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Green Communications in Smart City

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A special issue of Electronics (ISSN 2079-9292). This special issue belongs to the section "Microwave and Wireless Communications".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 March 2019) | Viewed by 76686

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Special Issue Editors

Dr. Naveed Ul Hassan

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Guest Editor

Department of Electrical Engineering, Lahore University of Management Sciences, Lahore 54792, Pakistan
Interests: wireless communication systems and networks; smart grids; indoor localization

Dr. Chau Yuen

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Guest Editor

School of Electrical & Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 639798, Singapore
Interests: 5G wireless; smart grid; localization; IoT; big data

Dr. Xiaoming Chen

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Guest Editor

College of Information Science and Electronic Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310016, China
Interests: wireless communications; cellular IoT; wireless power transfer; physical layer security

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

As the vision of smart cities is becoming a reality, the number of sensors, devices, and embedded platforms deployed in our surroundings is rapidly increasing. The communication requirements of various systems and sub-systems in smart cities that are expected to improve our well-being are also increasing. The energy requirements for providing connectivity to billions of new devices and trillions of message exchanges between these devices would contribute significantly towards greenhouse gas emissions. Green communication enabling technologies and solutions is therefore critical for sustainable, smart cities.

Green communications in smart cities is challenging due to massive machine type devices; a diverse range of applications with different qualities of service; traffic requirements & deployment scenarios; a wide range of involved equipment and hardware; numerous energy efficiency tradeoffs; and heterogeneous communication and networking protocols, technologies, & architectures. Through this Special Issue, our aim is to gather manuscripts that describe the most recent advances and developments in order to overcome some of these challenges in this emerging area. Authors are invited to submit high quality papers on topics that include (but are not limited to) the following:

Green hardware, devices, and platforms for sustainable smart cities.
Energy efficiency mechanisms & green communication tradeoffs for diverse applications and deployment scenarios in smart cities.
Cognitive radio and TVWS in smart city applications.
Use of 5G technologies, massive MIMO, full duplex relaying, and NOMA for smart city applications.
Internet of Things (IoT) and massive machine-type communication protocols
Energy harvesting, wireless power transfer, and renewable technologies for green communications in smart cities.
Application scenarios, smart grids, intelligent transportation, etc.
Cross layer optimization and scheduling for green communication in smart cities.
Physical layer security for green communication technologies.
Energy-efficient high definition video streaming.
Novel, energy-efficient communication and networking architectures for smart cities.
Results of field trials and practical deployments.

Dr. Naveed Ul Hassan
Dr. Chau Yuen
Dr. Xiaoming Chen
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Electronics is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

smart cities
green communications
Internt of Things (IoT)
green hardware platforms
communication and newtorking platforms
energy efficiency
cross layer optimization
energy harvesting
renewable technolgies
information and communication technologies
machine to machine communiction

Published Papers (14 papers)

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Editorial

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3 pages, 148 KiB

Open AccessEditorial

Green Communications in Smart Cities

by Naveed Ul Hassan, Chau Yuen and Xiaoming Chen

Electronics 2019, 8(7), 773; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics8070773 - 11 Jul 2019

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2240

Abstract

As the vision of smart cities becomes a reality, the number of sensors, devices, and embedded platforms deployed in our surroundings is rapidly increasing [...] Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Green Communications in Smart City)

Research

Jump to: Editorial

18 pages, 3292 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Social-Aware Peer Selection for Device-to-Device Communications in Dense Small-Cell Networks

by Aamir Nadeem and Ho-Shin Cho

Electronics 2019, 8(6), 670; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics8060670 - 13 Jun 2019

Cited by 6 | Viewed by 2763

Abstract

Device-to-device communications refer to the emerging paradigm that permits direct communication between cellular users that are in close physical and social proximity. It is expected to become an essential aspect of the future 5G cellular communications system. As a prerequisite for device-to-device communications, a user has to select another user in its proximity that has the desired information/service and is willing to share it. In this paper, we propose a method for peer selection in dense small-cell device-to-device networks that uses multi-attribute decision modeling. The method exploits both the physical and social characteristics of the user equipment to find the most suitable peer for device-to-device communications. We assume hexagonal small-cell and macro-cell architectures with a small-cell/macro-cell base station with multiple user equipments in its coverage area to evaluate the proposed scheme’s performance. The small-/macro-cell base station exploits various social and physical attributes to rank peers and selects the best one for device-to-device communication with the requesting user. The numerical results demonstrate the proposed algorithm’s efficiency in terms of computational time, selection of the best peer, throughput, and energy efficiency of device-to-device communications. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Green Communications in Smart City)

