SimTalk: Simulation of IoT Applications

Internet of Things (IoT) applications are generally developed in a vertical manner, i.e., each IoT application is developed for a certain scenario which generally does not share data with IoT applications for recommendation services. This leads to an inefficient exploitation of other IoT service applications. In fact, such recommendation services can be achieved with the help of Social IoT (SIoT) by using data generated by various IoT applications. SIoT builds a profile of objects based on IoT applications data that can be exchanged with SIoT network for accessible to other IoT applications. In this manner, the SIoT network provides recommendation services for reusability of IoT applications' data among various IoT applications, as well as adapting IoT services according to users' needs which improve user experience. Additionally, the profiles built by a SIoT network can also help a single IoT application by looking for similar conditions that have been addressed in the past for the same IoT application. We propose a concept for exploiting the SIoT for recommendation services among various IoT applications with the help of a sample application scenario that highlights how the SIoT can help by providing recommendations. We also provide some implementation challenges for this concept.

Widespread adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) applications assumes a sustainable ecosystem of firms creating, distributing, and using these applications. Such an ecosystem often forms around a platform that implements commonly used functionality and offers it to the members of the ecosystem for creating applications and services. In IoT, such a platform may be materialized in a form of a cloud platform that supports the management of connected devices, and the development and use of the applications based on them. A number of cloud platforms targeting IoT applications are available in the market; to prosper, they need to assist the providers of the IoT applications in designing and developing the applications, as well as in deploying and operating the application software. In this paper, a framework for evaluating the IoT platforms from the perspective of how widely they cover the potential needs of the application providers is introduced. Based on the framework, the maturity of the available IoT platforms is evaluated, by using the publicly available information about the platforms' features and supporting services. As the results of this initial analysis suggest, none of the platforms today offers the comprehensive support. This can be seen as a factor contributing to a slow adaption of the IoT platforms, and therefore to the slower-than-expected takeoff of the IoT ecosystem in general.

With the advancement of computing technology, we are witnessing the dawn of a new era of the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm in which objects equipped with sensors, actuators and processing capabilities communicate with each other to serve a given goal. The IoT’s intrinsic nature, which uses heterogeneous devices, resources and different communication protocols, complicates IoT applications’ design, development, and validation. Reducing the complexity of building IoT applications is one of the current challenges in this area.To address this challenge, we focus on a model-driven approach to support IoT systems’ management and the development of IoT applications. In particular, we propose the FloWare approach and its toolchain, which combine Software Product Line and Flow-Based Programming paradigms to manage the complexity in the various stages of the IoT application development process. An automatic transformation procedure generates the final IoT application, an executable Node-RED flow, starting from a configuration of the designed Feature Models.KeywordsIoTModel-drivenFeature modelFlow-based programmingNode-RED

Age of Information minimization in UAV-aided data collection for WSN and IoT applications: A systematic review

Blockchain technology has been regarded as a paradigm that enables enterprises to deploy decentralized Internet of things (IoT) applications, which require security, mutual truthfulness, privacy, and data reliability. However, the adoption of blockchain technology on IoT applications has been limited due to the lack of blockchain's capability to process a huge amount of transaction requests from IoT devices. In this paper, we propose a new transaction processing mechanism, called Accelerator, which improves the performance of blockchain-based IoT applications in terms of transaction throughput and latency. Two key design ideas of Accelerator lie in: (i) independent modular structure that can be implemented without changing the incumbent blockchain network and (ii) adaptive multi-batch scheduling engine for robust performance. We first provide a mathematical analysis that is used to choose the parameters of Accelerator to maximize the performance. Moreover, we implement Accelerator on a decentralized blockchain network using Hyperledger Fabric and perform the extensive test using Hyperledger Caliper. We show that Accelerator achieves 8x transaction throughput improvement without sacrificing latency.

The rapid development of low-cost sensors, smart devices, communication networks, and learning algorithms has enabled data-driven decision making in large-scale systems. However, the development platforms for such Internet of Things (IoT) applications and collecting the data in a cohesive, yet simple manner is not very well understood. MIT App Inventor [1] is an open-source, user-friendly interface to develop mobile applications and has been used by over ten million users worldwide. We have added IoT capability to the MIT App Inventor platform where people can build applications using various sensors and IoT platforms such as Raspberry Pi [2] and Android Things [3] to collect the data through mobile applications. This poster paper presents a realization of easy to program IoT applications in the mobile application space with a focus on collecting data from the connected sensors. We have integrated the Android Things platform with the MIT App Inventor and introduced the existing MIT App Inventor community to the IoT based App development. This integration allows not only the seasoned developers, but also the novice developers to make interesting IoT applications with minimal programming knowledge.

