Amorphous Placement and Informed Diffusion for Timely Monitoring by Autonomous, Resource-Constrained, Mobile Sensors

Personal communication devices are increasingly equipped with sensors for passive monitoring of encounters and surroundings. We envision the emergence of services that enable a community of mobile users carrying such resource-limited devices to query such information at remote locations in the field in which they collectively roam. One approach to implement such a service is directed placement and retrieval (DPR), whereby readings/queries about a specific location are routed to a node responsible for that location. In a mobile, potentially sparse setting, where end-to-end paths are unavailable, DPR is not an attractive solution as it would require the use of delay-tolerant (flooding-based store-carry-forward) routing of both readings and queries, which is inappropriate for applications with data freshness constraints, and which is incompatible with stringent device power/memory constraints. Alternatively, we propose the use of amorphous placement and retrieval (APR), in which routing and field monitoring are integrated through the use of a cache management scheme coupled with an informed exchange of cached samples to diffuse sensory data throughout the network, in such a way that a query answer is likely to be found close to the query origin. We argue that knowledge of the distribution of query targets could be used effectively by an informed cache management policy to maximize the utility of collective storage of all devices. Using a simple analytical model, we show that the use of informed cache management is particularly important when the mobility model results in a non-uniform distribution of users over the field. We present results from extensive simulations which show that in sparsely-connected networks, APR is more cost-effective than DPR, that it provides extra resilience to node failure and packet losses, and that its use of informed cache management yields superior performance

Internet of Nano-Things, Things and Everything: Future Growth Trends

The current statuses and future promises of the Internet of Things (IoT), Internet of Everything (IoE) and Internet of Nano-Things (IoNT) are extensively reviewed and a summarized survey is presented. The analysis clearly distinguishes between IoT and IoE, which are wrongly considered to be the same by many commentators. After evaluating the current trends of advancement in the fields of IoT, IoE and IoNT, this paper identifies the 21 most significant current and future challenges as well as scenarios for the possible future expansion of their applications. Despite possible negative aspects of these developments, there are grounds for general optimism about the coming technologies. Certainly, many tedious tasks can be taken over by IoT devices. However, the dangers of criminal and other nefarious activities, plus those of hardware and software errors, pose major challenges that are a priority for further research. Major specific priority issues for research are identified

Ubiquitous computing and natural interfaces for environmental information

Dissertação apresentada na Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia do Ambiente, perfil Gestão e Sistemas AmbientaisThe next computing revolution‘s objective is to embed every street, building, room and object with computational power. Ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) will allow every object to receive and transmit information, sense its surroundings and act accordingly, be located from anywhere in the world, connect every person. Everyone will have the possibility to access information, despite their age, computer knowledge, literacy or physical impairment. It will impact the world in a profound way, empowering mankind, improving the environment, but will also create new challenges that our society, economy, health and global environment will have to overcome. Negative impacts have to be identified and dealt with in advance. Despite these concerns, environmental studies have been mostly absent from discussions on the new paradigm. This thesis seeks to examine ubiquitous computing, its technological emergence, raise awareness towards future impacts and explore the design of new interfaces and rich interaction modes. Environmental information is approached as an area which may greatly benefit from ubicomp as a way to gather, treat and disseminate it, simultaneously complying with the Aarhus convention. In an educational context, new media are poised to revolutionize the way we perceive, learn and interact with environmental information. cUbiq is presented as a natural interface to access that information

