In the last few years, the Internet of Things (IoT) has proved to be an interesting and promising paradigm that aims to contribute to countless applications by connecting more physical “things” to the Internet. Although it emerged as a major enabler for many next generation applications, it also introduced new challenges to already saturated networks. The IoT is already coming to life especially in healthcare and smart environment applications adding a large number of low powered sensors and actuators to improve life style and introduce new services to the community. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) developed RPL as the routing protocol for low power and lossy networks (LLNs) and standardized it in RFC6550 in 2012. RPL quickly gained interest and many research papers were introduced to evaluate and improve its performance in different applications. In this paper, we present a discussion of the main aspects of RPL and the advantages and disadvantages of using it in different IoT applications. We also review the available research related to RPL in a systematic manner, based on the enhancement area and the service type. In addition to that, we compare related RPL-based protocols in terms of energy efficiency, reliability, flexibility, robustness and security. Finally, we present our conclusions and discuss the possible future directions of RPL and its applicability in the Internet of the future.

Fault diagnosis of high-speed train (HST) bogie is essential in guaranteeing the normal daily operation of HST. In prior works, feature extraction from multi-sensor vibration signals mainly relies on signal processing methods, which is independent of the classification process. Based on convolutional neural networks (CNNs), this paper presents a novel fault diagnosis system using the residual-squeeze net (RSNet), which is directly applicable to raw data (time sequences) and does not require any signal transformation or post-processing. In this network, information fusion is achieved by using the convolutional layer. More specifically, via the squeeze operation, an optimal combination of channels is learnt by training the network. Experimental results obtained by using SIMPACK simulation data demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach in both complete failure case and single failure case, with diagnosis accuracy near 100%. The proposed approach also shows good performance in identifying the locations of faulty components. Comparisons between RSNet and competitive methods shows the advantages of RSNet for fault classification.

As an important part of high-speed train (HST), the mechanical performance of bogies imposes a direct impact on the safety and reliability of HST. It is a fact that, regardless of the potential mechanical performance degradation status, most existing fault diagnosis methods focus only on the identification of bogie fault types. However, for application scenarios such as auxiliary maintenance, identifying the performance degradation of bogie is critical in determining a particular maintenance strategy. In this article, by considering the intrinsic link between fault type and performance degradation of bogie, a novel multiple convolutional recurrent neural network (M-CRNN) that consists of two CRNN frameworks is proposed for simultaneous diagnosis of fault type and performance degradation state. Specifically, the CRNN framework 1 is designed to detect the fault types of the bogie. Meanwhile, CRNN framework 2, which is formed by CRNN Framework 1 and an RNN module, is adopted to further extract the features of fault performance degradation. It is worth highlighting that M-CRNN extends the structure of traditional neural networks and makes full use of the temporal correlation of performance degradation and model fault types. The effectiveness of the proposed M-CRNN algorithm is tested via the HST model CRH380A at different running speeds, including 160, 200, and 220 km/h. The overall accuracy of M-CRNN, i.e., the product of the accuracies for identifying the fault types and evaluating the fault performance degradation, is beyond 94.6% in all cases. This clearly demonstrates the potential applicability of the proposed method for multiple fault diagnosis tasks of HST bogie system.

Localisation in wireless networks faces challenges such as high levels of signal attenuation and unknown path-loss exponents, especially in urban environments. In response to these challenges, this paper proposes solutions to localisation problems in noisy environments. A new observation model for localisation of static nodes is developed based on hybrid measurements, namely angle of arrival and received signal strength data. An approach for localisation of sensor nodes is proposed as a weighted linear least squares algorithm. The unknown path-loss exponent associated with the received signal strength is estimated jointly with the coordinates of the sensor nodes via the generalised pattern search method. The algorithm’s performance validation is conducted both theoretically and by simulation. A theoretical mean square error expression is derived, followed by the derivation of the linear Cramer-Rao bound which serves as a benchmark for the proposed location estimators. Accurate results are demonstrated with 25%–30% improvement in estimation accuracy with a weighted linear least squares algorithm as compared to linear least squares solution.