SummaryIn recent years, applying Internet of Things (IoT) applications has significantly increased to facilitate and improve quality of human life activities in various fields such as healthcare, education, industry, economics, etc. The energy aware cloud‐edge computing paradigm has developed as a hybrid computing solution to provide IoT applications using available cloud service providers and fog nodes for the smart devices and mobile applications. Since the IoT applications are developed in the form of several IoT services with various quality of service (QoS) metrics which can deploy on the cloud‐edge providers with different resource capabilities, finding an efficient placement solution as one of challenging topics to be measured for IoT applications. The service placement issue arranges IoT applications on the cloud‐edge providers with various capabilities of atomic services though sufficient different QoS factors to support service level agreement (SLA) contracts. This paper presents a technical analysis on the cloud‐edge service placement approaches in IoT systems. The key point of this technical analysis is to identify substantial studies in the service placement approaches which need additional consideration to progress more efficient and effective placement strategies in IoT environments. In addition, a side‐by‐side taxonomy is proposed to categorize the relevant studies on cloud‐edge service placement approaches and algorithms. A statistical and technical analysis of reviewed existing approaches is provided, and evaluation factors and attributes are discussed. Finally, open issues and forthcoming challenges of service placement approaches are presented.

As a major agricultural province in China, Shandong Province has always played an important role. At the same time, it is also closely related to the strong support of science and technology. As a new technology, the Internet of things (IoT) has made positive contributions. Agricultural IoT is a mode that uses information technology, wireless communication technology and radio frequency automatic identification technology to share the identified agricultural information to the network. The application of agricultural IoT is a major change in agricultural development, which provides convenient conditions for the development of agriculture, provides a favorable environment for the agricultural products, promotes the transformation of agricultural technology, realizes the informatization of agricultural production, improves the efficiency of rural land, integrates agricultural resources and provides a foundation for food safety. In this paper, the application of IoT in the field of agriculture in Shandong Province is described from two practical cases. One is about how to use wireless sensor network technology to transmit data in the big data platform based on the Bohai granary project. The other describes how to use IoT for food quality and safety traceability. It takes pigs as the research object, runs through all links of the whole industrial chain of pig breeding, breeding, slaughtering, processing, logistics and sales, collects the data of the whole industrial chain with the help of IoT, and realizes the information tracking and traceability of the whole industrial chain. At the end of the paper, it discusses the countermeasures.

Owing to the advancement of vibration energy harvesting technology, many motion-powered battery-free Internet of things (IoT) applications have been reported in recent years. Since the ambient energy is usually weak, these IoT devices (a) mostly operate in intermittent or burst mode. The operation of these devices heavily depends on the level of stored energy. Conventional energy-aware solutions are carried out based on discrete general-purpose comparators or analog-to-digital converters (ADC) inside the system on chip (SoC) to monitor the storage level. Their power consumption is considerable in a low-power system. This paper presents a new energy-aware circuit, which can wake up or turn off the IoT devices according to the stored energy. Its standby quiescent current is at the sub-$\mu$A level. The proposed circuit also provides a regulated output voltage for IoT applications. This design is built with discrete analog components. It is low cost and has high feasibility. It is compatible with different kinds of micro-power generators.

The internet of things (IoT) is focused in offering new technologies which is changing the business environment by showing the potential in different sectors like retail, transportation, healthcare etc. Through IoT, the managers can gather and process data and information in an effective manner, also they can use them to automate in order to enhance productivity and efficiency. With the usage of such technologies, human resource managers can access information for possible candidates which can be accessed through IoT. The overall behaviour of potential candidate tends to help them in shortlisting and choosing the desirable ones. The application of IoT has emerged in enhancing the recruitment of candidates in search of candidates based on large volume of information, assist in screening the candidates, selecting the most suitable ones. The application of IoT technology can modify the HR roles, enable in changing the company perspective in enhancing recruitment process, source the candidates effectively and select them so as to meet the organisational requirements. The implementation of IoT driven technologies support in removing the biases in screening the candidates and aids in candidate selection with the support of other technologies like artificial intelligence, predictive analytics etc. Furthermore, IoT is also involved in better inventory management as it supports the organisation in converting the data which are sourced through RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) into more insights related to inventory data, location of the products, tracking the movement of goods until it reaches the hands of the customers. With the application of IoT inventory managers possess better control in managing the inventory through automated ordering request and thereby reduce manual time and cost for the business. This paper is focused in presenting a conceptual understanding on the application of environmental IoT in recruitment process and also the overall impact created by the technology in managing the inventory efficiently.KeywordsInternet of thingsRecruitment processInventory managementPredictive analytics

