Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) is growing prominence as an automated identification technology able to turn everyday objects into an ad-hoc network of mobile nodes; which can track, trigger events and perform actions. Energy scavenging and backscattering techniques are the foundation of low-cost identification solutions for RFIDs. The performance of these two techniques, being wireless, significantly depends on the underlying communication architecture and affect the overall operation of RFID systems. Current RFID systems are based on a centralized master-slave architecture hindering the overall performance, scalability and usability. Several proposals have aimed at improving performance at the physical, medium access, and application layers. Although such proposals achieve significant performance gains in terms of reading range and reading rates, they require significant changes in both software and hardware architectures while bounded by inherited performance bottlenecks, i.e., master-slave architecture. Performance constraints need to be addressed in order to further facilitate RFID adoption; especially for ultra large scale applications such as Internet of Things. A natural approach is re-thinking the distributed communication architecture of RFID systems; wherein control and data tasks are decoupled from a central authority and dispersed amongst spatially distributed low-power wireless devices. The distributed architecture, by adjusting the tag's reflectivity coefficient creates micro interrogation zones which are interrogated in parallel. We investigate this promising direction in order to significantly increase the reading rates and reading range of RFID tags, and also to enhance overall system scalability. We address the problems of energy-efficient tag singulations, optimal power control schemes and load aware reader placement algorithms for RFID systems. We modify the conventional set cover approximation algorithm to determine the minimal number of RFID readers with minimal overlapping and balanced number of tags amongst them. We show, via extensive simulation analysis, that our approach has the potential to increase the performance of RFID technology and hence, to enable RFID systems for ultra large scale applications. / Thesis (Ph.D, Computing) -- Queen's University, 2011-08-30 23:41:02.937

Evolving smart infrastructures requires both content distribution as well as event notification and processing support. Content Centric Networking (CCN), built around named data, is a clean slate network architecture for supporting future applications. Due to its focus on content distribution, CCN does not inherently support Publish-Subscribe event notification, a fundamental building block in computer mediated systems and a critical requirement for smart infrastructure applications. While semantics of content distribution and event notification require different support systems from the underlying network infrastructure, content distribution and event notification can still be united by leveraging similarities in the routing infrastructure. Our Extended-CCN architecture(X-CCN) realizes this to provide lightweight content based pub-sub service at the network layer, which is used to provide advanced publish/subscribe services at higher layers. Light weight content based pub-sub and CCN communication at network layer along with advanced publish/subscribe together are presented as data fabric for the smart infrastructures applications.

The future Internet will be an IPv6 network interconnecting traditional computers and a large number of smart object or networks such as Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). This Internet of Things (IoT) will be the foundation of many services and our daily life will depend on its availability and reliable operations. Therefore, among many other issues, the challenge of implementing secure communication in the IoT must be addressed. The traditional Internet has established and tested ways of securing networks. The IoT is a hybrid network of the Internet and resource-constrained networks, and it is therefore reasonable to explore the options of using security mechanisms standardized for the Internet in the IoT. The IoT requires multi-facet security solutions where the communication is secured with confidentiality, integrity, and authentication services; the network is protected against intrusions and disruptions; and the data inside a sensor node is stored in an encrypted form. Using standardized mechanisms, communication in the IoT can be secured at different layers: at the link layer with IEEE 802.15.4 security, at the network layer with IP security (IPsec), and at the transport layer with Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS). Even when the IoT is secured with encryption and authentication, sensor nodes are exposed to wireless attacks both from inside the WSN and from the Internet. Hence an Intrusion Detection System (IDS) and firewalls are needed. Since the nodes inside WSNs can be captured and cloned, protection of stored data is also important. This thesis has three main contributions. (i) It enables secure communication in the IoT using lightweight compressed yet standard compliant IPsec, DTLS, and IEEE 802.15.4 link layer security; and it discusses the pros and cons of each of these solutions. The proposed security solutions are implemented and evaluated in an IoT setup on real hardware. (ii) This thesis also presents the design, implementation, and evaluation of a novel IDS for the IoT. (iii) Last but not least, it also provides mechanisms to protect data inside constrained nodes. The experimental evaluation of the different solutions shows that the resource-constrained devices in the IoT can be secured with IPsec, DTLS, and 802.15.4 security; can be efficiently protected against intrusions; and the proposed combined secure storage and communication mechanisms can significantly reduce the security-related operations and energy consumption.

