Anna Maria Vegni | Roma Tre University, Rome, Italy (original) (raw)

Books by Anna Maria Vegni

Papers by Anna Maria Vegni

Proceedings of the 3rd Workshop on Experiences with the Design and Implementation of Smart Objects - SMARTOBJECTS '17, 2017

The Internet-of-Vehicles allows the coexistence of traditional Internet applications with the Int... more The Internet-of-Vehicles allows the coexistence of traditional Internet applications with the Internet-of-Things, so that vehicles can communicate not only among them but also to neighboring devices and humans as well. In this context, the human social behavior is a fundamental aspect that needs to be taken into account specially for message dissemination in Vehicular Social Networks. In this paper, we present a probabilistic broadcast protocol that exploits the "social degree" of a vehicle to be selected as next-hop forwarder. The social degree of a vehicle depends on its social activity inside a vehicular social network, so that a vehicle that uses to access and post often in a given vehicular social network is more likely to be "socially trusted". Selecting a trusted vehicle as next-hop forwarder allows a secure and faster message dissemination with respect to an "asocial" vehicle. Simulation results show that a socially trusted vehicle improves network performance, expressed in terms of overall throughput.

The coexistence of radio frequency (RF) and visible light communications (VLC) in typical indoor ... more The coexistence of radio frequency (RF) and visible light communications (VLC) in typical indoor environments can be leveraged to support vast user quality-of-service (QoS) needs. In this paper, we target a hybrid RF/VLC network in which data transmission is provided via either an RF access point or a VLC luminary based on a selection process. We employ the concept of effective capacity, which defines the maximum constant arrival data rate at the transmitter buffer when the QoS needs are imposed as limits on the buffer overflow and delay violation probabilities, as the main selection criteria. We initially formulate the effective capacity of both channels with respect to channel gains and user distribution. Under the assumption of uniform user distribution within the VLC cell, we then provide a closed-form approximation for the effective capacity of the VLC channel. We further investigate the effects of illumination needs and line-of-sight blockage on the VLC performance. In additio...

IEEE Communications Standards Magazine, 2021

Recent developments in the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) field have put in evidence the need fo... more Recent developments in the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) field have put in evidence the need for a standardization process of the communication technologies supporting direct information exchange, thus enabling UAV-to-UAV networking. We consider this is necessary to achieve all sorts of cooperative tasks requiring real-time (or near-real-time) synchronization, including swarm formation and collision avoidance. In this paper, we therefore argue in favor of introducing a new standard that would address this specific area, highlighting why current technologies are not adequate, what are the different steps towards a rapid standardization, and which lessons have been learned from related fields, namely the vehicular and the robotic environments, in the past few years.

ITU Journal on Future and Evolving Technologies, 2021

With the advancement of nanotechnology, there has been fervid research activity on new communicat... more With the advancement of nanotechnology, there has been fervid research activity on new communication paradigms suitable for new challenging contexts, such as biological systems. Among different approaches, the most considered has been artificial Molecular Communication, where entities such as synthetic molecules, enzymes, hormones, bacteria etc. are functionalized in order to implement information exchange with the surrounding system and with other entities. In this context, it is interesting to analyze specific features that could be exploited for effective communication paradigms. In this paper, we focus on chiral molecules (a.k.a. enantiomers) as novel enablers for a molecular communication paradigm. Chirality is an interesting and appealing feature existing in nature and that can be replicated with strong emphasis in new types of materials, such as metasurfaces and metamaterials. A deep knowledge of chirality features and how chiral molecules interact with each other or with ach...

2019 16th IEEE Annual Consumer Communications & Networking Conference (CCNC), 2019

The Internet-of-Vehicles (IoV) allows vehicles to share information for common services, such as ... more The Internet-of-Vehicles (IoV) allows vehicles to share information for common services, such as traffic status or safety alerts, not only among themselves but also with neighboring devices and users. Vehicular Social Networks (VSNs) appear when IoVs is combined with social features like chat, sharing achievements, wish-listings, etc. In this work, we demonstrate that VSNs require specific data dissemination techniques. To this aim, we consider the Barabási model and we study the impact of its use for data dissemination in VSNs. Moreover, the use of a probabilistic data dissemination protocol based on social features [1] proves that the time-evolving dynamics of the vehicular social network graph presents a small-world structure, where nodes tend to connect through clusters whose average distance is low on average. This result highlights how VSNs are a specific class of vehicular ad hoc networks with peculiar features that distinguish them from classical online social networks.

