Search

Current Personal Flotation Devices (PFD), such as life jackets, are equipped with reflective tape and water- activated LED units. As technology advances, it is imperative that safety equipment is enhanced as well. This motivates the use of Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWAN) technology, such as LoRa (Long Range), to allow for easier detection of individuals when disaster strikes at sea. The methodology involves developing a transmitter device, to be placed in a life jacket and a receiver device, to be placed in a sea rescue helicopter. MultiTech’s range of LoRa enabled modules were used. This includes the LoRa mCard, MultiTech MultiConnect Conduit, LoRa mDot and the MultiTech micro developer kit. Sensors placed in the life jacket were that of a pulse sensor, water sensor and GPS sensor. It was found that within a 4 km range, the transmitter transmitted data to the receiver within 1.9 ms. The GPS sensor provided the latitude and longitude of the user with an error margin of 7 meters. The pulse sensor produced a BPM value which was 98% accurate compared to the wrist method test of finding ones BPM. Therefore, in this paper, the authors designed and implemented a sea rescue system which depicted how LoRa can be utilized in such an application and shows how it can be used to transfer data from a device attached to a PFD to a receiver placed in a sea rescue helicopter. Hence and so forth, the use of water sensors, GPS sensors and pulse sensors have been attached to a transmitter device found in a life jacket which then transfer live information to a receiver placed in a sea rescue helicopter. The overall aim of the system is to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of current sea rescue operations.

This paper proposes and investigates Stochastically Resonant Spectrum Sensing (SRSS) in order to expedite Dynamic Spectrum Access and TV White Space (TVWS) communications. SRSS adds noise to a signal in order to enhance its Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) and can be useful in sensing and detecting weak signals, e.g. weak Primary User or even Secondary User activity in TVWS. We demonstrate that SR is a useful Spectrum Sensing technique and can improve SNRs by ∼8–10 dB using MATLAB simulations. Typically, SRSS uses only Additive SR Noise and we include and also investigate Multiplicative SR Noise effects, showing that in certain instances the latter can also improve SNRs by ∼2 dB. We compare the Additive versus the combined Additive and Multiplicative cases using Uniform and Normal/Gaussian distributions and present our results. Our ultimate goal is to include SRSS in an IEEE/DySPAN-SC 1900.∗ Standards based Interference Managing Ontological Cognitive Radio, Intelligent Radio or Policy Based Radio for Ad-Hoc and Heterogeneous i.e. Composite Wireless Networks.

Two wireless communication technologies commonly used in smart home networks, namely Wi-Fi b/g and Bluetooth operate in the ISM 2.4 GHz band. Channel usage on Bluetooth and Wi-Fi amidst interference conditions to identify potential white spaces in the 2.4GHz range, at any instance was measured. We identified a possible white space frequency range above 2.48 GHz which could be used by either Wi-Fi or Bluetooth protocols to avoid interference from common household wireless interferers, such as a microwave oven. The availability of this unused spectra implies that it may still be possible to use the unregulated ISM 2.4 GHz band for smart home area network wireless communication.

In this paper a review of current research, design and development of an Ontological Cognitive Radio (OCR) which uses Stochastically Resonant Spectrum Sensing (SRSS) and Interference Management (IM) to facilitate, expedite and optimize TV White Space is provided. We discuss the OCR basis and address IM aspects briefly, and, discuss and demonstrate the Stochastic Resonance (SR) effect using additive noise.