Hitch Hiker 2.0: a binding model with flexible data aggregation for the Internet-of-Things

Wireless communication plays a critical role in determining the lifetime of Internet-of-Things (IoT) systems. Data aggregation approaches have been widely used to enhance the performance of IoT applications. Such approaches reduce the number of packets that are transmitted by combining multiple packets into one transmission unit, thereby minimising energy consumption, collisions and congestion. However, current data aggregation schemes restrict developers to a specific network structure or cannot handle multi-hop data aggregation. In this paper, we propose Hitch Hiker 2.0, a component binding model that provides support for multi-hop data aggregation. Hitch Hiker uses component meta-data to discover remote component bindings and to construct a multi-hop overlay network within the free payload space of existing traffic flows. Hitch Hiker 2.0 provides end-to-end routing of low-priority traffic while using only a small fraction of the energy of standard communication. This paper extends upon our previous work by incorporating new mechanisms for decentralised route discovery and providing additional application case studies and evaluation. We have developed a prototype implementation of Hitch Hiker for the LooCI component model. Our evaluation shows that Hitch Hiker consumes minimal resources and that using Hitch Hiker to deliver low-priority traffic reduces energy consumption by up to 32 %

Automated allocation and configuration of dual stack IP networks

The manual configuration and management of a modern network infrastructure is an increasingly complex task. This complexity is caused by factors including heterogeneity, a high degree of change and dependencies between configuration parameters. Due to increasing complexity, manual configuration has become time consuming and error prone. This paper proposes an automatic configuration tool for dual stack IP networks that addresses these issues by using high level abstractions to model the network topology and key parameters. From this high level configuration model, low level configuration files can be generated and deployed. A key parameter specified in the high level model is the network prefix of the entire network. When translating a configuration model to configuration files, IPv4 and IPv6 subnets need to be allocated. We provide an allocation algorithm to do this allocation in the most efficient way. Evaluation of our approach shows that there is a significant increase in efficiency compared to manual configuration.status: publishe

SPEED: Secure provable erasure for class-1 IoT devices

The Internet of Things (IoT) consists of embedded devices that sense and manage our environment in a growing range of applications. Large-scale IoT systems such as smart cities require significant investment in both equipment and personnel. To maximize return on investment, IoT platforms should support multiple third-party applications and adaptation of infrastructure over time. Realizing the vision of shared IoT platforms demands strong security guarantees. That is particularly challenging considering the limited capability and resource constraints of many IoT devices. In this paper, we present SPEED, an approach to secure erasure with verifiability in IoT. Secure erasure is a fundamental property when it comes to share an IoT platform with other users which guarantees the cleanness of a device’s memory at the beginning of the application deployment as well as at the time of releasing the underlying IoT device. SPEED relies on two security primitives: memory isolation and distance bounding protocol. We evaluate the performance of SPEED by implementing it on a simple bare-metal IoT device belongs to Class-1. Our evaluation results show a limited overhead in terms of memory footprint, time, and energy consumption.status: Published onlin

Cryogenic: Enabling power-aware applications on Linux

© 2014. The authors. Modern hardware devices that are idle for a certain period of time enter into sleep mode as a means of reducing power consumption. Naturally, devices should remain in sleep mode for as long as possible to maximize energy savings. However, a growing number of applications perform non-urgent background tasks, which may force hardware to wake up. It would be better if such non-urgent activities could be scheduled to execute only when the respective devices are already in use, as this would maximize the duration of sleep-states. This requires cooperation between applications and the kernel, as only the kernel can coordinate between applications that access the same hardware, and only applications know which tasks can be deferred and for how long. This paper presents the design and implementation of Cryogenic, a POSIX-compatible API that enables the clustering of tasks that access the same hardware. Specifically, the Cryogenic API allows applications to defer tasks until devices are used by other processes. This way, non-urgent tasks can choose not to wake up the device they require and instead defer their execution until either other tasks force the device to be powered on, or until the task becomes urgent. Cryogenic has been realized as a new Linux module, which integrates with the existing POSIX event loop system calls. This allows the use of Cryogenic on many different platforms, as long as the platform uses a Linux-kernel at the heart of the operating system. In addition to describing the design and implementation of Cryogenic, this paper contains experimental results that demonstrate Cryogenic's ability to reduce power consumption using physical measurements on a Raspberry Pi.status: publishe

Demonstration of micropnp: the zero-configuration wireless sensing and actuation platform

Creating, deploying and configuring applications for Internet of Things (IoT) scenarios today remains complex and costly for many users. The MicroPnP platform addresses this complexity problem and provides a true zero-configuration and standards-based solution that radically reduces the cost of acquiring, building, and operating wireless sensing and actuation IoT systems at scale. MicroPnP combines true Plug-and-Play integration of sensing and actuation peripherals with ultra-reliable wireless mesh networking and extreme battery lifetimes. MicroPnP was awarded in an international IoT competition, and is currently being successfully used in commercial IoT scenarios.status: publishe

Demo: Enabling plug-and-play for the Internet of Things

© 2015 ACM. Internet of Things (IoT) applications increasingly need to integrate different peripherals such as sensors and actua-tors. Unfortunately, the current generation of embedded IoT devices lacks adequate support for 'Plug-and-Play' in- tegration of heterogeneous peripheral devices. This demo showcases MicroPnP, a lightweight hardware and software solution supporting true plug-and-play integration of third- party embedded peripherals on constrained IoT devices. Mi- croPnP contributes in three areas: automatic low-cost pe- ripheral hardware identification, platform-independent driver development, and seamless integration of peripheral func- tionality inside the network. Moreover, we will demonstrate how easy MicroPnP makes it to roll-out and customise IoT devices for various application scenarios.status: publishe

CerberOS: A Resource-Secure OS for Sharing IoT Devices

To continue to grow, the Internet of Things (IoT) requires scalable and secure system software solutions for resource-constrained devices. To maximize return on investment of these devices, IoT platforms should support multiple third-party applications and adaptation of software over time. However, realizing the vision of shared IoT platforms demands not only strong guarantees on the confidentiality and integrity of application data, but also guarantees on the use of critical resources such as computation, sensors and energy. We refer to this vision as resource security . Prior research on Operating Systems (OS) for tiny IoT devices has focused on miniaturizing core functionality such as scheduling and communication and does not consider resource security. To address this problem, we introduce CerberOS, a resource-secure OS for sharing IoT devices. CerberOS enables multiple applications on constrained IoT devices while, for the first time, guaranteeing data confidentiality, integrity and secure resource management. Our approach is based upon the twin pillars of virtualization, which isolates applications, and contracts, which control application resource usage. Evaluation shows that CerberOS supports the secure coexistence of up to seven applications on a representative IoT device with a memory usage of 40KB ROM and 5KB RAM while preserving multi-year battery lifetimes

SμV - The Security MicroVisor: A Formally-Verified Software-Based Security Architecture for the Internet of Things

status: publishe

Increasing user participation: An exploratory study of querying on the Facebook and Twitter platforms

Participatory applications frequently rely upon a crowd–sourced community of users who contribute data and content to deliver a service. The success or failure of participatory applications is dependent on developing and maintaining a community of responsive users. This paper reports the results of an exploratory 30–day study examining user responsiveness to query messages. In total 3,055 check–in requests were sent via the online social networks Facebook or Twitter to 70 participants who were randomly recruited using a chain referral process, wherein existing users recruited others to participate