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Robust Low-Power Wide Area Networks for Sports and Health

Time: Fri 2020-09-25 10.00

Location: https://kth-se.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_-Ik9ZnewRCG_on64XaZhvg, (English)

Subject area: Technology and Health

Doctoral student: Charalampos Orfanidis , Hälsoinformatik och logistik, Health Informatics

Opponent: Assistant Professor Dimitrios Zorbas, University College Cork, Irland

Supervisor: Martin Jacobsson, Hälsoinformatik och logistik

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Abstract

Low-Power Wide Area Networks (LPWANs) has enriched the IoT ecosystem with new features and application scenarios. LPWANs offer long range communication and can be used to connect devices that are divided by long distances and offer connectivity to remote areas where cellular networks are not accessible. They utilize their long range, low-power robust communication to enable popular application scenarios, such as smart cities and smart agriculture.

However, the environment that most of these networks operate in is unlicensed spectrum, which might be crowded and noisy due to the co-existence of other networks and technologies that operate in the same frequency band. Therefore, one of the goals of this thesis is to investigate the degree of robustness in LPWANs and propose seamless mechanisms that ensure robust communication in case of high degree of interference. Another goal is to support application scenarios in sports technology and health, which require robust and long-range communication. Hence, the second goal of this thesis is to explore how to take advantage of the robust communication that LPWANs offer, and use it in application scenarios in sports technology and health.

To realize the aforementioned goals, this thesis is quantifying the tolerance level of LPWANs in high interference level environments and suggests methods that will make the co-existence of these networks more sustainable. It also demonstrates that LPWANs can be used in healthcare and safety contexts with a use case of a long-range emergency system. Finally, this thesis provides evidence that LPWAN is a good fit for sports technology applications as it presents a use case where long range time synchronization is offered for a kayak training application using LPWAN.

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