Chapter 4 Articles
4.11 Outlook on Future IoT Applications
CERP-IoT – Cluster of European Research Projects on the Internet of Things 181
Ovidiu Vermesan SINTEF, Norway, ETP EPoSS
Abstract: Internet of Things technology opens the way towards multi dimensional, context aware, and smart environments. The technology is bridging the real, virtual and digital worlds by using wireless connectivity for energy efficient and environmentally friendly applications and ser-vices and by respecting the security and privacy of individuals and organisations.
1 Introduction
Tackling the challenges that European society and the world will face in developing the “Fu-ture Internet” will require a multidisciplinary approach and coordinated efforts.
Today, there are 36 European Technology Platforms (ETPs), and five Joint Technological Ini-tiatives (JTIs) originated directly from ETPs, covering the most important technological areas.
They connect thousands of European companies, knowledge institutes and policy makers and have facilitated the development of a common vision and research agenda for each of the 36 technology fields they represent.
In the context of “Future Internet” there are 10 ETPs that have become important inter-locutors for the European Commission for the development of strategic research agendas de-fining the technologies required for implementing the future internet.
Figure 4.11-1: European Technology Platforms – IoT technology research and development.
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EPoSS has close links with other ETPs addressing the IoT technology. Coordination meetings have been held with the other Platforms, facilitated by the fact that several industrial partners were members of these Platforms. An agreement was reached on the different core competen-cies, but care was taken to insure a smooth integration among different activities, to avoid missing to cover critical elements for the full integration of planned applications.
Figure 4.11-2: Core competences for IoT provided by ARTEMIS, ENIAC and EPoSS ETPs.
The three ETPs (ARTEMIS, ENIAC and EPoSS) have cooperated in the definition of the Stra-tegic Research Agendas and (for ENIAC and ARTEMIS) of the content of the JTI.
These technology platforms are organized by final applications, but they target different layers as presented in Figure 4.11-2:
xx ENIAC focus is on the development of the Nanoelectronics components, and related equipment, materials and design tools; development of nanoelectronics technologies, de-vices, circuits architectures and modules
x ARTEMIS focus is on system architecture, system design tools and methodologies and software development;
x EPOSS, which is closer to the final application, focuses on the full integration of the elec-tronic smart system, which combines components developed by ENIAC, software and archi-tecture designed by ARTEMIS, with additional electromechanical technologies.
This paper will focus on the activities of EPOSS, which is the European Technology Platforms that is active in the field of Internet of Things and smart systems integration.
The Internet of the Future, or as it’s commonly called, the “Future Internet”, will result from the synergic merging of today’s computer networks with the Internet of Media (IoM), the Internet of Services (IoS) and Internet of Things (IoT) into a common global IT platform.
Complete definitions of these terms have been provided by the Strategic Research Agenda of the CERP-IoT SRA 2009 that is included in this book.
While the current Internet is a collection of rather uniform devices, albeit heterogeneous in some capabilities but very similar for what concerns purpose and properties, the future IoT will exhibit a much higher level of heterogeneity, as totally different objects, in terms of func-tionality, technology and application fields will belong to the same communication environ-ment.
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The IoT as a concept describes a wireless network between objects that would include ad-dressable objects that could be anything from home appliances, food, flowers and pot plants that become connected to the Internet. Some of the things, which are very sensitive to the environment in which they travel, will have sensors attached. This will allow participants to monitor conditions and climate during the entire journey. Under this vision, objects will be able to transport themselves, implement fully automated processes and thus optimise logis-tics; they will be able to harvest the energy they need; they will configure themselves when exposed to a new environment, and show an “intelligent” behaviour when faced with other objects and deal seamlessly with unforeseen circumstances. Finally, at the end of their lifecy-cle, they will manage their own disposal or recycling/remanufacturing, helping to preserve the environment.
In this context the technologies such as nanoelectronics, communications, sensors, smart phones, embedded systems and software together with smart wireless identifiable devices will form the backbone of “Internet of Things” infrastructure allowing new services and enabling new applications.