2017 International Conference on Computing, Networking and Communications (ICNC), 2017

Nowadays, Internet of Things (IoT) coupled with cloud computing begins to take an important place... more Nowadays, Internet of Things (IoT) coupled with cloud computing begins to take an important place in economic systems and in society daily life. It has got a large success in several application areas, ranging from smart city applications to smart grids. One major challenge that should be addressed is the huge amount of data generated by the sensing devices, which make the control of sending useless data very important. To face this challenge, we present a Bayesian Inference Approach (BIA), which allows avoiding the transmission of high spatio-temporal correlated data. In this paper, BIA is based on a hierarchical architecture with simple nodes, smart gateways and data centers. Belief Propagation algorithm has been chosen for performing an approximate inference on our model in order to reconstruct the missing sensing data. BIA is evaluated based on the data collected from real sensors and according to different scenarios. The results show that our proposed approach reduces drastically the number of transmitted data and the energy consumption, while maintaining an acceptable level of data prediction accuracy.

L'Internet des Objets (IdO) a obtenu un grand succes dans divers domaines d'application. ... more L'Internet des Objets (IdO) a obtenu un grand succes dans divers domaines d'application. Toutefois, malgre ce succes, l'un des plus grands defis a relever est la grande quantite de donnees generees par les dispositifs de capteur. Cela peut affecter la consommation d'energie et causer la congestion du reseau. Pour resoudre ce probleme, nous proposons dans cet article une Approche d'Inference Bayesienne (AIB) permettant d'eviter la transmission des donnees fortement correlees. AIB est base sur une architecture hierarchique composee de simple capteurs, de passerelles intelligentes et de centre de donnees. L'Algorithme Belief Propagation est utilise pour reconstituer les donnees manquantes. La solution proposee est evalue sur la base des donnees recueillies sur des capteurs reels. Sur les divers scenarios etudies, les resultats montrent que notre approche reduit considerablement le nombre de donnees transmises et la consommation d'energie tout en maintena...

This paper assesses the performance of a localization technique for underwater visible light netw... more This paper assesses the performance of a localization technique for underwater visible light networks. The proposed approach is based on a fingerprinting technique, collecting the channel impulse responses from different wireless optical signals in the visible range. A local database related to the power level distribution within a maritime environment is built and exploited to estimate user position, e.g., a diver moving in a given space for underwater fish monitoring. In this paper, we investigate on the noise effect on the localization accuracy in underwater scenarios and for different water turbidity coefficient and we demonstrate that the estimation error suffers on variable channel impulse responses. Different configuration parameters and environmental scenarios have been considered, showing that the LED transmitter deployment can be effective in the localization estimation. A comparison of the proposed localization approach to the traditional triangulation method has been fin...

2018 IEEE International Conference on Sensing, Communication and Networking (SECON Workshops), 2018

Internet, in its most recent evolution, is going to be the playground where a multitude of hetero... more Internet, in its most recent evolution, is going to be the playground where a multitude of heterogeneous interconnected "things" autonomously exchange information to accomplish some tasks or to provide a service. Recently, the idea of giving to those smart devices the capability to organize themselves according to a social structure, gave birth to the socalled paradigm of the Social Internet of Things. The expected benefits of SIoT range from the enhanced effectiveness, scalability and speed of the navigability of the network of interconnected objects, to the provision of a level of trustworthiness that can be established by averaging the social relationships among things that are "friends". Bearing in mind the beneficial effects of social components in IoT, we consider a social structure in a vehicular context i.e., Social Internet of Vehicles (SIoV). In SIoV, smart vehicles build social relationships with other social objects they might come into contact, with the intent of creating an overlay social network to be exploited for information search and dissemination for vehicular applications. In this paper, we aim to investigate the social behavior of vehicles in SIoV and how it is affected by mobility patterns. Specifically, through the analysis of simulated traffic traces, we distinguish friendly and acquaintance vehicles based on the encounter time and connection maintenance.

2021 17th International Symposium on Wireless Communication Systems (ISWCS), 2021

In the upcoming advent of 6G networks, underwater communications are expected to play a relevant ... more In the upcoming advent of 6G networks, underwater communications are expected to play a relevant role in the context of overlapping hybrid wireless networks, following a multilayer architecture i.e., aerial-ground-underwater. The concept of Internet of Underwater Things defines different communication and networking technologies, as well as positioning and tracking services, suitable for harsh underwater scenarios. In this paper, we present a footprinting localization algorithm based on optical wireless signals in the visible range. The proposed technique is based on a hybrid Radio Frequency (RF) and Visible Light Communication (VLC) network architecture, where a central RF sensor node holds an environment channel gain map i.e., database, that is exploited for localization estimation computation. A recursive localization algorithm allows to estimate user positions with centimeter-based accuracy, in case of different turbidity scenarios.

ITU Journal on Future and Evolving Technologies, 2020

In this work, a new paradigm for vehicular communications based on Reconfigurable Intelligent Met... more In this work, a new paradigm for vehicular communications based on Reconfigurable Intelligent Meta-surfaces (RIMs) is presented. By using the proposed RIM, we are able to manipulate electromagnetic waves in the half-space, since the element is reflective. The unit cell consists of a U-shaped designed microstrip structure equipped with a pin diode and via a hole. In this study, two different reflection modes are achieved for 1-bit data transferring in each state. By incorporating these two different configurations together, the reflected phases in the proposed RIM surface can be controlled respectively in 0 and 180. The proposed unit cell can provide a usable double negative functional characteristic around 5.3 GHz. The main goal of this paper is the use of a multifunctional behavior RIM for vehicular communications to code the transmitted wave. A novel phase distribution diagram is generated to propagate in each angle. Moreover, two major electromagnetic modulation functions, beam f...

IEEE INFOCOM 2019 - IEEE Conference on Computer Communications Workshops (INFOCOM WKSHPS), 2019

Recently, a huge interest has been raised in controlling and manipulating electromagnetic waves b... more Recently, a huge interest has been raised in controlling and manipulating electromagnetic waves by means of MetaSurfaces. This type of material makes possible the control of phase and amplitude of electromagnetic waves paving the way of different applications, like cloaking and communications in THz band. In this paper, we propose a novel approach for designing metasurface-based structures that are independent from the geometry and the frequency. As a proof of concept, we realize a 3D curvilinear metasurface and we show this approach can be effectively applied in different applications. In particular, for the THz-based system, we consider a transmitting antenna emitting a signal that impinges on the metasurface. Our analysis focuses on the evaluation of the attenuation of the incident signal on the metasurface in respect of characteristic design parameters, the length of the medium and the frequency.

Ad Hoc Networks, 2019

Internet of Robotic Things (IoRT) is a new concept introduced for the first time by ABI Research.... more Internet of Robotic Things (IoRT) is a new concept introduced for the first time by ABI Research. Unlike the Internet of Things (IoT), IoRT provides an active sensorization and is considered as the new evolution of IoT. In this context, we propose a Neuro-Dominating Set algorithm (NDS) to efficiently deploy a team of mobile wireless robots in an IoRT scenario, in order to reach a desired inter-robot distance, while maintaining global connectivity in the whole network. We use the term Neuro-Dominating Set to describe our approach, since it is inspired by both neural network and dominating set principles. With NDS algorithm, a robot adopts different behaviors according whether it is a dominating or a dominated robot. Our main goal is to show and demonstrate the beneficial effect of using different behaviors in the IoRT concept. The obtained results show that the proposed method outperforms an existing related technique (i.e., the Virtual Angular Force approach) and the neural network based approach presented in our previous work. As an objective, we aim to decrease the overall traveled distance and keep a low energy consumption level, while maintaining network connectivity and an acceptable convergence time.

