Publications

Pursuing a Software-Defined Information-Centric Network

Authors: Dimitris Syrivelis, George Parisis, Drik Trossen, Paris Flegkas, Vasilis Sourlas, Thanasis Korakis and  Leandros Tassiulas

Conference: European Workshop on Software Defined Networks, Darmstadt, Germany, December 2012

The areas of Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Information-Centric Networking (ICN) have gained increasing attention in the wider research community, while gaining credibility through corporate interest and investment. With the promise of SDN to simplify the deployment of alternative network architectures, the question arises how SDN and ICN could concretely be combined, deployed and tested. In this paper, we address this very question within a particular architectural context for ICN. We outline a possible realization in a novel design for ICN solutions and point to possible testbed deployments for future testing.

Download paper: Pursuing a Software-Defined Information-Centric Network

Control and energy monitoring of electrical appliances

NITLab developed a Power Meter framework consisted of Power Meter Devices and respective User Interface. This framework is capable of sampling the Power Consumption of a connected electric device. Moreover, it can sense environmental conditions using a temperature and humidity sensor and a light intensity photo-resistor sensor as well. The sensed data are transmitted to NITOS server through a Gateway node for further processing.

The Power Meter Device features:

Network Architecture

Each plug has attached an electric device which the experimenter/user needs to to control or measure its power consumption. The microcontroler collects the results including the environmental measurements as well. Through the wireless interface each plug sends the measurements to a Gateway. The Gateway collects the measurements from all the associated devices and sends the data to the central NITOS Server through the Internet. The server processes the measurements and stores them in a database. Users are able to view the data through the provided web interface.

The designed PCB 

Users are able to view the collected measurements (current power consumption as well as environmental measurements) through a web-based graphical interface. 

Moreover, through the same web interface the experimenters can remotely manage the plugs using the provided control panel. In this way they are able to turn them on or off, to reset and calibrate each plug individually. In addition, the users have the ability to change the sampling paramenter of each plug. Such parameters are the samples per period, the periods per measurement and the sampling interval.

Finally, an Android application had been developed in order to control the plugs in an alternative and more practical way. The application provides to the experimenter the aforementioned control panel. In this way he is able to control or monitor the plugs through his Android phone. In the picture below you can see a screenshot of the application.

Demo Poster: http://nitlab.inf.uth.gr/NITlab/papers/Power_poster.pdf

Enabling mobile sensing through a DTN framework based on Arduino hardware

Focusing on a mobile sensing framework at NITOS facility we developed a sophisticated framework with tolerant delay characteristics. The overall framework consists of two main parts, the NITOS mobile sensing device and the Road Side Units (RSUs). The NITOS mobile devices are mounted on vehicles and collect measurements as the vehicles move around in a city. The acquired data are locally stored at the device, until a vehicle is found into the range of any RSU. RSUs are statically deployed gateways that are connected to a backbone network, aiming to provide wireless connection for data forwarding. When a NITOS mobile device, detects the existence of a RSU, attempts to establish a wireless connection, in order to upload the measurements to a speci c Server. The Server stores the transfered data and provides them for further analysis and visualization.

The aforementioned platform features:

Chassis Manager

The NITlab Chassis Manager (CM) Card is allows the remote control of an Icarus node or any other type of node/computer. The CM Card can receive commands over Ethernet and turn on/off or reset the node.

Out latest platform is also equiped with:

• A series of sensors (air temperature, humidity, internal temperature, light intensity).
• A CM card self-resetting mechanism.
• Multiple voltage measurement components that monitor the integrity of the node's Power Supply Unit.

The following video demonstration shows the remote controlling of an Icarus node equipped with a NITlab CM Card, using a linux terminal:

 The hardware setup is demonstrated below: