Wireless communication, identification and sensing technologies enabling integrated logistics: a study in the harbor environment

In the last decade, integrated logistics has become an important challenge in the development of wireless communication, identification and sensing technology, due to the growing complexity of logistics processes and the increasing demand for adapting systems to new requirements. The advancement of wireless technology provides a wide range of options for the maritime container terminals. Electronic devices employed in container terminals reduce the manual effort, facilitating timely information flow and enhancing control and quality of service and decision made. In this paper, we examine the technology that can be used to support integration in harbor's logistics. In the literature, most systems have been developed to address specific needs of particular harbors, but a systematic study is missing. The purpose is to provide an overview to the reader about which technology of integrated logistics can be implemented and what remains to be addressed in the future

Wireless diagnostic methods in an aerospace application

Katedra měřen

Environmental monitoring using a drone-enabled wireless sensor network

Water quality monitoring traditionally occurs via resource intensive field surveys, such as when a researcher manually collects data in a stream. Limiting factors such as time, money, and accessibility often result in less oversight of impaired water bodies, significantly threatening ecosystemic health and related ecosystem services. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, 84% of rivers and streams within the United States remain unassessed, resulting in significant lapses in available data. Such lapses prohibit efficient and effective monitoring, restoration, and conservation efforts throughout the United States. The objective of this project was to employ an unmanned aerial vehicle to remotely collect data regarding water quality from a wireless sensor network. The site under analysis was Boones Run, a tributary of the South Fork of the Shenandoah River near Elkton, Virginia. This project served as a proof-of-concept that communication with a wireless sensor node has the capability to be deployed to collect data in remote areas efficiently and effectively. This system would be useful in areas where accessibility is difficult, and transmission of data for processing is not readily available due to the lack of network connectivity. Initial analysis of environmental data gathered by hand indicated that surrounding land use had a significant impact on Boones Run water quality. This conclusion was reached given the trends seen in dissolved oxygen, water temperature, pH, and conductivity data from upstream to downstream over time. The completion of this project also lead to the successful data flow amongst all parts in the wireless sensor network. Three sensors soldered to a breadboard and connected to an Arduino Uno were able to gather data and send it to a Raspberry Pi 0. The Raspberry Pi 0 acted as a temporary storage device for the data before it was sent wirelessly to a Raspberry Pi 3 acting as an access point. The Raspberry Pi 3 device was mounted to an unmanned aerial vehicle so it could be flown over the node to decrease data collection time as well as adding the ability to collect data from places that are otherwise difficult for humans to access

Exploring Broadband Enabled Smart eEnvironment: Wireless Sensor (Mesh) Network

This paper explored the emergent importance of the use sensors as complementary or as alternative to environmental sensing and monitoring, industrial monitoring, and surface explorations. Advances in wireless broadband technology have enabled the use Wireless Sensor (Mesh) Network (WSN), a type mobile ad hoc network (MANET), in all facet of human endeavor. As a next-generation wireless communication, which centered on energy savings, communication reliability, and security, WSN has increased our processing, sensing, and communications capabilities. Hence, this paper is an exploration of recent reliance on sensors as result of broadband enabled smart environment for activities, such as environmental and habitat monitory, military surveillance, target tracking, search and rescue, and logistical tracking and supply-chain management