Journal of Lightwave Technology, 2017

In indoor environments, visible light communications paradigm is emerging as a viable promising s... more In indoor environments, visible light communications paradigm is emerging as a viable promising solution complementary to well-known radio frequency technology. At the same time, the information about user's location is useful for accessing the medium via space division multiplexing, handling over or providing access to location-based contents. In this paper, we present two localization mechanisms based on the wavelength domain by assuming that each anchor point uses a spectrally dedicated signature for the user to readily identify it. The first approach i.e., wavelength-based localization, assumes a simultaneous transmission of three different pulse streams emitted by the red-green-blue (RGB) light emitting diodes (LEDs). The second method i.e., color-based localization, considers the subsequent transmission of RGB pulses. Localization is then computed through traditional received signal strength and time difference of arrival approaches. Moreover, we resort to the properties of metamerism so that the red, green and blue components used by LEDs provide the white light sensation to the human eye. The performances of the two proposed schemes are close to theoretical bounds. Even in the worst cases, the estimation error variance is in the order of 10 −4 m 2. Finally, the signaling request for estimating user position is less than others in the Literature and is independent from the number of anchor points.

Nano Communication Networks, 2016

Channel modeling in the Terahertz frequency band has become a very hot research field, above all ... more Channel modeling in the Terahertz frequency band has become a very hot research field, above all in the context of nano-Internet of Things. Thanks to the exploitation of frequencies in the interval ranging from 0.06 to 10 THz, it is envisioned the possibility to overcome the issues related to the spectrum scarcity and capacity limitation. On the other hand, the design of new channel models, able to capture the inherent features of the phenomenons related with this specific field is of paramount importance. Very high molecular absorption, and very high reflec

Proceedings of the 10th EAI International Conference on Body Area Networks, 2015

Nanotechnology is gaining more and more consensus in several application fields, comprised in-bod... more Nanotechnology is gaining more and more consensus in several application fields, comprised in-body applications. Innovative therapies and diagnostic approaches are based on the use of injections or oral delivery of nanoparticles. The acceleration of this type of development makes very urgent a deeply and accurate analysis of the interaction between the nanoparticles and the biological fluid where the nanoparticles are immersed. In this paper, we focus on Titanium (T i and its alloy (e.g., T iO2) systems, given their specific features in terms of density, lack of cytotoxic effects, etc.. Specifically, we design and study an in-body system by characterizing the emission and diffusion processes. Further, we propose an experimental study of the morphology and other important characteristics (e.g. the pH of the particles, and the dielectric constant of the solution) of nano-T iO2 systems when immersed in a Ringer

Ad Hoc Networks, 2015

Internet of Things security and privacy: Design methods and optimization Recent advances in infor... more Internet of Things security and privacy: Design methods and optimization Recent advances in information and communication technologies and embedded systems have given rise to a new disruptive technology: the Internet of Things (IoT). This major development will lead to major changes in usage and to a transformation of the technological ecosystem in all its complexity.

Proceedings of the 3rd Workshop on Experiences with the Design and Implementation of Smart Objects - SMARTOBJECTS '17, 2017

The Internet-of-Vehicles allows the coexistence of traditional Internet applications with the Int... more The Internet-of-Vehicles allows the coexistence of traditional Internet applications with the Internet-of-Things, so that vehicles can communicate not only among them but also to neighboring devices and humans as well. In this context, the human social behavior is a fundamental aspect that needs to be taken into account specially for message dissemination in Vehicular Social Networks. In this paper, we present a probabilistic broadcast protocol that exploits the "social degree" of a vehicle to be selected as next-hop forwarder. The social degree of a vehicle depends on its social activity inside a vehicular social network, so that a vehicle that uses to access and post often in a given vehicular social network is more likely to be "socially trusted". Selecting a trusted vehicle as next-hop forwarder allows a secure and faster message dissemination with respect to an "asocial" vehicle. Simulation results show that a socially trusted vehicle improves network performance, expressed in terms of overall throughput.

