Recent developments and technological advancements in wireless communication, MicroElectroMechanical Systems (MEMS) technology and integrated circuits has enabled low-power, intelligent, miniaturized, invasive/non-invasive micro and nano-technology sensor nodes strategically placed in or around the human body to be used in various applications, such as personal health monitoring. This exciting new area of research is called Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) and leverages the emerging IEEE 802.15.6 and IEEE 802.15.4j standards, specifically standardized for medical WBANs. The aim of WBANs is to simplify and improve speed, accuracy, and reliability of communication of sensors/actuators within, on, and in the immediate proximity of a human body. The vast scope of challenges associated with WBANs has led to numerous publications. In this paper, we survey the current state-of-art of WBANs based on the latest standards and publications. Open issues and challenges within each area are also explored as a source of inspiration towards future developments in WBANs.

Wireless Body Area Networks: A Survey

The Internet of Things (IoT) envisages a future in which digital and physical things or objects (e.g., smartphones, TVs, cars) can be connected by means of suitable information and communication technologies, to enable a range of applications and services. The IoT’s characteristics, including an ultra-large-scale network of things, device and network level heterogeneity, and large numbers of events generated spontaneously by these things, will make development of the diverse applications and services a very challenging task. In general, middleware can ease a development process by integrating heterogeneous computing and communications devices, and supporting interoperability within the diverse applications and services. Recently, there have been a number of proposals for IoT middleware. These proposals mostly addressed wireless sensor networks (WSNs), a key component of IoT, but do not consider RF identification (RFID), machine-to-machine (M2M) communications, and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA), other three core elements in the IoT vision. In this paper, we outline a set of requirements for IoT middleware, and present a comprehensive review of the existing middleware solutions against those requirements. In addition, open research issues, challenges, and future research directions are highlighted.

/pdf/middleware-for-internet-of-things-a-survey-5b3i33k9fm.pdf

Middleware for Internet of Things: A Survey

The concept of Internet of Things (IOT), which is already at our front doors, is that every object in the Internet infrastructure (II) is interconnected into a global dynamic expanding network. Sensors and smart objects are beside classical computing devices key parties of the IOT. We can already exploit the benefits of the IOT by using various weareables or smart phones which are full of diverse sensors and actuators and are connected to the II via GPRS or Wi-Fi. Since sensors are a key part of IOT, thus are wireless sensor networks (WSN). Researchers are already working on new techniques and efficient approaches on how to integrate WSN better into the IOT environment. One aspect of it is the security aspect of the integration. Recently, Turkanovic et?al.'s proposed a highly efficient and novel user authentication and key agreement scheme (UAKAS) for heterogeneous WSN (HWSN) which was adapted to the IOT notion. Their scheme presented a novel approach where a user from the IOT can authenticate with a specific sensor node from the HWSN without having to communicate with a gateway node. Moreover their scheme is highly efficient since it is based on a simple symmetric cryptosystem. Unfortunately we have found that Turkanovic et?al.'s scheme has some security shortcomings and is susceptible to some cryptographic attacks. This paper focuses on overcoming the security weaknesses of Turkanovic et?al.'s scheme, by proposing a new and improved UAKAS. The proposed scheme enables the same functionality but improves the security level and enables the HWSN to dynamically grow without influencing any party involved in the UAKAS. The results of security analysis by BAN-logic and AVISPA tools confirm the security properties of the proposed scheme.

An efficient user authentication and key agreement scheme for heterogeneous wireless sensor network tailored for the Internet of Things environment

An integrated system includes a system user interface (SUI) that provides an iconic, at-a-glance representation of integrated security system status. The SUI is for use across all client devices including mobile or cellular telephones, a mobile portal, a web portal, and a touchscreen device. The SUI includes a number of display elements presented across all types of client devices for monitoring status of the integrated security system. The display elements of the SUI include an orb icon, text summary, security button, device warnings, system warnings, interesting sensors, and quiet sensors. The SUI thus provides system status summary information agnostically across all clients. Additionally, the SUI provides consistent iconography, terminology, and display rules across all clients as well as consistent sensor and system detail across clients.

Cross-client sensor user interface in an integrated security network

Internet of Things (IoT) has been growing rapidly due to recent advancements in communications and sensor technologies. Meanwhile, with this revolutionary transformation, researchers, implementers, deployers, and users are faced with many challenges. IoT is a complicated, crowded, and complex field; there are various types of devices, protocols, communication channels, architectures, middleware, and more. Standardization efforts are plenty, and this chaos will continue for quite some time. What is clear, on the other hand, is that IoT deployments are increasing with accelerating speed, and this trend will not stop in the near future. As the field grows in numbers and heterogeneity, “intelligence” becomes a focal point in IoT. Since data now becomes “big data,” understanding, learning, and reasoning with big data is paramount for the future success of IoT. One of the major problems in the path to intelligent IoT is understanding “context,” or making sense of the environment, situation, or status using data from sensors, and then acting accordingly in autonomous ways. This is called “context-aware computing,” and it now requires both sensing and, increasingly, learning, as IoT systems get more data and better learning from this big data. In this survey, we review the field, first, from a historical perspective, covering ubiquitous and pervasive computing, ambient intelligence, and wireless sensor networks, and then, move to context-aware computing studies. Finally, we review learning and big data studies related to IoT. We also identify the open issues and provide an insight for future study areas for IoT researchers.

