Intracom Telecom (Greece)

The fifth generation (5G) of mobile telecommunications is characterized by massive growth in the number of stakeholders, interconnected devices, and available services distributed under different administrative domains. Distributed marketplaces aim at facilitating stakeholders in the quest and hiring of third party resources and services. Establishing trustworthiness in such an open ecosystem is a cornerstone for the final deployment of these marketplaces in 5G networks and beyond. Hence, building trust management systems that ensure the selection of reliable parties or assets in 5G distributed marketplaces is essential. Thus, a reputation-based trust management framework is proposed to analyze stakeholder behavior patterns and predict trust scores to establish trustworthy relationships across domains. Furthermore, an Service Level Agreement (SLA)-driven reward and punishment mechanism is designed and developed on top of the reputation-based trust framework. Such a mechanism enables continuously adapting trust scores by gathering breach predictions, breach detections, and SLA violations in real time. Furthermore, an edge-based use case is presented to contextualize our reputation-based framework in a tangible enforcement scenario. In conclusion, three experiments were conducted on real-life testbeds demonstrating that our framework fairly distinguishes bad-mouthing attacks with 67% accuracy, when 50% recommenders are corrupted, and is resilient to continuous misbehavior bursts.

Heavy metal ions are amongst the most toxic elements that can be found in water. Dangerous contamination of water with heavy metal ions must be identified as quickly and reliably as possible and the relevant information must reach immediately and reliably those who need it (government bodies, local authorities, scientists, citizens) for prevention, taking the appropriate measures and further analysis. In this paper we present the approach of the MICSYS research project for an advanced edge to cloud system architecture for smart real-time water quality monitoring using cutting-edge portable IoT biosensor devices. The paper analyzes the implementation of this architecture, its evaluation criteria and methodology as well as its initial evaluation. The architecture ensures speed, reliability and general availability of measurements, moves processing as close as possible to the data sources, while taking advantage of the computing power on the path from the edge device to the cloud. The significant computing capabilities of the cloud can be used for further analysis of the raw data from the measuring devices using Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies to refine the estimation algorithms of concentrations, find contamination trends in different areas and estimate future contamination risks.

The evolution of emerging technologies that use Radio Frequency Electromagnetic Field (RF-EMF) has increased the interest of the scientific community and society regarding the possible adverse effects on human health and the environment. This article provides NextGEM's vision to assure safety for EU citizens when employing existing and future EMF-based telecommunication technologies. This is accomplished by generating relevant knowledge that ascertains appropriate prevention and control/actuation actions regarding RF-EMF exposure in residential, public, and occupational settings. Fulfilling this vision, NextGEM commits to the need for a healthy living and working environment under safe RF-EMF exposure conditions that can be trusted by people and be in line with the regulations and laws developed by public authorities. NextGEM provides a framework for generating health-relevant scientific knowledge and data on new scenarios of exposure to RF-EMF in multiple frequency bands and developing and validating tools for evidence-based risk assessment. Finally, NextGEM's Innovation and Knowledge Hub (NIKH) will offer a standardized way for European regulatory authorities and the scientific community to store and assess project outcomes and provide access to findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR) data.

A novel 802.11ah transmitter for TV white space (TVWS) band devices is presented. To realize the transmitter meeting the stringent FCC and ETSI TVWS device emission limits for the adjacent channels and FCC restricted bands, a low noise and high linear class- AB voltage- to-current converter (V2I) as the mixer driver and a 2nd -order harmonic notch filter with the frequency tracking capability on the power amplifier (PA) load are newly proposed. The designed transmitter is implemented in a 40nm CMOS process as a part of the TVWS band 802.11ah connectivity System-on-Chip (SoC), and the measured results with the 802.11ah CBW4 signal show −55dBr and −58dBr Adjacent Channel Leakage Ratio (ACLR) at <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$\pm 3\mathbf{MHz}$</tex> and <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$\pm 20\mathbf{MHz}$</tex> frequency offset, respectively, and 60dB 2nd harmonic rejection for 470MHz ~ 790MHz TVWS bands. This transmitter is the first SoC level transmitter meeting the FCC and ETSI ACLR requirements.