The coexistence of radio frequency (RF) and visible light communications (VLC) in typical indoor ... more The coexistence of radio frequency (RF) and visible light communications (VLC) in typical indoor environments can be leveraged to support vast user quality-of-service (QoS) needs. In this paper, we target a hybrid RF/VLC network in which data transmission is provided via either an RF access point or a VLC luminary based on a selection process. We employ the concept of effective capacity, which defines the maximum constant arrival data rate at the transmitter buffer when the QoS needs are imposed as limits on the buffer overflow and delay violation probabilities, as the main selection criteria. We initially formulate the effective capacity of both channels with respect to channel gains and user distribution. Under the assumption of uniform user distribution within the VLC cell, we then provide a closed-form approximation for the effective capacity of the VLC channel. We further investigate the effects of illumination needs and line-of-sight blockage on the VLC performance. In additio...

IEEE Communications Standards Magazine, 2021

Recent developments in the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) field have put in evidence the need fo... more Recent developments in the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) field have put in evidence the need for a standardization process of the communication technologies supporting direct information exchange, thus enabling UAV-to-UAV networking. We consider this is necessary to achieve all sorts of cooperative tasks requiring real-time (or near-real-time) synchronization, including swarm formation and collision avoidance. In this paper, we therefore argue in favor of introducing a new standard that would address this specific area, highlighting why current technologies are not adequate, what are the different steps towards a rapid standardization, and which lessons have been learned from related fields, namely the vehicular and the robotic environments, in the past few years.

ITU Journal on Future and Evolving Technologies, 2021

With the advancement of nanotechnology, there has been fervid research activity on new communicat... more With the advancement of nanotechnology, there has been fervid research activity on new communication paradigms suitable for new challenging contexts, such as biological systems. Among different approaches, the most considered has been artificial Molecular Communication, where entities such as synthetic molecules, enzymes, hormones, bacteria etc. are functionalized in order to implement information exchange with the surrounding system and with other entities. In this context, it is interesting to analyze specific features that could be exploited for effective communication paradigms. In this paper, we focus on chiral molecules (a.k.a. enantiomers) as novel enablers for a molecular communication paradigm. Chirality is an interesting and appealing feature existing in nature and that can be replicated with strong emphasis in new types of materials, such as metasurfaces and metamaterials. A deep knowledge of chirality features and how chiral molecules interact with each other or with ach...

2019 16th IEEE Annual Consumer Communications & Networking Conference (CCNC), 2019

The Internet-of-Vehicles (IoV) allows vehicles to share information for common services, such as ... more The Internet-of-Vehicles (IoV) allows vehicles to share information for common services, such as traffic status or safety alerts, not only among themselves but also with neighboring devices and users. Vehicular Social Networks (VSNs) appear when IoVs is combined with social features like chat, sharing achievements, wish-listings, etc. In this work, we demonstrate that VSNs require specific data dissemination techniques. To this aim, we consider the Barabási model and we study the impact of its use for data dissemination in VSNs. Moreover, the use of a probabilistic data dissemination protocol based on social features [1] proves that the time-evolving dynamics of the vehicular social network graph presents a small-world structure, where nodes tend to connect through clusters whose average distance is low on average. This result highlights how VSNs are a specific class of vehicular ad hoc networks with peculiar features that distinguish them from classical online social networks.

2017 International Conference on Computing, Networking and Communications (ICNC), 2017

Nowadays, Internet of Things (IoT) coupled with cloud computing begins to take an important place... more Nowadays, Internet of Things (IoT) coupled with cloud computing begins to take an important place in economic systems and in society daily life. It has got a large success in several application areas, ranging from smart city applications to smart grids. One major challenge that should be addressed is the huge amount of data generated by the sensing devices, which make the control of sending useless data very important. To face this challenge, we present a Bayesian Inference Approach (BIA), which allows avoiding the transmission of high spatio-temporal correlated data. In this paper, BIA is based on a hierarchical architecture with simple nodes, smart gateways and data centers. Belief Propagation algorithm has been chosen for performing an approximate inference on our model in order to reconstruct the missing sensing data. BIA is evaluated based on the data collected from real sensors and according to different scenarios. The results show that our proposed approach reduces drastically the number of transmitted data and the energy consumption, while maintaining an acceptable level of data prediction accuracy.

