Securing Our Future Homes: Smart Home Security Issues and Solutions

The Internet of Things, commonly known as IoT, is a new technology transforming businesses, individuals’ daily lives and the operation of entire countries. With more and more devices becoming equipped with IoT technology, smart homes are becoming increasingly popular. The components that make up a smart home are at risk for different types of attacks; therefore, security engineers are developing solutions to current problems and are predicting future types of attacks. This paper will analyze IoT smart home components, explain current security risks, and suggest possible solutions. According to “What is a Smart Home” (n.d.), a smart home is a home that always operates in consideration of security, energy, efficiency and convenience, whether anyone is home or not

Occupancy Estimation Using Low-Cost Wi-Fi Sniffers

Real-time measurements on the occupancy status of indoor and outdoor spaces can be exploited in many scenarios (HVAC and lighting system control, building energy optimization, allocation and reservation of spaces, etc.). Traditional systems for occupancy estimation rely on environmental sensors (CO2, temperature, humidity) or video cameras. In this paper, we depart from such traditional approaches and propose a novel occupancy estimation system which is based on the capture of Wi-Fi management packets from users' devices. The system, implemented on a low-cost ESP8266 microcontroller, leverages a supervised learning model to adapt to different spaces and transmits occupancy information through the MQTT protocol to a web-based dashboard. Experimental results demonstrate the validity of the proposed solution in four different indoor university spaces.Comment: Submitted to Balkancom 201

Wireless Multi-Sensor Networks for Smart Cities: A Prototype System with Statistical Data Analysis

As urbanization proceeds at an astonishing rate, cities have to continuously improve their solutions that affect the safety, health and overall wellbeing of their residents. Smart city projects worldwide build on advanced sensor, information and communication technologies to help dealing with issues like air pollution, waste management, traffic optimization, and energy efficiency. The paper reports about the prototype of a smart city initiative in Budapest which applies various sensors installed on the public lighting system and a cloud-based analytical module. While the installed wireless multi-sensor network gathers information about a number of stressors, the module integrates and statistically processes the data. The module can handle inconsistent, missing and noisy data and can extrapolate the measurements in time and space, namely, it can create short-term forecasts and smoothed maps, both accompanied by reliability estimates. The resulting database uses geometric representations and can serve as an information centre for public services.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures, 3 tables, 27 reference

Integrated system architecture for decision-making and urban planning in smart cities

Research and development of applications for smart cities are extremely relevant considering the various problems that population growth will bring to large urban centers in the next few years. Although research on cyber-physical systems, cloud computing, embedded devices, sensor and actuator networks, and participatory sensing, among other paradigms, is driving the growth of solutions, there are a lot of challenges that need to be addressed. Based on these observations, in this work, we present an integrated system architecture for decision-making support and urban planning by introducing its building blocks (termed components): sensing/actuation, local processing, communication, cloud platform, and application components. In the sensing/actuation component, we present the major relevant resources for data collection, identification devices, and actuators that can be used in smart city solutions. Sensing/actuation component is followed by the local processing component, which is responsible for processing, decision-making support, and control in local scale. The communication component, as the connection element among all these components, is presented with an emphasis on the open-access metropolitan area network and cellular networks. The cloud platform is the essential component for urban planning and integration with electronic governance legacy systems, and finally, the application component, in which the government administrator and users have access to public management tools, citizen services, and other urban planning resources15

Smart city pilot projects using LoRa and IEEE802.15.4 technologies

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), through wireless communications and the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm, are the enabling keys for transforming traditional cities into smart cities, since they provide the core infrastructure behind public utilities and services. However, to be effective, IoT-based services could require different technologies and network topologies, even when addressing the same urban scenario. In this paper, we highlight this aspect and present two smart city testbeds developed in Italy. The first one concerns a smart infrastructure for public lighting and relies on a heterogeneous network using the IEEE 802.15.4 short-range communication technology, whereas the second one addresses smart-building applications and is based on the LoRa low-rate, long-range communication technology. The smart lighting scenario is discussed providing the technical details and the economic benefits of a large-scale (around 3000 light poles) flexible and modular implementation of a public lighting infrastructure, while the smart-building testbed is investigated, through measurement campaigns and simulations, assessing the coverage and the performance of the LoRa technology in a real urban scenario. Results show that a proper parameter setting is needed to cover large urban areas while maintaining the airtime sufficiently low to keep packet losses at satisfactory levels

Efficient Control Message Dissemination in Dense Wireless Lighting Networks

Modern lighting systems using LED light sources lead to dense lighting installations. The control of such systems using wireless Machine-to-Machine (M2M) where standard LED light sources are replaced by wirelessly controllable LED light sources create new problems which are investigated in this thesis. Current approaches for control message transmission is such networks are based on broadcasting messages among luminaires. However, adequate communication performance - in particular, sufficiently low latency and synchronicity - is difficult to ensure in such networks, in particular, if the network is part of a wireless building management system and carries not only low-latency broadcast messages but also collects data from sensors. In this thesis, the problem of simultaneously controlling dense wireless lighting control networks with a higher number of luminaires is addressed. Extensive computer simulation shows that current state-of-the-art protocols are not suitable for lighting control applications, especially if complex applications are required such as dimming or colour tuning. The novel D³LC-Suite is proposed, which is specially designed for dense wireless lighting control networks. This suite includes three sub-protocols. First, a protocol to organize a network in form of a cluster tree named CIDER. To ensure that intra-cluster messages can be exchanged simultaneously, a weighted colouring algorithm is applied to reduce the inter cluster interference. To disseminate efficiently control messages a protocol is proposed named RLL. The D³LC-Suite is evaluated and validated using different methods. A convergence analysis show that CIDER is able to form a network in a matter of minutes. Simulation results of RLL indicate that this protocol is well suited for dense wireless applications. In extensive experiments, it is shown that the D³LC-Suite advances the current state-of-the-art in several aspects. The suite is able to deliver control messages across multiple hops meeting the requirements of lighting applications. Especially, it provides a deterministic latency, very promising packet loss ratios in low interference environments, and mechanisms for simultaneous message delivery which is important in terms of Quality of Experience (QoE

The digital harms of smart home devices:a systematic literature review

The connection of home electronic devices to the internet allows remote control of physical devices and involves the collection of large volumes of data. With the increase in the uptake of Internet-of-Things home devices, it becomes critical to understand the digital harms of smart homes. We present a systematic literature review on the security and privacy harms of smart homes. PRISMA methodology is used to systematically review 63 studies published between January 2011 and October 2021; and a review of known cases is undertaken to illustrate the literature review findings with real-world scenarios. Published literature identifies that smart homes may pose threats to confidentiality (unwanted release of information), authentication (sensing information being falsified) and unauthorised access to system controls. Most existing studies focus on privacy intrusions as a prevalent form of harm against smart homes. Other types of harms that are less common in the literature include hacking, malware and DoS attacks. Digital harms, and data associated with these harms, may vary extensively across smart devices. Most studies propose technical measures to mitigate digital harms, while fewer consider social prevention mechanisms. We also identify salient gaps in research, and argue that these should be addressed in future crossdisciplinary research initiatives