Newsletter July 2015

Issue Number 2

InduStry-acadeMia pArtnership for the design and implementation of an efficient, Reliable and secure smarT eNeRGy network

Issue highlights

The first SMART-NRG workshop has been successfully organized in conjunction with the AD-HOC-NOW conference on June 29, 2015. More than 15 papers were submitted to review and the organizing committee selected five of them (two including project fellows in the authors list). The workshop attracted more than 40 attendants that were very interested to the presentations asking many questions and providing their own views. Main achievements of Dionysis Xenakis, Mattia Boschi, Dimitris Tsolkas and Georgios Karopoulos are included in this issue. The fellows have adjusted to their new research environment and produced considerable results towards the project development. They have also started publishing the results of their research to prestigious conferences and journals. Publications, important days and social media information are included at the end of this issue. The number of project publications starts to increase as the partners are producing new research results. High quality journal and conferences are targeted with an impressive success rate so far. The next important project dates are 15-16 October 2015 where the mid-term review meeting will be organized at the University of Athens, Greece. The partners and mainly the fellows will have the chance to present their developments to the Project Officer and an external expert and receive comments and suggestions.

In this issue:

Issue Highlights 1

First SMART-NRG workshop 2

Fellows’ progress (D. Xenakis) 3

Fellows’ progress (M. Boschi) 4

Fellows’ progress (M. Boschi) 4

Fellows’ progress (D. Tsolkas) 6

Publications 7

Project partners:

Workshops

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First SMART-NRG Workshop

The first SMART-NRG workshop has been successfully organized in conjunction with the AD-HOC-NOW conference. The SMART-NRG project has organized the special track on SMART ENERGY NETWORKS (SENs) on Monday 29th of June 2015. The list of accepted papers in the first SMART-NRG workshop is the following:

1. Apollinaire Nadembega, Abdelhakim Hafid, Ronald Brisebois “Energy Efficient Small-Cell Discovery Using Users' Mobility Prediction”

2. Bela Genge, Piroska Haller, Istvan Kiss, “A Linear Programming Approach for K-Resilient and Reliability-Aware Design of Large-Scale Industrial Networks”

3. Foivos Fotios Demertzis, Georgios Karopoulos, Christos Xenakis, Andrea Colarieti, “Self-organised Key Management for the Smart Grid”

4. Stefano Tennina, Dionysis Xenakis, Mattia Boschi, Marco Di Renzo, Fabio Graziosi, Christos Verikoukis, “A Modular and Flexible Network Architecture for Smart Grids”

5. Mislav Findrik, Thomas L.F. Kristensen, Thomas Hinterhofer, Rasmus Olsen, Hans-Peter Schwefel, “Information-Quality based LV-Grid-Monitoring Framework and its Application to Power-Quality Control”

The SMART-NRG workshop in action Dr. Nikos Passas during his opening speech

Highlights of the Fellows’ Progress

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Dionysis Xenakis at WEST Aquila

Dr. Dionysis Xenakis has recently completed his PhD at the Department of Informatics and Telecommunications at the University of Athens (UoA), Greece, on localization and mobility management in heterogeneous wireless networks. During the past few years, Dionysis has focused his research efforts in the area of machine type communications for multi-tier heterogeneous wireless networks, with the emphasis given in smart grid systems. In the context of SMART-NRG Dionysis has been recently seconded from UoA to WEST L’Aquila. His secondment has started on May 2015 and will be completed until April 2016. Among others, Dionysis; role is to prepare, plan and actively participate in the evaluation / validation of the SMART-NRG algorithms in the WEST’s powerful system level simulator. The experience that he will get during his secondment in WEST is expected to bring his research closer to the market and open new horizons to his career. Dionysis has been already actively involved in the SMART-NRG deliverable D2.1. Dionysis' research activities so far have focused in co-authoring a joined conference publication between SMART-NRG partners in the Ad hoc NOW 2015 conference [1], as well as a journal publication in the IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications with his UOA fellows [2]. In brief, [1] summarizes the key aspects of the SMART-NRG reference architecture, whereas [2] assesses the performance of proximity estimation in multi-tier clustered heterogeneous networks (similar to the ones considered in SMART-NRG ). Dionysis has also served as a TPC co-chair in the first workshop organized by the SMART-NRG project (June 2015) and gave his first public talk at the University of Aquila, Italy (May 2015), about his main research interests and his upcoming efforts towards the SMART-NRG objectives. Currently, Dionysis is actively involved in the evaluation and validation of the preliminary versions of the SMART-NRG algorithms, emphasizing on their integration in the system-level simulator developed by WEST. [1] S. Tennina, D. Xenakis, M. Boschi, et al., "A Modular and Flexible Network Architecture for Smart Grids", Ad Hoc Now 2015, June 2015, Athens, Greece. [2] D. Xenakis, L. Merakos, N. Passas, et al., "Distance Distributions and Proximity Estimation given Knowledge of the Heterogeneous Network Layout", IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, to appear, June 2015.