L'Internet des Objets (IdO) a obtenu un grand succes dans divers domaines d'application. ... more L'Internet des Objets (IdO) a obtenu un grand succes dans divers domaines d'application. Toutefois, malgre ce succes, l'un des plus grands defis a relever est la grande quantite de donnees generees par les dispositifs de capteur. Cela peut affecter la consommation d'energie et causer la congestion du reseau. Pour resoudre ce probleme, nous proposons dans cet article une Approche d'Inference Bayesienne (AIB) permettant d'eviter la transmission des donnees fortement correlees. AIB est base sur une architecture hierarchique composee de simple capteurs, de passerelles intelligentes et de centre de donnees. L'Algorithme Belief Propagation est utilise pour reconstituer les donnees manquantes. La solution proposee est evalue sur la base des donnees recueillies sur des capteurs reels. Sur les divers scenarios etudies, les resultats montrent que notre approche reduit considerablement le nombre de donnees transmises et la consommation d'energie tout en maintena...

This paper assesses the performance of a localization technique for underwater visible light netw... more This paper assesses the performance of a localization technique for underwater visible light networks. The proposed approach is based on a fingerprinting technique, collecting the channel impulse responses from different wireless optical signals in the visible range. A local database related to the power level distribution within a maritime environment is built and exploited to estimate user position, e.g., a diver moving in a given space for underwater fish monitoring. In this paper, we investigate on the noise effect on the localization accuracy in underwater scenarios and for different water turbidity coefficient and we demonstrate that the estimation error suffers on variable channel impulse responses. Different configuration parameters and environmental scenarios have been considered, showing that the LED transmitter deployment can be effective in the localization estimation. A comparison of the proposed localization approach to the traditional triangulation method has been fin...

2018 IEEE International Conference on Sensing, Communication and Networking (SECON Workshops), 2018

Internet, in its most recent evolution, is going to be the playground where a multitude of hetero... more Internet, in its most recent evolution, is going to be the playground where a multitude of heterogeneous interconnected "things" autonomously exchange information to accomplish some tasks or to provide a service. Recently, the idea of giving to those smart devices the capability to organize themselves according to a social structure, gave birth to the socalled paradigm of the Social Internet of Things. The expected benefits of SIoT range from the enhanced effectiveness, scalability and speed of the navigability of the network of interconnected objects, to the provision of a level of trustworthiness that can be established by averaging the social relationships among things that are "friends". Bearing in mind the beneficial effects of social components in IoT, we consider a social structure in a vehicular context i.e., Social Internet of Vehicles (SIoV). In SIoV, smart vehicles build social relationships with other social objects they might come into contact, with the intent of creating an overlay social network to be exploited for information search and dissemination for vehicular applications. In this paper, we aim to investigate the social behavior of vehicles in SIoV and how it is affected by mobility patterns. Specifically, through the analysis of simulated traffic traces, we distinguish friendly and acquaintance vehicles based on the encounter time and connection maintenance.

2021 17th International Symposium on Wireless Communication Systems (ISWCS), 2021

In the upcoming advent of 6G networks, underwater communications are expected to play a relevant ... more In the upcoming advent of 6G networks, underwater communications are expected to play a relevant role in the context of overlapping hybrid wireless networks, following a multilayer architecture i.e., aerial-ground-underwater. The concept of Internet of Underwater Things defines different communication and networking technologies, as well as positioning and tracking services, suitable for harsh underwater scenarios. In this paper, we present a footprinting localization algorithm based on optical wireless signals in the visible range. The proposed technique is based on a hybrid Radio Frequency (RF) and Visible Light Communication (VLC) network architecture, where a central RF sensor node holds an environment channel gain map i.e., database, that is exploited for localization estimation computation. A recursive localization algorithm allows to estimate user positions with centimeter-based accuracy, in case of different turbidity scenarios.

