An Internet of Sport Architecture Based on Emerging Enabling Technologies

Sports and recreational activities provide an interesting domain of research that includes several of the critical challenges for next generation of services. The adoption of emerging Internet of Things technologies into the field of sport could significantly improve the sport experience and also the safety level of team sports. To this purpose, this paper presents a novel Sport System based on the jointly use of different technologies, such as RFID, WSN, Cloud, and mobile. It is able to collect, in real time, both environmental parameters and players’ physiological data via an ultra-low-power Hybrid Sensing Network (HSN) composed of 6LoWPAN nodes integrating UHF RFID functionalities. Sensed data are delivered to a Cloud platform where a monitoring application makes them easily accessible via REST Web Services. A simple proof of concept has demonstrated the appropriateness of the proposed system. This work represents a first real attempt to demonstrate the benefits introduced by the use of IoT technologies in sport environments

A Smart Parking System Based on IoT Protocols and Emerging Enabling Technologies

Enabling a sustainable mobility is one of primary goals of the so-called Smart City vision, and the development of intelligent parking systems represents a key aspect. To this purpose, this paper presents a novel Smart Parking System based on the jointly use of different technologies, such as RFID, WSN, NFC, Cloud, and mobile. It is able to collect, in real time, both environmental parameters and information about the occupancy state of parking spaces, and to direct drivers to the nearest vacant parking spot by using a customized software application. This last one leverages a NFC-based e-wallet system to allow users to pay for parking fees. Furthermore, a customized software application, installed on a cloud platform, is able to manage alert events (e.g. improper use of a reserved space or expiration of the purchased time). In such a case, it promptly informs the traffic cops through an Android mobile app, which has been designed ad hoc for the considered scenario

An IoT-aware System for Elderly Monitoring

The aging population is a global phenomenon, characterized by many interesting challenges. In this context, the Internet of Things technologies could allow to analyze the elderly’s behavioral in an unobtrusive way, thus helping to prevent Mild Cognitive Impairment and frailty problems. To this end, this work aims to define a reliable system for controlling the position and the body motility of the elderly in low-cost and low- power way. Movements and body motility are, indeed, good indicators of behavioral changes. The system represents the basis of a complete architecture for behavioral analysis and risk detection developed within the City4Age project, funded by the Horizon 2020 Programme of the European Commission

Integration of RFID and WSN Technologies in a Smart Parking System

In this paper, a Smart Parking System (SPS) based on the integration of Ultra-High Frequency (UHF) Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and IEEE 802.15.4 Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) technologies is presented. The system is able to collect information about the occupancy state of parking spaces, and to direct drivers to the nearest vacant parking spot by using a customized software application. Such application also leverages an NFC-based e-wallet system to allow users to pay for the parking fee. Furthermore, a software application based on RESTful Java and Google Cloud Messaging (GCM) technologies has been installed on a Central Server in order to manage alert events (e.g. improper use of a reserved space or expiration of the purchased time). In such a case, it promptly informs the traffic cops through an Android mobile app, which has been designed ad hoc for the considered scenario. A proof-of-concept has demonstrated that the proposed solution can meet the real requirements of a SPS

RFID-based Efficient Method for Parking Slot Car Detection

Enabling a sustainable urban mobility is one of primary goals of the so-called Smart Cities vision, and the deployment of smart parking systems represents a key aspect. The proper operation of these systems heavily depends on their ability to automatically detect the presence of vehicles in the parking spaces. To date, this problem is solved by expensive wireless/wired systems. As the car presence is only one bit of information, with importance of knowing the ID of a slot, in this paper we consider the possibility of using Battery Assisted Passive (BAP) tags for those purposes. Specifically, the considered system uses a BAP tag, with the battery replaced by a solar cell. Once the light level is below some thresholds (ensured by car on top of it), the tag stops transmitting the data, and the system recognizes the slot as occupied. The feasibility of the proposed solution is experimentally verified, and first results are reported

Item-level tracing in the pharmaceutical supply chain through UHF RFID technology

