Module 5

IOT CASE STUDIES

Agricultural IoT
Learning Outcomes
Introduction
 IoT-enabled technologies are widely used for increasing crop
productivity, generating significant revenue, and efficient farming.
 The development of the IoT paradigm helps in precision farming.
Agricultural loT systems perform crop health monitoring, water
management, crop security, farming vehicle tracking, automatic
seeding, and automatic pesticide spraying over the agricultural fields.
 In an IoT based agricultural system, different sensors necessarily have
to be deployed over agricultural fields, and the sensed data from these
sensors need to be transmitted to a centralized entity such as a server,
cloud, or fog devices. Further, these data have to be processed and
analyzed to provide various agricultural services.
 Finally, a user should be able to access these services from hand held
devices or computers.
 Figure 12.1 depicts a basic architecture of an agricultural IoT

Components of an agricultural IoT

 The development of an agricultural IoT has helped farmers enhance
crop productivity and reduce the overhead of manual operations of the
agricultural equipment in the fields.
 Different components such as analytics, drone, cloud computing,
sensors, hand-held devices, and wireless connectivity enable
agricultural IoT as depicted in Figure 12.2.

The different components of an agricultural IoT are discussed as follows:

Cloud computing:
 Sensors such as the camera, devices to measure soil moisture, soil
humidity, and soil pH-level are used for serving different agricultural
applications.
 These sensors produce a huge amount of agricultural data that need to
be analyzed. Sometimes, based on the data analysis, action needs to
be taken, such as switching on the water pump for irrigation. Further,
the data from the deployed sensors are required to be stored on a
long-term basis since it may be useful for serving future applications.
 Thus, for agricultural data analysis and storage, the cloud plays a
crucial role.

Sensors:
 In previous chapters, we already explored different types of sensors
and their respective requirements in IoT applications. We have seen
that the sensors are the major backbone of any IoT application.
 For agricultural IoT applications, the sensors are an indispensable
component.
 A few of the common sensors used in agriculture are sensors for soil
moisture, humidity, water level, and temperature.

Cameras:
 Imaging is one of the main components of agriculture. Therefore,
multispectral, thermal, and RGB cameras are commonly used for
scientific agricultural IoT.
 These cameras are used for estimating the nitrogen status, thermal
stress, water stress, and crop damage due to inundation, as well as
infestation.
 Video cameras are used for crop security.
Satellites:
 In modern precision agriculture, satellites are extensively used to
extract information from field imagery.
 The satellite images are used in agricultural applications to monitor
different aspects of the crops such as crop health monitoring and dry
zone assessing over a large area.

Analytics:
 Analytics contribute to modern agriculture massively. Currently, with
the help of analytics, farmers can take different agricultural decisions,
such as estimating the required amount of fertilizer and water in an
agricultural field and estimating the type of crops that need to be
cultivated during the upcoming season.
 Analytics is not only responsible for making decisions locally; it is
used to analyze data for the entire agricultural supply chain.
 Data analytics can also be used for estimating the crop demand in the
market.

Wireless connectivity:
 One of the main components of agricultural IoT is wireless
connectivity. Wireless connectivity enables the transmission of the
agricultural sensor data from the field to the cloud/server. It also enables
farmers to access various application services over hand-held devices,
which rely on wireless connectivity for communicating with the
cloud/server.

Handheld devices:
 One of the fundamental components of e-agriculture is a handheld
device such as a smartphone.
 Farmers can access different agricultural information, such as soil and
crop conditions of their fields and market tendency, over their
smartphones.
 Farmers can also control different field equipment, such as pumps,
from their phones.

Drones:
 The use of drones has become very attractive in different applications
such as surveillance, healthcare, product delivery, photography, and
 agriculture. Drone imaging is an alternative to satellite imaging in
agriculture.
 In continuation to providing better resolution land mapping visuals,
drones are used in agriculture for crop monitoring, pesticide spraying,
and irrigation.
 An agricultural food chain (agri-chain) represents the different stages
that are involved in agricultural activity right from the agricultural
fields to the consumers.
 Figure 12.3 depicts a typical agricultural food chain with the different
operations that are involved in it.
 The figure depicts the applications of different IoT components
required for performing these agricultural operations.
 In the agrichain, we consider farming as the first stage.
 In farming, various operations, such as seeding, irrigation, fertilizer
spreading, and pesticide spraying, are involved. For performing these
operations, different IoT components are used.
 An example, for monitoring the soil health, soil moisture and
temperature sensors are used; drones are used for spraying pesticides;
and through wireless connectivity, a report on on-field soil conditions
is sent directly to a users’ handheld device or cloud.
 After farming, the next stage in the agri-chain is transport. Transport
indicates the transfer of crops from the field to the local storage, and
after that, to long-term storage locations.
 In transport, smart vehicles can automatically load and unload crops.
The global positioning system (GPS) plays an important role by
tracking these smart devices, and radio frequency identification
(RFID) is used to collect information regarding the presence of a
particular container of a crop at a warehouse. Storage is one of the
important operations in the agri-chain. It is responsible for storing
crops on a longterm basis.
 Cold storage is used for preserving the crops for a long time and
providing them with the necessary climatic and storage conditions
and protection.
 In the storage, cameras are used to keep a check and protect the
harvested crops.
 The camera feeds are transferred through wireless connectivity to a
remote server or a cloud infrastructure. Moreover, the amount and
type of crops stored in a storage
location are tracked and recorded with the help of sensors and cloud
computing.
 For pushing the crops into the market, processing plays a crucial role
in an agri chain. Processing includes proper drying and packaging of
crops.
 For drying and packaging, different sensors are used. Packaging is the
immediate operation prior to pushing the crop into the market. Thus,
it is essential to track every package and store all the details related to
the crops in the cloud.
 Logistics enables the transfer of the packed crops to the market with
the help of smart vehicles.
 These smart vehicles are equipped with different sensors that help in
loading and unloading the packed crop autonomously. Additionally,
GPS is used in these smart vehicles for locating the position of the
packed crops at any instant and tracking their whereabouts.
 All the logistical information gets logged in the cloud with the help
of wireless connectivity.
 The packed items reach the market using logistical channels. From
the market, these items are accessible to consumers. The details of the
sale and purchase of the items are stored in the form of records in the
cloud.

