A review of recent research on structural monitoring in railway industry is proposed in this paper, with a special focus on stress-based solutions. After a brief analysis of the mechanical behaviour of ballasted railway tracks, an overview of the most common monitoring techniques is presented. A special attention is paid on strain gages and accelerometers for which the accurate mounting position on the track is requisite. These types of solution are then compared to another modern approach based on the use of optical fibres. Besides, an in-depth discussion is made on the evolution of numerical models that investigate the interaction between railway vehicles and tracks. These models are used to validate experimental devices and to predict the best location(s) of the sensors. It is hoped that this review article will stimulate further research activities in this continuously expanding field.

Visible Light Communication (VLC) has gained popularity in research and business in the last decade. This technology aims to combine lighting and communication into a single device. For now, this technology has been thoroughly studied for an indoor environment, but it is sufficiently mature nowadays to consider its outdoor-environment potentials. The key outdoor challenges are the weather variabilities and smoke particles in cities due to pollution or fires. The aim of this is the study and quantification of the weather and smoke particles’ impact on a short-range optical communication thanks to a simulator. This article’s novelty is the inclusion of the effects of smoke in a short-range outdoor VLC system channel model. This smoke model, which comes from the fire engineering field, states that smoke attenuation is independent of the wavelength, starting from high visibility to 5 m. The visibility represents the distance up to which an object can be distinguished against the background. The effects of fog and smoke are studied in the case of two outdoor VLC scenarios. Smoke and fog models have analogous equations to express the optical attenuation they induce, using the visibility concept. Taking into account the actual light-emitting diode (LED) lamp radiation pattern, the simulator computes the power at the receiver side and the channel attenuation coefficients for a given fog or/and smoke outdoor setting. The main result drawn in this paper is that the channel attenuation levels due to fog and smoke are both in the same order of magnitude, starting from the visibility of about 1 km. The attenuation induced by fog is higher under this threshold of 1 km.

LoRa enables long-range communication for Internet of Things (IoT) devices, especially those with limited resources and low power requirements. Consequently, LoRa has emerged as a popular choice for numerous IoT applications. However, the security of LoRa devices is one of the major concerns that requires attention. Existing device identification mechanisms use cryptography which has two major issues: (1) cryptography is hard on the device resources and (2) physical attacks might prevent them from being effective. Deep learning-based radio frequency fingerprinting identification (RFFI) is emerging as a key candidate for device identification using hardware-intrinsic features. In this paper, we present a comprehensive survey of the state of the art in the area of deep learning-based radio frequency fingerprinting identification for LoRa devices. We discuss various categories of radio frequency fingerprinting techniques along with hardware imperfections that can be exploited to identify an emitter. Furthermore, we describe different deep learning algorithms implemented for the task of LoRa device classification and summarize the main approaches and results. We discuss several representations of the LoRa signal used as input to deep learning models. Additionally, we provide a thorough review of all the LoRa RF signal datasets used in the literature and summarize details about the hardware used, the type of signals collected, the features provided, availability, and size. Finally, we conclude this paper by discussing the existing challenges in deep learning-based LoRa device identification and also envisage future research directions and opportunities.

In the dynamic landscape of 6G and smart cities, visible light communication (VLC) assumes critical significance for Internet of Things (IoT) applications spanning diverse sectors. The escalating demand for bandwidth and data underscores the need for innovative solutions, positioning VLC as a complementary technology within the electromagnetic spectrum. This paper focuses on the relevance of VLC in the 6G paradigm, shedding light on its applicability across smart cities and industries. The paper highlights the growing efficiency of lighting LEDs in infrastructure, facilitating the seamless integration of VLC. The study then emphasizes VLC’s robustness in outdoor settings, demonstrating effective communication up to 10 m. This resilience positions VLC as a key player in addressing the very last meter of wireless communication, offering a seamless solution for IoT connectivity. By introducing a freely available open-source simulator combined with an alternative waveform, UFMC, the study empowers researchers to dimension applications effectively, showcasing VLC’s potential to improve wireless communication in the evolving landscape of 6G and smart cities.

Digital terrestrial television is now implemented in many countries worldwide and is now mature. Digital Video Broadcasting-Terrestrial, second generation (DVB-T2) is the European standard adopted or deployed by European and African countries which uses Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing (OFDM) modulation to achieve good throughput performance. However, its main particularity is the number of subcarriers operated for OFDM modulation which varies from 1024 to 32,768 subcarriers. Also, mobile reception is planned in DVB-T2 in addition to rooftop antenna and portable receptions planned in DVB-T. However, the main challenge of DVB-T2 for mobile reception is the presence of a carrier frequency offset (CFO) which degrades the system performance by inducing an Intercarrier Interference (ICI) on the DVB-T2 signal. This paper evaluates the system performance in the presence of the CFO when Gaussian noise and a TU6 channel are applied. Universal Filtered Multicarrier (UFMC) and non-uniform constellations (NUCs) have previously demonstrated good performance in comparison with OFDM and Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) in DVB-T2. The impact of CFO on the UFMC- and NUC-based DVB-T2 system is additionally investigated in this work. The results demonstrate that the penalties induced by CFO insertion in UFMC- and NUC-based DVB-T2 are highly reduced in comparison to those for the native DVB-T2. At a bit error rate (BER) of ${10}^{-3}$, the CFO penalties induced by the native DVB-T2 are $0.96$$\mathrm{d}$$\mathrm{B}$ and 4 $\mathrm{d}$$\mathrm{B}$, respectively, when only Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) is used and when TU6 is additionally considered. The penalties are equal to $0.84$$\mathrm{d}$$\mathrm{B}$ and $0.2$$\mathrm{d}$$\mathrm{B}$ for UFMC/NUC-based DVB-T2.