Cooperative Human-Centric Sensing Connectivity

Human-centric sensing (HCS) is a new concept relevant to Internet of Things (IoT). HCS connectivity, referred to as “smart connectivity,” enables applications that are highly personalized and often time-critical. In a typical HCS scenario, there may be many hundreds of sensor stream connections, centered around the human, who would be the determining factor for the number, the purpose, the direction, and the frequency of the sensor streams. This chapter examines the concepts of HCS communications, outlines the challenges, and defines a roadmap for solutions for realizing HCS networks. This chapter is organized as follows. Section 1 introduces the concept of cooperation in information and communications technologies (ICT), and in the context of IoT. Section 2 discusses cooperation in the context of the personal and extra-personal user space and identifies the remaining open challenges and requirements for realizing the benefits of this approach to enabling more resources and services in a hyper-connected society. Section 3 defines a roadmap toward realizing simple, efficient, and trustable systems based on advanced technologies combining security, cloud, and IoT/big data technologies and outlines the challenges related to this vision. Section 4 concludes the chapter

Gait-based identification for elderly users in wearable healthcare systems

Abstract The increasing scope of sensitive personal information that is collected and stored in wearable healthcare devices includes physical, physiological, and daily activities, which makes the security of these devices very essential. Gait-based identity recognition is an emerging technology, which is increasingly used for the access control of wearable devices, due to its outstanding performance. However, gait-based identity recognition of elderly users is more challenging than that of young adults, due to significant intra-subject gait fluctuation, which becomes more pronounced with user age. This study introduces a gait-based identity recognition method used for the access control of elderly people-centred wearable healthcare devices, which alleviates the intra-subject gait fluctuation problem and provides a significant recognition rate improvement, as compared to available methods. Firstly, a gait template synthesis method is proposed to reduce the intra-subject gait fluctuation of elderly users. Then, an arbitration-based score level fusion method is defined to improve the recognition accuracy. Finally, the proposed method feasibility is verified using a public dataset containing acceleration signals from three IMUs worn by 64 elderly users with the age range from 50 to 79 years. The experimental results obtained prove that the average recognition rate of the proposed method reaches 96.7%. This makes the proposed method quite lucrative for the robust gait-based identification of elderly users of wearable healthcare devices

Secrecy Capacity and Secure Distance for Diffusion-Based Molecular Communication Systems

The biocompatibility and nanoscale features of Molecular Communication (MC) make this paradigm, based on molecules and chemical reactions, an enabler for communication theory applications in the healthcare at its biological level ( e.g. , bimolecular disease detection/monitoring and intelligent drug delivery). However, the adoption of MC-based innovative solutions into privacy and security-sensitive areas is opening new challenges for this research field. Despite fundamentals of information theory applied to MC have been established in the last decade, research work on security in MC systems is still limited. In contrast to previous literature focused on challenges, and potential roadmaps to secure MC, this paper presents the preliminary elements of a systematic approach to quantifying information security as it propagates through an MC link. In particular, a closed-form mathematical expression for the secrecy capacity of an MC system based on free molecule diffusion is provided. Numerical results highlight the dependence of the secrecy capacity on the average thermodynamic transmit power, the eavesdropper's distance, the transmitted signal bandwidth, and the receiver radius. In addition, the concept of secure distance in an MC system is introduced and investigated for two different techniques of signal detection, i.e. , based on energy and amplitude. The secrecy capacity can be used to determine how much secure information (bit/sec/Hz) can be exchanged and within which operative range, while the secure distance can be used to set the transmit power to obtain a secure channel at a given distance. We envision these metrics will be of utmost importance for a future design framework tailored to MC systems and their practical applications

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

JIDOKA. Integration of Human and AI within Industry 4.0 Cyber Physical Manufacturing Systems

This book is about JIDOKA, a Japanese management technique coined by Toyota that consists of imbuing machines with human intelligence. The purpose of this compilation of research articles is to show industrial leaders innovative cases of digitization of value creation processes that have allowed them to improve their performance in a sustainable way. This book shows several applications of JIDOKA in the quest towards an integration of human and AI within Industry 4.0 Cyber Physical Manufacturing Systems. From the use of artificial intelligence to advanced mathematical models or quantum computing, all paths are valid to advance in the process of human–machine integration

ETSI SmartBAN system performance and coexistence verification for healthcare

Abstract ETSI Technical Committee (TC) Smart Body Area Network (SmartBAN) defines and specifies low power physical and medium access control layers for smart body area networks. Several use cases have been defined for SmartBAN, such as sleep monitoring, fall monitoring and apnea monitoring. The specialist task force 511 (STF511), working under ETSI TC SmartBAN, studied the performance of the system and evaluated coexistence with other wireless systems. In this paper, the simulator model based on the SmartBAN specification is introduced. Based on the simulation results, the receiver sensitivity for the SmartBAN system is defined. In addition, the interference model extracted from the measurements in the Oulu university hospital is discussed. This paper presents the summary of the simulation results based on the abovementioned interference models. The simulation results showed that when there is a high interference in a communication channel, the SmartBAN system cannot gain an acceptable frame error level without a physical layer protocol data unit (PPDU) repetition technique and a high signal-to-interference power ratio level (SIR). In a low interference scenario, repetition is also needed when SIR is less than 9 dB