Abstract
The IEEE 802.11 standard has been evolving over the past decade, introducing a set of new mechanisms at the MAC layer to improve the Quality of Service (QoS) provided to the communication. Among such improvements, we highlight the evolution from earlier DCF and PCF, until more recent EDCA and HCCA MAC layer mechanisms. In this paper we perform a simulation assessment of these four MAC mechanisms, evaluating their ability to support real-time (RT) communication. More specifically, we assess their ability to handle RT traffic in open communication environments composed of RT and non-RT stations operating in the same frequency channel and coverage area. The target of this paper is to highlight and understand the limitations of each mechanism when supporting RT communication. We show that for most of the situations, including less demanding scenarios, these mechanisms are not adequate to support RT traffic.

Abstract
Wireless sensor networks can provide visual information from the monitored field when sensor nodes are equipped with low-power cameras. In general, visual monitoring applications supported by sensing technology will have to address many challenging issues when visual information has to be transmitted over resource-constrained sensors. When addressing energy efficiency, sensing redundancy can be exploited to enlarge the network lifetime, whenever inactive sensors are used to replace faulty nodes. The monitoring of multiple targets may be optimized reducing the number of active visual sensors, but the required perspectives of the targets must be considered. In this paper we propose an algorithm to compute the minimum number of visual sensors that should be activated to cover all desired targets, especially addressing the particular problem when single nodes can view multiple targets at the same time. As different concurrent perspectives of the targets may be required, the proposed algorithm can bring significant results to wireless visual sensor network applications.

Abstract
This paper proposes a new real-time communication scheme for 802.11e wireless networks. This scheme is called Group Sequential Communication (GSC). The GSC improves the efficiency of the Hybrid Coordination Function Controlled Channel Access (HCCA) mechanism by reducing the protocol overheads of the 802.11e amendment. The GSC approach eliminates the polling scheme used in traditional scheduling algorithm, by means of a virtual token passing procedure among members of the real-time group to whom is granted a high-priority and sequential access to communication medium. In order to improve the reliability of the proposed scheme, it is also proposed an error recovery mechanism based on block acknowledgment. The GSC was implemented in network simulator software and the performance results were compared to HCCA scheme, showing the efficient of the proposed approach when dealing with traditional industrial communication scenarios.

Abstract
Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have been widely considered as a promising solution to support different types of applications on industrial environments. Many of these applications impose strict dependability requirements, since a system failure may result in economic losses, or damage for human life or to the environment. The absence of an effective approach enabling the dependability evaluation of WSNs prevents system designers to forecast these type of scenarios or to optimize decisions regarding the criticality of the devices, network topology, levels of redundancy and network robustness that minimize the occurrence of faults. To bridge the gap between research achievements and industrial development, we present in this paper a framework to support the dependability evaluation of WSNs based on the automated generation of analytical dependability models from high level AADL (Architecture Analysis and Description Language) architecture models. The main objective of this framework is to relieve the end user from a deep knowledge of dependability modeling techniques and evaluation methods, focusing on their knowledge of the behavior and structure of the system.

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