An assessment of blockchain consensus protocols for the Internet of Things

In a few short years the Internet of Things has become an intrinsic part of everyday life, with connected devices included in products created for homes, cars and even medical equipment. But its rapid growth has created several security problems, with respect to the transmission and storage of vast amounts of customers data, across an insecure heterogeneous collection of networks. The Internet of Things is therefore creating a unique set of risk and problems that will affect most households. From breaches in confidentiality, which could allow users to be snooped on, through to failures in integrity, which could lead to consumer data being compromised; devices are presenting many security challenges to which consumers are ill equipped to protect themselves from. Moreover, when this is coupled with the heterogeneous nature of the industry, and the interoperable and scalability problems it becomes apparent that the Internet of Things has created an increased attack surface from which security vulnerabilities may be easily exploited. However, it has been conjectured that blockchain may provide a solution to the Internet of Things security and scalability problems. Because of blockchain’s immutability, integrity and scalability, it is possible that its architecture could be used for the storage and transfer of Internet of Things data. Within this paper a cross section of blockchain consensus protocols have been assessed against a requirement framework, to establish each consensus protocols strengths and weaknesses with respect to their potential implementation in an Internet of Things blockchain environment

Bluetooth Wireless Technology: A milestone in ICT

This article summarizes the Bluetooth technology – a type of Wireless Personal Area Network (WPAN) with emphasis on the pivotal role of Bluetooth enabled devices in ICT. The areas of application of Bluetooth technology, itssecurity, basic design and architecture, and likely future trends in its applications are also discussed with a view to highlighting its major significance. Bluetooth was compared with other wireless communications technologies specifically Infrared Data Association (IrDA) and Wireless Fidelity (Wi-Fi®) showing their dissimilarities and, above all, the advantages of Bluetooth wireless protocol over the other wireless technologies which have made it a topic of discourse in ICT are discussed

Implementation and Analysis of Communication Protocols in Internet of Things

Internet of Things (IoT) is the future of all the present-day devices around the globe. Giving them internet connectivity makes IoT the next frontier of technology. Possibilities are limitless as the devices communicate and interact with each other which make it even more interesting for the global markets. For example, Rolls-Royce announced that it would use the Microsoft Azure IoT suite and also the Intelligence suite of Cortana to keep track of the fuel usage, for performance analysis, to optimize the fly routes etc. which improves the airline efficiency. The devices must communicate with each other, the data from these devices must be collected by the servers, and the data is then analyzed or provided to the people. For all this to happen, there is a need for efficient protocols to ensure that the communication is secure and to avoid loss of data. This research is about the implementation and analysis of various protocols that can be used for the communication in IoT. Various protocols with various capabilities are required for different environments. The internet today supports hundreds of protocols from which choosing the best would be a great challenge. But each protocol is different in its own way when we have the specifics like security, reliability, range of communication etc. This research emphasizes on the best available protocols and the environments that suit them the most. It provides an implementation of some of the protocols and analyzes the protocols according to the results obtained. The data collected from the sensors/devices through a protocol is also subject to predictive analysis which improves the scope of the project to performing data analysis on the data collected through IoT

Event program

UNLV Undergraduates from all departments, programs and colleges participated in a campus-wide symposium on April 16, 2011. Undergraduate posters from all disciplines and also oral presentations of research activities, readings and other creative endeavors were exhibited throughout the festival

Event program

UNLV Undergraduates from all departments, programs and colleges participated in a campus-wide symposium on April 16, 2011. Undergraduate posters from all disciplines and also oral presentations of research activities, readings and other creative endeavors were exhibited throughout the festival

Development and Evaluation of Sensor Concepts for Ageless Aerospace Vehicles: Report 5 - Phase 2 Implementation of the Concept Demonstrator

This report describes the second phase of the implementation of the Concept Demonstrator experimental test-bed system containing sensors and processing hardware distributed throughout the structure, which uses multi-agent algorithms to characterize impacts and determine a suitable response to these impacts. This report expands and adds to the report of the first phase implementation. The current status of the system hardware is that all 192 physical cells (32 on each of the 6 hexagonal prism faces) have been constructed, although only four of these presently contain data-acquisition sub-modules to allow them to acquire sensor data. Impact detection.. location and severity have been successfully demonstrated. The software modules for simulating cells and controlling the test-bed are fully operational. although additional functionality will be added over time. The visualization workstation displays additional diagnostic information about the array of cells (both real and simulated) and additional damage information. Local agent algorithms have been developed that demonstrate emergent behavior of the complex multi-agent system, through the formation of impact damage boundaries and impact networks. The system has been shown to operate well for multiple impacts. and to demonstrate robust reconfiguration in the presence of damage to numbers of cells

The ALICE TPC, a large 3-dimensional tracking device with fast readout for ultra-high multiplicity events

The design, construction, and commissioning of the ALICE Time-Projection Chamber (TPC) is described. It is the main device for pattern recognition, tracking, and identification of charged particles in the ALICE experiment at the CERN LHC. The TPC is cylindrical in shape with a volume close to 90 m^3 and is operated in a 0.5 T solenoidal magnetic field parallel to its axis. In this paper we describe in detail the design considerations for this detector for operation in the extreme multiplicity environment of central Pb--Pb collisions at LHC energy. The implementation of the resulting requirements into hardware (field cage, read-out chambers, electronics), infrastructure (gas and cooling system, laser-calibration system), and software led to many technical innovations which are described along with a presentation of all the major components of the detector, as currently realized. We also report on the performance achieved after completion of the first round of stand-alone calibration runs and demonstrate results close to those specified in the TPC Technical Design Report.Comment: 55 pages, 82 figure