Introducing probability in Colorwave

Technical Repor

Fault Injection for Embedded Microprocessor-based Systems

Microprocessor-based embedded systems are increasingly used to control safety-critical systems (e.g., air and railway traffic control, nuclear plant control, aircraft and car control). In this case, fault tolerance mechanisms are introduced at the hardware and software level. Debugging and verifying the correct design and implementation of these mechanisms ask for effective environments, and Fault Injection represents a viable solution for their implementation. In this paper we present a Fault Injection environment, named FlexFI, suitable to assess the correctness of the design and implementation of the hardware and software mechanisms existing in embedded microprocessor-based systems, and to compute the fault coverage they provide. The paper describes and analyzes different solutions for implementing the most critical modules, which differ in terms of cost, speed, and intrusiveness in the original system behavio

On Improving Automation by Integrating RFID in the Traceability Management of the Agri-Food Sector

Traceability is a key factor for the agri-food sector. RFID technology, widely adopted for supply chain management, can be used effectively for the traceability management. In this paper, a framework for the evaluation of a traceability system for the agri-food industry is presented and the automation level in an RFID-based traceability system is analyzed and compared with respect to traditional ones. Internal and external traceability are both considered and formalized, in order to classify different environments, according to their automation level. Traceability systems used in a sample sector are experimentally analyzed, showing that by using RFID technology, agri-food enterprises increase their automation level and also their efficiency, in a sustainable wa

Evaluation Criteria for Reader-to-Reader Anti-collision Protocols

Technical Repor

Probabilistic DCS: An RFID reader-to-reader anti-collision protocol

The wide adoption of radio frequency identification (RFID) for applications requiring a large number of tags and readers makes critical the reader-to-reader collision problem. Various anti-collision protocols have been proposed, but the majority require considerable additional resources and costs. Distributed color system (DCS) is a state-of-the-art protocol based on time division, without noteworthy additional requirements. This paper presents the probabilistic DCS (PDCS) reader-to-reader anti-collision protocol which employs probabilistic collision resolution. Differently from previous time division protocols, PDCS allows multichannel transmissions, according to international RFID regulations. A theoretical analysis is provided in order to clearly identify the behavior of the additional parameter representing the probability. The proposed protocol maintains the features of DCS, achieving more efficiency. Theoretical analysis demonstrates that the number of reader-to-reader collisions after a slot change is decreased by over 30%. The simulation analysis validates the theoretical results, and shows that PDCS reaches better performance than state-of-the-art reader-to-reader anti-collision protocol

A Fault Injection Environment for Microprocessor-based Board

Evaluating the faulty behaviour of low-cost microprocessor-based boards is an increasingly important issue, due to their usage in many safety critical systems. To address this issue, the paper describes a software-implemented fault injection system based on the trace exception mode available in most microprocessors. The architecture of the complete fault injection environment is proposed, integrating modules for generating a fault list, for performing their injection and for gathering the results, respectively. Data gathered from some sample benchmark applications are presented The main advantages of the approach are low cost, good portability, and high efficienc

Tampering in RFID: A Survey on Risks and Defenses

RFID is a well-known pervasive technology, which provides promising opportunities for the implementation of new services and for the improvement of traditional ones. However, pervasive environments require strong efforts on all the aspects of information security. Notably, RFID passive tags are exposed to attacks, since strict limitations affect the security techniques for this technology. A critical threat for RFIDbased information systems is represented by data tampering, which corresponds to the malicious alteration of data recorded in the tag memory. The aim of this paper is to describe the characteristics and the effects of data tampering in RFID-based information systems, and to survey the approaches proposed by the research community to protect against it. The most important recent studies on privacy and security for RFID-based systems are examined, and the protection given against tampering is evaluated. This paper provides readers with an exhaustive overview on risks and defenses against data tampering, highlighting RFID weak spots and open issues

Personal Assistance and Monitoring Devices Applications

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Agri-Food Traceability Management using a RFID System with Privacy Protection

In this paper an agri-food traceability system based on public key cryptography and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology is proposed. In order to guarantee safety in food, an efficient tracking and tracing system is required. RFID devices allow recording all useful information for traceability directly on the commodity. The security issues are discussed and two different methods based on public cryptography are proposed and evaluated. The first algorithm uses a nested RSA based structure to improve security, while the second also provides authenticity of data. An experimental analysis demonstrated that the proposed system is well suitable on PDAs to

A Review on Fall Prediction and Prevention System for Personal Devices: Evaluation and Experimental Results

Injuries due to unintentional falls cause high social cost in which several systems have been developed to reduce them. Recently, two trends can be recognized. Firstly, the market is dominated by fall detection systems, which activate an alarm after a fall occurrence, but the focus is moving towards predicting and preventing a fall, as it is the most promising approach to avoid a fall injury. Secondly, personal devices, such as smartphones, are being exploited for implementing fall systems, because they are commonly carried by the user most of the day. This paper reviews various fall prediction and prevention systems, with a particular interest to the ones that can rely on the sensors embedded in a smartphone, i.e., accelerometer and gyroscope. Kinematic features obtained from the data collected from accelerometer and gyroscope have been evaluated in combination with different machine learning algorithms. An experimental analysis compares the evaluated approaches by evaluating their accuracy and ability to predict and prevent a fall. Results show that tilt features in combination with a decision tree algorithm present the best performance