The aims of this survey article are to elaborate on cross-layer optimization, Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Software-Defined Radio (SDR) as separate domains of wireless network design for which a unified view has not been adequately considered to date and present lessons learned, with a view towards the challenges associated with SDN-SDR interaction that would facilitate benefits in cross-layer optimization of mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). We focus on MANETs because (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${i}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>) they are still at the forefront of technology, and in some scenarios they are the only meaningful option for establishing communication; (<italic>ii</italic>) they expose the full potential and benefits of coexistence and interaction of SDN and SDR, in terms of optimizing key performance indicators. While SDN and SDR are mature technologies, their interaction and joint consideration have been largely overlooked. Current SDN approaches do not span the physical (PHY) and medium-access control (MAC) layers, but they rather concentrate on network-level routing and traffic flow optimization. As a result, PHY- and MAC-layer related parameters which notoriously affect key network performance metrics remain static or at best are adapted based on some heuristic or local approaches. On the other hand, the reach of SDR architectures is restricted to the PHY and MAC layers. We discuss the state of the art of cross-layer optimization, SDN and SDR, and current challenges associated with coexistence and interaction of SDN and SDR. Such an interaction would extend the span of SDN to PHY and MAC layers and lead to realizations of centralized approaches across all layers so as to control and optimize parameters, towards global network objectives. It would also create a bridge between centralized network control that is inherent in SDN and the distributed nature of MANETs, with the add-on features of flexible and fast PHY and MAC layer adaptation offered by SDR, for solid, autonomous and ultimately better network control implementations that span all layers, towards realizing and implementing the holy grail of real cross-layer optimization.

&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Research project &amp;amp;#8220;PerManeNt&amp;amp;#8221; aims at developing an integrated platform for operational monitoring, smart control, and sustainable energy management of the external aqueduct system of the city of Patras in western Greece, which consists of more than 60 km of pressurized pipeline, 44 pumping wells, 3 springs, 22 regulating tanks, and 14 pumping stations. Given the significance of the existing infrastructure, 5 main pipelines, 7 pumping wells, 9 reservoirs, and 5 pumping stations were selected to be monitored in the context of: a) real-time data collection, processing and visualization, b) near real-time detection of system malfunctioning and automatic alarm generation, and c) generation of short and longer term forecasts for the water demand and corresponding energy consumption rates, based on hydrometeorological data and environmental indices. The development of the integrated platform is expected to have significant scientific, financial, societal and environmental impacts including: i) efficient water resources management and environmental protection, ii) reduction of the operational costs and regulator expenses for system maintenance and management, iii) promotion of citizens&amp;amp;#8217; awareness regarding environmental issues, and iv) significant improvement of the quality of services offered, including pricing and emergency planning.&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;Acknowledgments:&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;This research is co&amp;amp;#8208;financed by the European Regional Development Fund of the European Union and Greek national funds through the Operational Program Competitiveness, Entrepreneurship and Innovation, under the call RESEARCH &amp;amp;#8211; CREATE &amp;amp;#8211; INNOVATE (project code: T2EDK-4177.&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;

The spotGEO dataset is the official dataset of <strong>ESA's Kelvins</strong> <strong>competition for "spotting GEO satellites"</strong>. This entry consists of coding tools to help the participants getting started. In particular, we provide: official validation and scoring code (python) example on how to work with the data (jupyter notebook) documentation about the scoring metric (.pdf) For a detailed description on the challenge and the dataset visit https://kelvins.esa.int/spot-the-geo-satellites.

Antenna arrays implementing beamforming are required in Terahertz (THz) communications to combat the very high propagation losses. In this paper, real-time THz wireless transmission with beamforming at a carrier frequency of 300 GHz is demonstrated for the first time using a single-carrier FPGA based modem and a uniform linear array with four antenna elements. Digital beamforming is implemented at the modem, which is a prototype based on a millimeter wave (mmWave) communication product. Moreover, suitable converter and signal conditioning boards as an interface to the THz frontends have been fabricated and utilized for the experimental setup. Apart from beamforming, THz specific imperfections of the transceivers as well as their impact on the communication performance have been experimentally explored.

ABSTRACT This practical note presents striking findings from a research project in Malawi, comparing the cost effectiveness of a traditional project approach with a church and community mobilisation approach (CCM). The research found that CCM had the same level of positive impact on quality of life but at 4% of the cost. It also found that CCM communities were almost four times more confident in solving problems themselves, indicating a much greater likelihood of sustainability. To realise the potential advantages of faith in development means funders and faith-based organisations have to mobilise local faith communities. CCM is a challenging but cost-effective alternative to the NGO-project approach.