Abstract
WSN can be deployed using widely available hardware and software solutions. The Contiki is an open source operative system compatible with a wide range of WSN hardware. A Contiki development environment named InstantContiki is also available and includes the Cooja simulation tool, useful for the simulation of WSN scenarios, prior to their deployment. This simulation tool can provide realistic results since it uses the full Contiki's source code and some motes can be emulated at the hardware level. However, the Cooja simulator uses one process per simulation, not taking advantage of multiple core processors. In this paper we propose a framework to automate the execution of simulations of multiple scenarios and configurations in Cooja. When a multiple cores processor is available, this framework can run multiple simultaneous Cooja instances, taking advantage of processing resources and contributing to reduce the total simulation runtime.

Abstract
This paper presents the TEC4SEA research infrastructure created in Portugal to support research, development, and validation of marine technologies. It is a multidisciplinary open platform, capable of supporting research, development, and test of marine robotics, telecommunications, and sensing technologies for monitoring and operating in the ocean environment. Due to the installed research facilities and its privileged geographic location, it allows fast access to deep sea, and can support multidisciplinary research, enabling full validation and evaluation of technological solutions designed for the ocean environment. It is a vertically integrated infrastructure, in the sense that it possesses a set of skills and resources which range from pure conceptual research to field deployment missions, with strong industrial and logistic capacities in the middle tier of prototype production. TEC4SEA is open to the entire scientific and enterprise community, with a free access policy for researchers affiliated with the research units that ensure its maintenance and sustainability. The paper describes the infrastructure in detail, and discusses associated research programs, providing a strategic vision for deep sea research initiatives, within the context of both the Portuguese National Ocean Strategy and European Strategy frameworks.

Abstract
Critical monitoring applications can use wireless sensor networks to transport delay sensitive data. This data may demand bounded delays in order to be considered useful by the receiver. In these cases, an accurate and real-time estimation of the end-to-end delay could be used to anticipate the data usefulness prior to sending it. A novel real-time and end-to-end delay estimation mechanism is proposed in this paper, which considers processing times and two new RPL metrics. Results show that our proposal is more accurate than the ETT-based solution for delay estimation, and it does not significantly degrade the network performance.

Abstract
Available wireless sensor networks targeting the domain of healthcare enables the development of new applications and services in the context of E-Health. Such networks play an important role in several scenarios of patient monitoring, particularly those where data collection is vital for diagnosis and/or research purposes. However, despite emerging solutions, wearable sensors still depend on users' acceptance. One proposed solution to improve wearability relies on the use of smaller sensing nodes, requiring more energy-efficient networks, due to smaller room available for energy sources. In such context, smaller wireless sensor network nodes are required to work long time periods without human intervention and, at the same time, to provide appropriate levels of reliability and quality of service. Satisfaction of these two goals depends on several key factors, such as the routing protocol, the network topology, and energy efficiency. This paper offers a solution to increase the network lifetime based on a new Energy-Aware Objective Function used to design a Routing Protocol for Low-Power and Lossy Networks. The proposed Objective Function uses the Expected Transmission Count Metric and the Remaining Energy on each sensor node to compute the best paths to route data packets across the network. When compared with state of the art solutions, the proposed method increases the network lifetime by 21% and reduces the peaks of energy consumption by 12%. In this way, wireless sensor network nodes wearability can be improved, making them smaller and lighter, while maintaining the required performance.

Abstract
IEEE 802.11-based wireless multimedia sensor networks (WMSN) are a cost-effective and flexible solution for video monitoring scenarios. Yet, they suffer from three major problems: bad performance, throughput unfairness, and energy inefficiency. Several approaches have been considered to tackle these problems but they are too restrictive or complex. In this paper we propose a scheduling approach using FM as a control channel to address the energy inefficiency problem. By taking advantage of the FM radio characteristics - higher coverage and lower energy consumption than Wi-Fi, our proposed approach uses FM as an always-on point-to-multipoint control channel used to turn off the nodes' Wi-Fi radio interfaces when they are not needed to transmit, receive, or relay data. Numerical and simulation analysis shows that our proposed scheduling mechanism significantly reduces energy consumption, while preserving performance and fairness characteristics.

Abstract
The usage of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs), Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs), and sensors in surveillance, maintenance and inspection of underwater facilities is increasing the need for broadband, cost-e ective communications solutions. Current solutions, mainly based on acoustic communications, enable long ranges but provide low bitrates and have high communication delays. Despite its strong attenuation underwater, RF is envisioned as a technology to enable broadband, short-range communications. We present an ns-3 and an experimental evaluation of IEEE 802.11 networks in freshwater at 700 MHz, 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz frequency bands. Evaluation results con rm the accuracy of the new developed ns-3 underwater RF propagation model and show that IEEE 802.11 networks are feasible for broadband, short range underwater communications, with range and throughput exceeding 2 m and 100 Mbit/s, respectively.