Routing and Mobility on IPv6 over LoWPAN

The IoT means a world-wide network of interconnected objects based on standard communication protocols. An object in this context is a quotidian physical device augmented with sensing/actuating, processing, storing and communication capabilities. These objects must be able to interact with the surrounding environment where they are placed and to cooperate with neighbouring objects in order to accomplish a common objective. The IoT objects have also the capabilities of converting the sensed data into automated instructions and communicating them to other objects through the communication networks, avoiding the human intervention in several tasks. Most of IoT deployments are based on small devices with restricted computational resources and energy constraints. For this reason, initially the scientific community did not consider the use of IP protocol suite in this scenarios because there was the perception that it was too heavy to the available resources on such devices. Meanwhile, the scientific community and the industry started to rethink about the use of IP protocol suite in all IoT devices and now it is considered as the solution to provide connectivity between the IoT devices, independently of the Layer 2 protocol in use, and to connect them to the Internet. Despite the use of IP suite protocol in all devices and the amount of solutions proposed, many open issues remain unsolved in order to reach a seamless integration between the IoT and the Internet and to provide the conditions to IoT service widespread. This thesis addressed the challenges associated with the interconnectivity between the Internet and the IoT devices and with the security aspects of the IoT. In the interconnectivity between the IoT devices and the Internet the problem is how to provide valuable information to the Internet connected devices, independently of the supported IP protocol version, without being necessary accessed directly to the IoT nodes. In order to solve this problem, solutions based on Representational state transfer (REST) web services and IPv4 to IPv6 dual stack transition mechanism were proposed and evaluated. The REST web service and the transition mechanism runs only at the border router without penalizing the IoT constrained devices. The mitigation of the effects of internal and external security attacks minimizing the overhead imposed on the IoT devices is the security challenge addressed in this thesis. Three different solutions were proposed. The first is a mechanism to prevent remotely initiated transport level Denial of Service attacks that avoids the use of inefficient and hard to manage traditional firewalls. It is based on filtering at the border router the traffic received from the Internet and destined to the IoT network according to the conditions announced by each IoT device. The second is a network access security framework that can be used to control the nodes that have access to the network, based on administrative approval, and to enforce security compliance to the authorized nodes. The third is a network admission control framework that prevents IoT unauthorized nodes to communicate with IoT authorized nodes or with the Internet, which drastically reduces the number of possible security attacks. The network admission control was also exploited as a management mechanism as it can be used to manage the network size in terms of number of nodes, making the network more manageable, increasing its reliability and extending its lifetime.A IoT (Internet of Things) tem suscitado o interesse tanto da comunidade académica como da indústria, uma vez que os campos de aplicação são inúmeros assim como os potenciais ganhos que podem ser obtidos através do uso deste tipo de tecnologia. A IoT significa uma rede global de objetos ligados entre si através de uma rede de comunicações baseada em protocolos standard. Neste contexto, um objeto é um objeto físico do dia a dia ao qual foi adicionada a capacidade de medir e de atuar sobre variáveis físicas, de processar e armazenar dados e de comunicar. Estes objetos têm a capacidade de interagir com o meio ambiente envolvente e de cooperar com outros objetos vizinhos de forma a atingirem um objetivo comum. Estes objetos também têm a capacidade de converter os dados lidos em instruções e de as comunicar a outros objetos através da rede de comunicações, evitando desta forma a intervenção humana em diversas tarefas. A maior parte das concretizações de sistemas IoT são baseados em pequenos dispositivos autónomos com restrições ao nível dos recursos computacionais e de retenção de energia. Por esta razão, inicialmente a comunidade científica não considerou adequado o uso da pilha protocolar IP neste tipo de dispositivos, uma vez que havia a perceção de que era muito pesada para os recursos computacionais disponíveis. Entretanto, a comunidade científica e a indústria retomaram a discussão acerca dos benefícios do uso da pilha protocolar em todos os dispositivos da IoT e atualmente é considerada a solução para estabelecer a conetividade entre os dispositivos IoT independentemente do protocolo da camada dois em uso e para os ligar à Internet. Apesar do uso da pilha protocolar IP em todos os dispositivos e da quantidade de soluções propostas, são vários os problemas por resolver no que concerne à integração contínua e sem interrupções da IoT na Internet e de criar as condições para a adoção generalizada deste tipo de tecnologias. Esta tese versa sobre os desafios associados à integração da IoT na Internet e dos aspetos de segurança da IoT. Relativamente à integração da IoT na Internet o problema é como fornecer informação válida aos dispositivos ligados à Internet, independentemente da versão do protocolo IP em uso, evitando o acesso direto aos dispositivos IoT. Para a resolução deste problema foram propostas e avaliadas soluções baseadas em web services REST e em mecanismos de transição IPv4 para IPv6 do tipo pilha dupla (dual stack). O web service e o mecanismo de transição são suportados apenas no router de fronteira, sem penalizar os dispositivos IoT. No que concerne à segurança, o problema é mitigar os efeitos dos ataques de segurança internos e externos iniciados local e remotamente. Foram propostas três soluções diferentes, a primeira é um mecanismo que minimiza os efeitos dos ataques de negação de serviço com origem na Internet e que evita o uso de mecanismos de firewalls ineficientes e de gestão complexa. Este mecanismo filtra no router de fronteira o tráfego com origem na Internet é destinado à IoT de acordo com as condições anunciadas por cada um dos dispositivos IoT da rede. A segunda solução, é uma framework de network admission control que controla quais os dispositivos que podem aceder à rede com base na autorização administrativa e que aplica políticas de conformidade relativas à segurança aos dispositivos autorizados. A terceira é um mecanismo de network admission control para redes 6LoWPAN que evita que dispositivos não autorizados comuniquem com outros dispositivos legítimos e com a Internet o que reduz drasticamente o número de ataques à segurança. Este mecanismo também foi explorado como um mecanismo de gestão uma vez que pode ser utilizado a dimensão da rede quanto ao número de dispositivos, tornando-a mais fácil de gerir e aumentando a sua fiabilidade e o seu tempo de vida

Internet protocol over wireless sensor networks, from myth to reality

Internet Protocol (IP) is a standard network layer protocol of the Internet architecture, allowing communication among heterogeneous networks. For a given network to be accessible from the Internet it must have a router that complies with this protocol. Wireless sensor networks have many smart sensing nodes with computational, communication and sensing capabilities. Such smart sensors cooperate to gather relevant data and present it to the user. The connection of sensor networks and the Internet has been realized using gateway or proxy- based approaches. Historically, several routing protocols were specifically created, discarding IP. However, recent research, prototypes and even implementation tools show that it is possible to combine the advantages of IP access with sensor networks challenges, with a major contribution from the 6LoWPAN Working Group. This paper presents the advantages and challenges of IP on sensor networks, surveys the state-of-art with some implementation examples, and points further research topics in this area

Real life Applications of Internet of Things

The Internet of Things is the next technological revolution after the revolution of computer and internet. IoT integrates the new technologies of computing and communication (e.g. Sensor networks, RFID, Mobile communication and IPV6 etc). The Internet of Things is an emerging topic of technical, social, and economic significance. The term Internet of Things generally refers to scenarios where network connectivity and computing capability extends to objects, sensors and everyday items not normally considered computers, allowing these devices to generate exchange and consume data with minimal human intervention. Internet connect “all people”, Internet of Things connect “all things”. Interconnection of Things or Objects or Machines, e.g., sensors, actuators, mobile phones, electronic devices, home appliances, any existing items and interact with each other via Interne