Search

Over the last years, a huge number of things has been connected to the Internet to support applications for smart cities, smart industries, smart agriculture and smart environment, etc. In order to fix bugs, update features or perform dynamic adaptations on these things, Efficient Firmware Update Over the Air (FUOTA) methods are required. In this paper, we propose a modular-based approach for the development of firmware of MCU-based IoT devices, and a new FUOTA method for devices communicating using LoRaWAN. This method enables partial and dynamic updates of modules forming the device firmware, and does not require a system reboot to apply these updates. This approach and this method have been implemented on STM32 MCUs. The experimental results show good performance in terms of update size and network traffic compared to the traditional FUOTA method and monolithic-based firmware development approach, which both impose full firmware updates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Solid waste management is one of the problems that has gained greater prominence in recent years. This topic has been discussed with greater emphasis in conjunction with environmental issues, driven by changes in the most diverse fields provided by the recent post-pandemic scenario. However, due to traditional or inefficient waste management approaches, most trash bins placed in cities can be seen as overflowing. Therefore, a remote monitoring system is needed to alert the level of garbage in bins to the relevant authority for waste clearance. In this scenario, the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm plays a vital role in improving smart city applications by tracking and managing city processes. This paper implements a solution based on Low-Power Wide-Area Network (LPWAN) and blockchain technologies to provide the required data available for increasing efficiency in solid waste collection. Finally, this paper provides an evaluation of the proposed architecture related to latency and throughput metrics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this research is to investigate the use of a communication network utilizing Long Range (LoRa) low-power wide-area network protocol for the telemetry of detected target chemicals. The sensor platform under development allows traditional electrochemical techniques to be executed with a low Size, Weight, and Power (low SWaP) system that is deployable using an autonomous or remote-controlled vehicle. Once in the field, the sensors communicate target chemical concentrations to a centralized gateway through LoRa to an Internet of Things (IoT) network. Researchers are currently deploying the prototype network for field testing of each node's sensing, meshing, and communication capabilities throughout all weather climates. Developing a robust and dynamic sensor network to monitor the environment and provide a live data feed to detect chemicals of interest in the environment eliminates the need for direct human interaction. The low power consumption of LoRa allows the network nodes to be deployed for an extended amount of time on a single battery supply. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the greater availability and reduced dimensions of complex electronics, an Internet of Things (IoT) will emerge in the future, in which machines use sensors to collect and evaluate information about the physical world and share it with other machines without having to rely on human interaction. Blockchain technology encompasses features such as trustworthiness and decentralization and these features can be advantageous in the IoT context, as they can help to ensure data integrity in an Internet of Things unmonitored by humans. In the course of this paper, we investigate to what extent the use of blockchain technology is feasible for autonomous devices in IoT. For this purpose, a prototypical client blockchain component is built using the single-board computer Raspberry Pi and a simulated Ethereum blockchain. This prototype will be examined for aspects like proper functionality, response times and performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last years we have seen a rapid expansion within the area of Internet of Things (IoT) applications. For many applications' use cases, such as rescue monitor systems, the problem of localization (i.e. determine the physical location of nodes) is critical. This paper studies and evaluates the usage of mathematical model of multilateration algorithms using Time Difference of Arrival (TDoA) as a solution for positioning over Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN). The research is carried out using simulations in Python by configuring the constant positions of the Gateways inside an outdoor area. The proposed algorithms can be integrated in application for tracking people at any time and especially routing people from vulnerable groups. Through multilateration and algorithm's prediction, we can have an accuracy of 40-60m in location positioning ideal for search and rescue use cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The basis of smart city services is urban sensing, i.e., the collection of data from sensors deployed in urban settings. However, it has been recently when mobile objects have started to be monitored to feed smart applications within the smart city ecosystems. Most of the advances in this area focus on gathering data from public transportation services such as buses or trams, which use to employ regular cellular or WiFi-based networks and state-of-the-art TCP/IP protocols. Although this covers a basic on-board equipment to report position and other sensor data, there is not a direct integration of Internet of Things (IoT) capabilities in urban transportation and, in general, in moving "things". Communication technologies used in regular wireless sensor networks such as ZigBee or Bluetooth are not appropriate for high mobility patterns. The Internet of Vehicles (IoV) paradigm aims at filling these gaps, exploiting the synergy between IoT and vehicular networks. It is an emerging area in which extra efforts should be paid to cover constrained capabilities of end devices installed on personal mobility devices, e.g., scooters, segways or bicycles. The solution proposed here deals with the connectivity of moving objects by developing an on-board unit for energy-constrained vehicles, integrating communication capabilities using the Low-Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) technologies Long Range Wide-area Network (LoRaWAN) and Narrow-Band IoT (NB-IoT) to efficiently collect data. A set of sensors are included to target services in the areas of urban mobility, enhanced environmental perception and speed-up of city operations. The on-board unit has been evaluated through real-life experiments to study especially its communication capabilities with NB-IoT, obtaining good performances in terms of packet delivery ratio and network delay under non-ideal coverage settings. Results show that NB-IoT presents better performances than