ITU Journal on Future and Evolving Technologies, 2020

In this work, a new paradigm for vehicular communications based on Reconfigurable Intelligent Met... more In this work, a new paradigm for vehicular communications based on Reconfigurable Intelligent Meta-surfaces (RIMs) is presented. By using the proposed RIM, we are able to manipulate electromagnetic waves in the half-space, since the element is reflective. The unit cell consists of a U-shaped designed microstrip structure equipped with a pin diode and via a hole. In this study, two different reflection modes are achieved for 1-bit data transferring in each state. By incorporating these two different configurations together, the reflected phases in the proposed RIM surface can be controlled respectively in 0 and 180. The proposed unit cell can provide a usable double negative functional characteristic around 5.3 GHz. The main goal of this paper is the use of a multifunctional behavior RIM for vehicular communications to code the transmitted wave. A novel phase distribution diagram is generated to propagate in each angle. Moreover, two major electromagnetic modulation functions, beam f...

IEEE INFOCOM 2019 - IEEE Conference on Computer Communications Workshops (INFOCOM WKSHPS), 2019

Recently, a huge interest has been raised in controlling and manipulating electromagnetic waves b... more Recently, a huge interest has been raised in controlling and manipulating electromagnetic waves by means of MetaSurfaces. This type of material makes possible the control of phase and amplitude of electromagnetic waves paving the way of different applications, like cloaking and communications in THz band. In this paper, we propose a novel approach for designing metasurface-based structures that are independent from the geometry and the frequency. As a proof of concept, we realize a 3D curvilinear metasurface and we show this approach can be effectively applied in different applications. In particular, for the THz-based system, we consider a transmitting antenna emitting a signal that impinges on the metasurface. Our analysis focuses on the evaluation of the attenuation of the incident signal on the metasurface in respect of characteristic design parameters, the length of the medium and the frequency.

Ad Hoc Networks, 2019

Internet of Robotic Things (IoRT) is a new concept introduced for the first time by ABI Research.... more Internet of Robotic Things (IoRT) is a new concept introduced for the first time by ABI Research. Unlike the Internet of Things (IoT), IoRT provides an active sensorization and is considered as the new evolution of IoT. In this context, we propose a Neuro-Dominating Set algorithm (NDS) to efficiently deploy a team of mobile wireless robots in an IoRT scenario, in order to reach a desired inter-robot distance, while maintaining global connectivity in the whole network. We use the term Neuro-Dominating Set to describe our approach, since it is inspired by both neural network and dominating set principles. With NDS algorithm, a robot adopts different behaviors according whether it is a dominating or a dominated robot. Our main goal is to show and demonstrate the beneficial effect of using different behaviors in the IoRT concept. The obtained results show that the proposed method outperforms an existing related technique (i.e., the Virtual Angular Force approach) and the neural network based approach presented in our previous work. As an objective, we aim to decrease the overall traveled distance and keep a low energy consumption level, while maintaining network connectivity and an acceptable convergence time.

Journal of Lightwave Technology, 2017

In indoor environments, visible light communications paradigm is emerging as a viable promising s... more In indoor environments, visible light communications paradigm is emerging as a viable promising solution complementary to well-known radio frequency technology. At the same time, the information about user's location is useful for accessing the medium via space division multiplexing, handling over or providing access to location-based contents. In this paper, we present two localization mechanisms based on the wavelength domain by assuming that each anchor point uses a spectrally dedicated signature for the user to readily identify it. The first approach i.e., wavelength-based localization, assumes a simultaneous transmission of three different pulse streams emitted by the red-green-blue (RGB) light emitting diodes (LEDs). The second method i.e., color-based localization, considers the subsequent transmission of RGB pulses. Localization is then computed through traditional received signal strength and time difference of arrival approaches. Moreover, we resort to the properties of metamerism so that the red, green and blue components used by LEDs provide the white light sensation to the human eye. The performances of the two proposed schemes are close to theoretical bounds. Even in the worst cases, the estimation error variance is in the order of 10 −4 m 2. Finally, the signaling request for estimating user position is less than others in the Literature and is independent from the number of anchor points.

