A service oriented middleware for smart home and ambient assisted living

Due to the complexity issue of developing heterogeneous Wireless Sensor Network application such as limited reusability, non-scalability, tight coupling between platform and application, a new middleware needs to be introduced to solve these problems. A distributed system framework such as Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) can definitely resolve these issues. SOA framework is able to hide the complexity lower layer to the application programmer and also create modular programming that can support different platforms. This paper aims to provide the service oriented middleware that supports heterogeneous services in Smart Home and Ambient Assisted Living (SHAAL) application

IoT Smart Device for e-Learning Content Sharing on Hybrid Cloud Environment

Centralized e-Learning technology has dominated the learning ecosystem that brings a lot of potential usage on media rich learning materials. However, the centralized architecture has their own constraint to support large number of users for accessing large size of learning contents. On the other hand, Content Delivery Network (CDN) solution which relies on distributed architecture provides an alternative solution to eliminate  bottleneck  access.  Although  CDN  is   an  effective solution, the implementation of technology is expensive and has less impact for student who lives in limited or non-existence internet access in geographical area. In this paper, we introduce an IoT smart device to provide e-Learning access for content sharing on hybrid cloud environment with distributed peer-to- peer communication solution for data synchronization and updates. The IoT smart device acts as an intermediate device between user and cloud services, and provides content sharing solution without fully depending on the cloud server

Wireless biomedical sensor network for home-based healthcare monitoring system

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) consists of sensor nodes that interact with each other to collectively monitor environmental or physical conditions at different location for the intended user. One of its potential deployment is for the form of Wireless Biomedical Sensor Network (WBSN) to measure physiological signals. The WBSN applications would allow the medical practitioners to continuously monitor and update the status of a patient from a far. This project focuses on the development of a WBSN platform for home-based healthcare monitoring over WBSN which complies with IEEE 802.15.4 standard and operates in 2.4 GHz ISM (industrial, scientific and medical) band. The initial state of WBSN development is the design of the wireless sensor node called TelG. The main feature of TelG include low power consumption, wearable, flexible and small size. It is then embedded with a self-built operating system called WiseOS to support customized operation. The home-based healthcare monitoring system is able to operate via web-based with the capability multi-hop real-time communication using Lightweight Real-time Load Distribution (LRTLD) routing protocol for device discovery. The system is also capable of displaying patients data which include electrocardiogram (ECG), pulse rate and temperature. The performance of the TelG is tested experimentally and found to be comparable with other sensor nodes in the market. The node can achieve packet reception rate (PRR) above 80% for a distance of up to 6 meters and also for up to 3 hops at different transmission rates. In addition, the LRTLD routing protocol takes less than 1 millisecond to obtain information on the forwarding node. It is also observed that the packet transmission rate does not affect the end-to-end delay if the range of communication is less than 10 m. The WBSN is tested in a real experimental test bed and are able to successfully provide ECG, pulse rate and temperature data for remote monitoring of patient at home from the hospital

ZigBee based multi-hop wireless communication for home security and automation system

Currently, there are various wireless technologies available, for instance Bluetooth, Infrared (IR), ZigBee, Radio Frequency (RF) and etc. Radio frequency (RF) module is a wireless device that basically works on either 413 MHz or 315 MHz frequency. Basically, the module doesn’t contain any protocol and it will broadcast the signal with no security included. RF only supports star topology and the wireless range can cover up to 100 meters. Bluetooth is a wireless technology that had been introduced 10 years ago for short-range communication. Bluetooth technology is developed to be used in Personal Area Network (PAN) network for low power communication between devices such as phones, personal computers (PC), Personal Digital Assistance (PDA) and etc [1]. The range for Bluetooth wireless device can be up to 10 meters with 2.5mW (4dBm) power consumption. Bluetooth operates in unlicensed Industrial Scientific-Medical (ISM) band at 2.4 GHz with the capability of frequency hopping [1] and it only supports star topology communication

Flood transmission based protocol for home automation system via power line communication

There are many researches and development involving the use of power line as data transmission medium. With multiple power outlets in almost every room in every house, the power line is the most pervasive network and the largest infrastructure available. The aim of this project is to deploy this infrastructure in designing a home automation system. This paper presents a method to develop a home automation system using the AC (alternating current) power line to establish a network between main controlling unit and client units with a proprietary designed power line communication (PLC) protocol. The designed protocol has features such as multinode simplex communication, flood transmission and even parity error detection. The protocol is successfully implemented and tested in a home automation system consisting of one main controlling unit and three client units. Each client unit is able to control three electrical devices. Multipoint of receiver units can be controlled (On / Off) by the main controller unit sending command data using power line as transmission medium to the corresponding devices

Performance of a fully mechanical parking brake system for passenger cars

In order to ensure that a vehicle remains stationary when it is parked at a certain road slope, the driver has to apply sufficient pulling force on the handbrake lever. Otherwise, the vehicle will start to rollaway where the torque generated by the parking brake system is lower that the torque required by the vehicle to remain stationary. This poses a danger situation not only to the vehicle's occupants but also to the people surrounding it. Thus, this paper aims to investigate performance of a typical parking brake system used in passenger cars. A theoretical model of drum-type parking brake system is derived and later being validated by test data that measured from the parking brake test bench. A good agreement is achieved between calculated and test results. Results from the model show that the parking brake system used in this work can hold the vehicle stationary at 11 degree slope less than 200 N of the applied force and thus it meets the regulation requirement, and also the vehicle will not rollaway even though there are four adult passengers inside it

Performance of an Electro-Mechanical Parking Brake (EMPB) system

A mechanical parking brake is one of the most important safety subsystems in a vehicle. Its main function is to hold a vehicle in position when parks on a flat or slope road. A typical problem of the mechanical parking brake system is that it requires a driver to apply sufficient or sometimes high pulling force to keep the vehicle stationary at any road slopes. Insufficient pulling force may cause the vehicle to move away or known as rollaway phenomenon. In order to overcome such an issue, an electro-mechanical parking brake (EMPB) is proposed and developed. The EMPB system is then tested using in-house parking brake test bench. It is found that the EMPB takes within 0.6s to fully engage and within 0.5s to disengage the system, respectively at 11.3 degrees of the road slope. Thus, current design of an EMPB system can prevent rollaway problem and also can be used as alternative replacement for the existing fully mechanical parking brake system