Damith Chinthana Ranasinghe

Adding sense to the Internet of Things

The Internet of Things (IoT) concept is being widely presented as the next revolution toward massively distributed information, where any real-world object can automatically participate in the Internet and thus be globally discovered and queried. Despite the consensus on the great potential of the concept and the significant progress in a number of enabling technologies, there is a general lack of an integrated vision on how to realize it. This paper examines the technologies that will be fundamental for realizing the IoT and proposes an architecture that integrates them into a single platform. The architecture introduces the use of the Smart Object framework to encapsulate radio-frequency identification (RFID), sensor technologies, embedded object logic, object ad-hoc networking, and Internet-based information infrastructure. We evaluate the architecture against a number of energy-based performance measures, and also show that it outperforms existing industry standards in metrics such as network throughput, delivery ratio, or routing distance. Finally, we demonstrate the feasibility and flexibility of the architecture by detailing an implementation using Wireless Sensor Networks and Web Services, and describe a prototype for the real-time monitoring of goods flowing through a supply chain.

Taxonomy, technology and applications of smart objects

Deployment of embedded technologies is increasingly being examined in industrial supply chains as a means for improving efficiency through greater control over purchase orders, inventory and product related information. Central to this development has been the advent of technologies such as bar codes, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) systems, and wireless sensors which when attached to a product, form part of the product’s embedded systems infrastructure. The increasing integration of these technologies dramatically contributes to the evolving notion of a “smart product”, a product which is capable of incorporating itself into both physical and information environments. The future of this revolution in objects equipped with smart embedded technologies is one in which objects can not only identify themselves, but can also sense and store their condition, communicate with other objects and distributed infrastructures, and take decisions related to managing their life cycle. The object can essentially “plug” itself into a compatible systems infrastructure owned by different partners in a supply chain. However, as in any development process that will involve more than one end user, the establishment of a common foundation and understanding is essential for interoperability, efficient communication among involved parties and for developing novel applications. In this paper, we contribute to creating that common ground by providing a characterization to aid the specification and construction of “smart objects” and their underlying technologies. Furthermore, our work provides an extensive set of examples and potential applications of different categories of smart objects.

EPC Network Architecture

The concept of a “Networked Physical World” originated from the Auto-ID Center, now called the Auto-ID Labs [1]. Such a “World” can be realised with the combination of an automatic identification technology and a ubiquitous computer network that will glue the physical world together. Low cost RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology can automate identification of physical objects by providing an interface to link a vast number of objects to the digital domain. Thus, RFID as the enabling technology has paved the way forward for the creation of a “Networked Physical World”. The ability to form a ubiquitous item identification network has a wide range of applications including automation of manufacturing and supply chain management. The previous chapter provided a brief overview of RFID systems. This chapter describes the backend system components formulating a distributed ubiquitous item identification network enabled by the development of automatic identification provided by RFID technology, and examines the flow of tag data, once obtained by an interrogator. The implementation of such an architecture using a web services based model, as well as the impact of the network on supply chain applications, is also investigated.

RFID opportunity analysis for leaner manufacturing

Although RFID is seen by many as a revolutionary enabler of automated data capture, confusion still remains as to how manufacturing organisations can identify cost-effective opportunities for its use. Managers view promotional business case estimates as unjustified, simulation based analysis and analytical models as secondary modes of analysis, and case studies are scarce. Further, there is a lack of simple tools to understand how RFID can help to achieve a leaner manufacturing environment, after the use of which practitioners can be routed to grounded forms of analysis. The purpose of this paper is to provide and test such a toolset, which uses the seven Toyota Production System wastes as a template. In our approach, RFID technology is viewed as a vehicle to achieve leaner manufacturing through automated data collection, assurance of data dependencies, and improvements in production and inventory visibility. The toolset is tested on case examples from two push-based, multi-national fast moving consumer goods manufacturing companies. The opportunity analysis is shown to identify not only initially suspected areas of improvement, but also other areas of value.

Networked RFID Systems and Lightweight Cryptography

This book is a comprehensive guide to networks of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) based Electronic Product Codes (EPCs) in supply chains, and its topics range from standardised hardware designs through known vulnerabilities, security and privacy models, and to concrete proposals for RFID authentication in various scenarios: machine readable documents, oneand two-way authentication in supply chains, and the pharmaceutical industry. Though a better insight into several discussion points requires additional reading, the book nevertheless provides both a good overview of the general challenges and opportunities in the area of supply chain RFID, and a comprehensive guide to further literature.

