TechNews digests: Jan - Nov 2006

TechNews is a technology, news and analysis service aimed at anyone in the education sector keen to stay informed about technology developments, trends and issues. TechNews focuses on emerging technologies and other technology news. TechNews service : digests september 2004 till May 2010 Analysis pieces and News combined publish every 2 to 3 month

Dense and long-term monitoring of Earth surface processes with passive RFID -- a review

Billions of Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) passive tags are produced yearly to identify goods remotely. New research and business applications are continuously arising, including recently localization and sensing to monitor earth surface processes. Indeed, passive tags can cost 10 to 100 times less than wireless sensors networks and require little maintenance, facilitating years-long monitoring with ten's to thousands of tags. This study reviews the existing and potential applications of RFID in geosciences. The most mature application today is the study of coarse sediment transport in rivers or coastal environments, using tags placed into pebbles. More recently, tag localization was used to monitor landslide displacement, with a centimetric accuracy. Sensing tags were used to detect a displacement threshold on unstable rocks, to monitor the soil moisture or temperature, and to monitor the snowpack temperature and snow water equivalent. RFID sensors, available today, could monitor other parameters, such as the vibration of structures, the tilt of unstable boulders, the strain of a material, or the salinity of water. Key challenges for using RFID monitoring more broadly in geosciences include the use of ground and aerial vehicles to collect data or localize tags, the increase in reading range and duration, the ability to use tags placed under ground, snow, water or vegetation, and the optimization of economical and environmental cost. As a pattern, passive RFID could fill a gap between wireless sensor networks and manual measurements, to collect data efficiently over large areas, during several years, at high spatial density and moderate cost.Comment: Invited paper for Earth Science Reviews. 50 pages without references. 31 figures. 8 table

Towards the internet of smart clothing: a review on IoT wearables and garments for creating intelligent connected e-textiles

[Abstract] Technology has become ubiquitous, it is all around us and is becoming part of us. Togetherwith the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm and enabling technologies (e.g., Augmented Reality (AR), Cyber-Physical Systems, Artificial Intelligence (AI), blockchain or edge computing), smart wearables and IoT-based garments can potentially have a lot of influence by harmonizing functionality and the delight created by fashion. Thus, smart clothes look for a balance among fashion, engineering, interaction, user experience, cybersecurity, design and science to reinvent technologies that can anticipate needs and desires. Nowadays, the rapid convergence of textile and electronics is enabling the seamless and massive integration of sensors into textiles and the development of conductive yarn. The potential of smart fabrics, which can communicate with smartphones to process biometric information such as heart rate, temperature, breathing, stress, movement, acceleration, or even hormone levels, promises a new era for retail. This article reviews the main requirements for developing smart IoT-enabled garments and shows smart clothing potential impact on business models in the medium-term. Specifically, a global IoT architecture is proposed, the main types and components of smart IoT wearables and garments are presented, their main requirements are analyzed and some of the most recent smart clothing applications are studied. In this way, this article reviews the past and present of smart garments in order to provide guidelines for the future developers of a network where garments will be connected like other IoT objects: the Internet of Smart Clothing.Xunta de Galicia; ED431C 2016-045Xunta de Galicia; ED341D R2016/012Xunta de Galicia; ED431G/01Agencia Estatal de Investigación de España; TEC2013-47141-C4-1-RAgencia Estatal de Investigación de España; TEC2016-75067-C4-1-RAgencia Estatal de Investigación de España; TEC2015-69648-RED

A low-cost electromagnetic tagging technology for wireless identification, sensing, and tracking of objects

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Media Arts & Sciences, 1997.Includes bibliographical references (leaf 82).by Richard Ribon Fletcher.M.S

Defects, Flexoelectricity and RF communications: the ZBD story

The zenithal bistable display (ZBD) was the first liquid crystal device mode to be commercialised that uses nematic disclinations in a constructive fashion, to use the flexoelectric effect inherent to all liquid crystals but at the time was considered too weak an effect to be useful, and to transfer nano-replication methods to the LCD manufacturing environment. The genesis of the invention and spin-out company ZBD Displays Limited will be described, and the evolution of that company from licensing model, through fabless manufacturer to display provider and finally to a system provider for the retail sector. The story may be useful not just to those interested in the science behind a rather unusual LCD, but also those involved in taking technology from laboratory to manufacturing, from idea to commercial success