Those smart wireless identifiable devices will provide the means for the fusion of the real, virtual and digital worlds, creating a map of the physical world within the virtual space by using a high temporal and spatial resolution and combining the characteristics of ubiquitous sensor networks and other wireless identifiable devices, while reacting autonomously to the real world and influencing it by running processes that trigger actions, without direct human intervention.
1.1 ID
As their basic functionality, simple tags/devices provide an ID number wirelessly. The devices require no line-of-sight and can be read as long as the tagged item is within range of the reader. The tags are simple, low cost, disposable, and implemented using polymers, SAW (Surface Acoustic Wave), or low cost silicon technologies. Radio-frequency tags are used to identify animals, track goods within the logistics chain and replace printed bar codes at retail-ers. RFID tags include a chip that typically stores a static number (ID) and an antenna that enables the chip to transmit the stored number to a reader via electromagnetic waves. When the tag comes within range of the appropriate RF reader, the tag is powered by the reader's RF field and transmits its ID to the reader. RFID middleware provides the interface for communi-cation between the interrogator and existing company databases and information manage-ment systems.
1.2 Beyond ID
The development of smart systems implies new devices that go beyond wireless identification and include processing capabilities, sensing/monitoring, larger non-volatile memories and combining multiple standards and multiple communication protocols (NFC, RFID, UWB, Rubee, Zigbee, Wi-Fi, or others) to interconnect with other ubiquitous sensor networks and to implement Real Time Location Systems (RTLS). Applications of wireless identifiable smart systems will go beyond mere identification in many areas such as:
xx Ambient Intelligence and ubiquitous computing
x Hybrid wireless sensor networks that are characterised by modularity, reliability, flexibility, robustness and scalability.
x Systems using different communication protocols
RFID, NFC
ZigBee
6LowPAN
WirelessHART
ISA100.11a
UWB
Rubee
Ultra low power Bluetooth
Wi-Fi
Wi-Max
x Wireless monitoring of different ambient parameters (video, audio, temperature, light, hu-midity, smoke, air quality, radiation, energy, etc)
x Mobile robotic sensor networks.
These developments will enable the development of new context and situation based personal-ised applications and services:
x User context identification
Biometrics
Privacy mode
Attention
Gesture
Posture
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xx Social context
Surrounding people and/or objects/things
Type of group
Link to people and/or objects/things
Net link - Internet of Things
xx Environmental context
Location, position
Time
Condition
Physical data 1.3 Beyond RF
The devices used in the future IoT will employ wireless communications using the frequency spectrum beyond the radio frequency range. The table below present the mapping between the frequency spectrum and the existing standards and protocols that are used for implementing wireless identifiable devices.
Table 4.11-1: Summary of standards used for IoT applications.
Range Frequency
Range Wavelength Frequency Standard
LF Low Frequency 30kHz to 300kHz 10km to 1km
30-50kHz 125/134kHz1 131/450kHz
USID
ISO/IEC 18000-2 IEEE P1902.1/ RuBee ETSI EN 300 330 MF Medium Fre-quency 300kHz to 3MHz 1km to 100m ETSI EN 300 330
HF High Frequency 3MHz to 30MHz 100m to 10m
6.78MHz2 7.4-8.8MHz 13.56MHz
27MHz
ISO/IEC 18000-3 ISO/IEC 15693 ISO/IEC 14443 ISO/IEC 18092/NFC ISO/IEC 10536 EPCglobal EPC HF C1G2 ETSI EN 300 330 VHF Very High Fre-quency 30MHz to
300MHz 10m to 1m 125MHz
UHF Ultra High Fre-quency 300MHz to 3GHz 1m to 10cm
433MHz 840-956MHz
2.45GHz
ISO/IEC 18000-7 ISO/IEC 18000-6 Types A, B. C, D
EPCglobal EPC UHF C1G2 IEEE 802.11
ISO/IEC 18000-4 IEEE 802.15 WPAN IEEE 802.15 WPAN Low Rate
IEEE 802.15 RFID ETSI EN 300 220 ETSI EN 300 440 ETSI EN 302 208 SHF Super High Fre-quency 3GHz to 30GHz 10cm to 1cm 3.1-10,6GHz
5.8GHz 24.125GHz
IEEE 802.15.4a WPAN UWB
ETSI EN 300 440 EHF Extremely High Frequency 30GHz to
300GHz 1cm to 1mm MMID
ETSI EN 300 440 1, 2 According to Annex 9 of the ERC Rec 70-03, inductive RFID Reader systems primarily operate either below 135 kHz or at 6.78 or 13.56 MHz.