Advantages of IoT in agriculture

 Agricultural IoT enables the autonomous execution of different
agricultural operations. The specific advantages of the agricultural
IoT are as follows:
(i) Automatic seeding: IoT-based agricultural systems are capable of
autonomous seeding and planting over the agricultural fields. These
systems significantly reduce manual effort, error probability, and delays
in seeding and planting.
(ii) Efficient fertilizer and pesticide distribution: Agricultural IoT has
been used to develop solutions that are capable of applying and
controlling the amount of fertilizers and pesticides efficiently. These
solutions are based on the analysis of crop health.
(iii) Water management: The excess distribution of water in the
agricultural fields may affect the growth of crops. On the other hand, the
availability of global water resources is finite. The constraint of limited
and often scarce usable water resources is an influential driving factor for
the judicious and efficient distribution of agricultural water resources.
Using the various solutions available for agricultural IoT, water can be
distributed efficiently, all the while, increasing field productivity and
yields.
 The IoT-enabled agricultural systems are capable of monitoring the
water level and moisture in the soil, and accordingly, distribute the
water to the agricultural fields.
(iv) Real-time and remote monitoring: Unlike traditional agriculture, in
IoT-based farming, a stakeholder can remotely monitor different
agricultural parameters, such as crop and soil conditions, plant health, and
weather conditions.
 Moreover, using a smart handheld device (e.g., cellphone), a farmer
can actuate on-field farming machinery such as a water pump, valves,
and other pieces of machinery.
(v) Easy yield estimation: Agricultural IoT solutions can be used to
record and aggregate data, which may be spatially or temporally diverse,
over long periods.
 These records can be used to come up with various estimates related
to farming and farm management. The most prominent among these
estimates is crop yield, which is done based on established crop
models and historical trends.
(vi) Production overview: The detailed analysis of crop production,
market rates, and market demand are essential factors for a farmer to
estimate optimized crop yields and decide upon the essential steps for
future cropping practices.
IoT-based agriculture acts as a force multiplier for farmers by enabling
them to have a stronger hold on their farming as well as crop
management practices, and that too mostly autonomously.

Case Studies
.
1. In-situ assessment of leaf area index using IoT-based agricultural system

 In this case study, we focus on an IoT-based agricultural system

developed by Bauer et al. [1]. The authors focus on the in-situ
assessment of the leaf area index (LAI), which is considered as an
essential parameter for the growth of most crops.
 LAI is a dimensionless quantity which indicates the total leaf area per
unit ground area. For determining the canopy (the portion of the plant,
which is above the ground) light, LAI plays an essential role.

Architecture
 The authors integrated the hardware and software components of their
implementation in order to develop the IoT-based agricultural system
for LAI assessment.
 One of the important components in this system is the wireless sensor
network (WSN), which is used as the LAI assessment unit. The authors
used two types of sensors:
(i) ground-level sensor (G) and
(ii) (ii) reference sensor (R).
 These sensors are used to measure photosynthetically active radiation
(PAR).
 The distance between the two types of sensors must be optimal so that
these are not located very far from one another.
 In this system, the above-ground sensor (R) acts as a cluster head
while the other sensor nodes (Gs) are located below the canopy.
These Gs and R connect and form a star topology.
 A solar panel is used to charge the cluster head.
 The system is based on IoT architecture.
 Therefore, a cluster head is attached to a central base station,
which acts as a gateway. Further, this gateway connects to an IoT
infrastructure.
 The architecture of the system is depicted in Figure 12.4.

Hardware
 For sensing and transmitting the data from the deployment fields to a
centralized unit, such as a server and a cloud, different hardware
components are used in the system.
 The commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) TelosB platform is used in the
system.
 The TelosB motes are equipped with three types of sensors:
temperature, humidity, and light sensors. With the help of an optical
filter and diffuser accessory on the light sensors, the PAR is
calculated to estimate the LAI.
 The system is based on the cluster concept.
 A Raspberry-Pi is used as a cluster head, which connects with four
ground sensor motes.
 The Raspberry-Pi is a tiny single board, which works as a computer
and is used to perform different operations in IoT.
 Humidity and wet plants intermittently cause attenuation to the
system, which is minimized with the help of forward error coding
(FEC) technique.
 The real deployment of the LAI assessment system involves various
environmental and wild-life challenges. Therefore, for reliable data
delivery, the authors take the redundant approach of using both wired
and wireless connectivity.
 In the first deployment generation, USB power supply is used to
power-up the sensors motes.
 The USB is used for configuring the sensor board and accessing the
failure as per requirement. In this setup, a mechanical timer is used to
switch off the sensor nodes during the night.
 In the second deployment generation, the cluster is formed with
wireless connectivity.
 The ground sensor motes consist of external antennas, which help to
communicate with the cluster head.
 A Raspberry-Pi with long-term evolution (LTE) is used as a gateway
in this system.

Communication
 The LAI system consists of multiple components, such as WSN, IoT
gateway, and IoT based network. All of these components are
connected through wired or wireless links.
 The public land mobile network (PLMN) is used to establish
connectivity between external IoT networks and the gateway. The
data are analyzed and visualized with the help of a farm management
information system (FMIS), which resides in the IoT-based
infrastructure. Further, a prevalent data transport protocol: MQTT, is
used in the system.
 MQTT is a very light-weight, publish/subscribe messaging protocol,
which is widely used for different IoT applications. The wireless
LAN is used for connecting the cluster head with a gateway.
 The TelosB motes are based on the IEEE 802.15.4 wireless protocol.