Nano Communication Networks, 2016

Channel modeling in the Terahertz frequency band has become a very hot research field, above all ... more Channel modeling in the Terahertz frequency band has become a very hot research field, above all in the context of nano-Internet of Things. Thanks to the exploitation of frequencies in the interval ranging from 0.06 to 10 THz, it is envisioned the possibility to overcome the issues related to the spectrum scarcity and capacity limitation. On the other hand, the design of new channel models, able to capture the inherent features of the phenomenons related with this specific field is of paramount importance. Very high molecular absorption, and very high reflec

Proceedings of the 10th EAI International Conference on Body Area Networks, 2015

Nanotechnology is gaining more and more consensus in several application fields, comprised in-bod... more Nanotechnology is gaining more and more consensus in several application fields, comprised in-body applications. Innovative therapies and diagnostic approaches are based on the use of injections or oral delivery of nanoparticles. The acceleration of this type of development makes very urgent a deeply and accurate analysis of the interaction between the nanoparticles and the biological fluid where the nanoparticles are immersed. In this paper, we focus on Titanium (T i and its alloy (e.g., T iO2) systems, given their specific features in terms of density, lack of cytotoxic effects, etc.. Specifically, we design and study an in-body system by characterizing the emission and diffusion processes. Further, we propose an experimental study of the morphology and other important characteristics (e.g. the pH of the particles, and the dielectric constant of the solution) of nano-T iO2 systems when immersed in a Ringer

Ad Hoc Networks, 2015

Internet of Things security and privacy: Design methods and optimization Recent advances in infor... more Internet of Things security and privacy: Design methods and optimization Recent advances in information and communication technologies and embedded systems have given rise to a new disruptive technology: the Internet of Things (IoT). This major development will lead to major changes in usage and to a transformation of the technological ecosystem in all its complexity.

Recent Advances in Wireless Communications and Networks, 2011

Recent advances in wireless technology and decreasing costs of portable devices strongly contribu... more Recent advances in wireless technology and decreasing costs of portable devices strongly contributed to increase the popularity of mobile communications. Wireless communication and device integration have lead to the so-called nomadic computing (or mobile computing) where portable devices (such as laptop and handheld computers) allow users to access Internet and data on their home or work computers from anywhere in the world. Multimedia services requirements nowadays encompass not only large bandwidths, but also on-the-move facilities. Future 4th generation wireless communications systems will provide seamless mobility support to access heterogeneous wired and wireless networks (Makhecha & Wandra, 2009), (Lin et al., 2010). Emerging and pre-existing wireless technologies exhibit different characteristics, access technologies, available services and network performances. For example GSM, UMTS, WLAN and WiMAX have different bandwidth (70 Mbps for WiMAX and 9.6 kbps for GSM), cell diameter (50 km in LoS for WiMAX and 100 m for WLAN), or handover latency (3 s for WLAN and 50 µs for WiMAX). The increasing demand for services with high QoS requirements and novel mobility scenarios, like on-the-move business users, home and office networks, on-the-move entertainment, info-mobility etc., provide users to be connected to the Internet anytime and anywhere, as well as user services and connectivity be maintained, and kept alive. Mobility management in heterogeneous networks is the essential support for roaming nomadic devices switching from one access technology to another, at the same time maintaining seamless connectivity at high QoS services (i.e. video-streaming). New emerging multimode mobile devices are equipped with multiple wireless network interface cards, providing Vertical Handover capability to autonomously select the best access network. The design of innovative handover mechanisms-sometimes called as handoffbetween heterogeneous mobile devices (e.g. PDA, laptop, smart phones) and seamless integration of different integrated network (e.g. GSM, UMTS, HSDPA, GPS, WLAN, Bluetooth and so on) is an open research issue.