The correlated transponder (TRP) data return frequencies reside in the following ranges:
LF Range Transponder Frequencies: fC = < 135 kHz, f TRP = 135 to 148.5 kHz HF Range Transponder Frequencies: fC = 6.78 MHz f TRP = 4.78 to 8.78 MHz
fC = 13.56 MHz f TRP = 11.56 to 15.56 MHz.
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2 Technology
The technological developments that are offering the technology basis for IoT are the expo-nential increase of the processing and storage power of the devices, miniaturisation, ubiqui-tous connectivity and autonomous behaviour and the ability of devices to connect and to sense i.e. the ability to be intelligent. From the technological point of view, in order to realise the vision of the IoT, several technological advances must be carried out by the research commu-nity
The social impact of these three technological trends is the key driver to the Internet of Things.
2.1 Energy
Energy in all its phases of harvesting, conservation and consumption is a key issue in the future. There is a need to research and develop solutions in this area, having as an ulti-mate objective a level of entropy as close as possible to zero. Current technology development is inadequate and existing processing power and energy capacity is too low to cope with future needs.
The development of new and more efficient and compact energy storage sources such as bat-teries, fuel cells, and printed/polymer batteries etc; as well as new energy generation devices coupling energy transmission methods or energy harvesting using energy conversion, will be the key factors for the roll-out of autonomous wireless smart systems.
2.2 Intelligence
The Intelligence of devices, in particular as regards context awareness and inter-machine communication, is considered a high priority for the IoT. This context awareness is strongly related to information received via sensors, corresponding sensor networks and the capabili-ties of localisation, as well as the possibilicapabili-ties to influence via appropriate actuators. Besides this, environmental context identification can also be user related or social. Communication capabilities will have to include multi-standard as well as multi-protocol compatibility.
Furthermore, the development of ultra low power designs for mobile IoT devices and a new class of simple and affordable IoT-centric smart systems will be an enabling factor. In that context the terminology of ultra low power design is a broad one - from high efficiency front-ends, ultra low power processors/microcontroller cores, ultra low power signal processing capabilities, ultra low power sensors to low power base stations. however the intelligence of local IoT nodes will be heavily restricted by size, cost and need to mass-produce in high speed, roll-to-roll manufacturing processes, thus keeping the distributed intelligence on a rather low level and accordingly specific. Processing of accumulated information will take place sepa-rately.
2.3 Communication
Communication, in terms of physical wave transmission and protocols, will be the cornerstone of the novel IoT architecture. Integration of smart devices into the products themselves will allow significant cost savings and increase the eco-friendliness of products. In the future, ap-plication- specific antennae will need to be developed, in order to allow the smooth function-ing of applications and services; those antennae will eventually evolve into smart devices themselves, able to reconfigure themselves, and to adapt to the specific application needs and to their surrounding environment.
