TY - JOUR A1 - Altmann, Matthias A1 - Schlegl, Peter A1 - Volbert, Klaus T1 - A low-power wireless system for energy consumption analysis at mains sockets JF - EURASIP Journal on Embedded Systems N2 - Introduction: Improving energy efficiency and reducing energy wastage is an important topic of our time. But it is quite difficult to figure out how much of our total electricity bill can be mapped to which device or at what time the device used it. We believe energy efficiency of normal households can be improved, if this kind of transparency would be available. In this article, we present a system for energy measurement at mains sockets to gain a transparent view of energy consumption for each device in a household. It consists of several smart energy measuring devices (SEMDs) that use a low-power radio protocol to dynamically build and connect to a radio network to transfer power usage date to a server. At the server, the data is stored and can be accessed via web interface. Results: Our primary goal was to build a back-end system for an energy metering platform with very low energy consumption. This platform can provide data for a variety of services that enables users (the consumers) to understand and improve their energy consumption behavior and increase overall energy efficiency of their households. KW - Low power KW - Smart grid KW - Smart home KW - Smart metering KW - Wireless system Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1186/s13639-016-0041-y N1 - Corresponding author: Peter Schlegl IS - 1 PB - Springer Nature ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Zenger, Gerhard A1 - Kenner, Susanne A1 - Volbert, Klaus A1 - Waas, Thomas A1 - Kucera, Markus T1 - Acquiring energy data from a medium-voltage grid for future smart grid solutions: A practical smart grid application example realized by use of cellular communication networks of the 2nd and 3rd generation T2 - Proceedings of the 11th Workshop on Intelligent Solutions in Embedded Systems (WISES), 10-11 Sept. 2013, Pilsen, Czech Republic N2 - In this paper we present a practical example of the use of Cellular Communication standards like GPRS and UMTS in a Smart Grid Application. For a more detailed view we demonstrate a possible implementation of Cellular Communication Technologies in a data acquisition application for the collection of energy indicators in a medium-voltage grid. Furthermore, we show a technical overview of relevant and common mobile communication standards available in Germany. The included theoretical examples, Smart Grid scenarios, presented data and results are based on a research project for intelligent power regulation in medium-voltage grids performed in Regensburg (Germany). It is a joint project' of the University of Applied Sciences Regensburg together with a local energy provider and a manufacturer for distribution network systems. KW - Mobile communication KW - Medium voltage KW - Standards KW - Smart grids KW - Feeds KW - Ground penetrating radar Y1 - 2013 UR - https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6664954 SN - 978-3-00-042899-9 SP - 1 EP - 8 PB - IEEE ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kenner, Susanne A1 - Thaler, Raphael A1 - Kucera, Markus A1 - Volbert, Klaus A1 - Waas, Thomas T1 - Comparison of Smart Grid architectures for monitoring and analyzing power grid data via Modbus and REST JF - EURASIP Journal on Embedded Systems N2 - Smart grid, smart metering, electromobility, and the regulation of the power network are keywords of the transition in energy politics. In the future, the power grid will be smart. Based on different works, this article presents a data collection, analyzing, and monitoring software for a reference smart grid. We discuss two possible architectures for collecting data from energy analyzers and analyze their performance with respect to real-time monitoring, load peak analysis, and automated regulation of the power grid. In the first architecture, we analyze the latency, needed bandwidth, and scalability for collecting data over the Modbus TCP/IP protocol and in the second one over a RESTful web service. The analysis results show that the solution with Modbus is more scalable as the one with RESTful web service. However, the performance and scalability of both architectures are sufficient for our reference smart grid and use cases. KW - smart grid KW - real-time monitoring KW - Modbus KW - HTTP performance KW - Intelligentes Stromnetz KW - Referenzmodell KW - Monitoring Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1186/s13639-016-0045-7 VL - 2017 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Kenner, Susanne A1 - Thaler, Raphael A1 - Kucera, Markus A1 - Volbert, Klaus A1 - Waas, Thomas T1 - Smart Grid architecture for monitoring and analyzing, including modbus and REST performance comparison T2 - International Workshop on Intelligent Solutions in Embedded Systems (WISES), 12th, 29.