Bachelor-Seminar Connected and Mobile Systems

Over the past few years, the Linux kernel community has developed a lightweight in-kernel virtual machine called eBPF. eBPF allows to dynamically and safely execute small programs within the kernel.

Researchers have ported eBPF to RIOT OS, an operating system for microcontroller-based IoT devices. While they retained eBPF’s ISA, they had to slightly adopt different mechanisms due to the nature of microcontrollers.

First, describe eBPF in detail. Then discuss the differences between eBPF for microcontrollers and eBPF for Linux.

• https://ebpf.io/
• Minimal Virtual Machines on IoT Microcontrollers: The Case of Berkeley Packet Filters with rBPF
• Femto-Containers: DevOps on Microcontrollers with Lightweight Virtualization & Isolation for IoT Software Modules
• Extended Berkeley Packet Filter: An Application Perspective

One of the bottlenecks for wireless sensor networks (WSN) is the power supply of it's nodes. While batteries may seem like the obvious solution, they will run out of energy eventually and must be replaced, which hinders long term operation. In order to allow node operation without much maintanence, a class of nodes have emerged which harvest their energy from the environment (e.g. by using solar cells). But these have their own drawbacks, since the environment energy is harvested from may not be static, but dynamic. This dynamic behavior may result in phases of energy drought (e.g. during night when using solar cells) during which the node has to be supplied out of stored energy. But since these storages are often limited in size and they may not always be filled to their full capacity, the node will run out of energy, shuts down and resumes it's operation once enough energy as been harvested.

This intermittent behaviour of a nodes power supply results in the operation of the nodes beeing quite different when compared to regular computers. Your task will be to present the main challenges of running programs on these intermittently powered devices and discuss publications that aim to solve them.

• Intermittent Computing: Challenges and Opportunities
• Hibernus: Sustaining Computation During Intermittent Supply for Energy-Harvesting Systems
• Reliable Timekeeping for Intermittent Computing

Modern WSNs can contain numerous nodes gathering information and delivering these to a back end. The nodes' capabilities and services differ, leading to a heterogeneous network. Moreover, high reliability and availability are often crucial, especially in critical infrastructure. Therefore, such networks must be resilient against failure and still function sufficiently in case of failure. Recent publications proposed various approaches to mitigate the impact of interfering events and increase network resilience.

First, describe WSNs and their use cases. Second, characterize resilience in such networks according to recent research while considering different use cases and QoS requirements. Third, review state-of-the-art proposals to improve network resilience.

• A Survey on Resilience in the IoT: Taxonomy, Classification, and Discussion of Resilience Mechanisms

Vehicular communication and Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) do not only revolve around vehicles, their safety, traffic efficiency, and cooperation. Also, Vulnerable Road Users (VRUs), such as pedestrians and cyclists, are considered on the way to reduced traffic injuries and fatalities in general since they play an important role in traffic overall. Over the last decade, various approaches have been proposed to protect these weaker traffic participants using the means of communication. Search for relevant literature, projects, and standards regarding VRU protection using communication and identify key concepts.

• Cooperative intelligent transport systems standards in europe
• WATCH-OVER project
• ETSI TR 103 300-1

Communication techonology is one of the fundamental building block of WSNs. Wireless sensor nodes rely on wireless communication to transmit data between devices, connect to internet, etc. The wireless techonologies in WSNs are diverse, ranging from short-range protocols (like Bluetooth) to long range technologies (like LoRa).

• list all the widely used wireless techonologies for IoT and categorize them based on range and power consumption
• choose any two wireless techonology of your choice from one of the categories and explain the network architecture
• compare the chosen technologies and draw conclusions on its suitability to real world applications

• An Overview of Wireless Technologies for IoT Network