2.4 Integration
The integration of chips and antennae into non-standard substrates like textiles and paper, even metal laminates and the development of new substrates, conducting paths and bonding materials adapted to harsh environments and for environmentally friendly disposal will be-come mainstream technologies. RFID inlays with a strap coupling structure will be used to connect the integrated circuit chip and antenna in order to produce a variety of shapes and sizes of labels, instead of direct mounting. Inductive or capacitive coupling of specifically de-signed strap-like antennae will avoid galvanic interconnection and thus increase reliability and allow even faster production processes. The target must physically integrate the RFID structure with the material of the object to be identified, in such a way as to enable the object to physically act as the antenna. This will require ultra-thin structures (< 10 μm) as well as printed electronics, which are both robust and flexible.
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2.5 Interoperability
It is common knowledge that two different devices might not be interoperable, even if they are using the same standard. We define interoperability as the capability of two or more networks, systems, devices, applications, or components to exchange information between them and to use the information so exchanged. Future tags and interrogators/readers must integrate dif-ferent communication standards and protocols that operate at difdif-ferent frequencies and allow different architectures, centralised or distributed, and be able to communicate with other net-works unless and until global, well defined standards emerge. The interoperability issues have to be differentiated at different levels like physical, syntactical, services, devices, functions, the communication layers, radio protocols, frequencies, application and semantics and a holistic approach is required in addressing and solving the interoperability of IoT devices and services at one or several layers.
2.6 Trust and Security
There is a need to have a technically sound solution to guarantee privacy and the security of the customers in order to have a widespread adoption of any object identification system.
While in many cases the security has been done as an add-on feature, it seems that the public acceptance for the IoT will happen only when strong security solutions are in place. Long term security protection is a necessity, one which takes into account the product lifecycle.
3 Applications
Under the current vision, the IoT will have an even more fundamental impact on our society than the impact of the Internet & mobile technologies or even today’s acclaimed “Information Era”. The future ubiquitous IoT will make it possible for virtually any object around us to ex-change information and work in synergy with each other in order to dramatically increase the quality of our lives.
We will be wearing smart clothes, made of smart fabrics, which will interact with the Climate Control of our cars and homes, selecting the most suitable temperature and humidity levels for the person concerned; smart books of the future will interact with the entertainment sys-tem, such as a multi-dimensional, multi-media Hypertext bringing up on the TV screen addi-tional information on the topic we are reading in real time; and so on.
Many application areas are foreseen for the future IoT and they range from automatic meter reading, home automation, industrial monitoring, military, automotive, aeronautics, consum-ers (Pconsum-ersonal Area Networks), retail, logistics (shipping tracking storing, managing supply chain), food traceability, agriculture, environment and energy monitoring to healthcare with pharmaceutical or public and private safety and security.
Initially, RFID technology was studied in order to replace the bar code in retail. While cur-rently tested in a variety of pilot projects, the adoption of RFID has been slowed down by sev-eral factors, such as the much higher cost of an RFID tag over bar code labels, necessary tech-nological improvements to overcome attenuation by metals and liquid items, and privacy cerns. The electronic tags offer multiple benefits over the bar code for both retailers and con-sumers. The retailers will have item identification which is integrated from the producer, through to the storage, the shop floor, cashier and check out levels. RFID tags will also ensure enhanced theft protection. The shelves will be able to issue refill orders automatically, and the history of any item from production to the shelf can be stored offering increased quality man-agement along the supply chain. For the consumers this offers the possibility to avoid long check-out queues, and having the product history available will improve food safety and pro-tect consumer rights in case of faulty or tainted products. RFID tags will also prove a great tool to fighting counterfeit goods.
Another important application field is logistics. Today, RFID technology is mainly being used for identification purposes. In the future, using the autonomous routing of data packets in today's internet as a model, the next evolution step will be an integrated automation and indi-vidualization of material flows. For that purpose, logistics objects will be equipped with RFID tags which contain not only identification attributes but also information regarding the desti-nation, routing, priority, and processing steps of the object. The logistics environment will be composed of standardized modules (e.g., conveyors, junctions) with an integrated intelligence based on powerful microcontrollers. This will allow for intelligent communication between logistics objects and other modules; via this set up, actions of the different modules and the logistics objects can be negotiated between themselves. A complex central material flow com-puter therefore becomes obsolete.