LOW-RESOLUTION CUSTOMIZABLE UBIQUITOUS DISPLAYS

In a conventional display, pixels are constrained within the rectangular or circular boundaries of the device. This thesis explores moving pixels from a screen into the surrounding environment to form ubiquitous displays. The surrounding environment can include a human, walls, ceiling, and floor. To achieve this goal, we explore the idea of customizable displays: displays that can be customized in terms of shapes, sizes, resolutions, and locations to fit into the existing infrastructure. These displays require pixels that can easily combine to create different display layouts and provide installation flexibility. To build highly customizable displays, we need to design pixels with a higher level of independence in its operation. This thesis shows different display designs that use pixels with pixel independence ranging from low to high. Firstly, we explore integrating pixels into clothing using battery-powered tethered LEDs to shine information through pockets. Secondly, to enable integrating pixels into the architectural surroundings, we explore using battery-powered untethered pixels that allow building displays of different shapes and sizes on a desired surface. The display can show images and animations on the custom display configuration. Thirdly, we explore the design of a solar-powered independent pixel that can integrate into walls or construction materials to form a display. These pixels overcome the need to recharge them explicitly. Lastly, we explore the design of a mechanical pixel element that can be embedded into construction material to form display panels. The information on these displays is updated manually when a user brushes over the pixels. Our work takes a step forward in designing pixels with higher operation independence to envision a future of displays anywhere and everywhere

ENERGY-EFFICIENT AND SECURE HARDWARE FOR INTERNET OF THINGS (IoT) DEVICES

Internet of Things (IoT) is a network of devices that are connected through the Internet to exchange the data for intelligent applications. Though IoT devices provide several advantages to improve the quality of life, they also present challenges related to security. The security issues related to IoT devices include leakage of information through Differential Power Analysis (DPA) based side channel attacks, authentication, piracy, etc. DPA is a type of side-channel attack where the attacker monitors the power consumption of the device to guess the secret key stored in it. There are several countermeasures to overcome DPA attacks. However, most of the existing countermeasures consume high power which makes them not suitable to implement in power constraint devices. IoT devices are battery operated, hence it is important to investigate the methods to design energy-efficient and secure IoT devices not susceptible to DPA attacks. In this research, we have explored the usefulness of a novel computing platform called adiabatic logic, low-leakage FinFET devices and Magnetic Tunnel Junction (MTJ) Logic-in-Memory (LiM) architecture to design energy-efficient and DPA secure hardware. Further, we have also explored the usefulness of adiabatic logic in the design of energy-efficient and reliable Physically Unclonable Function (PUF) circuits to overcome the authentication and piracy issues in IoT devices. Adiabatic logic is a low-power circuit design technique to design energy-efficient hardware. Adiabatic logic has reduced dynamic switching energy loss due to the recycling of charge to the power clock. As the first contribution of this dissertation, we have proposed a novel DPA-resistant adiabatic logic family called Energy-Efficient Secure Positive Feedback Adiabatic Logic (EE-SPFAL). EE-SPFAL based circuits are energy-efficient compared to the conventional CMOS based design because of recycling the charge after every clock cycle. Further, EE-SPFAL based circuits consume uniform power irrespective of input data transition which makes them resilience against DPA attacks. Scaling of CMOS transistors have served the industry for more than 50 years in providing integrated circuits that are denser, and cheaper along with its high performance, and low power. However, scaling of the transistors leads to increase in leakage current. Increase in leakage current reduces the energy-efficiency of the computing circuits,and increases their vulnerability to DPA attack. Hence, it is important to investigate the crypto circuits in low leakage devices such as FinFET to make them energy-efficient and DPA resistant. In this dissertation, we have proposed a novel FinFET based Secure Adiabatic Logic (FinSAL) family. FinSAL based designs utilize the low-leakage FinFET device along with adiabatic logic principles to improve energy-efficiency along with its resistance against DPA attack. Recently, Magnetic Tunnel Junction (MTJ)/CMOS based Logic-in-Memory (LiM) circuits have been explored to design low-power non-volatile hardware. Some of the advantages of MTJ device include non-volatility, near-zero leakage power, high integration density and easy compatibility with CMOS devices. However, the differences in power consumption between the switching of MTJ devices increase the vulnerability of Differential Power Analysis (DPA) based side-channel attack. Further, the MTJ/CMOS hybrid logic circuits which require frequent switching of MTJs are not very energy-efficient due to the significant energy required to switch the MTJ devices. In the third contribution of this dissertation, we have investigated a novel approach of building cryptographic hardware in MTJ/CMOS circuits using Look-Up Table (LUT) based method where the data stored in MTJs are constant during the entire encryption/decryption operation. Currently, high supply voltage is required in both writing and sensing operations of hybrid MTJ/CMOS based LiM circuits which consumes a considerable amount of energy. In order to meet the power budget in low-power devices, it is important to investigate the novel design techniques to design ultra-low-power MTJ/CMOS circuits. In the fourth contribution of this dissertation, we have proposed a novel energy-efficient Secure MTJ/CMOS Logic (SMCL) family. The proposed SMCL logic family consumes uniform power irrespective of data transition in MTJ and more energy-efficient compared to the state-of-art MTJ/ CMOS designs by using charge sharing technique. The other important contribution of this dissertation is the design of reliable Physical Unclonable Function (PUF). Physically Unclonable Function (PUF) are circuits which are used to generate secret keys to avoid the piracy and device authentication problems. However, existing PUFs consume high power and they suffer from the problem of generating unreliable bits. This dissertation have addressed this issue in PUFs by designing a novel adiabatic logic based PUF. The time ramp voltages in adiabatic PUF is utilized to improve the reliability of the PUF along with its energy-efficiency. Reliability of the adiabatic logic based PUF proposed in this dissertation is tested through simulation based temperature variations and supply voltage variations