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16 pages, 2118 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Terminal-Oriented Distributed Traffic Flow Splitting Strategy for Multi-Service of V2X Networks

by Fei Ding, Zitong Ma, Zhiliang Li, Ruoyu Su, Dengyin Zhang and Hongbo Zhu

Electronics 2019, 8(6), 644; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics8060644 - 06 Jun 2019

Cited by 7 | Viewed by 2670

Abstract

With the development and the characteristics of terminal services of the 5G (5th-Generation network) Internet of Vehicles (IoVs), this paper proposes a distributed splitting strategy for multi-type services of 5G V2X (Vehicle to X) networks. Based on a service-oriented adaptive splitting strategy in heterogeneous networks, combined with various service types such as communications between the networks, terminal, and base stations, and the value-added services of 5G IoVs, the proposed strategy jointly considers delay and cost as optimization goals. By analyzing the characteristics of the different services, the proposed traffic flow splitting strategy is modeled as an optimization problem to efficiently split services in 5G V2X networks. The simulation results show that by setting the traffic distribution policy for each service, the distributed traffic flow splitting strategy can significantly improve network transmission efficiency and reduce the service costs in a vehicle V2X network. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Green Communications in Smart City)

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15 pages, 2287 KiB

Open AccessFeature PaperArticle

An Ontology-Based Framework for Building Energy Management with IoT

by Clement Lork, Vishal Choudhary, Naveed Ul Hassan, Wayes Tushar, Chau Yuen, Benny Kai Kiat Ng, Xinyu Wang and Xiang Liu

Electronics 2019, 8(5), 485; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics8050485 - 30 Apr 2019

Cited by 23 | Viewed by 4545

Abstract

In this paper, we develop an ontology-based framework for energy management in buildings. We divide the functional architecture of a building energy management system into three interconnected modules that include building management system (BMS), benchmarking (BMK), and evaluation & control (ENC) modules. The BMS module is responsible for measuring several useful environmental parameters, as well as real-time energy consumption of the building. The BMK module provides the necessary information required to understand the context and cause of building energy efficiency or inefficiency, and also the information which can further differentiate normal and abnormal energy consumption in different scenarios. The ENC module evaluates all the information coming from BMS and BMK modules, the information is contextualized, and finally the cause of energy inefficiency/abnormality and mitigating control actions are determined. Methodology to design appropriate ontology and inference rules for various modules is also discussed. With the help of actual data obtained from three different rooms in a commercial building in Singapore, a case study is developed to demonstrate the application and advantages of the proposed framework. By mitigating the appropriate cause of abnormal inefficiency, we can achieve 5.7%, 11.8% and 8.7% energy savings in Room 1, Room 2, and Room 3 respectively, while creating minimum inconvenience for the users. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Green Communications in Smart City)

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20 pages, 7135 KiB

Open AccessArticle

An Efficient 3-D Ray Tracing Method: Prediction of Indoor Radio Propagation at 28 GHz in 5G Network

by Ferdous Hossain, Tan Kim Geok, Tharek Abd Rahman, Mohammad Nour Hindia, Kaharudin Dimyati, Sharif Ahmed, Chih P. Tso and Noor Ziela Abd Rahman

Electronics 2019, 8(3), 286; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics8030286 - 04 Mar 2019

Cited by 46 | Viewed by 7148

Abstract

Millimeter wave technology will be dominating the fifth-generation networks due to the clear advantage of higher frequency bands and hence wider spectrum. In this paper, the indoor radio wave propagation at 28 GHz is studied by developing an efficient three-dimensional ray tracing (ETRT) method. The simulation software based on the ETRT model has been verified by measurement data. The received signal strength indication and path loss have shown significant agreement between simulation and measurement. Compared with the conventional shooting bouncing ray tracing method, the proposed ETRT method has better agreement with measurement data. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Green Communications in Smart City)

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32 pages, 1620 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Electricity Price and Load Forecasting using Enhanced Convolutional Neural Network and Enhanced Support Vector Regression in Smart Grids

by Maheen Zahid, Fahad Ahmed, Nadeem Javaid, Raza Abid Abbasi, Hafiza Syeda Zainab Kazmi, Atia Javaid, Muhammad Bilal, Mariam Akbar and Manzoor Ilahi

