Reducing Operation Cost of LPWAN Roadside Sensors Using Cross Technology Communication

Low-Power Wide-Area Network (LPWAN) is an emerging communication standard for Internet of Things (IoT) that has strong potential to support connectivity of a large number of roadside sensors with an extremely long communication range. However, the high operation cost to manage such a large-scale roadside sensor network remains as a significant challenge. In this paper, we propose LOC-LPWAN, a novel optimization framework that is designed to reduce the operation cost using the cross technology communication (CTC). LOC-LPWAN allows roadside sensors to offload sensor data to passing vehicles that in turn forward the data to a LPWAN server using CTC aiming to reduce the data subscription cost. LOC-LPWAN finds the optimal communication schedule between sensors and vehicles to maximize the throughput given an available budget of the user. Furthermore, LOC-LPWAN optimizes the fairness among sensors by allowing sensors to transmit similar amounts of data and preventing certain sensors from dominating the opportunity for data transmissions. LOC-LPWAN also provides an option that allows all sensor to transmit data within a specific delay bound. Extensive numerical analysis performed with real-world taxi data consisting of 40 vehicles with 24-hour trajectories demonstrate that LOC-LPWAN improves the throughput by 72.6%, enhances the fairness by 65.7%, and reduces the delay by 28.8% compared with a greedy algorithm given the same budget

Strategies to Protect Against Security Violations During the Adoption of the Internet of Things by Manufacturers

Security violations have been one of the key factors affecting manufacturers in adopting the Internet of Things (IoT). The corporate-level information technology (IT) leaders in the manufacturing industry encounter issues when adopting IoT due to security concerns because they lack strategies to protect against security violations. Grounded in Roger’s diffusion of innovations theory, the purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to explore strategies corporate-level IT leaders use in protecting against security violations while adopting IoT for manufacturers. The participants were senior IT leaders in the eastern region of the United States. The data collection process included interviews with corporate-level IT leaders (n = 6) and examination of company documents (n = 10). The data analysis process involved searching patterns for words, codes, or themes and their relationships to confirm the findings. During analysis, four major themes emerged: relevance of securing IoT devices in IoT adoption, identifying and separating personal and confidential data from analytical data, adequate budget for securing IoT network devices and infrastructure as key factors in IoT adoption, and risk mitigation policy relevant to securing IoT devices. The implications for positive social change include the potential for corporate-level IT leaders to develop tools that will detect threats, prevent malicious attacks, and monitor IoT networks for any IoT device vulnerabilities. Improved protection from security violations may result in more efficient ways for people to use natural resources. Additionally, there may be a wider usage of smartphones connected to IoT to simplify people’s lives