-30. Oct. 2015, Ancona, Italy N2 - Smart Grid, Smart Metering, Electromobility and the regulation of the power network are keywords of the transition in energy policies. In the future, the power grid will be smart. Due to this the OTH Regensburg does research in this area based on different projects. This paper presents a data collection, analyzing and monitoring software for a reference Smart Grid. We discuss two possible architectures for collecting data from energy analyzers. The performance is analyzed with respect to real-time monitoring, analyzing load peaks and automated regulation of the power grid. KW - Software KW - Computer architecture KW - Smart grids KW - Protocols KW - Databases KW - Servers KW - TCPIP Y1 - 2015 UR - https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7356988 SN - 978-8-8875-4808-2 SP - 96 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Weiß, Martin Georg A1 - Volbert, Klaus ED - Falter, Thomas T1 - Intelligente Steuerung von Industrierobotern T2 - Zweite OTH-Clusterkonferenz 18. Januar 2017 Techbase, Regensburg Y1 - 2017 CY - Regensburg ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Schwindl, Tobias A1 - Volbert, Klaus A1 - Schwab, Maximilian ED - Benavente-Peces, César ED - Cam-Winget, Nancy ED - Fleury, Eric ED - Ahrens, Andreas T1 - On Update Protocols in Wireless Sensor Networks T2 - Sensor Networks N2 - There has been a lot of research been done in the domain of Wireless Sensor Networks in recent years. Nowadays, Wireless Sensor Networks are in operation in a wide range of different scenarios and applications, like energy management services, heat and water billing as well as smoke detectors. However, research and development will be continued in this domain. During the operation of such a network, software updates need to be done seldom. In contrast to this, software updates need to be done very frequently during development and testing for uploading a new firmware on umpteen nodes. In this paper, we examine such a software update for a particular, but popular and often used sensor network platform. There are already interesting research papers about the process of updating sensor nodes. Our specific focus relies on the technical part of such an update process. We will argue why these already existing update processes do not cover our defiances. The objective of our software update protocol is to enable the developer to update many nodes in a reliable and very fast fashion during the development and testing process. For this reason, energy consumption is considered only marginally. We do not need a multi-hop protocol, due to the fact that all devices are in range, e.g. in a laboratory. In this paper we survey well known update protocols and architectures for software updates in WSN, discuss the solutions and compare them to our approach. As a conclusion of our extensive simulation follows to sum up that the developed protocols do a fast and scalable as well as a reliable update. KW - Low-power devices KW - Software update KW - WSN Y1 - 2019 SN - 978-3-030-30109-5 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30110-1_5 SP - 74 EP - 97 PB - Springer International Publishing CY - Cham ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Schwindl, Tobias A1 - Volbert, Klaus A1 - Bock, Sebastian ED - Fleury, Eric ED - Ahrens, Andreas ED - Benavente-Peces, César ED - Cam-Winget, Nancy T1 - Fast and Reliable Update Protocols in WSNs During Software Development, Testing and Deployment T2 - Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Sensor Networks - SENSORNETS, Funchal, January 22-24, 2018, Madeira, Portugal N2 - A lot of research has been done in the area of Wireless Sensor Networks during the past years. Today, Wireless Sensor Networks are in field in many different ways and applications (e.g. energy management services, heat and water billing, smoke detectors). Nevertheless, research and development is continued in this area. After the network is deployed, software updates are performed very rarely, but during development and testing one typical, high frequented task is to deploy a new firmware to thousands of nodes. In this paper, we consider such a software update for a special, but well-known and frequently used sensor network platform. There exist some interesting research papers about updating sensor nodes, but we have a special focus on the technical update process. In this context, we show the reasons why these existing update processes do not cover our challenges. Our goal is to allow a developer to update thousands of nodes reliably and very fast during development and testing. Fo r this purpose, it is not so important to perform the best update with regard to energy consumption. We do not need a multi hop protocol, because all devices are in range, e.g., in a laboratory. In our work, we present a model of the update process and give very fast protocols to solve it. The results of our extensive simulations show that the developed protocols do a fast, scalable and reliable update. KW - WSN KW - Software Update KW - Low-Power Devices Y1 - 2018 UR - https://www.scitepress.org/DigitalLibrary/Link.aspx?doi=10.5220/0006534400190030 SN - 978-989-758-284-4 U6 - https://doi.org/10.5220/0006534400190030 SP - 19 EP - 30 PB - SCITEPRESS - Science and Technology Publications Lda CY - Setúbal, Portugal ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Schlegl, Peter A1 - Robatzek, Patrick A1 - Kucera, Markus A1 - Volbert, Klaus A1 - Waas, Thomas T1 - Performance analysis of mobile radio for automatic control