Software
 Software is an essential part of the system by which different
operations of the system are executed.
 In order to operate the TelosB motes, TinyOS, an open-source, low-
power operating system, is used.
 This OS is widely used for different WSN applications. Typically, in
this system, the data acquired from the sensor node is stored with a
timestamp and sequence number (SN).
 For wired deployments (the first generation deployment), the
sampling rate used is 30 samples/hour.
 However, in the wireless deployment (the second generation), the
sampling rate is significantly reduced to 6 samples/hour.
 The TinyOS is capable of activating low-power listening modes of a
mote, which is used for switching a mote into low-power mode during
its idle state.
 In the ground sensor, TelosB motes broadcast the data frame, and the
cluster head (Raspberry-Pi) receives it.
 The received data is transmitted to the gateway.
 Besides acquiring ground sensor data, the Raspberry-Pi works as a
cluster head.
 In this system, the cluster head can re-boot any affected ground
sensor node automatically.

IoT Architecture
 The MQTT broker runs in the Internet server of the system. This
broker is responsible for receiving the data from the WSN. In the
system, the graphical user interface (GUI) is built using an Apache
server.
 The visualization of the data is performed at the server itself. Further,
when a sensor fails, the server informs the users.
 The server can provide different system-related information to the
smartphone of the registered user.

Smart irrigation management system

 In precision agriculture, the regular monitoring of different
agricultural parameters, such as water level, soil moisture, fertilizers,
and soil temperature are essential.
 For monitoring agricultural parameters, a farmer needs to go to
his/her field and collect the data. Excess water supply in the
agricultural field can damage the crops.
 On the other hand, insufficient water supply in the agricultural field
also affects the healthy growth of crops.
 Efficient and optimized water supply in the agricultural field is
essential.
 This case study highlights a prototype of an irrigation management
system developed at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur,
funded by the Government of India.
 The primary objective of this system is to provide a Web-based
platform to the farmer for managing the water supply of an irrigated
agricultural field.
 The system is capable of providing a farmer-friendly interface by
which the field condition can be monitored.
 With the help of this system, a farmer can take the necessary decision
for the agricultural field based on the analysis of the data.
 The farmer need not worry about the complex background
architecture of the system.
 It is an affordable solution for the farmers to access the agricultural
field data easily and remotely.

Architecture
 The architecture of this system consists of three layers: Sensing and
actuating layer, remote processing and service layer, and application
layer.
 These layers perform dedicated tasks depending on the requirements
of the system.
 Figure 12.5 depicts the architecture of the system. The detailed
functionalities of different layers of this system are as follows:
(i) Sensing and Actuating layer: This layer deals with different physical
devices, such as sensor nodes, actuators, and communication modules. In
the system, a specially designated sensor node works as a cluster head to
collect data from other sensor nodes, which are deployed on the field for
sensing the value of soil moisture and water level.
 A cluster head is equipped with two communication module: ZigBee
(IEEE 802.15.4) and General Packet Radio Service (GPRS).
 The communication between the deployed sensor nodes and the
cluster head takes place with the help of ZigBee.
 The cluster heads use GPRS to transmit data to the remote server. An
electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM),
integrated with the cluster head, stores a predefined threshold value
of water levels and soil moisture.
 The sensed value of the deployed sensor node drops below this
predefined threshold value, a solenoid (pump) activates to start the
irrigation process.
 In the system, the standard EC-05 soil moisture sensor is used along
with the water level sensor, which is specifically designed and
developed for this project.
 A water level sensor is shown in Figure 12.6(a).

(ii) Processing and Service layer: This layer acts as an intermediate

layer between the sensing and actuating layer and the application layer.
 The sensed and process data is stored in the server for future use.
Moreover, these data are accessible at any time from any remote
location by authorized users.
 Depending on the sensed values from the deployed sensor nodes, the
pump actuates to irrigate the field.
 A processing board as depicted in Figure 12.6(b) is developed for the
project.

(iii) Application layer: The farmer can access the status of the pump,
whether it is in switch on/off, and the value of different soil parameters
from his/her cell phone.
 This information is accessible with the help of the integrated GSM
facility of the farmers’ cell phone.
 An LED array indicator and LCD system is installed in the
farmers’house.
 Using the LCD and LED, a farmer can easily track the condition of
his respective fields. Apart from this mechanism, a farmer can
manually access field information with the help of a Web-based
application.
 The farmer can control the pump using his/her cell phone from a
remote location.

Deployment
 The system has been deployed and experimented in two agricultural
fields:
(i) an agricultural field at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur
(IIT Kharagpur), India.
(ii) Benapur, a village near IIT Kharagpur, India. Both the agricultural
fields were divided into 10 equal sub-fields of 3 × 3m2 .
 In order to examine the performance, the system was deployed at over
4 sub-fields. Each of these sub-fields consists of a solenoid valve, a
water level sensor, and a soil moisture sensor, along with a processing
board.
 On the other hand, the remaining six sub-fields were irrigated
through a manual conventional irrigation process.
 The comparison analysis between these six and four fields summarily
reports that the designed system’s performance is superior to the
conventional manual process of irrigation.
Vehicular IoT
Learning Outcomes

 Figure 13.1 represents a simple architecture of a vehicular IoT

system. The architecture of the vehicular IoT is divided into three sub
layers: device, fog, and cloud.

