Houbing Song

Internet of Things and Big Data Analytics for Smart and Connected Communities

This paper promotes the concept of smart and connected communities SCC, which is evolving from the concept of smart cities. SCC are envisioned to address synergistically the needs of remembering the past (preservation and revitalization), the needs of living in the present (livability), and the needs of planning for the future (attainability). Therefore, the vision of SCC is to improve livability, preservation, revitalization, and attainability of a community. The goal of building SCC for a community is to live in the present, plan for the future, and remember the past. We argue that Internet of Things (IoT) has the potential to provide a ubiquitous network of connected devices and smart sensors for SCC, and big data analytics has the potential to enable the move from IoT to real-time control desired for SCC. We highlight mobile crowdsensing and cyber-physical cloud computing as two most important IoT technologies in promoting SCC. As a case study, we present TreSight, which integrates IoT and big data analytics for smart tourism and sustainable cultural heritage in the city of Trento, Italy.

A Self-Assessment Stereo Capture Model Applicable to the Internet of Things.

The realization of the Internet of Things greatly depends on the information communication among physical terminal devices and informationalized platforms, such as smart sensors, embedded systems and intelligent networks. Playing an important role in information acquisition, sensors for stereo capture have gained extensive attention in various fields. In this paper, we concentrate on promoting such sensors in an intelligent system with self-assessment capability to deal with the distortion and impairment in long-distance shooting applications. The core design is the establishment of the objective evaluation criteria that can reliably predict shooting quality with different camera configurations. Two types of stereo capture systems—toed-in camera configuration and parallel camera configuration—are taken into consideration respectively. The experimental results show that the proposed evaluation criteria can effectively predict the visual perception of stereo capture quality for long-distance shooting.

Imperfect Information Dynamic Stackelberg Game Based Resource Allocation Using Hidden Markov for Cloud Computing

Existing static grid resource scheduling algorithms, which are limited to minimizing the makespan, cannot meet the needs of resource scheduling required by cloud computing. Current cloud infrastructure solutions provide operational support at the level of resource infrastructure only. When hardware resources form the virtual resource pool, virtual machines are deployed for use transparently. Considering the competing characteristics of multi-tenant environments in cloud computing, this paper proposes a cloud resource allocation model based on an imperfect information Stackelberg game (CSAM-IISG) using a hidden Markov model (HMM) in a cloud computing environment. CSAM-IISG was shown to increase the profit of both the resource supplier and the applicant. Firstly, we used the HMM to predict the service providers current bid using the historical resources based on demand. Through predicting the bid dynamically, an imperfect information Stackelberg game (IISG) was established. The IISG motivates service providers to choose the optimal bidding strategy according to the overall utility, achieving maximum profits. Based on the unit prices of different types of resources, a resource allocation model is proposed to guarantee optimal gains for the infrastructure supplier. The proposed resource allocation model can support synchronous allocation for both multi-service providers and various resources. The simulation results demonstrated that the predicted price was close to the actual transaction price, which was lower than the actual value in the game model. The proposed model was shown to increase the profits of service providers and infrastructure suppliers simultaneously.

ART: An Attack-Resistant Trust Management Scheme for Securing Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks

Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) have the potential to transform the way people travel through the creation of a safe interoperable wireless communications network that includes cars, buses, traffic signals, cell phones, and other devices. However, VANETs are vulnerable to security threats due to increasing reliance on communication, computing, and control technologies. The unique security and privacy challenges posed by VANETs include integrity (data trust), confidentiality, nonrepudiation, access control, real-time operational constraints/demands, availability, and privacy protection. The trustworthiness of VANETs could be improved by addressing holistically both data trust, which is defined as the assessment of whether or not and to what extent the reported traffic data are trustworthy, and node trust, which is defined as how trustworthy the nodes in VANETs are. In this paper, an attack-resistant trust management scheme (ART) is proposed for VANETs that is able to detect and cope with malicious attacks and also evaluate the trustworthiness of both data and mobile nodes in VANETs. Specially, data trust is evaluated based on the data sensed and collected from multiple vehicles; node trust is assessed in two dimensions, i.e., functional trust and recommendation trust, which indicate how likely a node can fulfill its functionality and how trustworthy the recommendations from a node for other nodes will be, respectively. The effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed ART scheme is validated through extensive experiments. The proposed trust management theme is applicable to a wide range of VANET applications to improve traffic safety, mobility, and environmental protection with enhanced trustworthiness.

Ubiquitous WSN for Healthcare: Recent Advances and Future Prospects

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have witnessed rapid advancement in medical applications from real-time telemonitoring and computer-assisted rehabilitation to emergency response systems. In this paper, we present the state-of-the-art research from the ubiquity perspective, and discuss the insights as well as vision of future directions in WSN-based healthcare systems. First, we propose a novel tiered architecture that can be generally applied to WSN-based healthcare systems. Then, we analyze the IEEE 802 series standards in the access layer on their capabilities in setting up WSNs for healthcare. We also explore some of the up-to-date work in the application layer, mostly on the smartphone platforms. Furthermore, in order to develop and integrate effective ubiquitous sensing for healthcare (USH), we highlight four important design goals (i.e., proactiveness, transparency, awareness, and trustworthiness) that should be taken into account in future systems.