in smart grids JF - International Journal of Advancements in Electronics and Electrical Engineering N2 - In the context of a "Smart Grid" research project, together with industrial partners, the OTH-Regensburg realized an intelligent medium-voltage grid in the local area. Goal was to improve the current voltage regulation and to counter the problems with inconsistent energy feed-in of decentralized renewable energy producers. In this paper we discuss the possibilities of using 3rd generation (3G) cellular networks (UMTS) as basic technology to communicate the voltage-levels within a medium-voltage grid. We build an experimental hardware setup to generate data-traffic as specified for the smart grid. By analyzing the performance of 3G cellular networks in terms of transmission latency and rate of failure, we tried to evaluate the usability of this technology for such critical data exchange. Though mobile communication in its structure is not specified for the use of transmitting such infrastructure critical data, the results show a promising high reliability with low transmission latency. The experiments served just to test a fragment of the conditions of use in a real scenario. An expanded test scope is needed to further analyze the performance of mobile radio for automatic control in smart grids. In the end the results discussed in this paper led to a successful prototype of an intelligent medium-voltage grid with mobile radio as communication technology KW - mobile radio KW - cellular data transmission KW - 3G KW - 4G KW - Smart Grid KW - communication Y1 - 2014 UR - http://journals.theired.org/journals/paper/details/5456.html SN - 2319-7498 VL - 4 IS - 1 SP - 69 EP - 75 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - auf der Heide, Friedhelm Meyer A1 - Schindelhauer, Christian A1 - Volbert, Klaus A1 - Grünewald, Matthias T1 - Congestion, dilation, and energy in radio networks JF - Theory of Computing Systems N2 - We investigate the problem of path selection in radio networks for a given static set of n sites in two- and three-dimensional space. For static point-to-point communication we define measures for congestion, dilation, and energy consumption that take interferences among communication links into account. We show that energy-optimal path selection for radio networks can be computed in polynomial time. Then we introduce the diversity g(V) of a set V ⫅ ℝd for any constant d. It can be used to upper bound the number of interfering edges. For real-world applications it can be regarded as Θ(log n). A main result is that a c-spanner construction as a communication network allows one to approximate the congestion-optimal path system by a factor of O(g(V)2). Furthermore, we show that there are vertex sets where only one of the performance parameters congestion, dilation, and energy can be optimized at a time. We show trade-offs lower bounding congestion × dilation and dilation × energy. The trade-off between congestion and dilation increases with switching from two-dimensional to three-dimensional space. For congestion and energy the situation is even worse. It is only possible to find a reasonable approximation for either congestion or energy minimization, while the other parameter is at least a polynomial factor worse than in the optimal network. KW - Medium Access Control KW - Minimum Span Tree KW - Communication Link KW - Unit Energy KW - Radio Station Y1 - 2004 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s00224-004-1124-z VL - 37 IS - 3 SP - 343 EP - 370 PB - Springer Nature ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Lukovszki, Tamas A1 - Schindelhauer, Christian A1 - Volbert, Klaus T1 - Resource efficient maintenance of wireless network topologies JF - Journal of Universal Computer Science N2 - Multiple hop routing in mobile ad hoc networks can minimize energy consumption and increase data throughput. Yet, the problem of radio interferences remain. However if the routes are restricted to a basic network based on local neighborhoods, these interferences can be reduced such that standard routing algorithms can be applied. We compare different network topologies for these basic networks, i.e. the Yao-graph (aka. Θ-graph) and some also known related models, which will be called the SymmYgraph (aka. YS-graph), the SparsY-graph (aka. YY-graph) and the BoundY-graph. Further, we present a promising network topology called the HL-graph (based on Hierarchical Layers). We compare these topologies regarding degree, spanner-properties, and communication features. We investigate how these network topologies bound the number of (uni- and bidirectional) interferences and whether these basic networks provide energy-optimal or congestion-minimal routing. Then, we compare the ability of these topologies to handle dynamic changes of the network when radio stations appear and disappear. For this we measure the number of involved radio stations and present distributed algorithms for repairing the network structure. KW - ad hoc networks KW - topology control KW - distributed algorithms Y1 - 2006 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3217/jucs-012-09-1292 VL - 12 IS - 9 SP - 1292 EP - 1311 PB - Verlag der Technischen Universität Graz ER -