This study focuses on the Internet of Things (IoT) gateway; a common middleware solution that bridges the gap between physical sensors and devices to internet applications. There is a shown interest in understanding the characteristics of different types of gateway architectures both from the research field and the industry, particularly the IT-consulting firm Attentec in Linköping, Sweden. A study has also been made on the open source C library libuv, used in the common web runtime engine NodeJS. The library has been used to study how asynchronous I/O operations can be used to improve the IoT gateway performance. A set of three general architectural approaches are identified. Common internal and external properties are identified based on state-of-the-art gateway implementations found in the industry. All of these properties are taken into account when a general gateway implementation is developed that is proposed to mimic any architectural level implementation of the gateway. A set of performance tests are conducted on the implementation to observe how different configurations of the gateway affect throughput and response time of data transmitted from simulated devices. The results show that the properties of the gateway do affect throughput and response time significantly and that libuv overall helps implement one of the best performing gateway configurations.

L'internet des Objets (IoT) est habituellement présenté comme l'ensemble d'objets interconnectés à travers un réseau qui est, en pratique, Internet. Or, il existe beaucoup de cas où la connectivité est intermittente à cause des interfaces radio courte-portées et des contraintes d'économie d'énergie. L'architecture de réseautage tolérant les délais (DTN) ainsi que le Bundle Protocole (BP) sont considérés comme des solutions viables pour résoudre ce genre de challenges grâce au mécanisme store-carry-and-forward. Cette thèse vise à fournir des supports de programmation adaptés autant à l'IoT qu'au contexte DTN. Dans ce but, les challenges relevant du DTN et de l'IoT (DT-IoT) sont étudiés et quelques principes de design logiciels sont proposés. Ces principes ont pour but d'optimiser la réactivité et l'efficacité des applications ayant pour cible un contexte DT- IoT. La première contribution est la définition d'un support de programmation orienté ressources, nommé BoaP. Ce support fournit un protocole de requête/réponse grâce à une transposition de CoAP (Contrained Application Protocol). Cette transposition est composée d'ajustements fondamentaux et d'améliorations pour utiliser BP en tant que couche de transport. BoaP a été implémenté et testée dans un petit réseau physique. Une méthode pour évaluer des intergiciels dans des réseaux DTNs est présentée. Un outil implémentant cette méthode a été développé. Il repose sur une plateforme de virtualisation qui simule les contacts réseaux tout en émulant les nœuds du réseau. Cet outil a été utilisé pour exécuter des expériences pour évaluer la validité de BoaP. Enfin, un autre support de programmation est examiné. Celui-ci adopte une approche orientée service et respecte les contraintes REST (Representational State Transfer). Il se repose sur BoaP a été créé avec l'IoT en tête et est adapté à l’environnement DTN. La découverte exploite une interface de publications/souscriptions. Les descripteurs de services contiennent des champs spécifiques pour informer de la disponibilité de leur fournisseurs. / The Internet of Things (IoT) is usually presented as a set of THINGS interconnected through a network that is, in practice, Internet. However, there exist many contexts in which the connectivity is intermittent due to short-range wireless communication means or energy constraints. The Delay Tolerant Networking (DTN) architecture and the Bundle Protocol (BP) are known to overcome this communication challenge as they provide communication means by relying on a store-carry-and- forward mechanism. This thesis aims to provide programming supports adapted to both IoT and DTN contexts. For this, both DTN and IoT (DT-IoT) challenges are studied and several design principles are proposed. These principles aim to optimize reactivity and efficiency of applications targeting the DT-IoT context. The first contribution is the definition of a resource-oriented programming support, named BoaP, to enable a DT-IoT. It provides a protocol based on request/response thanks to a transposition of CoAP (Contrained Application Protocol). This transposition consists of fundamental adjustments and enhancements to use BP as the underlying transport protocol. BoaP has been implemented and tested in a small physical network. A method to evaluate middleware systems in DTNs is presented. A tool implementing this method has been developed. It relies on a virtualization platform that simulates network contacts and emulates network devices. This tool was used to run experimentations that assessed the validity of BoaP. Finally, another programming support is investigated. It follows a service-oriented approach and respects REST (Representational State Transfer) constraints. It is built on top of BoaP with IoT in mind and is adapted to DTN environments. Its discovery/advertisement exploits a publish/subscribe interface. Service descriptors contain specific fields to inform on the availability of the service providers. %Finally, requests are extended with some options to enforce conditions on geographic or time context.