Context-Aware Computing, Learning, and Big Data in Internet of Things: A Survey

Body Area Networks (BANs) are an emerging area of wireless personal communications. The IEEE 802.15.6 working group aims to develop a communications standard optimised for low power devices operating on, in or around the human body. IEEE 802.15.6 specifically targets low power medical application areas. The IEEE 802.15.6 draft defines two main channel access modes; contention based and contention free. This paper examines the energy lifetime performance of contention free access and in particular of periodic scheduled allocations. This paper presents an overview of the IEEE 802.15.6 and an analytical model for estimating the device lifetime. The analysis determines the maximum device lifetime for a range of scheduled allocations. It also shows that the higher the data rate of frame transfers the longer the device lifetime. Finally, the energy savings provided by block transfers are quantified and compared to immediately acknowledged alternatives.

An energy analysis of IEEE 802.15.6 scheduled access modes

Medical body area networks will employ a range of implantable and body worn devices to support a wide range of applications with diverse QoS requirements The IEEE 802156 working group is developing a communications standard for low power devices operating on, in and around the body and medical devices are a key application area of the standard The ISO/IEEE 11073 standard addresses medical device interoperability and specifies the required QoS for medical applications

/pdf/an-energy-analysis-of-ieee-802-15-6-scheduled-access-modes-4g8gecqhsj.pdf

An Energy Analysis of IEEE 802.15.6 Scheduled Access Modes for Medical Applications

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) increasingly enable the interaction of the physical world with services, which may be located across the Internet from the sensing network. Cloud services and big data approaches may be used to store and analyse this data to improve scalability and availability, which will be required for the billions of devices envisaged in the Internet of Things (IoT). This potential of WSNs is limited by the relatively low number deployed and the difficulties imposed by their heterogeneous nature and limited (or proprietary) development environments and interfaces. This paper proposes a set of requirements for achieving a pervasive, integrated information system of WSNs and associated services. It also presents an architecture which provides a set of abstractions for the different types of sensors and services, enabling them to take advantage of Big Data and cloud technologies and which is termed holistic as it caters for the data flow from sensors through to services. The architecture has been designed for implementation on a resource constrained node and to be extensible to server environments, shown in this paper where we present a 'C' implementation of the core architecture, including services on Linux and Contiki (using the Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP)) and a Linux service to integrate with the Hadoop HBase data store.

/pdf/a-holistic-architecture-for-the-internet-of-things-sensing-2trcg335hh.pdf

A holistic architecture for the internet of things, sensing services and big data

In one aspect, a system capable of performing network address changes is provided. The system comprises a network interconnecting a plurality of hosts, a mobile device connected to the network, the mobile device associated with a first network address corresponding to a first network location of the mobile device on the network, a first host connected to the network, and a mobile handler capable of communicating with the mobile device and the host over the network. Wherein the mobile handler is configured to receive a change of address request from the mobile device, the change of address request including a second network address corresponding to a second network location of the mobile device on the network, the mobile handler configured to notify the first host of the change of address request, the notification including the second network address, and wherein the first host is adapted to receive the notification and to initiate a connection with the mobile device at the second network address, wherein a communication path of the connection does not include the mobile handler.

Methods and apparatus for network address change for mobile devices

A system and method for automatically and dynamically initiating and establishing secure connections between a Server and a Client using a session control server (SCS). Both the Server and the Client are connected to an untrusted network (such as the Internet) through a Network Address Translator or Translation (NAT) router or a firewall. The SCS, independently trusted by both the Server and the Client, brokers the required connection parameters to establish a secure connection between the Server and the Client. The system and method does not require any user configuration on the Client and eliminates the need for the Server to accept explicit connection requests or packets from the Client, thereby allowing the Server firewall to always remain closed to all inbound traffic.

System and method for automatically initiating and dynamically establishing secure internet connections between a fire-walled server and a fire-walled client

David Tracey

Papers

An energy analysis of IEEE 802.15.6 scheduled access modes

An Energy Analysis of IEEE 802.15.6 Scheduled Access Modes for Medical Applications

A holistic architecture for the internet of things, sensing services and big data

Methods and apparatus for network address change for mobile devices

System and method for automatically initiating and dynamically establishing secure internet connections between a fire-walled server and a fire-walled client