Under the background of prosperity of Internet of things (IoT), in order to accelerate the training of talented persons of China for IoT, we propose to design and develop a new course for Chinese students: Essential Technologies, Applications, and Commercial Patterns of Internet of Things. Aiming at three-dimensional target, which has dimensionalities of attitude and thoughts, knowledge and skills, process and methods, the contents of the course include the following parts: system and application architectures, key technologies of IoT, applications of IoT, commercial patterns of IoT, IoT industry and social significance etc. The course highlights the training of abilities of innovation, creativity, comprehensive analysis and practical operations. The construction of teaching resources, such as textbooks, lecture notes, teaching equipments, practice bases, are also emphasized in the process of development of this course.

The design and development process for internet of things (IoT) applications is more complicated than that for desktop, mobile, or web applications. First, IoT applications require both software and hardware to work together across many different types of nodes with different capabilities under different conditions. Second, IoT application development involves different types of software engineers such as desktop, web, embedded, and mobile to work together. Furthermore, non-software engineering personnel such as business analysts are also involved in the design process. In addition to the complexity of having multiple software engineering specialists cooperating to merge different hardware and software components together, the development process requires different software and hardware stacks to be integrated together (e.g., different stacks from different companies such as Microsoft Azure and IBM Bluemix). Due to the above complexities, non-functional requirements (such as security and privacy, which are highly important in the context of the IoT) tend to be ignored or treated as though they are less important in the IoT application development process. This article reviews techniques, methods, and tools to support security and privacy requirements in existing non-IoT application designs, enabling their use and integration into IoT applications. This article primarily focuses on design notations, models, and languages that facilitate capturing non-functional requirements (i.e., security and privacy). Our goal is not only to analyse, compare, and consolidate the empirical research but also to appreciate their findings and discuss their applicability for the IoT.

A comprehensive review on Internet of Things application placement in Fog computing environment

As location-aware IoT (Internet of Things) devices intend to spread across almost every application, IoT devices are going to require different GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) receiver design requirements. To deliver on IoT opportunities, system architects and designers need to look carefully at every aspect of system design and architecture to be able to enable the full potential of the IoT era. IoT devices are equipped with different connectivity sensors that can provide a reliable integrated location-awareness solution. IoT devices are mainly relying on GNSS chip to deliver a service when no other RF signal is available. Hence, GNSS chip is expected to maintain a robust and reliable performance even in harsh environment. The harsh environment includes multipath environment, NLOS (Non-Line of Sight) GNSS signal reception, weak GNSS signal power reception, superimposed motion (e.g., arm swing, floating platform fluctuation …etc.), operation under freezing temperature, and interference. The targeted low-cost system design along with the expected harsh operational environment derived us to face exceptional GNSS signal reception condition. This paper discusses lessons learned, and challenges faced signal acquisition, reacquisition, and tracking for several IoT applications. Different operational modes are also explored to accommodate various use cases scenarios for several IoT applications. These different power consumption operational modes allow the GNSS chip to achieve an Ultra-low power consumption which indeed required for IoT applications. This paper provides an overview about the addressed GNSS chip fabricated in a 28nm FD-SOI process. We demonstrate a system performance and power consumption comparison of this chip along with other state-of-the-art GNSS chip. We compare the positioning performance for this device alongside another state-of-the-art GNSS modules and Novatel’s tightly coupled GNSS/INS (Inertial Navigation System) reference solution at numerous scenarios ranging from walking, running, and driving at several sites under different environment.

Elliptic‐curve cryptography (ECC) is a popular technique of public‐key cryptography used for secure communications in Internet of Things (IoT) applications. In this study, the implementation and analyze the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) with NIST‐256 on MicroBlaze processors based on RISC‐V architecture. This implementation aims to enhance secure communication and data exchange between IoT devices and also provides a detailed account of our ECDSA implementation on a RISC‐V processor and evaluates its performance, achieving a reduction of 11.8% in execution time compared to existing techniques. The implementation takes 483 clock cycles and utilizes approximately 4096 bytes of memory. These results demonstrate that ECDSA can be efficiently implemented on RISC‐V processors, making it a promising option for secure communication in IoT applications. Furthermore, the study highlights specific security considerations critical to implementing ECC on RISC‐V processors, ensuring robust and reliable security in IoT environments.