Reconfigurable middleware architectures for large scale sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks, in an effort to be energy efficient, typically lack the high-level abstractions of advanced programming languages. Though strong, the dichotomy between these two paradigms can be overcome. The SENSIX software framework, described in this dissertation, uniquely integrates constraint-dominated wireless sensor networks with the flexibility of object-oriented programming models, without violating the principles of either. Though these two computing paradigms are contradictory in many ways, SENSIX bridges them to yield a dynamic middleware abstraction unifying low-level resource-aware task reconfiguration and high-level object recomposition. Through the layered approach of SENSIX, the software developer creates a domain-specific sensing architecture by defining a customized task specification and utilizing object inheritance. In addition, SENSIX performs better at large scales (on the order of 1000 nodes or more) than other sensor network middleware which do not include such unified facilities for vertical integration

Survey: Benefits of integrating both wireless sensors networks and cloud computing infrastructure

Cloud computing has the capabilities of powerful processing and scalable storage with the ability of offline and online data analysis and mining of the collected sensed data from body areas networks. Cloud computing can be considered as the main enabler for modern manufacturing industries. Cloud computing can efficiently serve key areas of manufacturing by aspects of the pay-as-you-go business model, scaling up and down production according to certain demands, more customized solutions, and flexible deployments. In cloud manufacturing, the distributed sensors and resources can be managed in centralized architecture that allows cloud users to request more specific product design, testing at all the stages of the product. This study covers the main points of Integrating Both Wireless Sensors Networks and Cloud Computing Infrastructure and gives a view of the various advantage and disadvantages of methods in integration

An agent based layered framework to facilitate intelligent Wireless Sensor Networks

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 78-80).Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are networks of small, typically low-cost hardware devices which are able to sense various physical phenomenon in their surrounding environments. These simple nodes are also able to perform basic processing and wirelessly communicate with each other. The power of these networks arise from their ability to combine their many vantage points of the individual nodes and to work together. This allows for behaviour to emerge which is greater than the sum of the ability of all the nodes in the network. The complexity of these networks varies based on the application domain and the physical phenomenon being sensed. Although sensor networks are currently well understood and used in a number of real world applications, a number limitations still exit. This research aims to overcome a number of issues faced by current WSNs, the largest of which is their monolithic or tightly coupled structure which result in static and application specific WSNs. We aim to overcome these issues by designing a dynamically reconfigurable system which is application neutral. The proposed system is also required to facilitate intelligence and be sufficiently efficient for low power sensor node hardware

EVALUATING THE CYBER SECURITY IN THE INTERNET OF THINGS: SMART HOME VULNERABILITIES

The need for advanced cyber security measures and strategies is attributed to modern sophistication of cyber-attacks and intense media attention when attacks and breaches occur. In May 2014, a congressional report suggested that Americans used approximately 500 million Internet-capable devices at home, including, but not limited to Smartphones, tablets, and other Internet-connected devices, which run various unimpeded applications. Owing to this high level of connectivity, our home environment is not immune to the cyber-attack paradigm; rather, the home has evolved to become one of the most influenced markets where the Internet of Things has had extensive surfaces, vectors for attacks, and unanswered security concerns. Thus, the aim of the present research was to investigate behavioral heuristics of the Internet of Things by adopting an exploratory multiple case study approach. A controlled Internet of Things ecosystem was constructed consisting of real-life data observed during a typical life cycle of initial configuration and average use. The information obtained during the course of this study involved the systematic acquisition and analysis of Smart Home ecosystem link-layer protocol data units (PDUs). The methodology employed during this study involved a recursive multiple case study evaluation of the Smart Home ecosystem data-link layer PDUs and aligned the case studies to the existing Intrusion Kill Chain design model. The proposed solution emerging from the case studies builds the appropriate data collection template while concurrently developing a Security as a Service (SECaaS) capability to evaluate collected results

Maximizing the capability of wireless sensor networks

Wireless micro-sensors introduce a new frontier in sensing devices and data acquisition capabilities. These sensors, capable of sensing, processing data, and short-range communication, can be spread over regions to form ad hoc wireless sensor networks (WSN) so as to deliver aggregate information from geographically diverse areas. This aggregate data gathering and processing induces a synergistic effect and enables a sensor network to complete sensing tasks that may never be feasible using a single, perhaps powerful, sensor. This new paradigm in sensing devices is not without many fundamental challenges, one being a constrained energy resource, which first need to be solved before the true capabilities of these networks may be realized. This thesis will discuss the models and techniques developed as an attempt to maximize the capability of a WSN. The premise used in the research is that the capability of a WSN can be maximize by developing a scheme that can duplicate the optimal energy efficient behavior of individual wireless sensors in a contention dominated, distributed decision-making, network environment. This optimal energy efficient behavior as determined by an analytically derived model and a mixed integer programming model will be presented. The analytical model enables the optimal sensor behavior to be calculated given a contention-less environment, and the integer programming model determines the optimal ON/OFF/transmission schedule for each sensor in a contention dominated network, over time. Finally, the optimal behavior found in the two models has been converted into a preliminary heuristic protocol that coordinates sensors in real time. The key aspects of this protocol along with its effectiveness, as compared to the optimal, are also presented

