Poster Abstract:Deploying a 6LoWPAN, CoAP, low power, wireless sensor network

In order to integrate equipment from different vendors, wireless sensor networks need to become more standardized. Using IP as the basis of low power radio networks, together with application layer standards designed for this purpose is one way forward. This research focuses on implementing and deploying a system using Contiki, 6LoWPAN over an 868 MHz radio network, together with CoAP as a standard application layer protocol. A system was deployed in the Cairngorm mountains in Scotland as an environmental sensor network, measuring streams, temperature profiles in peat and periglacial features. It was found that RPL provided an effective routing algorithm, and that the use of UDP packets with CoAP proved to be an energy efficient application layer. This combination of technologies can be very effective in large area sensor networks

Author Correction: Long-term field comparison of multiple low-cost particulate matter sensors in an outdoor urban environment

Correction to: Scientific Reports https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-43716-3, published online 16 May 2019. This Article contains a typographical error in the Acknowledgements section. “Natural Environmental Research Council grant number [NE/L002531/1]” should read: “Natural Environment Research Council: NE/N012070/1”

Commodity single board computer clusters and their applications

© 2018 Current commodity Single Board Computers (SBCs) are sufficiently powerful to run mainstream operating systems and workloads. Many of these boards may be linked together, to create small, low-cost clusters that replicate some features of large data center clusters. The Raspberry Pi Foundation produces a series of SBCs with a price/performance ratio that makes SBC clusters viable, perhaps even expendable. These clusters are an enabler for Edge/Fog Compute, where processing is pushed out towards data sources, reducing bandwidth requirements and decentralizing the architecture. In this paper we investigate use cases driving the growth of SBC clusters, we examine the trends in future hardware developments, and discuss the potential of SBC clusters as a disruptive technology. Compared to traditional clusters, SBC clusters have a reduced footprint, are low-cost, and have low power requirements. This enables different models of deployment—particularly outside traditional data center environments. We discuss the applicability of existing software and management infrastructure to support exotic deployment scenarios and anticipate the next generation of SBC. We conclude that the SBC cluster is a new and distinct computational deployment paradigm, which is applicable to a wider range of scenarios than current clusters. It facilitates Internet of Things and Smart City systems and is potentially a game changer in pushing application logic out towards the network edge

Next generation single board clusters

Until recently, cluster computing was too expensive and too complex for commodity users. However the phenomenal popularity of single board computers like the Raspberry Pi has caused the emergence of the single board computer cluster. This demonstration will present a cheap, practical and portable Raspberry Pi cluster called Pi Stack. We will show pragmatic custom solutions to hardware issues, such as power distribution, and software issues, such as remote updating. We also sketch potential use cases for Pi Stack and other commodity single board computer cluster architectures

Characterisation and calibration of low-cost PM sensors at high temporal resolution to reference-grade performance

Particulate Matter (PM) low-cost sensors (LCS) present a cost-effective opportunity to improve the spatiotemporal resolution of airborne PM data. Previous studies focused on PM-LCS-reported hourly data and identified, without fully addressing, their limitations. However, PM-LCS provide measurements at finer temporal resolutions. Furthermore, government bodies have developed certifications to accompany new uses of these sensors, but these certifications have shortcomings. To address these knowledge gaps, PM-LCS of two models, 8 Sensirion SPS30 and 8 Plantower PMS5003, were collocated for one year with a Fidas 200S, MCERTS-certified PM monitor and were characterised at 2 min resolution, enabling replication of certification processes, and highlighting their limitations and improvements. Robust linear models using sensor-reported particle number concentrations and relative humidity, coupled with 2-week biannual calibration campaigns, achieved reference-grade performance, at median PM2.5 background concentration of 5.5 μg/m3, demonstrating that, with careful calibration, PM-LCS may cost-effectively supplement reference equipment in multi-nodes networks with fine spatiotemporality

Testing Smart City environmental monitoring technology using small scale temporary cities

Exposure to Particulate Matter (PM) has been identified as a major health problem worldwide. Established measurement techniques require equipment costing many thousands of dollars and specialist expertise to maintain. Ongoing research is investigating the use of low cost <;$300 sensors to enable greater temporal-spatial density of readings to be taken. There are questions about the suitability and reliability of these low-cost sensors, which can be addressed by deploying and evaluating the sensors in real world applications. Rather than deploying standalone data loggers for each sensor, each air quality monitor is connected to an IoT device to enable real time transmission of data. We propose festival sites as small scale cities to enable a short term deployments and evaluation of sensors. This work illustrates that, if coupled with higher resolution of wind data, low-cost sensors may enable to follow the evolution of pollution hotspots and help the identification of pollution sources. This study, building upon the body of work focused on the evaluation and best practice of using low-cost sensors for PM monitoring. We present data from these IoT devices and experiences gained from using a festival site as a substitute for a city

LoRaWAN for smart city IoT deployments: a long term evaluation

LoRaWAN is a Low-PowerWide Area Network (LPWAN) technology designed for Internet of Things (IoT) deployments, this paper presents experiences from deploying a city-scale LoRaWAN network across Southampton, UK. This network has been deployed to support an installation of air quality monitors and to explore the capabilities of LoRaWAN. This deployment uses a mixture of commercial off-the-shelf gateways and custom gateways. These gateway locations have been chosen based on network access, site permission and accessibility, and are not necessarily the theoretical best locations. Over 135,000 messages have been transmitted by the twenty devices analysed. Over the course of the complete deployment 72.4% of the messages were successfully received by the data server. Of the messages that were received, 99% were received within 10 s of transmission. We conclude that LoRaWAN is an applicable communication technology for city-scale Air Quality monitoring and other smart city applications

LoRaWAN for city scale IoT deployments

LoRaWAN is a Low-Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) technology designed for Internet of Things (IoT) deployments, this paper presents experiences gained from deploying a citywide LoRaWAN network across Southampton, UK. This network has been deployed to support an installation of air quality sensors and to explore the LoRaWAN technology. This deployment uses a mixture of commercial off-the-shelf gateways and custom gateways. The custom gateways have required the development of a new printed circuit board interface which is available open-source. The gateway locations have been chosen based on combination of availability and predicted coverage. This paper shows that this approach has provided a reasonable coverage of the city

Reconstruction of human fingerprints from High Resolution CT data: Feasibility study and associated ethical issues.

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