• Device:
 The device layer is the bottom-most layer, which consists of the basic
infrastructure of the scenario of the connected vehicle. This layer includes
the vehicles and road side units (RSU). These vehicles contain certain
sensors which gather the internal information of the vehicles. On the
other hand, the RSU works as a local centralized unit that manages the
data from the vehicles.
• Fog:
 In vehicular IoT systems, fast decision making is pertinent to avoid
accidents and traffic mismanagement. In such situations, fog
computing plays a crucial role by providing decisions in real-time,
much near to the devices.
 Consequently, the fog layer helps to minimize data transmission time
in a vehicular IoT system.
• Cloud:
 Fog computing handles the data processing near the devices to take
decisions instantaneously.
 However, for the processing of huge data, fog computing is not
enough. Therefore, in such a situation, cloud computing is used.
 In a vehicular IoT system, cloud computing helps to handle processes
that involve a huge amount of data.
 For long-term storage, cloud computing is used as a scalable resource
in vehicular IoT systems.
Components of vehicular IoT

 Modern cars come equipped with different types of sensors and

electronic components.
 These sensors sense the internal environment of the car and transmit
the sensed data to a processor. The on-road deployed sensors sense
the external environment and transmit the sensed data to the
centralized processor.
 Thereafter, based on requirements, the processor delivers these sensed
data to fog or cloud to perform necessary functions.
 These processes seem to be simple, but practically, several
components, along with their challenges, are involved in a vehicular
IoT system.
 Figure 13.2 depicts the components required for vehicular IoT
systems.

• Sensors:
 In vehicular IoT, sensors monitor different environmental conditions
and help to make the system more economical, efficient, and robust.
Traditionally, two types of sensors, internal and external, are used in
vehicular IoT systems.
(i) Internal:
 These types of sensors are placed within the vehicle. The sensors are
typically used to sense parameters that are directly associated with the
vehicle. Along with the sensors, the vehicles are equipped with
different electronic components such as processing boards and
actuators.
 The internal sensors in a vehicle are connected with the processor
board, to which they transmit the sensed data. Further, the sensed data
 are processed by the board to take certain predefined actions. A few
examples of internal sensors are GPS, fuel gauge, ultrasonic sensors,
proximity sensors, accelerometer, pressure sensors, and temperature
sensors.
(ii) External:
 External sensors quantify information of the environment outside the
vehicle. For example, there are sensors used in the smart traffic
system that are capable of sensing vacant parking lots in a designated
parking area.
 The still images and videos from cameras are important inputs to
generate decisions in a vehicular IoT system. Therefore, on-road
cameras are widely used as external sensors to capture still images
and videos.
 The captured images and videos are processed further, either in the
fog or in the cloud layer, to take certain pre-programmed actions. As
an example, camera sensor can capture the image of the license plate
of an overspeeding vehicle at a traffic signal; the image can be
processed to identify the owner of the vehicle to charge a certain
amount of fine. Similarly, temperature, rainfall, and light sensors are
also used in the vehicular IoT infrastructure.
• Satellites:
 In vehicular IoT systems, automatic vehicle tracking and crash
detection are among the important available features.
 Satellites help the system to track vehicles and detect on-road crashes.
 The satellite image is also useful for detecting on-road congestions
and road blocks.
• Wireless connectivity:
 As vehicular IoT deals with connected vehicles, communication is an
important enabling component. For taking any action or making
decisions, the collective data from internal and external sensors need
processing. For transmitting the sensed data from multiple sensors to
RSU (roadside unit) and from RSUs to the cloud, connectivity plays
an indispensable role. Moreover, in the vehicular IoT scenario, the
high mobility of the vehicles necessitates the connectivity type to be
wireless for practical and real-time data transmission. Different
communication technologies, such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GSM, are
common in the vehicular IoT systems.

• Road Side Unit (RSU):

 The RSU is a static entity that works collaboratively with internal and
external sensors. Typically, the RSUs are equipped with sensors,
communication units, and fog devices.
 Vehicular IoT systems deal with timecritical applications, which need
to take decisions in real time. In such a situation, the fog devices
attached to the RSUs process the sensed data and take necessary
action promptly. If a vehicular system involves heavy computation,
the RSU transmits the sensed data to the cloud end. Sometimes, these
RSUs also work as an intermediate communication agent between
two vehicles.

Cloud and fog computing:

 In vehicular IoT systems, fog computing handles the light-weight
processes geographically closer to the vehicles than the cloud.
Consequently, for faster decision making, fog computing is used in
vehicular IoT systems. However, for a heavy-weight process, fog
computing may not be a suitable option. In such a situation, cloud
computing is more adept for vehicular IoT systems.
 Cloud computing provides more scalability of resources as compared
to fog computing. Therefore, the choice of the application of fog and
cloud computing depends on the situation.
 For example, the location and extent of short on-road congestion from
a certain location can be determined by fog computing with the help
of sensed data.
 The congestion information can be shared by the RSU among other
on road vehicles, thereby suggesting that they avoid the congested
road.
 On the other hand, for determining regular on-road congestion,
predictions are typically handled with the help of cloud computing.
 For the regular congestion prediction, the cloud end needs to process
a huge amount of instantaneous data, as well as, historical data for
that stretch of road spanning back a few months to years.

• Analytics:
 Similar to different IoT application domains, in vehicular IoT,
analytics is a crucial component. Vehicular IoT systems can be made
to predict different dynamic and static conditions using analytics. For
example, strong data analytics is required to predict on-road traffic
conditions that may occur at a location after an hour.