Electronics 2019, 8(2), 122; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics8020122 - 23 Jan 2019

Cited by 122 | Viewed by 9560

Abstract

Short-Term Electricity Load Forecasting (STELF) through Data Analytics (DA) is an emerging and active research area. Forecasting about electricity load and price provides future trends and patterns of consumption. There is a loss in generation and use of electricity. So, multiple strategies are used to solve the aforementioned problems. Day-ahead electricity price and load forecasting are beneficial for both suppliers and consumers. In this paper, Deep Learning (DL) and data mining techniques are used for electricity load and price forecasting. XG-Boost (XGB), Decision Tree (DT), Recursive Feature Elimination (RFE) and Random Forest (RF) are used for feature selection and feature extraction. Enhanced Convolutional Neural Network (ECNN) and Enhanced Support Vector Regression (ESVR) are used as classifiers. Grid Search (GS) is used for tuning of the parameters of classifiers to increase their performance. The risk of over-fitting is mitigated by adding multiple layers in ECNN. Finally, the proposed models are compared with different benchmark schemes for stability analysis. The performance metrics MSE, RMSE, MAE, and MAPE are used to evaluate the performance of the proposed models. The experimental results show that the proposed models outperformed other benchmark schemes. ECNN performed well with threshold 0.08 for load forecasting. While ESVR performed better with threshold value 0.15 for price forecasting. ECNN achieved almost 2% better accuracy than CNN. Furthermore, ESVR achieved almost 1% better accuracy than the existing scheme (SVR). Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Green Communications in Smart City)

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20 pages, 960 KiB

Open AccessFeature PaperArticle

Improving RF Fingerprinting Methods by Means of D2D Communication Protocol

by Syed Khandker, Joaquín Torres-Sospedra and Tapani Ristaniemi

Electronics 2019, 8(1), 97; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics8010097 - 16 Jan 2019

Cited by 11 | Viewed by 4540

Abstract

Radio Frequency (RF) fingerprinting is widely applied for indoor positioning due to the existing Wi-Fi infrastructure present in most indoor spaces (home, work, leisure, among others) and the widespread usage of smartphones everywhere. It corresponds to a simple idea, the signal signature in a location tends to be stable over the time. Therefore, with the signals received from multiple APs, a unique fingerprint can be created. However, the Wi-Fi signal is affected by many factors which degrade the positioning error range to around a few meters. This paper introduces a collaborative method based on device-to-device (D2D) communication to improve the positioning accuracy using only fingerprinting and the direct communication to nearby devices. The results presented in this paper show that the positioning error can be reduced around 44% by considering D2D communication in the operational stage without adding new infrastructure for fingerprinting or complex resource-consuming filters. Moreover, the presence of very large errors is significantly reduced when the collaborative positioning based on D2D is available. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Green Communications in Smart City)

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16 pages, 3978 KiB

Open AccessFeature PaperArticle

Assessment of Dual Frequency GNSS Observations from a Xiaomi Mi 8 Android Smartphone and Positioning Performance Analysis

by Umberto Robustelli, Valerio Baiocchi and Giovanni Pugliano

Electronics 2019, 8(1), 91; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics8010091 - 15 Jan 2019

Cited by 153 | Viewed by 15959

Abstract

On May 2018 the world’s first dual-frequency Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) smartphone produced by Xiaomi equipped with a Broadcom BCM47755 chip was launched. It is able to receive L1/E1/ and L5/E5 signals from GPS, Galileo, Beidou, and GLONASS (GLObal NAvigation Satellite System) satellites. The main aim of this work is to achieve the phone’s position by using multi-constellation, dual frequency pseudorange and carrier phase raw data collected from the smartphone. Furthermore, the availability of dual frequency raw data allows to assess the multipath performance of the device. The smartphone’s performance is compared with that of a geodetic receiver. The experiments were conducted in two different scenarios to test the smartphone under different multipath conditions. Smartphone measurements showed a lower C/N0 and higher multipath compared with those of the geodetic receiver. This produced negative effects on single-point positioning as showed by high root mean square error (RMS). The best positioning accuracy for single point was obtained with the E5 measurements with a DRMS (horizontal root mean square error) of 4.57 m. For E1/L1 frequency, the 2DRMS was 5.36 m. However, the Xiaomi Mi 8, thanks to the absence of the duty cycle, provided carrier phase measurements used for a static single frequency relative positioning with an achieved 2DRMS of 1.02 and 1.95 m in low and high multipath sites, respectively. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Green Communications in Smart City)

