Estimation of displacement for internet of things applications with kalman filter

In the vision of the Internet of Things, an object embedded in the physical world is recognizable and becomes smart by communicating data about itself and by accessing aggregate information from other devices. One of the most useful types of information for interactions among objects regards their movement. Mobile devices can infer their position by exploiting an embedded accelerometer. However, the double integration of the acceleration may not guarantee a reliable estimation of the displacement of the device (i.e., the difference in the new location). In fact, noise and measurement errors dramatically affect the assessment. This paper investigates the benefits and drawbacks of the use of the Kalman filter as a correction technique to achieve more precise estimation of displacement. The approach is evaluated with two accelerometers embedded in commercial devices: A smartphone and a sensor platform. The results show that the technique based on the Kalman filter dramatically reduces the percentage error, in comparison to the assessment made by double integration of the acceleration data; in particular, the precision is improved by up to 72%. At the same time, the computational overhead due to the Kalman filter can be assumed to be negligible in almost all application scenarios

AN INTEGRATED APPROACH FOR POLLUTION MONITORING: SMART ACQUIREMENT AND SMART INFORMATION

Air quality is a factor of primary importance for the quality of life. The increase of the pollutants percentage in the air can cause serious problems to the human and environmental health. For this reason it is essential to monitor its values to prevent the consequences of an excessive concentration, to reduce the pollution production or to avoid the contact with major pollutant concentration through the available tools. Some recently developed tools for the monitoring and sharing of the data in an effective system permit to manage the information in a smart way, in order to improve the knowledge of the problem and, consequently, to take preventing measures in favour of the urban air quality and human health. In this paper, the authors describe an innovative solution that implements geomatics sensors (GNSS) and pollutant measurement sensors to develop a low cost sensor for the acquisition of pollutants dynamic data using a mobile platform based on bicycles. The acquired data can be analysed to evaluate the local distribution of pollutant density and shared through web platforms that use standard protocols for an effective smart use

How to improve CSMA-based MAC protocol for dense RFID reader-to-reader Networks?

International audienceDue to the dedicated short range communication feature of passive radio frequency identification (RFID) and the closest proximity operation of both tags and readers in a large-scale dynamic RFID system, when nearby readers simultaneously try to communicate with tags located within their interrogation range, serious interference problems may occur. Such interferences may cause signal collisions that lead to the reading throughput barrier and degrade the system performance. Although many efforts have been done to maximize the throughput by proposing protocols such as NFRA or more recently GDRA, which is compliant with the EPCglobal and ETSI EN 302 208 standards. However, the above protocols are based on unrealistic assumptions or require additional components with more control packet and perform worse in terms of collisions and latency, etc. In this paper, we explore the use of some well-known Carrier Sense Multiple Access (CSMA) backoff algorithms to improve the existing CSMA-based reader-to-reader anti-collision protocol in dense RFID networks. Moreover, the proposals are compliant with the existing standards. We conduct extensive simulations and compare their performance with the well-known state-of-the-art protocols to show their performance under various criteria. We find that the proposals improvement are highly suitable for maximizing the throughput, efficiency and for minimizing both the collisions and coverage latency in dense RFID Systems

A hierarchical key pre-distribution scheme for fog networks

Security in fog computing is multi-faceted, and one particular challenge is establishing a secure communication channel between fog nodes and end devices. This emphasizes the importance of designing efficient and secret key distribution scheme to facilitate fog nodes and end devices to establish secure communication channels. Existing secure key distribution schemes designed for hierarchical networks may be deployable in fog computing, but they incur high computational and communication overheads and thus consume significant memory. In this paper, we propose a novel hierarchical key pre-distribution scheme based on “Residual Design” for fog networks. The proposed key distribution scheme is designed to minimize storage overhead and memory consumption, while increasing network scalability. The scheme is also designed to be secure against node capture attacks. We demonstrate that in an equal-size network, our scheme achieves around 84% improvement in terms of node storage overhead, and around 96% improvement in terms of network scalability. Our research paves the way for building an efficient key management framework for secure communication within the hierarchical network of fog nodes and end devices. KEYWORDS: Fog Computing, Key distribution, Hierarchical Networks

Trust in Food

Trust is important in the food sector. This is primarily because households entrust some of the tasks related to food preparation to food processors. The public is concerned about pesticides, food additives, preservatives, and processed foods that may harbor unwanted chemicals or additives. After numerous food scandals, consumers expect food processing industries and retailers to take responsibility for food safety. Meanwhile, the food industry focuses on profit growth and costs reduction to achieve higher production efficiency and competitiveness. It means that they introduce innovations, such as new production methods, processing techniques, and additives. Consumers have to delegate the responsibility for ensuring food safety to food producers, retailers, and regulatory authorities who ensure that the foods are safe, healthy, and pose no risks. For consumers, trusting these actors can reduce feelings of uncertainty. It is helpful for companies to be responsible for their activities through transparency and traceability. In turn, the food industry tries to gain consumers’ trust by providing objective information, such as ranked brands or labels on food packages

COlchicine for the Prevention of the Post-pericardiotomy Syndrome (COPPS): A multicentre, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial

Aims No drug has been proven efficacious to prevent the post-pericardiotomy syndrome (PPS), but colchicine seems safe and effective for the treatment and prevention of pericarditis. The aim of the COlchicine for the Prevention of the Post-pericardiotomy Syndrome (COPPS) trial is to test the efficacy and safety of colchicine for the primary prevention of the PPS. Methods and results The COPPS study is a multicentre, double-blind, randomized trial. On the third post-operative day, 360 patients (mean age 65.7 +/- 12.3 years, 66% males), 180 in each treatment arm, were randomized to receive placebo or colchicine (1.0 mg twice daily for the first day followed by a maintenance dose of 0.5 mg twice daily for 1 month in patients >= 70 kg, and halved doses for patients < 70 kg or intolerant to the highest dose). The primary efficacy endpoint was the incidence of PPS at 12 months. Secondary endpoint was the combined rate of disease-related hospitalization, cardiac tamponade, constrictive pericarditis, and relapses. Baseline characteristics were well balanced between the study groups. Colchicine significantly reduced the incidence of the PPS at 12 months compared with placebo (respectively, 8.9 vs. 21.1%; P = 0.002; number needed to treat = 8). Colchicine also reduced the secondary endpoint (respectively, 0.6 vs. 5.0%; P = 0.024). The rate of side effects (mainly related to gastrointestinal intolerance) was similar in the colchicine and placebo groups (respectively, 8.9 vs. 5.0%; P = 0.212). Conclusion Colchicine is safe and efficacious in the prevention of the PPS and its related complications and may halve the risk of developing the syndrome following cardiac surgery