Advantages of vehicular IoT

 The typical advantages of IoT architectures directly impact the
domain of connected vehicular systems. Therefore, the advantages of
IoT are inherently included in vehicular IoT environments. A few
selected advantages of vehicular IoT are depicted in Figure 13.3.
(i) Easy tracking:
 The tracking of vehicles is an essential part of vehicular IoT.
Moreover, the system must know from which location and which vehicle
the system is receiving the information. In a vehicular IoT system, the
tracking of vehicles is straightforward; the system can collect information
at a remote location.
(ii) Fast decision making:
 Most of the decisions in the connected vehicle environment are time
critical. Therefore, for such an application, fast and active decision
making are pertinent for avoiding accidents. In the vehicular IoT
environment, cloud and fog computing help to make fast decisions
with the data received from the sensor-based devices.
(iii) Connected vehicles:
 A vehicular IoT system provides an opportunity to remain connected
and share information among different vehicles.
(iv) Easy management:
 Since vehicular IoT systems consist of different types of sensors, a
communication unit, processing devices, and GPS, the management
of the vehicle becomes easy. The connectivity among different
components in a vehicular IoT enables systems to track every activity
in and around the vehicle. Further, the IoT infrastructure helps in
managing the huge number of users located at different geographical
coordinates.
(v) Safety:
 Safety is one of the most important advantages of a vehicular IoT
system. With easy management of the system, both the internal and
external sensors placed at different locations play an important role in
providing safety to the vehicle, its occupants, as well as the people
around it.
(vi) Record:
 Storing different data related to the transportation system is an
essential component of a vehicular IoT. The record may be of any
form, such as video footage, still images, and documentation. By
taking advantage of cloud and fog computing architecture, the
vehicular IoT systems keep all the required records in its database.

Crime assistance in a smart IoT transportation system

 The system highlights a fog framework for intelligent public safety in
vehicular environments (fog-FISVER) [1].
 The primary aim of this system is to ensure smart transportation
safety (STS) in public bus services. The system works through the
following three steps:
(i) The vehicle is equipped with a smart surveillance system, which is
capable of executing video processing and detecting criminal activity in
real time.
(ii) A fog computing architecture works as the mediator between a
vehicle and a police vehicle.
(iii) A mobile application is used to report the crime to a nearby police
agent.

Architecture
 The architecture of the fog-FISVER consists of different IoT
components. Moreover, the developers utilized the advantages of the
low-latency fog computing architecture for designing their system.
Fog-FISVER is based on a three-tiered architecture, as shown in
Figure 13.4. We will discuss each of the tiers as follows:

(i) Tier1—In-vehicle FISVER STS Fog:

 In this system component, a fog node is placed for detecting criminal
activities.
 This tier accumulates the real sensed data from within the vehicle and
processes it to detect possible criminal activities inside the vehicle.
 Further, this tier is responsible for creating crime-level meta data and
transferring the required information to the next tier.
 For performing all the activities, Tier 1 consists of two subsystems:
Image processor and event dispatcher.
• Image Processor:
 The image processor inside Tier 1 is a potent component, which has a
capability similar to the human eye for detecting criminal activities.
 Developers of the system used a deep-learning-based approach for
enabling image processing techniques in the processor.
 To implement the fog computing architecture in the vehicle, a
Raspberry-Pi-3 processor board is used, which is equipped with a
high-quality camera. Further, this architecture uses template matching
and correlation to detect the presence of dangerous articles (such as a
pistol or a knife) in the sub-image of a video frame.
 Typically, the image processor stores a set of crime object templates
in the fog-FISVER STS fog infrastructure, which is present in Tier 2
of the system. The image processor is divided into the following three
parts:
(a) Crime definition downloader:
 This component periodically checks for the presence of new crime
object template definitions in fog-FISVER STS fog infrastructure. If a
new crime object template is available, it is stored locally.

(b) Crime definition storage:

 In order to use template matching, the crime
object template definition is required to be stored in the system. The
crime definition storage is used to store all the possible crime object
template definitions.
(c) Algorithm launcher:
 This component initiates the instances of the registered algorithm in
order to match the template with the video captured by the camera
attached in the vehicles.
 If a crime object is matched with the video, criminal activity is
confirmed.

• Event dispatcher:
 This is another key component of Tier 1. The event dispatcher is
responsible for accumulating the data sensed from vehicles and the
image processor.
 After the successful detection of criminal activity, the information is
sent to the fog-FISVER STS fog infrastructure. The components of
the event dispatcher are as follows:
(a) Event notifier:
 It transfers the data to the fog-FISVER STS fog infrastructure, after
receiving it from the attached sensor nodes in the vehicle.
(b) Data gatherer:
 This is an intermediate component between the event notifier and the
physical sensor; it helps to gather sensed data.
(c) Virtual sensor interface:
 Multiple sensors that sense data from different locations of the vehicle
are present in the system. The virtual sensor interface helps to
maintain a particular procedure to gather data. This component also
cooperates to register the sensors in the system.

(ii) Tier 2—FISVER STS Fog Infrastructure:

 Tier 2 works on top of the fog architecture. Primarily, this tier has
three responsibilities—keep updating the new object template
definitions, classifying events, and finding the most suitable police
vehicle to notify the event. FISVER STS fog infrastructure is divided
into two sub-components:
• Target Object Training:
 Practically, there are different types of crime objects.
 The system needs to be up-to-dated regarding all crime objects. This
sub component of Tier 2 is responsible for creating, updating, and
storing the crime object definition. The algorithm launcher uses these
definitions in Tier 1 for the template matching process. The template
definition includes different features of the crime object such as color
gradient and shape format.
 A new object definition is stored in the definition database.
 The database requires to be updated based on the availability of new
template definitions.
• Notification Factory:
 This sub-component receives notification about the events in a
different vehicle with the installed system. Further, this component
receives and validates the events. In order to handle multiple events, it
maintains a queue.