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11 pages, 400 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Codebook-Aided DOA Estimation Algorithms for Massive MIMO System

by Shufeng Li, Hongda Wu and Libiao Jin

Electronics 2019, 8(1), 26; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics8010026 - 26 Dec 2018

Cited by 6 | Viewed by 3219

Abstract

The conventional direction of arrival (DOA) estimation algorithm is not effective with the tremendous complexity due to the large-scale array antennas in a massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system. A new frame structure for downlink transmission is presented. Then, codebook-aided (C-aided) algorithms are proposed based on this frame structure that can fully exploit the priori information under channel codebook feedback mechanism. An oriented angle range is scoped through the codebook feedback, which is drastically beneficial to reduce computational burden for DOA estimation in massive MIMO systemss. Compared with traditional DOA estimation algorithms, our proposed C-aided algorithms are computationally efficient and meet the demand of future green communication. Simulations show the estimation effectiveness of C-aided algorithms and advantage for decrement of computational cost. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Green Communications in Smart City)

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15 pages, 4333 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Spectrum Values in Suburban/Urban Environments above 1.5 GHz

by Yiqiao Wei and Seung-Hoon Hwang

Electronics 2018, 7(12), 401; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics7120401 - 07 Dec 2018

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 3041

Abstract

Frequency bands higher than 3 GHz will be allocated for 5G telecommunication services. Therefore, investigating the spectrum values at these frequency bands is important for developing an appropriate deployment strategy. In this paper, spectrum values above 1.5 GHz are investigated in suburban and urban environments. In the suburban environment, the relative spectrum values at different positions in a cell are analyzed for frequencies ranging from 500 MHz to 1.5 GHz, 1.5 GHz to 3 GHz, and 3 GHz to 11 GHz. In the urban environment, the maximum achievable capacity of users is calculated for frequencies ranging from 500 MHz to 40 GHz. Numerical results show that spectrum values at lower frequency bands below 5 GHz present higher values at the cell-edge in the suburban environment and in non-line-of-sight (NLoS) situations in the urban environment. However, higher frequency bands have nearly the same impact as low frequency bands at the cell center in suburban environments above 5 GHz but show advantages in outdoor urban environments with line-of-sight (LoS) above 20 GHz. It should be noted that 3.5 GHz shows the highest value in NLoS situations and the indoor domain environment in UMi scenarios, while 28 GHz gives the optimum value at the cell-center and indoor areas with LoS in UMa scenarios. When considering the spectrum value for different frequency bands, the primary consideration should be whether the environment is NLoS or LoS, and the secondary consideration should be whether the environment is indoor or outdoor. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Green Communications in Smart City)

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22 pages, 632 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Virtual Machine Placement via Bin Packing in Cloud Data Centers

by Aisha Fatima, Nadeem Javaid, Tanzeela Sultana, Waqar Hussain, Muhammad Bilal, Shaista Shabbir, Yousra Asim, Mariam Akbar and Manzoor Ilahi

Electronics 2018, 7(12), 389; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics7120389 - 04 Dec 2018

Cited by 28 | Viewed by 6216

Abstract

With the increasing size of cloud data centers, the number of users and virtual machines (VMs) increases rapidly. The requests of users are entertained by VMs residing on physical servers. The dramatic growth of internet services results in unbalanced network resources. Resource management is an important factor for the performance of a cloud. Various techniques are used to manage the resources of a cloud efficiently. VM-consolidation is an intelligent and efficient strategy to balance the load of cloud data centers. VM-placement is an important subproblem of the VM-consolidation problem that needs to be resolved. The basic objective of VM-placement is to minimize the utilization rate of physical machines (PMs). VM-placement is used to save energy and cost. An enhanced levy-based particle swarm optimization algorithm with variable sized bin packing (PSOLBP) is proposed for solving the VM-placement problem. Moreover, the best-fit strategy is also used with the variable sized bin packing problem (VSBPP). Simulations are done to authenticate the adaptivity of the proposed algorithm. Three algorithms are implemented in Matlab. The given algorithm is compared with simple particle swarm optimization (PSO) and a hybrid of levy flight and particle swarm optimization (LFPSO). The proposed algorithm efficiently minimized the number of running PMs. VM-consolidation is an NP-hard problem, however, the proposed algorithm outperformed the other two algorithms. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Green Communications in Smart City)

