A modular IoT platform for real-time indoor air quality monitoring

The impact of air quality on health and on life comfort is well established. In many societies, vulnerable elderly and young populations spend most of their time indoors. Therefore, indoor air quality monitoring (IAQM) is of great importance to human health. Engineers and researchers are increasingly focusing their efforts on the design of real-time IAQM systems using wireless sensor networks. This paper presents an end-to-end IAQM system enabling measurement of CO2, CO, SO2, NO2, O3, Cl2, ambient temperature, and relative humidity. In IAQM systems, remote users usually use a local gateway to connect wireless sensor nodes in a given monitoring site to the external world for ubiquitous access of data. In this work, the role of the gateway in processing collected air quality data and its reliable dissemination to end-users through a web-server is emphasized. A mechanism for the backup and the restoration of the collected data in the case of Internet outage is presented. The system is adapted to an open-source Internet-of-Things (IoT) web-server platform, called Emoncms, for live monitoring and long-term storage of the collected IAQM data. A modular IAQM architecture is adopted, which results in a smart scalable system that allows seamless integration of various sensing technologies, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) and smart mobile standards. The paper gives full hardware and software details of the proposed solution. Sample IAQM results collected in various locations are also presented to demonstrate the abilities of the system. 2018 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.Acknowledgments: This publication was made possible by the National Priority Research Program (NPRP) award (NPRP6-600-2-250) from the Qatar National Research Fund (QNRF), a member of the Qatar Foundation. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of QNRF.Scopu

Carbonic anhydrase inhibitor coated gold nanoparticles selectively inhibit the tumor-associated isoform IX over the cytosolic isozymes I and II.

International audienc

A smart rig for calibration of gas sensor nodes

Electrochemical gas sensors require regular maintenance to check and secure proper functioning. Standard procedures usually involve testing and recalibration of the sensors, for which working environments are needed. Periodic calibration is therefore necessary to ensure reliable and accurate measurements. This paper proposes a dedicated smart calibration rig with a set of novel features enabling simultaneous calibration of multiple sensors. The proposed calibration rig system comprises a gas mixing system, temperature control system, a test chamber, and a process-control PC that controls all calibration phases. The calibration process is automated by a LabVIEW-based platform that controls the calibration environment for the sensor nodes, logs sensor data, and best fit equation based on interpolation for every sensor on the node and uploads it to the sensor node for next deployments. The communication between the PC and the sensor nodes is performed using the same IEEE 802.15.4 (ZigBee) protocol that the nodes also use in field deployment for air quality measurement. The results presented demonstrate the effectiveness of the sensors calibration rig.Scopu

Experimental setup to validate the effects of major environmental parameters on the performance of FSO communication link in Qatar

Weather conditions and chemical composition of the atmosphere are the most uncontrollable challenges for free-space optical (FSO) communications. Environmental parameters contribute directly in the characterization of atmospheric turbulence. Thus, it is very interesting to prepare a test setup to study the effect of such parameters on FSO transmissions especially in a region like Qatar, which is arid and has harsh climate. Unlike that of Europe and USA, Qatar's climate is characterized by high temperatures throughout the year, exceeding 14 �C even in winter. The experiment was carried at Qatar University (QU) using a system that comprises of two Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) boards and two FSO terminals installed at 600 m apart from each other. Each terminal operates at 1550 nm and had a capacity of 1 Gb/s. On the other hand, the environment parameters were recorded using a weather station installed near the transmitter. To have a wider set of data for analysis, parameters from four different seasons were recorded and analyzed. We present a comparison between the FSO performances for the different seasons in terms of Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR). We notice a significant difference in the behavior of FSO during summer and winter seasons. Furthermore, using statistics on the data collected from the weather station and based on Blaunstein model (BKB), we correlate the FSO behavior to the variation of refractive index (Cn 2) in winter. Also a closed form expression, estimated from the statistical data, has been derived to relate the PDR with environmental parameters for the summer season. ? 2018 by the authors.Funding: The Publication of this article was funded by the Qatar National Library.Scopu

Indoor test of the fog's effect on FSO link

In order to distinguish the most rigorous model, we made a comparison between measurements data and the mostly used empirical models. These models use the visibility as a basic parameter to predict the fog attenuation. In order to measure the visibility, we used a laser lamp of 532 nm and two light sensors. The experimental set up is composed of a fog machine and two KORUZA terminals operating at 1310 nm and 1550 nm, respectively. Every one minute, the measured attenuation is averaged to one value then compared to the attenuation calculated based on measured visibility and according to the empirical models cited previously.Scopu

A smart rig for calibration of gas sensor nodes: Test and deployment

Nowadays, large number of sensors are deployed and used for air quality monitoring or in some industries that process hazardous gases. These sensors need periodic calibration to ensure reliable measurements. This paper proposes a dedicated smart calibration rig with a set of novel features enabling complete automation and parallel or batch calibration. The calibration process is completely automated by developing a LabVIEW-based platform that controls the calibration environment for the sensor nodes under test by logging sensor data, generates an updated calibration equation and uploading it to the sensor node for next deployments. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the sensor calibration rig.Scopu

Fuzzy Elliptic Curve Cryptography for Authentication in Internet of Things

The security and privacy of the network in Internet of Things (IoT) systems are becoming more critical as we are still more dependent on smart systems. Considering that packets are exchanged between the end user and the sensing devices, it is then important to ensure the security, privacy and integrity of the transmitted data by designing a secure and a lightweight authentication protocol for the IoT systems. In this paper, in order to improve the authentication and the encryption in IoT systems, we present a novel method of authentication and encryption based on elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) using random numbers generated by fuzzy logic. We evaluate our novel key generation method by using standard randomness tests such as: frequency test, frequency test with mono block, run test, discrete Fourier transform test and advanced discrete Fourier transform test. Our results show superior performance compared to existing ECC based on shift registers. In addition, we apply some attack algorithms such as Pollard’s ρ and Baby-step Giant-step to evaluate the vulnerability of the proposed scheme. IEEEScopu

Key Generation Based Fuzzy Logic and Elliptic Curve Cryptography for Internet of Things (IoT) Authentication

The security and privacy of the network in the Internet of Things is playing an important challenge for researchers and engineers. Considering that packets are exchanged between the end user and the sensing devices, it is then important to ensure the security, privacy and integrity of the transmitted data by designing a secure and a lightweight authentication protocol for the IoT environment. In this paper, we present a novel method of authentication and encryption based on Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) and on random numbers generated by fuzzy logic for the improvement of the authentication and the encryption in IoT systems. We evaluate our novel key generation method using standard randomness tests such as: Frequency test, Frequency test with mono block, run test, discrete Fourier transform test and advanced discrete Fourier transform test. Our results show superior performance. 2020 IEEE.Qatar University;Western University;Industrial Research and Consultancy CentreScopu