Browsing by Author "Akol, Roseline"
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Item An Assessment of the Effectiveness ofWeather Information Dissemination among Farmers and Policy Makers(Sustainability, 2022) Sansa-Otim, Julianne; Nsabagwa, Mary; Mwesigwa, Andrew; Faith, Becky; Owoseni, Mojisola; Osuolale, Olayinka; Mboma, Daudi; Khemis, Ben; Albino, Peter; Owusu Ansah, Samuel; Abla Ahiataku, Maureen; Owusu-Tawia, Victoria; Bashiru, Yahaya; Mugume, Isaac; Akol, Roseline; Kunya, Nathern; Inguula Odongo, RonaldThe changing environment, climate, and the increasing manifestation of disasters, has generated an increased demand for accurate and timely weather information. This information is provided by the National meteorological authorities (NMAs) through different dissemination channels e.g., using radios, Televisions, emails among others. The use of ICTs to provide weather information is recently gaining popularity. A study was conducted in three countries, namely Nigeria, Uganda, and South Sudan to assess the efficiency of an ICT tool, known as “Weather Information Dissemination System”. The study involved 254 participants (Uganda: 71; South Sudan: 133; and Nigeria: 50). The collected primary data were first quality controlled and organized thematically for detailed analysis. Descriptive statistics was used to provide quantitative analysis as well as content scrutinized for qualitative analysis. The results showed that there is a need for timely weather information to plan farming activities such as planting and application of fertilizers and pesticides as well as to manage flood and drought by the water sector and disaster management. Results further showed that the majority of the respondents have access to the technology needed to access weather and climate information. The respondents who received weather information from NMAs noted that the forecast was good. However, they further noted that there is more room for improvement especially with making the forecasts location-specific, ensuring mobile access is adequate in all regions, provision of weather information by SMS (in countries where this service is currently unavailable) and improved timing of the weather information. Finally, uncertainty about the accuracy of weather information and the weather information not meeting specific needs are key barriers to people’s willingness to pay for it (Uganda: 33.3%; South Sudan: 46.1%; and Nigeria: 33.3%). Improved collaborations between the NMAs, ICT service providers, policymakers and farmers will facilitate an effective approach to weather information access and dissemination. Innovative sensitization approaches through the media houses will enable better understanding of weather products and utilization, and access to enabling ICTs would increase access to weather forecastsItem Energy Storage Options for Environment Monitoring Wireless Sensor Networks in Rural Africa(Springer, 2012) Byamukama, Maximus; Akol, Roseline; Bakkabulindi, Geofrey; Pehrson, Björn; Olsson, Robert; Sansa-Otim, JulianneThis paper explores various traditional and emerging battery technologies available for deployments of automated environment monitoring devices using Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) in Africa and the considerations designers must take into account when implementing these systems. Environment-monitoring applications of WSNs are focusing more on reducing power consumption and optimizing data transmission and less on the constraints that their applications and deployment environments put on the energy storage device. We describe the various properties of energy storage devices and, for each, we highlight the requirements to be met for environment monitoring applications, especially in remote areas in Africa. We evaluate the performance of some of these energy storage options against the requirements using three use cases. We indicate the technologies that have shown reliability for each use case. We show that emerging battery technologies, such as Lithium Ion Capacitors are well suited for long-life low power deployments while the options for high-power deployments depend on the constraints faced by the designers, such as the power consumption of the sensor network components sand environment temperature range of the deployment environment.Item Minimal Idle-Listen Centralized Scheduling in TSCH Wireless Sensor Networks(IEEE, 2018) Nsabagwa, Mary; Muhumuza, Joshua; Kasumba, Robert; Otim, Julianne Sansa; Akol, RoselineCentralized scheduling in IEEE 802.15.4e Time Slotted Channel Hopping (TSCH), uses a centralized entity to perform scheduling of nodes in cells to generate collision-free communication amongst neighboring nodes. Although many centralized scheduling algorithms have been proposed, they still suffer from idle-listening, a state in which nodes stay awake without transmitting or receiving data, which causes wastage of the limited sensor node energy. This paper proposes a minimalidle-listen centralized 6TiSCH scheduling algorithm (MILS) with the aim of minimizing idle listening amongst sender nodes. MILS is formulated as a Constraint Satisfaction Problem (CSP) problem, which schedules relay links in parallel with leaf links while maximizing the channels available in order to minimize waiting at bottleneck regions. Minimizing the number of packets in nodes close to the sink reduced delays by approximately 19% and idle-listening by 50% in MILS compared to OTF.Item New Techniques for Sizing Solar Photovoltaic Panels for Environment Monitoring Sensor Nodes(Journal of Sensors, 2019) Byamukama, Maximus; Bakkabulindi, Geofrey; Akol, Roseline; Sansa-Otim, JulianneThe development of perpetually powered sensor networks for environment monitoring to avoid periodic battery replacement and to ensure the network never goes offline due to power is one of the primary goals in sensor network design. In many environment-monitoring applications, the sensor network is internet-connected, making the energy budget high because data must be transmitted regularly to a server through an uplink device. Determining the optimal solar panel size that will deliver sufficient energy to the sensor network in a given period is therefore of primary importance. The traditional technique of sizing solar photovoltaic (PV) panels is based on balancing the solar panel power rating and expected hours of radiation in a given area with the load wattage and hours of use. However, factors like the azimuth and tilt angles of alignment, operating temperature, dust accumulation, intermittent sunshine and seasonal effects influencing the duration of maximum radiation in a day all reduce the expected power output and cause this technique to greatly underestimate the required solar panel size.Themajority of these factors are outside the scope of human control and must be therefore be budgeted for using an error factor. Determining of the magnitude of the error factor to use is crucial to prevent not only undersizing the panel, but also to prevent oversizing which will increase the cost of operationalizing the sensor network. But modeling error factors when there are many parameters to consider is not trivial. Equally importantly, the concept of microclimate may cause any two nodes of similar specifications to have very different power performance when located in the same climatological zone. There is then a need to change the solar panel sizing philosophy for these systems. This paper proposed the use of actual observed solar radiation and battery state of charge data in a realistic WSNbased automatic weather station in an outdoor uncontrolled environment.We then develop two mathematical models that can be used to determine the required minimum solar PV wattage that will ensure that the battery stays above a given threshold given the weather patterns of the area. The predicted and observed battery state of charge values have correlations of 0.844 and 0.935 and exhibit Root Mean Square Errors of 9.2% and 1.7% for the discrete calculus model and the transfer function estimation (TFE) model respectively. The results show that the models perform very well in state of charge prediction and subsequent determination of ideal solar panel rating for sensor networks used in environment monitoring applications.Item Optimizing Location of Edge Clouds with Baseband Units in Cloud Radio Access Network(IEEE., 2019) Nakazibwe, Jackline; Serugunda, Jonathan; Akol, Roseline; Mwanje, StephenCloud radio access network architecture has become increasingly important in meeting the growing demand of high data rate services as well as managing interference among base station sites. However, this architecture is associated with high fronthaul link latencies that result into increased overall network latencies. This paper proposes a placement method for baseband units so as to lower the fronthaul link latencies. This is achieved by formulating the problem as a nonlinear optimization problem that is solved by fuzzy c-means clustering and a heuristic genetic based algorithm. The paper further investigates the user response time comparing it with the scenario before optimizing location of baseband units in edge clouds. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme greatly reduces overall fronthaul link latencies and cost of ownership in cloud radio access networks. We also show that there is an optimal number of edge clouds with baseband units for different cloud radio access network sizes. On the side of the users, the response time is greatly reduced when the baseband units are optimally placed.