Micropower sensate tags for supply-chain management and security

Thesis (M. Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2007.Includes bibliographical references (p. 109-113).This thesis describes the development of a system of sensate active RFID tags for supply-chain management and security applications, necessitated by the current lack of commercial platforms capable of monitoring the state of shipments at the crate and case level. To make a practical prototype, off-the-shelf components and custom-designed circuits that minimize power consumption and cost were assembled and integrated into an interrupt-driven, quasi-passive system that can monitor, log, and report environmental conditions inside a shipping crate while consuming only 23.7 microwatts of average power. To prove the feasibility of the system, the tags were tested in the laboratory and aboard transport conveyances.by Mateusz Ksawery Malinowski.M.Eng

Internet of Things and Modern Supply Chain Management

Information flow has a great influence over the flow of materials in the supply chain industry. The behavior by which the materials flow is highly affected by how the information flows throughout the organization in a smooth manner. To develop the supply chain performance and improve the efficiency of information sharing a lot of practices have been developed to achieve that target. However nowadays with the expansion of companies and having complicated structures of communication, ordinary practices cannot suffice any longer. Additionally, a lot of time is not utilized properly wasting a lot of time and lowering the efficiency of the organization. This research aim is to investigate the development of the internet of things and how when properly utilized it can make a huge impact on modern supply chain management. This research aim is to provide a theoretical basis on how companies can use internet of things to allow easier access for information throughout the organization with minimal effort. The research questions to be addressed in this research are (1), What is the impact of the internet of things on modern supply chain management (2) what are the possible improvements and future work that can be done with regards to the internet of things (3) is it easy to use. An application of internet of things in the supply chain management is developed based on literature findings. The applications aim is to take place to match between execution flexibility and information abundance. Information sharing aimed should be providing high quality information for the higher ups and management before making crucial and swift decisions. To improve the flexibility of the operations and improve the pace within the working environment information must be gathered in a swift manner. It was determined that there are several reasons behind the turbulent flow between materials flow and information flow. Numerous plan changes in response to demand changes, varying planning processes which would subsequently cause problems when designing a supply chain model to organize the information flow. Moreover, it was also found that another reason was insufficient data which resulted in the inability of sharing information between various departments

Internet of Things for enabling smart environments: a technology-centric perspective

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a computing paradigm whereby everyday life objects are augmented with computational and wireless communication capabilities, typically through the incorporation of resource-constrained devices including sensors and actuators, which enable their connection to the Internet. The IoT is seen as the key ingredient for the development of smart environments. Nevertheless, the current IoT ecosystem offers many alternative communication solutions with diverse performance characteristics. This situation presents a major challenge to identifying the most suitable IoT communication solution(s) for a particular smart environment. In this paper we consider the distinct requirements of key smart environments, namely the smart home, smart health, smart cities and smart factories, and relate them to current IoT communication solutions. Specifically, we describe the core characteristics of these smart environments and then proceed to provide a comprehensive survey of relevant IoT communication technologies and architectures. We conclude with our reflections on the crucial features of IoT solutions in this setting and a discussion of challenges that remain open for research

Sensors and Systems for Indoor Positioning

This reprint is a reprint of the articles that appeared in Sensors' (MDPI) Special Issue on “Sensors and Systems for Indoor Positioning". The published original contributions focused on systems and technologies to enable indoor applications

Industry 4.0 technologies within the logistics sector: the key role of innovative start-ups

The goal of the study is to analyze the 4.0 innovation in the logistics sector. First, it is provided a view of Industry 4.0 technologies, followed by a focus on Logistics 4.0 technologies as theoretical background. Then, through a patent analysis, the study analyzes in details the logistics sector in order to pursue and to demonstrate where is the origin of innovation in the sector

A control theoretic approach for security of cyber-physical systems

In this dissertation, several novel defense methodologies for cyber-physical systems have been proposed. First, a special type of cyber-physical system, the RFID system, is considered for which a lightweight mutual authentication and ownership management protocol is proposed in order to protect the data confidentiality and integrity. Then considering the fact that the protection of the data confidentiality and integrity is insufficient to guarantee the security in cyber-physical systems, we turn to the development of a general framework for developing security schemes for cyber-physical systems wherein the cyber system states affect the physical system and vice versa. After that, we apply this general framework by selecting the traffic flow as the cyber system state and a novel attack detection scheme that is capable of capturing the abnormality in the traffic flow in those communication links due to a class of attacks has been proposed. On the other hand, an attack detection scheme that is capable of detecting both sensor and actuator attacks is proposed for the physical system in the presence of network induced delays and packet losses. Next, an attack detection scheme is proposed when the network parameters are unknown by using an optimal Q-learning approach. Finally, this attack detection and accommodation scheme has been further extended to the case where the network is modeled as a nonlinear system with unknown system dynamics --Abstract, page iv

Advanced Location-Based Technologies and Services

Since the publication of the first edition in 2004, advances in mobile devices, positioning sensors, WiFi fingerprinting, and wireless communications, among others, have paved the way for developing new and advanced location-based services (LBSs). This second edition provides up-to-date information on LBSs, including WiFi fingerprinting, mobile computing, geospatial clouds, geospatial data mining, location privacy, and location-based social networking. It also includes new chapters on application areas such as LBSs for public health, indoor navigation, and advertising. In addition, the chapter on remote sensing has been revised to address advancements