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13 pages, 315 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Coordinated Multicast Precoding for Multi-Cell Massive MIMO Transmission Exploiting Statistical Channel State Information

by Li You, Xu Chen, Wenjin Wang and Xiqi Gao

Electronics 2018, 7(11), 338; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics7110338 - 20 Nov 2018

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2769

Abstract

This paper considers coordinated multi-cell multicast precoding for massive multiple-input-multiple-output transmission where only statistical channel state information of all user terminals (UTs) in the coordinated network is known at the base stations (BSs). We adopt the sum of the achievable ergodic multicast rate as the design objective. We first show the optimal closed-form multicast signalling directions of each BS, which simplifies the coordinated multicast precoding problem into a coordinated beam domain power allocation problem. Via invoking the minorization-maximization framework, we then propose an iterative power allocation algorithm with guaranteed convergence to a stationary point. In addition, we derive the deterministic equivalent of the design objective to further reduce the optimization complexity via invoking the large-dimensional random matrix theory. Numerical results demonstrate the performance gain of the proposed coordinated approach over the conventional uncoordinated approach, especially for cell-edge UTs. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Green Communications in Smart City)

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31 pages, 11253 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Development of a Bike-Sharing System Based on Pedal-Assisted Electric Bicycles for Bogota City

by David Florez, Henry Carrillo, Ricardo Gonzalez, Max Herrera, Ronald Hurtado-Velasco, Martha Cano, Sergio Roa and Tatiana Manrique

Electronics 2018, 7(11), 337; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics7110337 - 20 Nov 2018

Cited by 10 | Viewed by 7339

Abstract

The lack of sustainable solutions to mobility and transportation is a major problem in Latin American cities and requires prompt solutions. The main issues in Latin America are the high-cost of solutions, no inclusion of renewable energies, poor energy management, the use of foreign systems not adapted to local contexts, ineffective regional legislation and politics, among others. In this paper the main technical issues concerning the implementation of a bike-sharing system using pedaling-assisted (PAS) electric bicycles for Bogota City are discussed and a solution is proposed. To solve such problems, a methodology to design a tailored solution well suited to Bogota citizen’s needs is developed. Such methodology starts with the development of an on-board-computer (OBC) in order to characterize bike-users by collecting a rider’s data in real-time. Furthermore, the proposed solution develops a low-cost middle-drive (mid-drive) propulsion system for the PAS in the electric bike using brushless-DC (BLDC) motors and by implementing a field-oriented controller (FOC). The reported bike-sharing system also includes the development and implementation of two charging-stations that enable charging the battery on the electric bikes exclusively by using photovoltaic energy. Experimental results are presented and discussed. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Green Communications in Smart City)

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11 pages, 16344 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Worst Cell Based Pilot Allocation in Massive MIMO Systems

by Hieu Trong Dao and Sunghwan Kim

Electronics 2018, 7(9), 197; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics7090197 - 13 Sep 2018

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 3575

Abstract

Massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) has been viewed as an advanced technique in future 5G networks. Conventional massive MIMO systems consist of cellular base stations (BS) equipped with a very large number of antennas to simultaneously serve many single-antenna users. Unfortunately, massive MIMO system’s performance is limited by pilot contamination (PC) problem. Conventionally, all users in massive MIMO systems are assigned pilot randomly. In this paper, we propose a pilot allocation algorithm based on a cell with the worst channel quality (WCPA) algorithm to improve the uplink achievable sum rate of the system. Specifically, WCPA exploits the large-scale coefficients of fading channels between the BSs and users. According to the number of available orthogonal pilot sequences, we choose some of the highest inter-cell interfering users and assign each of them a unique pilot sequence if the number of pilot sequences is more than the number of users in a cell. Next, we choose a target cell with the worst channel quality, and gather the highest channel gain user in the target cell and the lowest interfering user in the other cells in the same group in a sequential way by assigning them the same pilot sequence. The simulation results show the outperformance of the proposed algorithm compared to the conventional pilot allocation schemes. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Green Communications in Smart City)

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