Covert Channels and Anonymous Communication in Ad-hoc Networks

Ad-hoc wireless networks distinguish themselves from their traditional wired counterparts by three unique characteristics: mobility, lack of infrastructure, and shared wireless channel. These properties have gained popularity in various military and civilian applications, but have also introduced challenging problems in terms of ensuring satisfying network performance and network security. Ad hoc networks are a fertile ground for new threats and security problems. We start by demonstrating how new covert attacks can be launched by using the ad hoc network protocols. In particular, nodes in ad-hoc wireless networks have to cooperate with each other in order to accomplish many networking functions such as routing and channel access. We observe that covert information can be conveyed during the cooperation procedure. It is very difficult to eliminate or even detect these covert channels. Simulation results show that performance of these covert channels depends on various network characteristics. Anonymous communication has been considered as one possible way of fighting covert threats. In fact, anonymity and privacy by themselves have attracted intensive attention as important societal issues and desirable security features. One of the key components in most anonymous routing protocols is anonymous trapdoors, for which we propose a new construction scheme based on pairing-based cryptographies. More careful analysis has shown that anonymity could be in conflict with other secure properties and secure mechanisms, such as accountability and intrusion detection. We propose a solution that can flexibly trade off anonymity against accountability according to the needs of individual applications. The basic idea is to distribute the real identity of a given user among a set of pseudonyms in such a way that only a sufficient number of pseudonyms can lead to the recovery of the identity. Users authenticate each other anonymously under pseudonyms. When the number of times a user is caught misbehaving exceeds the threshold, the user's real identity can be recovered from the pseudonyms that had been used. Thus, accountability is enforced. As conclusion, we propose to jointly investigate and incorporate all different secure properties by using various secure mechanisms across multiple protocol layers of the network

WSN based sensing model for smart crowd movement with identification: a conceptual model

With the advancement of IT and increase in world population rate, Crowd Management (CM) has become a subject undergoing intense study among researchers. Technology provides fast and easily available means of transport and, up-to-date information access to the people that causes crowd at public places. This imposes a big challenge for crowd safety and security at public places such as airports, railway stations and check points. For example, the crowd of pilgrims during Hajj and Ummrah while crossing the borders of Makkah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. To minimize the risk of such crowd safety and security identification and verification of people is necessary which causes unwanted increment in processing time. It is observed that managing crowd during specific time period (Hajj and Ummrah) with identification and verification is a challenge. At present, many advanced technologies such as Internet of Things (IoT) are being used to solve the crowed management problem with minimal processing time. In this paper, we have presented a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) based conceptual model for smart crowd movement with minimal processing time for people identification. This handles the crowd by forming groups and provides proactive support to handle them in organized manner. As a result, crowd can be managed to move safely from one place to another with group identification. The group identification minimizes the processing time and move the crowd in smart way

Kontextadaptive Dienstnutzung in Ubiquitous Computing Umgebungen

Die vorliegende Arbeit präsentiert einen Ansatz zur Spezifikation und Implementierung von kontextadaptiven Anwendungen in einer Ubiquitous Computing Umgebung. Grundlegend ist dabei das Konzept der kontextadaptiven Dienstnutzung, die sowohl die kontextadaptive Selektion als auch Ausführung von Diensten umfasst. Die kontextadaptive Selektion erweitert grundlegende Techniken der Dienstvermittlung insofern, dass ein Matching nicht ausschließlich durch die Spezifikation von gewünschten Dienstattributen erfolgt, sondern auch Kontextinformationen Berücksichtigung finden. Die Ausführung eines Dienstes kann ebenfalls an kontextuelle Bedingungen geknüpft werden. Eine realisierte Kombination von kontextadaptiver Selektion und Ausführung ermöglicht eine sowohl personalisierte als auch situationsbezogene Bereitstellung von Diensten. Kern der kontextadaptiven Dienstnutzung ist dabei ein Datenzentrisches Protokoll, welches die Weiterleitung (Routing) von Anwendungsdaten anhand kontextueller Einschränkungen erlaubt. Dieser Ansatz gestattet neben der kontextadaptiven Nutzung individueller Dienste auch die spontane Komposition von Diensten in einer Ubiquitous Computing Umgebung. Ferner wird ein Konzept zur dynamischen Rollenverwaltung für Endgeräte in einer Ubiquitous Computing Umgebung entwickelt und ein Verfahren zur Konstruktion von Kontextinformationen innerhalb eines Ad-hoc-Sensornetzwerks vorgestellt