Flexible heterogeneous satellite-based architecture for enhanced quality of life applications

Abstract

The future pervasive communication ecosystem can improve and enhance the quality of our everyday lives by increasing comfort and safety perception, and improving interaction and conditions of activities: remarkable quality and performance will be afforded by the synergistic use of communication, positioning, and monitoring techniques, provided by means of meshed heterogeneous architectures based on satellite and terrestrial segments. In such a scenario satellite communication will represent the missing link of the evolution of services. This article aims to describe a flexible architecture that could be adopted in the future system and discussing the open points in the development of the system as well as of its single building blocks. SATELLITE COMMUNICATIONS AND NETWORKINGEnrico POTENTIAL APPLICATION SCENARIOSThe flexibility and reconfigurability features of the proposed architecture, described in the next section, can support a large variety of services for different potential application contexts. Although already existing services may not be able to exploit all the functionalities provided by the architecture, new advanced services can be developed relying on their integration. Some examples are reported in the following. E-HEALTH AND WELL BEINGThe proposed architecture can provide solutions to some of the main problems related to the management of many patients in a care environment (hospital, rehabilitation structure, etc.) during all the different care phases and to the remote care of convalescent or home patients (for diseases such as diabetes and hypertension). The patient can be assisted "transparently" at any time through adaptive interactions between smart objects (sensors, drugs, doctors' terminals, patients, relatives, and pharmacies) that have received suitable localization and context information: the monitoring of some main parameters allows immediate assistance in case of necessity or if access to specified building areas is aided or blocked based on established relations helping the necessary patient mobility. The transparency to the user, flexibility, and cooperation between the patient, the objects, and the network are of utmost importance in the disease context and can be specifically tailored to the assistance of patients affected by specific problems or pathologies (e.g., wandering dementia). The specific operational modalities of the platform (user-oriented, object-driven, and network/context-enabled) can provide suitable solutions to the different applications.Another widespread field of interest that can be addressed by the proposed architecture is well-being systems and sport activities: in particular, people practicing a sport can share information about their activities and experiences while also being connected and monitored by means of wearable devices.The specific services for these scenarios are summarized in Fig. 2. PUBLIC SAFETYEvery member of a rescue or safety team is equipped with a portable radio transceiver, with advanced integrated navigation/ communication (...

Flexible cubesat-based system for data broadcasting

“…Moreover, the satellite segment will contribute significantly to the evolution of the services by means of the synergistic use of communication, positioning, and monitoring techniques: this objective will be realized by means of meshed heterogeneous architectures [2] that can afford remarkable systems and networks performance. At the same time, some of the envisaged future services such as the global tracking, monitoring, and maintaining of some specific assets or contexts don't mandatorily request the implementation of classic wireless or satellite communication systems which are subject to coverage and cost limitations; conversely, the uprising Machine-to-Machine (M2M) and Internet of Things paradigms seem to be more appropriate in such scenarios where a global packet connectivity has to be afforded in order to permit the exchange of information between the network and the ultimate users but the requirements in terms of data-rate and latency are not stringent [3], [4].…”

“…This pervasive communication ecosystem will solve many, if not most, problems in our life, by increasing security and safety perception and improving interaction and conditions of activities; information and communications technologies will be a pillar of this society evolution by providing a complex net of information exchanges and exploiting the big data that are involved in the procedures [2].…”

Future Wireless Systems for Human Bond Communications

“…One of the main goals of the future pervasive communication ecosystem is the improvement of the quality of our lives by increasing comfort and the enrichment of the interactions and conditions of our everyday activities [1]. In the near future this general objective is likely to encompass the capability of the human beings to communicate sensations by incorporating the five sensory features in the messages and allowing more expressive and holistic sensory information exchange through communication techniques [2].…”