for enhancing data transmission efficiency of Intensity Modulation Direct Detection (IM/DD) optical wireless communications (OWCs) by combining the parallel OWC with hierarchical nonorthogonal code based multilevel modulation. In the proposed system, nonorthogonal codes are constructed by concatenating pseudo orthogonal M-sequences. The numerical results show that the data transmission efficiency of the proposed system can achieve 1.0, which shows the effectiveness of the combination of the parallel OWC and the hierarchical nonorthogonal code based multilevel modulation system.

Parallel Optical Wireless Communication System with Hierarchical Nonorthogonal Code Shift Keying

In this paper, power-flow calculation simulator with its visualization function is proposed and implemented. Generally, it is necessary to prepare a text file, which describes bus systems with generators and loads, which is one of the barriers for power-flow simulation. The proposed simulator has a function of automatic generations of IEEE common data format file from user-drawn power-system diagram. Therefore, it is possible for users to make a simulation only by drawing power systems on display. In addition, the proposed simulator also has a function that power-system diagram is illustrated automatically from IEEE common data format file. By using this function, it is possible to visualize power flow amount and direction on the bus-system diagram, which helps for users to comprehend network dynamics intuitively. Because the proposed simulator allows including renewable-resource generators in the bus system, it is useful to evaluate the power distribution systems. It is shown that the proposed simulator can make accurate IEEE common data format file and intuitive power-flow illustration.

Power-flow simulation with visualization function based on IEEE common data format

This paper presents an energy-efficiency improvement method of the Code Shift Keying (CSK)employed wireless random access network. Additionally, the energy consumption in the CSK-employed random access system is derived theoretically and evaluated. By comparing the CSK random access system with the conventional DS/SS random access system, it is shown that the CSK random access system reduces the energy consumption without degrading the throughput performance.

Energy Efficient Wireless Random Access Network with Code-Based Multilevel Modulation Scheme

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To combine effective reduction of power consumption and shortening of total start-up latency when performing sleep control for setting a sleep state, where reception of flow is stopped, in a data transfer unit.SOLUTION: From a parameter table indicating the relation of a differential value of power consumption when a sleep state is set and not set, an average flow start interval, a power consumption reduction rate, and a total start-up latency, a differential value associated with an average flow start interval, determined corresponding to the current, and a preset power consumption reduction rate is identified, and the differential value thus identified is set as a threshold. A determination is then made as to whether or not a sleep state is set, based on the comparison results of the differential value of power consumption determined corresponding to the current flow start interval and the threshold.

Nobuyoshi Komuro

Papers

Effect of Channel Load Sensing Protocol on the Nonorthogonal ALOHA System

Parallel Optical Wireless Communication System with Hierarchical Nonorthogonal Code Shift Keying

Power-flow simulation with visualization function based on IEEE common data format

Energy Efficient Wireless Random Access Network with Code-Based Multilevel Modulation Scheme

Data transfer unit, sleep control method, program