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As a result, this allows for a completely decentralized material flow. Changes in topology, rout-ing order, etc, will not require costly adaptation work – the system recognizes them on its own. This increases not only efficiency, flexibility and robustness of material flow systems but also decreases costs and energy needs through the better usage of existing capacities. In the end, logistics objects will find their way through the production site, to the customer and back to recycling facilities independently – just like the data packets in today's internet.
Advanced RFID technologies will also reshape pharmaceutical and medical applications. Elec-tronic tags will carry information related to drug use making it easier for the customer to be acquainted with adverse effects and optimal dosage. RFID enhanced pharmaceutical packag-ing can carry not just all related information, but also control medical compliance. Finally, smart biodegradable dust embedded inside pills can interact with the intelligent tag on the box allowing the latter to monitor the use and abuse of medicine and inform the pharmacist when a new supply is needed. The smart dust in pills could also detect incompatible drug mixtures, and in case a dangerous mix is detected the medicament carrier could refuse to activate or release the active substances. The combination of sensors, RFID and NFC (near field commu-nication) will allow a significantly improved measurement and monitoring methods of vital functions (blood pressure, blood glucose etc). The enormous advantages are to be seen on the one hand side in prevention and easy monitoring (and having therefore an essential impact on our social system) and on the other side in case of accidents and ad hoc diagnosis. Especially passive RFID could act as communication as well as power interface for medical implants.
Implantable wireless identifiable devices could be used to store health records that could save a patient's life in emergency situations especially for people with diabetes, cancer, coronary heart disease, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, cognitive impairments, seizure disorders and Alzheimer's, and people with complex medical device implants, such as pace-makers, stents, joint replacements and organ transplants and have particular use in an emer-gency room when the patient is, unconscious and unable to communicate. Edible, biodegrad-able chips that can be introduced into the body and used for guided action. Paraplegic persons could have muscular stimuli delivered via an implanted radio-controlled electrical simulation system in order to restore movement functions.
In this context security, privacy and safety by design will be a first priority for the implantable wireless identifiable devices development and use.
RFID and wireless identifiable systems will benefit the aeronautics industry, helping it to op-timise its existing processes, improve reliability, offer new services and realise the advantages of rationalisation.
Dynamic monitoring systems will employ RFID and wireless identifiable sensing devices to provide input during the life-cycle phases of production, operation and disposal of aircraft and components. This will require robust RFID and sensor technologies. These will need to have in-service lives of 25-30 years, and be able to operate in harsh environments (for example, with large variations in temperature, humidity, material use, and corrosion).
The wireless identifiable devices attached to the aircraft components and parts can be updated with warranty and repair information to provide a virtual pedigree on each device, and these devices can help ensure that manufacturers comply with regulatory mandates for disposal of toxic substances (products that contain lead, mercury and other hazardous substances - Re-striction on Hazardous Substances - RoHS directive). This will result in the development of a complete systematic scheme to assess the environmental impact of the products throughout their entire life cycle, targeting design, procurement, manufacturing, transport, in-service operations, including maintenance, aircraft end of life and recycling (from cradle to grave).
Wireless identifiable systems will be developed using RFID tags correlated with luggage in containers, RFID tags for tracking passengers/luggage/cargo, RFID tags and sensors on con-veyors.
Applications in the automotive industry include the use of RFID devices to monitor and report everything from pressure in tyres to proximity of other vehicles. RFID technology is used to streamline vehicle production, improve logistics, increase quality control and improve cus-tomer service. The devices attached to parts contain information related to the name of the manufacturer and when and where the product was made, its serial number, type, product code, and precise location in the facility at that moment. RFID technology provides real-time data in the manufacturing process and maintenance and offers a new way of managing recalls more effectively.
The use of wireless identifiable devices helps factory workers to gain insights into where every-thing is so that it is possible to speed assembly processes and locate cars or components in a