Low-cost electromagnetic tagging : design and implementation

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2002.Includes bibliographical references (p. 220-222).Several implementations of chipless RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tags are presented and discussed as low-cost alternatives to chip-based RFID tags and sensors. An overview of present-day near-field electromagnetic tagging is presented, including both chip-based and chipless technologies with associated costs. As a candidate for low-cost ID tags, a design theory and implementation is presented for multiply-resonant planar metal structures. This theory includes a circuit model, a phenomenological model, and a framework for predicting the resonant frequencies as a function of geometrical and material properties. A novel physical geometry, a tree-like spiral structure, is proposed as a design that increases the number of resonances per unit area in a planar structure relative to the present day state-of-the-art. In addition to identification, it is shown how several chipless tags can also be designed to function as sensors. Several examples are discussed in detail, including: 1) a family of thermal sensor tags employing magnetic materials and 2) a family of sensor tags (to sense pressure, humidity, and pH) based on planar resonator structures. The latter section of the dissertation describes the evolution of my work in developing the necessary (and low-cost) instrumentation to support these new varieties of tag technologies, ranging from a $500 frequency-agile reader to a$5 reader for toy applications.by Richard Ribon Fletcher.Ph.D

Switchable Liquid crystal contact lenses for the correction of presbyopia

Presbyopia is an age-related disorder where the lens of the eye hardens so that focusing on near objects becomes increasingly difficult. This complaint affects everyone over the age of 50. It is becoming progressively more relevant, as the average age of the global population continues to rise. Bifocal or varifocal spectacles are currently the best solution for those that require near and far vision correction. However, many people prefer not to wear spectacles and while multifocal contact lenses are available, they are not widely prescribed and can require significant adaptation by wearers. One possible solution is to use liquid crystal contact lenses that can change focal power by applying a small electric field across the device. However, the design of these contact lenses must be carefully considered as they must be comfortable for the user to wear and able to provide the required change in focal power (usually about +2D). Progress towards different lens designs, which includes lens geometry, liquid crystal choices and suitable alignment modes, are reviewed. Furthermore, we also discuss suitable electrode materials, possible power sources and suggest some methods for switching the lenses between near and far vision correction