(iii) Tier 3 consists of mobile applications that are executed on the

users’ devices.
 The application helps a user, who witnesses a crime, to notify the
police.
 Healthcare IoT
Introduction
 The salient features of IoT encourage researchers and industries to
develop new IoT-based technologies for healthcare.
 These technologies have given rise to small, power-efficient, health
monitoring and diagnostic systems.
 Consequently, the development of numerous healthcare technologies
and systems has rapidly increased over the last few years. Currently,
various IoT-enabled healthcare devices are in wide use around the
globe for diagnosing human diseases, monitoring human health
conditions, caring/monitoring for elders, children, and even infants.
 Moreover, IoT-based healthcare systems and services help to increase
the quality of life for common human beings; in fact, it has a
promising scope of revolutionizing healthcare in developing nations.
IoT-based healthcare devices provide access and knowledge about
human physiological conditions through hand held devices. With this
development, users can be aware of the risks in acquiring various
diseases and take necessary precautions to avoid preventable diseases.
The basic skeleton of an IoT-based healthcare system is very similar
to the conventional IoT architectures.
 However, for IoT-based healthcare services, the sensors are
specifically designed to measure and quantify different physiological
conditions of its users/patients.
 A typical architecture for healthcare IoT is shown in Figure 14.1. We
divide the architecture into four layers. The detailed description of
these layers are as follows:

(i) Layer 1:
 Layer 1 contains different physiological sensors that are placed on
the human body. These sensors collect the values of various
physiological parameters. The physiological data are analyzed to
extract meaningful information.
(ii) Layer 2:
 Layer 1 delivers data to Layer 2 for short-term storage and low-level
processing.
 The devices that belong to Layer 2 are commonly known as local
processing units (LPU) or centralized hubs. These units collect the
sensed data from the physiological sensors attached to the body and
process it based on the architecture’s requirement. Further, LPUs or
the centralized hubs forward the data to Layer 3.
(iii) Layer 3:
 This layer receives the data from Layer 2 and performs application
specific high-level analytics. Typically, this layer consists of cloud
architecture or high-end servers. The data from multiple patients,
which may be from the same or different locations, are accumulated
in this layer.
 Post analysis of data, some inferences or results are provided to the
application in Layer 4.
(iv) Layer 4:
 The end-users directly interact with Layer 4 through receiver-side
applications. The modes of accessibility of these services by an end
user are typically through cellphones, computers, and tablets.

Components of healthcare IoT

A typical IoT healthcare architecture is composed of several components

that are essential to generate the whole architecture. Figure 14.2 depicts
different components and their usage in an IoT healthcare system. Each
of these components plays a distinct role in the smooth execution of the
system as a whole.

(i) Sensors:
 Layer 1 mainly consists of physiological sensors that collect the
physiological parameters of the patient. Few commonly used
physiological sensors and their uses are depicted in Table 14.1.
(ii) Wireless Connectivity:
 Without proper connectivity and communication, the data sensed by
the physiological sensors are of no use in an IoT-based healthcare
system. Typically, the communication between the wearable sensors
and the LPU is through either wired or wireless connectivity.
 The wireless communication between the physiological sensors and
LPU occurs with the help of Bluetooth and ZigBee.
 On the other hand, the communication between the LPU and the
cloud or server takes place with Internet connectivity such as WiFi
and WLAN.
 In Layer 4 of the healthcare IoT architecture, the healthcare data are
received by the end users with different devices such as laptops,
desktops, and cellphones.
 These communication protocols vary depending on the type of device
in use.
 For example, when a service is received by a cellphone, it uses GSM
(global system for mobile communications). On the other hand, if the
 same service is received on a desktop, it can be through Ethernet or
Wi-Fi.
 Communication and connectivity in healthcare IoT is an essential
component.
(iii) Privacy and Security:
 The privacy and security of health data is a major concern in
healthcare IoT services.
 In a healthcare IoT architecture, several devices connect with the
external world. Moreover, between LPU and the server/cloud,
different networking devices work via network hops (from one
networked device to another) to transmit the data.
 If any of these devices are compromised, it may result in the theft of
health data of a patient, leading to serious securityand the LPU is
through either wired or wireless connectivity.
 The wireless communication between the physiological sensors and
LPU occurs with the help of Bluetooth and ZigBee.
 On the other hand, the communication between the LPU and the
cloud or server takes place with Internet connectivity such as WiFi
and WLAN.
 In Layer 4 of the healthcare IoT architecture, the healthcare data are
received by the end users with different devices such as
laptops,desktops, and cellphones.
 These communication protocols vary depending on the type of device
in use. For example, when a service is received by a cellphone, it uses
GSM (global system for mobile communications).
 On the other hand, if the same service is received on a desktop, it can
be through Ethernet or Wi-Fi. Communication and connectivity in
healthcare IoT is an essential component.
(iv) Privacy and Security:
 The privacy and security of health data is a major concern in
healthcare IoT services.
 In a healthcare IoT architecture, several devices connect with the
external world.
 Moreover, between LPU and the server/cloud, different networking
devices work via network hops (from one networked device to
another) to transmit the data.
 If any of these devices are compromised, it may result in the theft of
health data of a patient, leading to serious security breaches and
ensuing lawsuits. In order to increase the security of the healthcare
data, different healthcare service providers and organizations are
implementing healthcare data encryption and protection schemes [3,
4].
(V) Analytics:
 For converting the raw data into information, analytics plays an
important role in healthcare IoT. Several actors, such as doctors,
nurses, and patients, access the healthcare information in a different
customized format.
 This customization allows each actor in the system to access only the
information pertinent to their job/role. In such a scenario, analytics
plays a vital role in providing different actors in the system access to
meaningful information extracted from the raw healthcare data .
 Analytics is also used for diagnosing a disease from the raw
physiological data available [1, 2].
(v) Cloud and Fog Computing:
 In a healthcare IoT system, several physiological sensors are attached
to a patient’s body.
 These sensors continuously produce a huge amount of heterogeneous
data.
 For storing these huge amounts of heterogeneous health data, efficient
storage space is essential. These data are used for checking the
patient’s history, current health status, and future for diagnosing
different diseases and the symptoms of the patient.
 Typically, the cloud storage space is scalable, where payment is made
as per the usage of space. Consequently, to store health data in a
healthcare IoT system, cloud storage space is used.
 Analytics on the stored data in cloud storage space is used for
drawing various inferences.
 The major challenges in storage are security and delay in accessing
the data. Therefore, cloud and fog computing play a pivotal role in the
storage of these massive volumes of heterogeneous data.
(vi) Interface:
 The interface is the most important component for users in a
healthcare IoT system.
 Among IoT applications, healthcare IoT is a very crucial and
sensitive application. Thus, the user interface must be designed in
such a way that it can depict all the required information clearly and,
if necessary, reformat or represent it such that it is easy to understand.
 Moreover, an interface must also contain all the useful information
related to the services.

