Security and Privacy Issues in IoT

Internet of Things (IoT) is a global network of physical and virtual ‘things’ connected to the internet. Each object has unique ID which is used for identification. IoT is the emerging technology which will change the way we interact with devices. In future almost every electronic device will be a smart device which can compute and communicate with hand-held and other infrastructure devices. As most of the devices may be battery operated, due to less processing power the security and privacy is a major issue in IoT. Authentication, Identification and device heterogeneity are the major security and privacy concerns in IoT. Major challenges include integration, scalability, ethics communication mechanism, business models and surveillance. In this paper major issues related to security and privacy of IoT are focused

IDHOCNET-A Novel Protocol Stack and Architecture for Ad hoc Networks

Presently employed Internet Protocol (IP) stack possesses number of architectural problems. The issues like Dual/Overriding role of IP addresses, mobility, multi-homing etc are the limitations for the infrastructure oriented networks which even have support of Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), Domain Name System (DNS), Network Address Translation (NAT) servers, etc. Such issues are extremely complex to handle in the case of multi-hop wireless ad hoc networks which lack the support of any infrastructure component. The contemporary research direction for the improvement of present Internet architecture mainly focuses on the use of real identifiers instead of IP addresses for host identification in the network. However, the proposed architectures mostly discuss the infrastructure oriented network models and minimal research has been conducted in the direction of proposals for ad hoc networks.  In this paper we provide a thorough discussion on the practical usage issues of IP based ad hoc network implementation. In order to resolve the present limitations of ad hoc networks, we describe an implementation of a novel identifier based ad hoc network protocol stack and architecture known as IDHOCNET (Identifier based ad hoc network). The architecture proposes a novel paradigm of identifier based applications for multi-hop wireless ad hoc environment. The proposed system further provides backward compatibility to support co-existence with IP based applications. As a proof of concept, the architecture has been implemented on Linux platform with WiFi interfaces. Various practical scenarios with architectural insight are presented to demonstrate the practicability of the proposed approach

Voice Controlled Home Automation System for the Elderly or Disabled People

ABSTRACT Home automation is one of the major growing industries that can change the way people live. Some of these home automation systems target those seeking luxury and sophisticated home automation platforms; others target those with special needs like the elderly and the disabled. Typical wireless home automation system allows one to control house hold appliances from a centralized control unit which is wireless. These appliances usually have to be specially designed to be compatible with each other and with the control unit for most commercially available home automation systems. The developed system can be integrated as a single portable unit and allows one to wirelessly control lights, fans, air conditioners, television sets, security cameras, electronic doors, computer systems, audio/visual equipment's etc. and turn ON or OFF any appliance that is plugged into a wall outlet, get the status of different sensors and take decision accordingly. The system is portable and constructed in a way that is easy to install, configure, run, and maintain. The perfect user interface still does not exist at present and to build a good interface requires knowledge of both sociology and technology fields. According to major companies that are involved in speech recognition researches, voice will be the primary interface between humans and machines in the near future. The problem lies with the situation of the elderly or disabled people, who cannot usually help themselves to move around, and might require external assistance. People who live alone might also need a helping hand at home. Therefore a voice controlled home automation system is designed, so that the users can perform certain tasks by just the use of their voices, moreover, the system is designed to have a hand-held device(remote) so that the user can easily speak their commands, otherwise they would have to walk over to the microphone to speak. Having a remote will make the system more user-friendly and portable

Multiband Stepped Impedance Resonator (SIR) Based Antenna for Future Wireless Applications

A novel multi-band stepped impedance resonator (SIR) based microstrip antenna is presented in this paper. The presented antenna is explicitly designed to overcome the multi-standard requirements of future wireless communication systems. The antenna contains six radiating patches, occupies a volume of 85x50x1.574mm. The antenna contains three short-circuited dual band SIR radiating patches. The SIR radiating patches are optimized to operate at the specified frequency bands of 0.9GHz, 1.2GHz, 1.5GHz, 2.5GHz, 2.75GHz, and 3.65 GHz. The SIR radiating patches are fed using a single coaxial feeding technique which shows a good matching of 50 Ohm. In stepped impedance technique; of three resonators one of the radiating patches is short circuited with a ground. The simulated results of the reflection coefficient, impedance matching, and peak gains show stable responses and are acceptable. The Antenna is designed using FR-4 as a substrate whereas; CST studio and MATLAB are utilized as simulation tool. The proposed antenna verifies to be a suitable candidate for small mobile devices and other multi-standard wireless communication devices

Choosing IoT-connectivity? A guiding methodology based on functional characteristics and economic considerations

Along with the growing market of Internet of Things (IoT), the set of IoT-connectivity networks is also continuously expanding. Large-scale deployments of the new low-power wide-area networks and announcements of new technologies prove this trend. Although these new technologies take care of some key IoT-challenges, such as communication cost and power consumption, careful consideration of the IoT-connectivity is still required since there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Typical comparisons of IoT-connectivity networks are based on technical characteristics but remain unpractical when it comes down to comparing functional characteristics. Questions on public network accessibility, ability for private network deployments, and cost considerations related to IoT-connectivity networks often remain unanswered. In this work, a 2-step methodology is proposed to guide IoT-developers in choosing an appropriate connectivity network. First, a questionnaire walkthrough eliminates IoT-connectivity networks based on mismatches between their functional characteristics and the functional requirements of the IoT-applications. In a second step, an evaluation of the main cost components related to IoT-connectivity indicates the most economical solution. As an illustration, we present 2 case studies: (1) deploying smart shipping containers in the port of Antwerp and (2)installing shop'n go parking spaces, which detect vehicle presence via asensor