The home is a physical place that provides isolation, comfort, access to essential needs on a daily basis, and it has a strong impact on a person’s life. Computational and media technologies (digital and electronic objects, devices, protocols, virtual spaces, telematics, interaction, social media, and cyberspace) become an important and vital part of the home ecology, although they have the ability to transform the domestic experience and the understanding of what a personal space is. For this reason, this work investigates the domestication of computational media technology; how objects, systems, and devices become part of the personal and intimate space of the inhabitants. To better understand the taming process, the home is studied and analysed from a range of perspectives (philosophy, sociology, architecture, art, and technology), and a methodological process is proposed for critically exploring the topic with the development of artworks, designs, and computational systems. The methodology of this research, which consists of five points (Context, Media Layers, Invisible Matter, Diffusion, and Symbiosis), suggests a procedure that is fundamental to the development and critical integration of the computationally enhanced home. Accordingly, the home is observed as an ecological system that contains numerous properties (organic, inorganic, hybrid, virtual, augmented), and is viewed on a range of scales (micro, meso and macro). To identify the “choreographies” that are formed between these properties and scales, case studies have been developed to suggest, provoke, and speculate concepts, ideas, and alternative realities of the home. Part of the speculation proposes the concept of DomoNovus (the “New Home”), where technological ubiquity supports the inhabitants’ awareness, perception, and imagination. DomoNovus intends to challenge our understanding of the domestic environment, and demonstrates a range of possibilities, threats, and limitations in relation to the future of home. This thesis, thus, presents methods, experiments, and speculations that intend to inform and inspire, as well as define creative and imaginative dimensions of the computationally-enhanced home, suggesting directions for the further understanding of the domestic life.

Nos recherches se situent à l'intersection des sphères académiques et industrielles et des organismes de standardisation pour permettre la mise en place d'un Internet des objets (IoT) sécurisé et efficace.Nous étudions des solutions de sécurisation en parcourant les standards de manière ascendante.En premier lieu, nous constatons que l'accélération matérielle des algorithmes de cryptographie est nécessaire pour les équipements formant l'IoT car il permet une reduction de deux ordres de grandeur des durées de calcul.Le surcoût des opérations cryptographiques n'est cependant qu'un des facteurs qui gouverne la performance globale dans le contexte des systèmes en réseau.Nous montrons à travers l'implementation d'applications pratiques que les dispositifs de sécurité de la couche 2 n'augmentent que de quelques pourcents la dépense énergétique totale.Ceci est acceptable, même pour les systèmes les plus contraints, comme ceux utilisant la recuperation d'énergie ambiante.La sécurité de la couche 2 contraint de faire confiance à chacun des noeuds du chemin de communication comprenant potentiellement des éléments malveillants, nous devons donc protéger le flux de données par un mécanisme de bout en bout.Nous étudions le protocole DTLS, standard de l'IETF pour la sécurité de l'IoT.Nous contribuons aux discussions sur l'intérêt de DTLS dans les environnements contraints, à la fois dans les organismes de standardisation et de recherche.Nous évaluons DTLS de manière étendue avec différents réseaux à cycle d'activité ou duty cycle au travers d'expérimentations, d'émulations et d'analyses.De manière surprenante, nos résultats démontrent la très faible performance de DTLS dans ces réseaux où l'efficacité énergétique est primordiale.Comme un client et un serveur DTLS échangent beaucoup de paquets de signalisation, la connection DTLS prends entre quelques secondes et quelques dizaines de secondes, ceci pour plusieurs des protocoles étudiés.DTLS a été conçu pour les communications de bout en bout dans l'Internet classique, contrairement au nouveau