A Novel Scheme for an Energy Efficient Internet of Things Based on Wireless Sensor Networks.

One of the emerging networking standards that gap between the physical world and the cyber one is the Internet of Things. In the Internet of Things, smart objects communicate with each other, data are gathered and certain requests of users are satisfied by different queried data. The development of energy efficient schemes for the IoT is a challenging issue as the IoT becomes more complex due to its large scale the current techniques of wireless sensor networks cannot be applied directly to the IoT. To achieve the green networked IoT, this paper addresses energy efficiency issues by proposing a novel deployment scheme. This scheme, introduces: (1) a hierarchical network design; (2) a model for the energy efficient IoT; (3) a minimum energy consumption transmission algorithm to implement the optimal model. The simulation results show that the new scheme is more energy efficient and flexible than traditional WSN schemes and consequently it can be implemented for efficient communication in the IoT.

Cloud-centric multi-level authentication as a service for secure public safety device networks

With the advances in IoT, future public safety responders will be well armed with devices that pump data between on-site responders and command centers, carrying useful information about the event scene, the status of a mission, and helping critical decisions to be made in real time. In addition, wearable and on-body sensors will monitor the vital signals and well being of the responders. These connected devices or the so-called IoT surrounding public safety responders generate highly vulnerable data, where security breaches may have life threatening consequences. Authentication of responder devices is essential in order to control access to public safety networks. Most of the existing authentication schemes do not scale well with the large number of devices of IoT, and are not fast enough to work during time-critical public safety missions. On the other hand, for general IoT services, cloud-based solutions provide unlimited resources for storing and accessing IoT data. However, the cloud may have some implications for sensitive data that are collected for public safety. Therefore, authentication solutions are desired to integrate well into the cloud environment. In this article, we propose cloud-centric, multi-level authentication as a service approach that addresses scalability and time constraints, and demonstrate its effectiveness. We draw future research directions for secure public safety networks in the presence of IoT devices and the cloud.

Security Enhancement for IoT Communications Exposed to Eavesdroppers With Uncertain Locations

The Internet of Things (IoT) depicts a bright future, where any devices having sensorial and computing capabilities can interact with each other. Among all existing technologies, the techniques for the fifth generation (5G) systems are the main driving force for the actualization of IoT concept. However, due to the heterogeneous environment in 5G networks and the broadcast nature of radio propagation, the security assurance against eavesdropping is a vital yet challenging task. In this paper, we focus on the transmission design for secure relay communications in IoT networks, where the communication is exposed to eavesdroppers with unknown number and locations. The randomize-and-forward relay strategy specially designed for secure multi-hop communications is employed in our transmission protocol. First, we consider a single-antenna scenario, where all the devices in the network are equipped with the single antenna. We derive the expression for the secrecy outage probability of the two-hop transmission. Following this, a secrecy-rate-maximization problem subject to a secrecy-outage-probability constraint is formulated. The optimal power allocation and codeword rate design are obtained. Furthermore, we generalize the above analyses to a more generic scenario, where the relay and eavesdroppers are equipped with multiple antennas. Numerical results show that the proper use of relay transmission can enhance the secrecy throughput and extend the secure coverage range.

Mobile Cloud Computing Model and Big Data Analysis for Healthcare Applications

Mobile devices are increasingly becoming an indispensable part of peoples daily life, facilitating to perform a variety of useful tasks. Mobile cloud computing integrates mobile and cloud computing to expand their capabilities and benefits and overcomes their limitations, such as limited memory, CPU power, and battery life. Big data analytics technologies enable extracting value from data having four Vs: volume, variety, velocity, and veracity. This paper discusses networked healthcare and the role of mobile cloud computing and big data analytics in its enablement. The motivation and development of networked healthcare applications and systems is presented along with the adoption of cloud computing in healthcare. A cloudlet-based mobile cloud-computing infrastructure to be used for healthcare big data applications is described. The techniques, tools, and applications of big data analytics are reviewed. Conclusions are drawn concerning the design of networked healthcare systems using big data and mobile cloud-computing technologies. An outlook on networked healthcare is given.

A Real-Time Monitoring System of Industry Carbon Monoxide Based on Wireless Sensor Networks.

Carbon monoxide (CO) burns or explodes at over-standard concentration. Hence, in this paper, a Wifi-based, real-time monitoring of a CO system is proposed for application in the construction industry, in which a sensor measuring node is designed by low-frequency modulation method to acquire CO concentration reliably, and a digital filtering method is adopted for noise filtering. According to the triangulation, the Wifi network is constructed to transmit information and determine the position of nodes. The measured data are displayed on a computer or smart phone by a graphical interface. The experiment shows that the monitoring system obtains excellent accuracy and stability in long-term continuous monitoring.