Smart container monitoring using custom-made WSN technology : from business case to prototype

This paper reports on the development of a prototype solution for tracking and monitoring shipping containers. Deploying wireless sensor networks (WSNs) in an operational environment remains a challenging task. We strongly believe that standardized methodologies and tools could enhance future WSN deployments and enable rapid prototype development. Therefore, we choose to use a step-by-step approach where each step gives us more insight in the problem at hand while shielding some of the complexity of the final solution. We observed that environment emulation is of the utmost importance, especially for harsh wireless conditions inside a container stacking. This lead us to extend our test lab with wireless link emulation capabilities. It is also essential to assess feasibility of concepts and design choices after every stage during prototype development. This enabled us to create innovative WSN solutions, including a multi-MAC framework and a robust gateway selection algorithm

Evaluating the more suitable ISM frequency band for iot-based smart grids: a quantitative study of 915 MHz vs. 2400 MHz

IoT has begun to be employed pervasively in industrial environments and critical infrastructures thanks to its positive impact on performance and efficiency. Among these environments, the Smart Grid (SG) excels as the perfect host for this technology, mainly due to its potential to become the motor of the rest of electrically-dependent infrastructures. To make this SG-oriented IoT cost-effective, most deployments employ unlicensed ISM bands, specifically the 2400 MHz one, due to its extended communication bandwidth in comparison with lower bands. This band has been extensively used for years by Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) and Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANET), from which the IoT technologically inherits. However, this work questions and evaluates the suitability of such a "default" communication band in SG environments, compared with the 915 MHz ISM band. A comprehensive quantitative comparison of these bands has been accomplished in terms of: power consumption, average network delay, and packet reception rate. To allow such a study, a dual-band propagation model specifically designed for the SG has been derived, tested, and incorporated into the well-known TOSSIM simulator. Simulation results reveal that only in the absence of other 2400 MHz interfering devices (such as WiFi or Bluetooth) or in small networks, is the 2400 MHz band the best option. In any other case, SG-oriented IoT quantitatively perform better if operating in the 915 MHz band.This research was supported by the MINECO/FEDER project grants TEC2013-47016-C2-2-R (COINS) and TEC2016-76465-C2-1-R (AIM). The authors would like to thank Juan Salvador Perez Madrid nd Domingo Meca (part of the Iberdrola staff) for the support provided during the realization of this work. Ruben M. Sandoval also thanks the Spanish MICINN for an FPU (REF FPU14/03424) pre-doctoral fellowship

Wireless body sensor networks for health-monitoring applications

This is an author-created, un-copyedited version of an article accepted for publication in Physiological Measurement. The publisher is not responsible for any errors or omissions in this version of the manuscript or any version derived from it. The Version of Record is available online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/0967-3334/29/11/R01

Antennas and Propagation of Implanted RFIDs for Pervasive Healthcare Applications

© 2010 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted components of this work in other works.This post-acceptance version of the paper is essentially complete, but may differ from the official copy of record, which can be found at the following web location (subscription required to access full paper): http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/JPROC.2010.205101

Survey on wireless technology trade-offs for the industrial internet of things

Aside from vast deployment cost reduction, Industrial Wireless Sensor and Actuator Networks (IWSAN) introduce a new level of industrial connectivity. Wireless connection of sensors and actuators in industrial environments not only enables wireless monitoring and actuation, it also enables coordination of production stages, connecting mobile robots and autonomous transport vehicles, as well as localization and tracking of assets. All these opportunities already inspired the development of many wireless technologies in an effort to fully enable Industry 4.0. However, different technologies significantly differ in performance and capabilities, none being capable of supporting all industrial use cases. When designing a network solution, one must be aware of the capabilities and the trade-offs that prospective technologies have. This paper evaluates the technologies potentially suitable for IWSAN solutions covering an entire industrial site with limited infrastructure cost and discusses their trade-offs in an effort to provide information for choosing the most suitable technology for the use case of interest. The comparative discussion presented in this paper aims to enable engineers to choose the most suitable wireless technology for their specific IWSAN deployment

On-Body Channel Measurement Using Wireless Sensors

© 2012 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, including reprinting/ republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted components of this work in other works.This post-acceptance version of the paper is essentially complete, but may differ from the official copy of record, which can be found at the following web location (subscription required to access full paper): http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TAP.2012.219693