protocol CoAP qui lui est destiné à des machines contraintes en facilitant le traffic asynchrone, les communications de groupe et le besoin de stockage intermédiaire.Donc, en plus du problème de performance, l'architecture de sécurité basée sur DTLS n'est pas capable de répondre aux contraintes de ces dispositifs et CoAP devient inutilisable.Nous proposons une architecture qui s'appuie à la fois sur une approche centrée sur le contenu et sur la notion classique de connection.L'échange des clefs est fait à travers des canaux sécurisés établis par DTLS, mais la notion d'états entre les entités de communication est supprimée grâce au concept d'objets sécurisés.Le mécanisme proposé resiste aux attaques par rejeu en regroupant les capacités de controle d'accès avec les en-tetes de communication CoAP.OSCAR, notre architecture à objets sécurisés, supporte intrinsèquement les communications de groupe et le stockage intermédiaire, sans perturber le fonctionnement à cycle d'activité de la radio des équipements contraintes.Les idées d'OSCAR sont discutés par les groupes de standardisation de l'Internet en vue d'être intégrées dans les standards à venir. / Our research explores the intersection of academic, industrial and standardization spheres to enable secure and energy-efficient Internet of Things. We study standards-based security solutions bottom-up and first observe that hardware accelerated cryptography is a necessity for Internet of Things devices, as it leads to reductions in computational time, as much as two orders of magnitude. Overhead of the cryptographic primitives is, however, only one of the factors that influences the overall performance in the networking context. To understand the energy - security tradeoffs, we evaluate the effect of link-layer security features on the performance of Wireless Sensors Networks. We show that for practical applications and implementations, link-layer security features introduce a negligible degradation on the order of a couple of percent, that is often acceptable even for the most energy-constrained systems, such as those based on harvesting.Because link-layer security puts trust on each node on the communication path consisted of multiple, potentially compromised devices, we protect the information flows by end-to-end security mechanisms. We therefore consider Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS) protocol, the IETF standard for end-to-end security in the Internet of Things and contribute to the debate in both the standardization and research communities on the applicability of DTLS to constrained environments. We provide a thorough performance evaluation of DTLS in different duty-cycled networks through real-world experimentation, emulation and analysis. Our results demonstrate surprisingly poor performance of DTLS in networks where energy efficiency is paramount. Because a DTLS client and a server exchange many signaling packets, the DTLS handshake takes between a handful of seconds and several tens of seconds, with similar results for different duty cycling protocols.But apart from its performance issues, DTLS was designed for point-to-point communication dominant in the traditional Internet. The novel Constrained Ap- plication Protocol (CoAP) was tailored for constrained devices by facilitating asynchronous application traffic, group communication and absolute need for caching. The security architecture based on DTLS is, however, not able to keep up and advanced features of CoAP simply become futile when used in conjunction with DTLS. We propose an architecture that leverages the security concepts both from content-centric and traditional connection-oriented approaches. We rely on secure channels established by means of DTLS for key exchange, but we get rid of the notion of “state” among communicating entities by leveraging the concept of object security. We provide a mechanism to protect from replay attacks by coupling the capability-based access control with network communication and CoAP header. OSCAR, our object-based security architecture, intrinsically supports caching and multicast, and does not affect the radio duty-cycling operation of constrained devices. Ideas from OSCAR have already found their way towards the Internet standards and are heavily discussed as potential solutions for standardization.