The item-level tagging is one of the main challenges in the pharmaceutical distribution in order to improve track and trace systems. The RFID technology will play a very important role in development of auto-identification solutions. In this paper, we focus on the use of passive UHF tags, in order to analyze a performance comparison between near field and far field UHF RFID systems. Some different passive UHF tags, suitably chosen, have been tested at item-level, i.e. on each single medicine package, simulating each stage of the pharmaceutical supply chain in a controlled laboratory environment. The obtained experimental results, in terms of successful read rates, have shown that the use of passive far field UHF tags represents an advantage solution to guarantee high performance in an item level tracing system in the whole supply chain

Performance Evaluation of an Energy-Efficient MAC Scheduler by using a Test Bed Approach

A Wireless Sensor Network consists of a large number of sensor nodes that are usually battery powered and deployed in large areas in which changing or recharging batteries may be impractical or completely unfeasible. Therefore, energy efficiency represents one of the main design objectives for these networks. Since most of the energy is consumed by the radio communication, the development of Medium Access Control protocols able to minimize the radio energy consumption is a very attractive research area. This paper presents an energy efficient communication protocol and its implementation in the Contiki Operating System. The performances and the portability of the proposed solution are thoroughly evaluated by means of both simulations, carried out using the Contiki simulation tools (i.e., Cooja and MPSim), and test beds based on two different platforms. Obtained results show that the proposed scheme significantly reduces the sensor nodes power consumption compared to the IEEE 802.15.4 standard solution already implemented in Contiki

Integrating Passive UHF RFID Tags with WSN Nodes: Challenges and Opportunities

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have received an ever-increasing attention in recent years, mainly because they represent two of the most important technologies enabling the Internet of Things vision. Although designed originally with different objectives, WSN and RFID represent two complementary technologies whose integration might increase their functionalities and extend their range of applications. However, important technological issues must still be solved in order to fully exploit the potentialities offered by such integration. In this work, an innovative RFID-WSN integration approach is presented and validated. It relies on the interconnection of a new-generation, long-range, EPCglobal Class-1 Generation-2 Ultra-High-Frequency (UHF) RFID tag with a commercial WSN node via the I2C interface. Experimental results have demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed approach compared to existing solution in the literature. Interesting application scenarios enabled by the proposed RFID-WSN integration approach are briefly summarized at the end of the paper

Implementation and validation of an energy-efficient MAC scheduler for WSN by a test bed approach

The paper presents an energy efficient MAC scheduler for wireless sensor networks, and its implementation in the Contiki Operating System. Simulations performed using the Contiki’s simulations tools (i.e., Cooja and MPSim) show that the proposed scheme reduces the power consumption with respect to the ZigBee standard solution and the X-MAC protocol, already implemented in Contiki. Furthermore, the functionality and the portability of the implementation are validated using two test beds based on two different platforms

The impact of RF technologies and EPC standard on the fresh vegetables supply chain

This paper evaluates the impact of the EPCglobal international standard and some emerging Radio Frequency (RF) technologies, such as Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) and Near Field Communication (NFC), on the main processes of the fresh vegetables supply chain. Particular attention was focused on the first steps of the supply chain, which include cultivation in greenhouses and manufacturing of packaged vegetables, known as IV gamma products (i.e., goods ready to be consumed), because they represent crucial points of the considered supply chain. A qualitative and quantitative analysis of the current business processes was performed exploiting the experience of a big Italian company, with several locations and different brands. This analysis highlighted some critical aspects in the management of the whole supply chain, from the land to the table of the end-consumer, and allowed us to perform an efficient re-engineering of the main business processes. The re-engineered model was designed by exploiting the potentialities derived from the combined use of innovative technologies, including EPCglobal, RFID, NFC, and DataMatrix. Moreover, this work has led to the definition of important guidelines able to substantially improve both the culture techniques and the vegetables transformation procedures, based on strategic concepts such as precision agriculture, item-level traceability, and integration of heterogeneous Information Systems (IS). The proposed tracing and tracking system, based on EPCglobal standard, is able to guarantee to end-consumer the ability to know the entire history of the purchased product. Moreover, in order to evaluate the potential benefits of the re-engineered processes in a real supply chain, some metrics able to compare the current (AS IS) and reengineered (TO BE) models were considered. In particular, the Key Performance Indicator (KPI) method has been chosen to carry out this analysis on the pilot project implemented in the chosen company. Experimental results allowed us to derive a realistic estimate of the selected performance indicators for the re-engineered model