Estimation of Surface Heat Flux and Surface Temperature during Inverse Heat Conduction under Varying Spray Parameters and Sample Initial Temperature

An experimental study was carried out to investigate the effects of inlet pressure, sample thickness, initial sample temperature, and temperature sensor location on the surface heat flux, surface temperature, and surface ultrafast cooling rate using stainless steel samples of diameter 27 mm and thickness (mm) 8.5, 13, 17.5, and 22, respectively. Inlet pressure was varied from 0.2 MPa to 1.8 MPa, while sample initial temperature varied from 600°C to 900°C. Beck’s sequential function specification method was utilized to estimate surface heat flux and surface temperature. Inlet pressure has a positive effect on surface heat flux (SHF) within a critical value of pressure. Thickness of the sample affects the maximum achieved SHF negatively. Surface heat flux as high as 0.4024 MW/m2 was estimated for a thickness of 8.5 mm. Insulation effects of vapor film become apparent in the sample initial temperature range of 900°C causing reduction in surface heat flux and cooling rate of the sample. A sensor location near to quenched surface is found to be a better choice to visualize the effects of spray parameters on surface heat flux and surface temperature. Cooling rate showed a profound increase for an inlet pressure of 0.8 MPa

E-Governance Service System Readiness Assessment Framework from CSCW’s Perspective

Growing E-Participation services compel democratic governments to re-examine their E-Governance service system readiness assessment models with respect to their usability, effectiveness and participatory governance. In practice, the open government data, E-Participation initiatives, and their integration levels, are essential ingredients of E-Governance service systems. The debate about what constitutes EGovernance success, their quantifiable and qualitative variables, their divergent socio-technical dependencies, etc. is still on-going. E-Governance has emerged as a large-scale socio-technical and human centered problem space. We, therefore, assert that HCI (Human Computer Interaction) based system modeling and its supporting socio-technical tools and technologies can effectively be used to design and develop E-participatory governance systems. The research gap analysis highlights a stark paradox by showing a weak correlation between UN (United Nation) provided E-Participation Index and a perceived governance index. As a result, the authors in this paper propose an exclusive human centered and socio-technical design of E-GovSSRA (E-Governance Service System Readiness Assessment) framework by redefining E-Participation model in HCIs CSCW (Computer Supported Cooperative Work) perspective that aimed to present relatively strong correlation with a perceived governance index

Ontology-Based Verification of UML Class/OCL Model

Software models describe structures, relationships and features of the software. Modern software development methodologies such as MDE (Model Driven Engineering) use models as core elements. In MDE, the code is automatically generated from the model and model errors can implicitly shift into the code, which are difficult to find and fix. Model verification is a promising solution to this problem. However, coverage of all facets of model verification is a painful job and existing formal/semi-formal verification methods are greatly inspired by mathematics and difficult to understand by the software practitioners. This work considers particularly UML Class/OCL (Unified Modeling Language Class/Object Constraint Language) model and presents an ontology-based verification method. In the proposed method, a class diagram is transformed into ontology specified in OWL (Web Ontology Language) and constraints into SPARQL NAF (Negation as Failure) queries. This work tries to demonstrate that the proposed approach can efficiently cover all aspects of UML Class/OCL model verification

Consequences of diverse use of nitrogen sources on grain yield, grain quality and growth attributes of hybrid maize (Zea mays L.)

A two year field experiment was conducted to check the consequences of diverse use of nitrogen sources on grain yield, grain quality and growth attributes of hybrid maize (Zea mays L.) at the Agronomic Research Area, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad during Autumn 2008 and 2009. Experiments were laid out in a randomized complete block design with factorial arrangement comprising 3 replications with a net plot size of 3 × 5 m. Treatment comprised two hybrids: that is, H1 (Pioneer-30Y87) and H2 (Pioneer-31R88) with combination of six nitrogen sources S0 : Control (0) kg N ha-1, S1: Urea (50%) + Poultry manure (50%), S2: Urea (50%) + Farm Yard Manure (50%) , S3: Urea (50%) + Pressmud of sugarcane manure (50%), S4: Urea (50%) + Compost (50%), S5: Urea (50%) + (PM+FYM+PMS+ Compost) 50% . Results of grain yield (t ha-1), grain protein content (%) grain oil content (%), leaf area index, leaf area duration, dry matter accumulation, crop growth rate and net assimilation rate was found to be significant during 2008 and 2009. It was concluded that hybrid maize H1 (Pioneer - 30Y87) produced better grain yield (6.14 t ha-1) during 2008 when nitrogen sources S1: Urea (50%) + Poultry manure (50%) was applied in combination as compared to grain yield (6.0 t ha-1) in hybrid H2 (Pioneer -31R88) during 2009. Growth and quality attributes also performed better in 2008 as compared to 2009 at nitrogen sources S1: Urea (50%) + Poultry manure (50%).Key words: Nitrogen sources, hybrid maize, yield, growth, quality