Background Wearable technology, which is a part of the Internet of Things (IoT), appears to be an upcoming trend with increasing importance within the business world. Nevertheless, no clear business model for companies working with wearables had been defined yet taking the influences wearables have on businesses and especially their value proposition into consideration. Purpose The purpose of this thesis is to offer input to the lack of existing literature within business models and wearables technology. The aim is to unfold a general business model that can be used within wearable companies/IoT businesses and show the influence these technologies have on them. Methodology In order to conduct an empirical research a multiple case study has been conducted, based on semi-structured interviews with eight companies, which core business consists out of wearable technology. The frameworks on business models by Gassmann et al (2014) and Osterwalder and Pigneur (2010) serve as the basis for this study and its analysis, which is based on a grounded theory approach. Results It appears that a great amount of similarities can be found through the cross-case analysis between the cases. This makes the construction of a new business model possible. The unfolded model gives also a new contribution to the theory of Hui (2014) regarding a new area of value creation and value capture within IoT businesses.

Um dos principais desafios de pesquisa na UbiComp consiste em fornecer mecanismos para a ciência de contexto que promovam o desenvolvimento de aplicações que reajam de acordo com a dinâmica do ambiente de interesse do usuário. Para manter o conhecimento a respeito desse ambiente, a área da UbiComp pressupõe a utilização de informações produzidas e disponibilizadas em diferentes localizações, o tempo todo. Nesse sentido, os recentes avanços na área da Internet das Coisas (IoT) têm proporcionado uma crescente disponibilidade de sensores conectados em rede, os quais são potenciais produtores de informações contextuais do ambiente para aplicações ubíquas. Com essa motivação, nessa tese é apresentado o COIOT, um middleware para Internet das Coisas concebido com o objetivo de gerenciar a coleta e o processamento das informações contextuais do ambiente físico, bem como a atuação remota sobre o mesmo. O COIOT foi idealizado considerando os trabalhos previamente desenvolvidos pelo grupo de pesquisa GPPD (Grupo de Processamento Paralelo e Distribuído) da UFRGS, particularmente o middleware EXEHDA (Execution Environment for Highly Distributed Applications). Na concepção do COIOT foi adotada uma abordagem distribuída de processamento de contexto que contempla tanto as premissas da IoT quanto as demandas das aplicações da UbiComp. A arquitetura proposta também contempla o gerenciamento de eventos distribuídos através de regras e triggers para tratar as mudanças de estados dos contextos de interesse. Além disso, a arquitetura proposta gerencia outros aspectos importantes nos cenários da IoT, como o tratamento da interoperabilidade, da heterogeneidade, apoio ao controle da escalabilidade e descoberta de recursos. As principais contribuições desta tese são: (i) a concepção de uma arquitetura para IoT capaz de realizar de forma distribuída tanto a coleta e processamento das informações contextuais, como a atuação remota no meio a fim de atender as aplicações da UbiComp e, (ii) a proposição de um modelo de processamento de eventos distribuídos adequado aos cenários da IoT. Para avaliar a arquitetura do COIOT foram realizados dois estudos de caso na área da agricultura. O primeiro estudo de caso foi desenvolvido em ambiente de produção a partir de demandas de pesquisadores da área da agricultura, particularmente da análise de sementes. Já o segundo estudo de caso teve como cenário de testes ambientes da viticultura de precisão. / One of the main research challenges in UbiComp is to provide mechanisms for context-aware to promote the development of applications that react according to the dynamics of user interest environment. To keep the knowledge of this environment, the area of UbiComp presupposes the use of information produced and made available in different locations, all the time. In this sense, the recent advances in the field of Internet of Things (IoT) have provided an increasing availability of sensors and actuators networked. These sensors are potential producers of contextual information. With this motivation, this thesis is presented the CoIoT, a middleware for Internet of Things (IoT) designed in order to manage the collect and processing of contextual information of the physical environment as well as remote actuation on it. The CoIoT was designed considering the work previously developed by the research group GPPD (Parallel Processing Group and distributed) of UFRGS, particularly middleware EXEHDA (Execution Environment for Highly Distributed Applications). In designing the CoIoT it was adopted a distributed approach of context processing that includes both the principles of IoT as the demands of the applications of UbiComp. The proposed architecture also includes rules based and triggers mechanisms to deal with events that characterize the changes of states of the contexts of interest. In addition, the proposed architecture manages other important aspects of IoT scenarios such as the treatment of interoperability, heterogeneity, support the control of scalability and resource discovery. Until now, the central contributions of this thesis include: (i) the design of an architecture for IoT able to perform distributed way both the collect and processing of contextual information, such as remote actuation in the environment in order to meet UbiComp applications and, (ii) the proposition of a distributed event processing model appropriate to the IoT scenarios. In order to evaluate the CoIoT architecture, two case studies were carried out in the area of agriculture. The first case study was developed in a production environment based on the demands of agricultural researchers, particularly seed analysis. On the other hand, the second case study was based on precision testing of viticulture environments.

IoT is a rapidly growing area with products in the consumer, commercial and industrial market. Collecting data with multiple small and often battery-powered devices sets new challenges for both security and communication. There has been a distinct lack of a IoT specific communication protocols. The industry has had to use bulky interfaces not suitable for resource-constrained devices. MQTT is a standardised communication protocol made for the IoT industry. MQTT does however not have built-in security and it is up to the developers to implement a suitable security countermeasure. To evaluate how different security countermeasures impact MQTT in complexity, current consumption and security the following research questions are answered. How do you derive a measurement from the SEF that can be compared with a current consumption measurement? Which level of security, according to the SEF, will RSA, AES and TLS provide to MQTT when publishing a message to a broker? What level of complexity is added to MQTT when using chosen security countermeasure? Which of the analysed security countermeasure upholds an adequate security level while also having a low current consumption? To answer the above research questions an experiment approach has been used. Implementations of TLS, RSA and AES have been evaluated to measure how they affect the security level and current consumption of an MQTT publication, compared to no security countermeasures at all.Both RSA and AES had the same security level, but the current consumption for RSA was four times higher. The experiment showed that the security level is significantly higher for TLS, while it also has the highest current consumption. The security countermeasure evaluated differs greatly. TLS provides complete protections, while RSA and AES lacks authentication and does not ensure integrity and non-repudiation.Even if the current consumption for TLS is higher, the security it provides make it unreasonable to recommend any of the other security countermeasure implementations.