The Smart Grid (SG) is the technological development that incorporates digital technologies and advanced communication methods to determine and respond to variations in electricity consumption in order to revolutionize power distribution, transmission, and generation. In the conventional electrical grid, customers remain unaware to their energy usage patterns that not only results in energy loss but also money. The consumers’ usage and consumption standards need to be regulated in order to improve energy efficiency (EE). SG utilizes demand side management (DSM) for energy savings by use of various approaches like financial incentives, subsidized tariffs, and awareness to alter consumers’ energy demand. In smart environments (SE), Internet-of-Things (IoT) is evolving as a significant partner for resource and energy management. DSM in SG must take advantage of smart energy management system (SEMS) developed on smart meters (SMs) and modern technologies like IoT. Using SMs with IoT based technologies makes SEMS more effective in the SG. This paper offers design, deployment, implementation, and performance evaluation of an IoT based SEMS, including SMs as well as IoT middleware module and its related benefits. The proposed SEMS operates online and offers real-time (RT) load profiles (LPs) to customers and suppliers remotely. The customers’ LPs allow suppliers to disseminate and regulate their incentives as well as incite the customers to alter their energy consumption. Furthermore, these LPs serves as an input for developing numerous DSM approaches. The proposed solution is installed and evaluated at 4 different locations of Stylo Pvt. Ltd. Pakistan, which can communicate commands and observe the efficiency of electricity supplied by the utility. Moreover, the RT impact of using separate SM for automated control of heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) system is shown in terms of power consumption. The RT case study presents the efficacy of the proposed IoT-based-SEMS.

Non orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) is a new radio access technique considered to be a possible candidate for 5G and beyond. Recent studies confirm that it provides better performance gains as compared to the orthogonal multiple access (OAM) techniques currently in use. This paper investigates the performance of downlink NOMA using the ideal and non-ideal successive interference cancellation (SIC) conditions. The ideal and non-ideal SIC conditions are referred as perfect and imperfect SIC respectively in this study. The purpose of this study is to provide a more realistic analysis of SIC in downlink NOMA rather than considering the perfect SIC conditions. Simulation results are provided at the end of the paper in terms of bit error rate (BER) at the receiver end using both perfect and imperfect SIC.

In wireless networks, due to limited bandwidth and packet losses, seamless and ubiquitous delivery of high-quality video streaming services is a big challenge for the operators. In order to improve the process of online video quality monitoring, the presence of no reference (NR) objective video quality assessment (VQA) methods is required. In some networks, the video decoder on the reception side adopts a mechanism in which last correctly received frame is frozen and displayed on video display terminal until the next correct frame is received. This phenomenon, employed as an error concealment technique, can cause a perceptual jerkiness on the video display terminal. In this paper, we have proposed an enhanced model of objective VQA based on the estimation of jerkiness. A study of three contemporary NR methods, used for objective VQA and online monitoring of videos, has been included along with subjective VQA tests. The subjective tests were performed for a set of video sequences with specific spatial and temporal information. The proposed NR method is based on our careful observations from the subjective test results and our main focus is to cater the effect of multiple frame freeze impairments in video steaming. Comparison with other NR methods shows that the proposed method performs better, in terms of estimating the impact of multiple frame freezing impairments, and has more affinity with the subjective test results.