Dr. Xenakis outside the premises of WEST L’Aquila

Dr. Xenakis in his first public talk at the University of L’Aquila

Dr. Xenakis with his colleagues at WEST L’Aquila: Dr. Stefano Tennina (left),

Professor Fabio Graziozi (middle), Dr. Dionysis Xenakis (right)

Highlights of the Fellows’ Progress (continued)

Mattia Boschi at the University of Barcelona

Mattia Boschi graduated in Telecommunication Engineering from University of L'aquila, Italy, in 2014. During his studies he collaborated with WEST Aquila S.r.l. (WEST) and Radiolabs, a university-industry research consortium involved in projects concerning wireless communications and context-based services. He is now a Junior Research Scientist employee at WEST. His actual research interests are focused on embedded systems, wireless sensor networks, localization and monitoring systems for healthcare applications. As expected in SMART-NRG project, Mattia has been seconded from WEST to University of Barcelona (UB) starting on July 2014. His first period of secondment concluded on April 2015. In the project, Mattia is involved in the research activities on prediction algorithms and network coding for smart grids. Back in WEST, he is using the experience gained towards designing new modules to enrich the WEST’s system level simulator. Mattia has been recently active in co-authoring a conference publication presented in the Ad hoc NOW 2015 conference [1], concerning the development of a modular and flexible network architecture to face with the challenges imposed by the different application scenarios. [1] S. Tennina,, D. Xenakis, M. Boschi, et al., “A Modular and Flexible Network Architecture for Smart Grids”. In Ad-hoc, Mobile, and Wireless Networks (pp. 273-287). Springer International Publishing.

Georgios Karopoulos at the University of Athens

Dr. Georgios Karopoulos has been a Scientific Officer at the Critical Infrastructure Protection unit of the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) in Italy, and a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute of Informatics and Telematics of the Italian National Research Council (IIT-CNR). He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Networks Security from the University of the Aegean, Greece, and his research interests are focused on Critical Infrastructure protection, mobile and wireless networks security and privacy, and multimedia security. He has been involved in national and EU funded R&D projects in the areas of Information and Communication Systems Security like PENED and SERENITY.

Mattia Boschi at the UB

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Georgios Karopoulos at the University of the Aegean

Highlights of the Fellows’ Progress (continued)

Georgios Karopoulos at the University of Athens (continued)

The recruitment of Georgios by the University of Athens under the SMART-NRG project started on October 2014 and will be completed on September 2016. His role to the project is the analysis, design, and optimization of advanced security and privacy protocols for large-scale smart grid networks with reduced management and control overhead. The performance of these protocols will be evaluated using a custom-based simulator provided by WEST, working together with the seconded experts from LINK and WEST. His involvement in these tasks will improve his know-how in theoretical and practical levels, and offer opportunities of networking and establishing collaborations with other researchers of the consortium both from industry and academia. Georgios has already participated in the preparation of SMART-NRG deliverable D2.1b. Regarding related research activities, Georgios has co-authored and presented a conference publication in the 1st SMART-NRG workshop on “Energy-efficient, Reliable and Secure Smart Energy Networks”, which was a special track in the AD HOC NOW 2015 conference (June 2015, Athens- Greece). This paper [1] analyses trust management issues in the smart grid and proposes a novel key management scheme that fulfills SMART-NRG’s requirements of being distributed and efficient. On May 2015, Dr. Karopoulos gave an invited talk to students and academic staff of the University of the Aegean, Samos, Greece. The talk was related to the workshop theme which was "Security for cloud-enabled system providers" and focused on Critical Infrastructure protection. The topic of the talk was “Multimedia access control in SIP protocol”. Dr. Karopoulos presented novel mechanisms for enhancing access control in distributed communication systems and how these mechanisms can also be employed in Critical Infrastructures like smart grids. The talk also included advertising the SMART-NRG project and briefly presenting its main objectives. [1] F.F. Demertzis, G. Karopoulos, C. Xenakis, A. Colarieti, Self-organised Key Management for the Smart Grid, 14th International Conference on Ad-Hoc Networks and Wireless - ADHOC-NOW, June-July 2015, Athens, Greece, 303-316, LNCS 9143, Springer.

