Internet of MIMO Things: UAV-Assisted Wireless-Powered Networks for Future Smart Cities

Abstract

Widespread and pervasive IoT adoption is threatened by finite-capacity batteries of wireless devices. To mitigate this issue, energy harvesting (EH) and wireless power transfer (WPT), in addition to energy-efficient communication techniques, have been widely explored. Although these efforts achieved longevity to some extent, ever-evolving IoT services seek fully autonomous things without energy constraints. To meet this demand and relieve the ongoing networking challenges, we propose a new concept called the Internet of MIMO Things (IoMIMO). The IoMIMO envisions a self-sufficient architecture that adopts only single-and double-hop energy and data transitions to enable efficient energy sharing and reduced data traffic in networks. In particular, single-hops are performed by hybrid access points (HAPs), while relaying via double-hops are actuated by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The HAPs will handle multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) of energy and data, and coordinate their transitions between the network components in a concurrent and automated manner. Benefiting from the recent advances in multi-source EH, WPT, and UAVs, the IoMIMO can fulfill Smart City services without being limited by energy and networking challenges. Device types specialized for the IoMIMO, and their operation modes are evaluated in a simple network scenario to clearly explain the principles and the potential benefits of the envisioned concept. Future research directions are also identified to ease the realization of such a next-generation networking architecture.

A Non-Intrusive Ultrasonic Sensor System for Water Flow Rate Measurement

“…Future works will focus on adopting multi-source energy harvesting capabilities to make the system self-sustaining [14,15], employing transient computing mechanisms to ensure energy-adaptive application execution [16,17], and integrating a lightweight and harvesting-aware communication strategy for high accurate data reporting [18,19]. We will also employ pressure sensors to detect leaks in real-time, thereby contributing to the reduction efforts of water waste that reaches up to 3 billion litres/day across the UK.…”

Planning the Future of Smart Cities With Swarms of Fully Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Using a Novel Framework

“…These types of architectural designs to meet the demands of the applications requiring ultra-low latency and high-data transfer rate with active mode decrease the battery life significantly, which is mitigated in the established architecture as elaborated below. Despite promising capabilities, IoT networks suffer from limited device batteries and ever-evolving IoT services seek fully autonomous things without energy constraints [115]. To meet this demand, WPT technology is gaining increasing interest in 5G networks and IoT due to scarce energy resources and high-power consumption [116].…”

Universal Transceivers: Opportunities and Future Directions for the Internet of Everything (IoE)

“…For example, reprogramming biological communication systems for smart farming, can be realized by bridging different IoE technologies. More specifically, an Internet of Bio-Nano Things (IoBNT) (Akyildiz et al, 2015), which uses molecular communication modality to regulate the growth of certain microorganisms in soil that provide the plants with the immune response against the upcoming environmental changes, can be interconnected via an electromagnetic communication modality with an Internet of Drones (IoD) (Long et al, 2018;Cetinkaya and Merrett, 2020;Cetinkaya et al, 2020b) that provides real-time feedback by monitoring the crops having disease or stress. Similarly, an IoBNT using MC to communicate with the intra-body cells can be interconnected with a bio-cyber interface via multiple communication technologies suitable for the intra-body communication, e.g., MC, THz, and acoustic, for healthcare applications such as remote healthcare with continuous monitoring as illustrated in Figure 2.…”

“…The conventional way of ensuring the longevity for energyconstrained devices is to adopt energy-efficient communication techniques since the majority of the limited energy budget is consumed during data transmission. Radio optimization, clock synchronization, low-power sleep/wake-up, energy-efficient routing, and data reduction schemes are the main enablers of lengthened operation times (Cetinkaya et al, 2020b).…”