Advantages and risk of healthcare IoT :

 IoT has already started to penetrate the domain of medical science. In

healthcare, IoT has become significantly popular due to its various
features, which have been covered previously in this book.
 Healthcare IoT helps in managing different healthcare subsystems
efficiently.
 Although it has many advantages, healthcare IoT has some risks too,
which may be crucial in real-life applications. In this section, we
discuss the different advantages and risks of healthcare IoT as
depicted in Figure 14.3.

Advantages of healthcare IoT

The major advantages of healthcare IoT can be listed as follows:

• Real-time:
 In healthcare sectors, different components, such as the condition of
the patients, availability of doctors and beds in a hospital, medical
facilities with their monetary charges, can vary dynamically with time.
In such a dynamic scenario, one of the important characteristics of an
IoT-based healthcare system is real-timeliness.
 A healthcare IoT system enables users, such as doctors, end users at
the patient-side, and staff in a healthcare unit, to receive real-time
updates about the healthcare IoT components, as mentioned earlier.
 Moreover, a healthcare IoT system can enable a doctor to observe a
patient’s health condition in real-time even from a remote location,
and can suggest the type of care to be provided to the patient. On the
other hand, users at the patient-end can easily take different decisions,
such as where to take a patient during critical situations.
 Moreover, the staff in a healthcare unit are better aware of the current
situation of their unit, which includes the number of patients admitted,
 availability of the doctors and bed, total revenue of the unit, and other
such information.
• Low cost:
 Healthcare IoT systems facilitate users with different services at low
cost.
 For example, an authorized user can easily find the availability of the
beds in a hospital with simple Internet connectivity and a web-browser-
based portal.
 The user need not visit the hospital physically to check the
availability of beds and facilities. Moreover, multiple registered users
can retrieve the same information simultaneously.
• Easy management:
 Healthcare IoT is an infrastructure that brings all its end users under
the same umbrella to provide healthcare services. On the other hand,
in such an infrastructure, the management of numerous tangible and
intangible entities (such as users, medical devices, facilities, costs,
and security) is a challenging task. However, healthcare IoT
facilitates easy and robust management of all the entities.
• Automatic processing:
 A healthcare unit consists of multiple subsystems, for which manual
interventions are required. For example, to register a patient with a
hospital, the user may be required to enter his/her details manually.
 However, automatic processing features can remove such manual
intervention with a fingerprint sensor/device. Healthcare IoT enables
end-to-end automatic processing in different units and also
consolidates the information across the whole chain: from a patient’s
registration to discharge.
• Easy record-keeping:
 When we talk about a healthcare IoT system, it includes a huge
number of patients, doctors, and other staff. Different patients suffer
from different types of diseases.
 A particular disease requires particular treatment, which requires
knowledge of a patient’s health history, along with other details about
them. Therefore, the timely delivery of health data of the patient to
the doctor is important. In such a situation, the permanent storage of
the patients’ health data along with their respective details is essential.
Similarly, for the smooth execution of the healthcare unit, details of
the staff with their daily activity in a healthcare unit are also required
for storage.
 A healthcare unit must also track its condition and financial
transactions for further development of the unit. A healthcare IoT
enables the user to keep these records in a safe environment and
deliver them to the authorized user as per requirement.
 Moreover, these recorded data are accessible from any part of the
globe.
• Easy diagnosis:
 Healthcare IoT system stores the data of the patient in a secure
manner. Sometimes, for diagnosing a disease, a huge chunk of prior
data is required.
 In a healthcare IoT system, the diagnosis of the disease becomes
easier with the help of certain learning mechanisms along with the
availability of prior datasets.

Risk in healthcare IoT

• Loss of connectivity:
 A healthcare IoT system consists of different physiological sensors
that sense and transmit the sensed data to a centralized unit. Moreover,
continuous data transmission from the patient is expected in a good
healthcare system.
 Intermittent connectivity may result in data loss, which may result in
a life-threatening situations for the patient. Proper and continuous
connectivity is essential in a healthcare IoT system.
• Security:
 A healthcare IoT system contains the health data of different patients
associated with the system. The healthcare system must keep the data
confidential. This data should not be accessible to any unauthorized
person. On the other hand, different persons and devices are
associated with a healthcare IoT system. In such a system, the risk of
data tampering and unauthorized access is quite high.
• Error:
 Data analytics helps a healthcare IoT system to predict the patients’
condition and diagnosis of diseases.
 A huge amount of data needs to be fed into the system in order to
perform accurate analytics. Moreover, the management of a huge
amount of data is a crucial task in any IoT-based system. Particularly,
in the healthcare system, errors in data may lead to misinterpretation
of symptoms and lead to the wrong diagnosis of the patient. It is a
challenging task to construct an error-free healthcare IoT architecture.