Georgios Karopoulos at the University of Athens

Georgios Karopoulos speech at the University of Athens

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Highlights of the Fellows’ Progress (continued)

Dimitrios Tsolkas at Link

Dr. Dimitris Tsolkas is an experienced researcher on wireless communication technologies with high interest in the very appealing research area of wireless communications for smart grids. He has recently received his PhD degree from the department of Informatics and Telecommunications, University of Athens, Greece. His dissertation was about spatial spectrum reuse in heterogeneous wireless networks: interference management and access control. He has also participated in numerous national and EU-funded projects including Self-NET, EMPHATIC, Heracleitous II, E3, and CROSSFIRE. As was planned in SMART-NRG, Dimitris has been seconded to LINK Technologies from January 1, 2015, for a period of 12 months. In collaboration with LINK experienced researchers, he is working on defining relative modules of SMART-NRG architecture and building blocks with emphasis on the communication between the edge network nodes of the SMART-NRG architecture. Part of his research activity has been accepted in one journal [1] and one conference publication [2]. Towards broadening his potential and enriching his background, in the context of SMART-NRG, he has attended the 2014 IEEE CAMAD conference that has been held in Athens on December 1-3, 2014, the 7th International Workshop on Quality of Multimedia Experience that has been held in Messinia, Greece, on May 26-29, 2015, and various seminars and workshops including the seminars on quality of experience that have been held in Vodafone premises at Newbury, UK, on February 18, 2015. [1] D. Tsolkas, N. Passas, and L. Merakos, “Enabling Device Discovery Transmissions in LTE Networks with Fractional Frequency Reuse”, Elsevier Computer Networks (COMNET) Journal, accepted for publication. [2] D. Tsolkas, E. Liotou, N. Passas, and L. Merakos, “Addressing traffic demanding scenarios in cellular networks through QoE-based rate adaptation”, IEEE International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC) 2015, Hong Kong, China, August 2015.

Dr. Dimitris Tsolkas in the premises of LINK

Dr. Dimitris Tsolkas (on the left) in CAMAD 2015

Dr. Dimitris Tsolkas (second on the left) in QoMEX 2015

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Publications

- S. Tennina, D. Xenakis, M. Boschi, et al., "A Modular and Flexible Network Architecture for Smart Grids", Ad Hoc Now 2015, June 2015, Athens, Greece.

- D. Xenakis, L. Merakos, N. Passas, et al., "Distance Distributions and Proximity Estimation given Knowledge of the Heterogeneous Network Layout", IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, to appear, June 2015.

- D. Xenakis, L. Merakos, N. Passas, et al., “On the Performance of Network-Assisted Device-to-Device Discovery”, 2015 IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM), San Diego, USA, 6-10 Dec 2015.

- F.F. Demertzis, G. Karopoulos, C. Xenakis, A. Colarieti, “Self-organised Key Management for the Smart Grid”, 14th International Conference on Ad-Hoc Networks and Wireless - ADHOC-NOW, June-July 2015, Athens, Greece, 303-316, LNCS 9143, Springer.

- D. Tsolkas, N. Passas, and L. Merakos, “Enabling Device Discovery Transmissions in LTE Networks with Fractional Frequency Reuse”, Elsevier Computer Networks (COMNET) Journal, accepted for publication.

- D. Tsolkas, E. Liotou, N. Passas, and L. Merakos, “Addressing traffic demanding scenarios in cellular networks through QoE-based rate adaptation”, IEEE International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC) 2015, Hong Kong, China, August 2015.

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Upcoming Events – Save the dates!

SMART-NRG in social media

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SMART-NRG Contact persons Prof. Lazaros Merakos Dr. Nikos Passas

Communication Networks Laboratory Department of Informatics and Telecommunications University of Athens Panepistimiopolis, Ilissia Athens, 15784 Greece E-mail iapp.smartnrg@gmail.com Mailing list smart-nrg@di.uoa.gr Linkedin SMART-NRG (open group) Twitter @smart_nrg Wiki (only for members)

We’re on the Web! See us at: http://www.smart-nrg.net

SMART-NRG is present in:

So please follow @smart_nrg on Twitter and join “SMART-NRG” group in Linkedin to keep up to date with the project progress!

Project mid-term review (project partners only) at the University of Athens,

Athens, Greece, October 15th-16th 2015.