Neuromorphic hardware for somatosensory neuroprostheses

In individuals with sensory-motor impairments, missing limb functions can be restored using neuroprosthetic devices that directly interface with the nervous system. However, restoring the natural tactile experience through electrical neural stimulation requires complex encoding strategies. Indeed, they are presently limited in effectively conveying or restoring tactile sensations by bandwidth constraints. Neuromorphic technology, which mimics the natural behavior of neurons and synapses, holds promise for replicating the encoding of natural touch, potentially informing neurostimulation design. In this perspective, we propose that incorporating neuromorphic technologies into neuroprostheses could be an effective approach for developing more natural human-machine interfaces, potentially leading to advancements in device performance, acceptability, and embeddability. We also highlight ongoing challenges and the required actions to facilitate the future integration of these advanced technologies

Facilitating Internet of Things on the Edge

The evolution of electronics and wireless technologies has entered a new era, the Internet of Things (IoT). Presently, IoT technologies influence the global market, bringing benefits in many areas, including healthcare, manufacturing, transportation, and entertainment. Modern IoT devices serve as a thin client with data processing performed in a remote computing node, such as a cloud server or a mobile edge compute unit. These computing units own significant resources that allow prompt data processing. The user experience for such an approach relies drastically on the availability and quality of the internet connection. In this case, if the internet connection is unavailable, the resulting operations of IoT applications can be completely disrupted. It is worth noting that emerging IoT applications are even more throughput demanding and latency-sensitive which makes communication networks a practical bottleneck for the service provisioning. This thesis aims to eliminate the limitations of wireless access, via the improvement of connectivity and throughput between the devices on the edge, as well as their network identification, which is fundamentally important for IoT service management. The introduction begins with a discussion on the emerging IoT applications and their demands. Subsequent chapters introduce scenarios of interest, describe the proposed solutions and provide selected performance evaluation results. Specifically, we start with research on the use of degraded memory chips for network identification of IoT devices as an alternative to conventional methods, such as IMEI; these methods are not vulnerable to tampering and cloning. Further, we introduce our contributions for improving connectivity and throughput among IoT devices on the edge in a case where the mobile network infrastructure is limited or totally unavailable. Finally, we conclude the introduction with a summary of the results achieved

Towards Tactile Internet in Beyond 5G Era: Recent Advances, Current Issues and Future Directions

Tactile Internet (TI) is envisioned to create a paradigm shift from the content-oriented communications to steer/control-based communications by enabling real-time transmission of haptic information (i.e., touch, actuation, motion, vibration, surface texture) over Internet in addition to the conventional audiovisual and data traffics. This emerging TI technology, also considered as the next evolution phase of Internet of Things (IoT), is expected to create numerous opportunities for technology markets in a wide variety of applications ranging from teleoperation systems and Augmented/Virtual Reality (AR/VR) to automotive safety and eHealthcare towards addressing the complex problems of human society. However, the realization of TI over wireless media in the upcoming Fifth Generation (5G) and beyond networks creates various non-conventional communication challenges and stringent requirements in terms of ultra-low latency, ultra-high reliability, high data-rate connectivity, resource allocation, multiple access and quality-latency-rate tradeoff. To this end, this paper aims to provide a holistic view on wireless TI along with a thorough review of the existing state-of-the-art, to identify and analyze the involved technical issues, to highlight potential solutions and to propose future research directions. First, starting with the vision of TI and recent advances and a review of related survey/overview articles, we present a generalized framework for wireless TI in the Beyond 5G Era including a TI architecture, the main technical requirements, the key application areas and potential enabling technologies. Subsequently, we provide a comprehensive review of the existing TI works by broadly categorizing them into three main paradigms; namely, haptic communications, wireless AR/VR, and autonomous, intelligent and cooperative mobility systems. Next, potential enabling technologies across physical/Medium Access Control (MAC) and network layers are identified and discussed in detail. Also, security and privacy issues of TI applications are discussed along with some promising enablers. Finally, we present some open research challenges and recommend promising future research directions

Decoupling User Interface Design Using Libraries of Reusable Components

The integration of electronic and mechanical hardware, software and interaction design presents a challenging design space for researchers developing physical user interfaces and interactive artifacts. Currently in the academic research community, physical user interfaces and interactive artifacts are predominantly designed and prototyped either as one-off instances from the ground up, or using functionally rich hardware toolkits and prototyping systems. During this prototyping phase, undertaking an integral design of the interface or interactive artifact’s electronic hardware is frequently constraining due to the tight couplings between the different design realms and the typical need for iterations as the design matures. Several current toolkit designs have consequently embraced component-sharing and component-swapping modular designs with a view to extending flexibility and improving researcher freedom by disentangling and softening the cause-effect couplings. Encouraged by early successes of these toolkits, this research work strives to further enhance these freedoms by pursuing an alternative style and dimension of hardware modularity. Another motivation is our goal to facilitate the design and development of certain classes of interfaces and interactive artifacts for which current electronic design approaches are argued to be restrictively constraining (e.g., relating to scale and complexity). Unfortunately, this goal of a new platform architecture is met with conceptual and technical challenges on the embedded system networking front. In response, this research investigates and extends a growing field of multi-module distributed embedded systems. We identify and characterize a sub-class of these systems, calling them embedded aggregates. We then outline and develop a framework for realizing the embedded aggregate class of systems. Toward this end, this thesis examines several architectures, topologies and communication protocols, making the case for and substantial steps toward the development of a suite of networking protocols and control algorithms to support embedded aggregates. We define a set of protocols, mechanisms and communication packets that collectively form the underlying framework for the aggregates. Following the aggregates design, we develop blades and tiles to support user interface researchers