Case Studies

1 AmbuSens system
 In many developing countries, patients need to be transferred from
primary-care to tertiary-care hospitals for proper diagnosis and
treatment.
 During the transit, the hospitals at both ends—the referring one as
well as the referred one—do not have any information about the
patient’s health condition during transit. In such situations, the
hospitals are unable to suggest any precautionary measures in the
event of some emergency during transit. Consequently, many patients
die during the transit due to lack of proper suggestive care by medical
experts. To overcome these shortcomings, the Smart Wireless
Applications and Networking (SWAN) laboratory at the Indian
Institute of Technology Kharagpur developed a system: AmbuSens.
The system was primarily funded by the Ministry of Human Resource
and Development (MHRD) of the Government of India. This product
system is a very crucial part of the healthcare IoT system. The
primary objectives of the AmbuSens system are summarized as
follows:
• Digitization and standardization of the healthcare data, which can be
easily accessed by the registered hospital authorities.
• Real-time monitoring of the patients who are in transit from one
hospital to another. At both hospitals, doctors can access the patients’
health conditions.
• Accessibility by which multiple doctors can access the patient’s health
data at the same time.
• Provision of confidentiality to the health data of the patients in the cloud.
• In the AmbuSens system, wireless physiological sensor nodes are used.
These sensor nodes make the system flexible and easy to use.
Architecture
 The AmbuSens system is equipped with different physiological
sensors along with a local hub. These sensors sense the physiological
parameters from the patient’s body and transmit those to a local data
processing unit (LDPU).
 The physiological sensors and LDPU form a wireless body area
network (WBAN). Further, this local hub forwards the physiological
data to the cloud for storing and analyzing the health parameters.
Finally, the data are accessed by different users.
 The detailed layered architecture of the AmbuSens system is depicted
in Figure 14.4.
(i) Layer 1:
 This layer consists of multiple WBANs attached to a patient’s body.
 These WBANs acquire the physiological data from the patient and
transmit them to the upper layer.
 The physiological sensors are heterogeneous, that is, each of these
sensors senses different parameters of the body. Moreover, the
physiological sensors require calibration for acquiring the correct data
from a patient’s body.
 Layer 1 takes care of the calibration of the physiological sensor
nodes. Further, in order to deliver the patient’s physiological data
from the sensor node to the LDPU, it is essential to form a proper
WBAN.
 The formation of WBAN takes place by connecting multiple
physiological sensor nodes to the LDPU so that the sensors can
transmit the data to the LDPU, simultaneously.

(ii) Layer 2:
 In the AmbuSens system, cloud computing has an important role.
 Layer 2 is responsible for handling the cloud-related functions.
 From Layer 1, WBANs attached to the different patients deliver data
to the cloud end.
 The cloud is used for the long-term analysis and storage of data in the
AmbuSens system. Moreover, the previous health records of the
patients are stored in the cloud in order to perform patient-specific
analysis.
 A huge volume of health data is produced by the WBANs, which are
handled by the cloud with the help of big data analytics for providing
real-time analysis.
(iii) Layer 3:
 In the AmbuSens system, the identity of the patients remains
anonymous. An algorithm is designed to generate a dynamic hash
value for each patient in order to keep the patient’s identity
anonymous. Moreover, in the AmbuSens system, at different time
instants, a new hash value is generated for the patients. The entire
hashing mechanism of the AmbuSens is performed in this layer.
(iv) Layer 4:
 The users simply register into the system and use it as per requirement.
of WBAN takes place by connecting multiple physiological sensor nodes
to the LDPU so that the sensors can transmit the data to the LDPU,
simultaneously.

(iv) Electromyogram (EMG) sensor:

 This sensor is used to analyze and measure the biomechanics of the
human body. Particularly, the EMG sensor is used to measure
different electrical activity related to muscle contractions; it also
assesses nerve conduction, and muscle response in injured tissue.
(v) Temperature sensor:
 The body temperature of patients changes with the condition of the
body. Therefore, a temperature sensor is included in the AmbuSens
system, which can easily be placed on the body of the patient.
(vi) Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) sensor:
 The GSR sensor is used for measuring the change in electrical
characteristics of the skin.

• Local Data Processing Unit (LDPU):

 In AmbuSens, all the sensors attached to the human body sense and
transmit the sensed data to a centralized device, which is called an
LDPU. An LDPU is a small processing board with limited
computation capabilities.
 The connectivity between the sensors and the LDPU follows a single-
hop star topology. The LDPU is programmed in such a way that it can
receive the physiological data from multiple sensor nodes,
simultaneously. Further, it transmits the data to the cloud for long-
term storage and heavy processing.

• Communication Module:
 Each sensor node consists of a Bluetooth (IEEE 802.15.1 standard)
module.
 The communication between the sensor nodes and the LDPU takes
place with the help of Bluetooth, which supports a maximum
communication range of 10 meters in line-of-sight.
 The LDPU delivers the data to the cloud with 3G/4G communication.
Front End
 In the AmbuSens system, three actors—doctor, paramedic/nurse, and
patient—are able to participate and use the services.
 The web interface is designed as per the requirements of the actors of
the system. Each of the actors has an option to log in and access the
system.
 The confidentiality of a patient and their physiological data is
important in a healthcare system. Therefore, the system provides
different scopes for data accessibility based on the category of an
actor. For example, the detailed health data of a patient is accessible
only to the assigned doctor. These data may not be required for the
nurse; therefore, a nurse is unable to access the same set of data a
doctor can access.
 The system provides the flexibility to a patient to log in to his/her
account and download the details of his/her previous
medical/treatment details. Therefore, in AmbuSens, the database is
designed in an efficient way such that it can deliver the customized
data to the respective actor. Each of the users has to register with the
system to avail of the service of the AmbuSens. Therefore, in this
system, the registration process is also designed in a customized
fashion, that is, the details of a user to be entered into the registration
form is different for different actors. For example, a doctor must enter
his/her registration number in the registration form.