LoRaWAN, as compared to our previous experiences, with negligible packet loss rates and two-way delays under 100 ms with Internet nodes, at the expense of needing a proper operator network deployment and consuming extra energy due to NB-IoT protocol complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the problem of monitoring of climatic and ecological condition of the region is considered. The authors propose an approach to the construction of such systems using the LoRaWAN (Long Range Wide Area Network) technology. This will make it possible to create easily scalable low-cost systems with high energy efficiency through the use of modern communication technologies. During the experiment, the authors have identified certain patterns in collected data, such as dependence on the time of year, weather, and the location of certain industrial facilities near the observed zone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present security vulnerabilities of LoRaWAN v1.1 in backward compatibility scenarios and propose countermeasures. Novel low-power wireless communication technologies are continuously introduced into the IoT ecosystem, while the existing ones continue their evolution by adding new features and fixing known problems. Since most of IoT-based applications involve communication of sensitive data with remote users, it is crucial to scrutinize the security of the emerging low-power wireless communication technologies. LoRaWAN is a Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) protocol that is optimized for wireless battery-powered IoT devices. The current LoRaWAN v1.1 states only one possible backward compatibility scenario without defining all the associated security behaviors and their implications for the system’s overall security. This work examines the applicability of v1.0.2 attacks in fall-back cases by consolidating the vulnerabilities of v1.0.2 and the resulting attacks. After determining the possible attacks, countermeasures to prevent DoS attacks that target the join procedure, replay of data, and eavesdropping in backward compatibility scenarios are proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the security features of LoRaWAN v1.1 and propose countermeasures for the determined security problems. LoRaWAN is among the emerging wireless communication technologies for the internet-of-things (IoT) that provide long-range connectivity for low-power IoT devices. As most IoT based applications operate without human intervention and deal with sensitive data, it is crucial to keep the security of LoRaWAN under scrutiny. The examined features in this work are key management, the newly introduced delegation of join procedure to network operators, backward compatibility, and replay protection for join procedure. The evaluation of key management exposes the fact that LoRaWAN v1.1 does not provide forward secrecy. The closer study of the join procedure delegation with backward compatibility reveals that they cannot securely coexist. The examination of join procedure demonstrates that when the assumption of trustworthy network server fails, not only integrity but also confidentiality of application data may be compromised. To overcome these issues, we proposed countermeasures that prevent the compromise of integrity and confidentiality of application data in the cases of join procedure delegation and malicious network server. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In today’s world, warfare is an important factor in any nation’s security. One of the important and vital roles is played by the army soldiers. There are many concerns regarding the safety of soldiers. So for their security purpose, many instruments are mounted on them to view their health status as well as their real time location. Bio-sensor systems comprise various types of small physiological sensors, transmission modules and processing capabilities, and can thus facilitate low-cost wearable unobtrusive solutions for health monitoring. This paper gives an ability to track the location and monitor health of the soldiers in real time who become lost and get injured in the battlefield. It helps to minimize the time, search and rescue operation efforts of army control unit. This system enables to army control unit to track the location and monitor health of soldiers using GPS module and wireless body area sensor networks (WBASNs), such as temperature sensor, heart beat sensor, etc. The data coming from sensors and GPS receiver will be transmitted wirelessly using ZigBee module among the fellow soldiers. Furthermore, LoRaWAN network infrastructure has been proposed to be used between the squadron leader and the control unit in high altitude warzones where cellular network coverage is either absent or does not allow data transmission. The collected data will be uploaded on the cloud for further data analysis and predictions using K-Means Clustering algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The coverage of a LoRaWAN network in a city is greatly hampered by the harsh propagation environment. Sensors are sometimes placed under the ground or in places with strong electromagnetic attenuation. Also, for users who have a contract with a network operator, installing another gateway to improve coverage of blind spots is not an option. In other cases, there is no or very weak connectivity (e.g. basements). In the present work, we design and implement a multi-hop uplink solution compatible with the LoRaWAN specification, which can act as an extension to already deployed gateways. End nodes transmit data messages to intermediate nodes, which relay them to gateways by choosing routes based on a simplified version of Destination-Sequenced Distance Vector (DSDV) routing. The routing protocol was successfully implemented and was assessed using a linear and bottleneck topology, where the Packet Reception Rate (PRR) and throughput were measured. On the bottleneck topology it was observed that the PRR of each node did not significantly vary. On the linear topology we observed that the throughput and PRR did not decrease considerably with the increase of hops. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

LoRaWAN is a wireless technology for Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN). Today, it is considered as one of the most serious alternatives for IoT thanks to its low cost, low power consumption equipments and its open business model. LoRaWAN specifications proposes interesting solutions regarding Medium Access Control (MAC) layer operations to deliver the best communication performances to connected things. Despite its crucial impact on the overall performances, few researches consider the LoRaWAN MAC layer. This paper presents LoRaWAN MAC layer operations and services based on the LoRaWAN Alliance technical specifications. In addition, it proposes an overview of recent studies related to LoRaWAN performances and stands out the major challenges to be addressed in order to enhance the performance of data exchanges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]