Sensor enabled wearable RFID technology for mitigating the risk of falls near beds

The increasing ageing population around the world and the increased risk of falling among this demographic, challenges society and technology to find better ways to mitigate the occurrence of such costly and detrimental events as falls. The most common activity associated with falls is bed transfers; therefore, the most significant high risk activity. Several technological solutions exist for bed exiting detection using a variety of sensors which are attached to the body, bed or floor. However, lack of real life performance studies, technical limitations and acceptability are still key issues. In this research, we present and evaluate a novel method for mitigating the high falls risk associated with bed exits based on using an inexpensive, privacy preserving and passive sensor enabled RFID device. Our approach is based on a classification system built upon conditional random fields that requires no preprocessing of sensorial and RF metrics data extracted from an RFID platform. We evaluated our classification algorithm and the wearability of our sensor using elderly volunteers (66-86 y.o.). The results demonstrate the validity of our approach and the performance is an improvement on previous bed exit classification studies. The participants of the study also overwhelmingly agreed that the sensor was indeed wearable and presented no problems.

Memristive crypto primitive for building highly secure physical unclonable functions.

Physical unclonable functions (PUFs) exploit the intrinsic complexity and irreproducibility of physical systems to generate secret information. The advantage is that PUFs have the potential to provide fundamentally higher security than traditional cryptographic methods by preventing the cloning of devices and the extraction of secret keys. Most PUF designs focus on exploiting process variations in Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) technology. In recent years, progress in nanoelectronic devices such as memristors has demonstrated the prevalence of process variations in scaling electronics down to the nano region. In this paper, we exploit the extremely large information density available in nanocrossbar architectures and the significant resistance variations of memristors to develop an on-chip memristive device based strong PUF (mrSPUF). Our novel architecture demonstrates desirable characteristics of PUFs, including uniqueness, reliability, and large number of challenge-response pairs (CRPs) and desirable characteristics of strong PUFs. More significantly, in contrast to most existing PUFs, our PUF can act as a reconfigurable PUF (rPUF) without additional hardware and is of benefit to applications needing revocation or update of secure key information.

Low cost and batteryless sensor-enabled radio frequency identification tag based approaches to identify patient bed entry and exit posture transitions

INTRODUCTION Falls in hospitals and residential care facilities commonly occur near the bed. The aim of this study was to investigate the accuracy of a continuously wearable, batteryless, low power and low cost monitoring device (Wearable Wireless Identification and Sensing Platform) with a single kinematic sensor capable of real-time monitoring to automatically detect bed entry and exit events. MATERIALS AND METHODS Three dimensional acceleration readings and the strength of the transmitted signal from the WISP was interpreted to identify bed exit events and sensitivity, specificity and Receiving Operator Curves (ROC) were determined. RESULTS The sensor located over sternum method performed best with sensitivity and specificity values of 92.8% and 97.5% respectively for detecting bed entry and values of 90.4% and 93.80% respectively for bed exit. On the other hand, the sensor-on-mattress algorithm achieved sensitivity and specificity values of 84.2% and 97.4% respectively for bed entry and 79% and 97.4% for bed exit detection. CONCLUSION The WISP located over the sternum method is the preferred method to detect bed entry and exit. However, further work in frail older people is required to confirm the performance of this method.

Security and privacy solutions for low-cost RFID systems

Low cost radio frequency identification (RFID) systems are increasingly being deployed in industry and commerce. These contactless devices have raised public concern regarding violation of privacy and information security. There is a growing need in the RFID community to discover and develop techniques and methods to overcome several problems posed by the abovementioned concerns. This paper presents proposals on feasible security mechanisms for low cost RFID systems and analyses them from both security and privacy points of view.

Enabling through life product-instance management: Solutions and challenges

Developments in the area of radio frequency identification (RFID) and sensor network technologies have created new possibilities for product lifecycle management (PLM). These technologies are enabling building blocks upon which various business applications for product management can be built. A significant aspect in the through-life management of products is the gathering and management of data related to the product during the various phases of its lifecycle. Both RFID and wireless sensor technologies have created novel levels of product status visibility and automatic identification with granularity to the level of individual components. We consider three approaches that leverage automatic identification technologies and miniaturised wireless sensors to support PLM strategies at the product instance level based on a product centric computing paradigm. The paper draws upon a number of case studies focusing on the various phases of a products lifecycle: Beginning of Life, Middle of Life and End of Life. We used the case studies to extract technical, capability and information requirements needed to support PLM strategies. We compared the ability and suitability of existing architectural approaches to meet the key requirements we identified. Furthermore we assessed them to evaluate their level of support for managing product instances at different lifecycle phases. Finally, we present an extension to significantly improve the ability of the most promising architecture for supporting PLM strategies.