1,721,003 research outputs found
A Dive into the AgriTech World: Technologies and Adoption Incentives
No full textIn this column, rather than taking a trip to a geographical location, the author explore the world of AgriTech, shedding light on the currently available technology assets and on some of the hurdles any technology transfer initiative in this domain is facing, slowing down adoption of ICT in agriculture. Through this journey the author will therefore at first take a look at the landscape of technology enablers supporting the vision of an upcoming fourth agricultural revolution, while in the second part the author will juxtapose a picture of what the world of potential adopters looks like, identifying what are the adoption showstoppers
IoT in China: What does the Future Hold?
No full textIn this issue we take a trip to the Land of the Dragon and give an overview of what IoT currently looks like in China, focusing at first on a tech sector that recently slumped, due to over-investing in startups, which is making uncertain the future of consumer based IoT. We then briefly talk about the Chinese government’s plans to fuel growth with substantial investments in industrial IoT applications. We then conclude with an interview with Professor Bo Ai from Beijing Jiao Tong University, who further reinforces our findings
Brand Protection, Pizzas, and the Case for IoT Traceability
No full textIn this column, we take a journey to Europe and analyze how IoT technology could be used to protect the Made in Italy brand and make it harder for fake products to find their way into the market, therefore protecting consumers from being misled in their purchases. Recent research into what is commonly referred to as the “Italian sounding” phenomenon, estimated its value to be around 100 billion Euro (+70 percent over the past 10 years). One can argue whether or not this number is the actual amount “missing” from the Italian economy or whether it is not also reflecting the fact that the offer of authentic products cannot sustain demand due to lack of enough production or simply lack of adequate distribution channels (i.e. business-driven choices, political-embargos, etc.)
Powering IoT Devices: Technologies and Opportunities
No full textInternet of Things (IoT) devices are supposed to be deployed 'everywhere' and to be accessed 'any time' from 'anywhere'. A high number of these devices perform monitoring and control tasks in the smart-x applications and difficult-to-access areas. For successful realization of these applications an IoT device should be tiny and autonomous de-facto while including sensing/actuating, processing and wireless communications capabilities
IoT Technologies and Privacy in a Data-Bloated Society: Where Do We Stand in the Fight to Prepare for the Next Pandemic?
No full textIn this column we plan to take a tour around different physical locations in the world with the objective of highlighting the peculiarities of the trendiest IoT-related applications in selected regions. Thus, the “IoT World” will certainly be physical, but traveling around it shall also expose to the readers how different application domains have been addressed, with particular attention to business sustainability
Fostering Iot Solutions For Sustainable Development In Africa
No full textReports on initiatives to promote and develop the Internet of Things in Africa
Cost-effective IoT devices as trustworthy data sources for a blockchain-based water management system in precision agriculture
No full textThis paper explores how the energy-efficient integration of IoT-based sensing and blockchains, an innovation in the field of Digital Infrastructure technologies, can be used to incentivize virtuous behaviors in agricultural practices. The novelty of the study lies specifically in the unprecedented use of constrained sensing devices as trustworthy data sources for a permissionless blockchain. Furthermore, we show how our research results, advancing the State-of-the-Art in the IoT and blockchain interactions, can support the interests of a diverse set of water management stakeholders in a concrete use-case implementation. To assess our contribution and validate our results we use a system architecture comprising constrained IoT devices for measuring water consumption used as direct data-source actors, a public blockchain infrastructure, and smart contracts that represent the interests of different water management stakeholders and regulate the distribution of incentives amongst virtuous farmers. Further validation on the usability of our results is obtained through the real implementation of a complete use case featuring the Ethereum network as a public blockchain and where six different types of IoT platforms are individually assessed for impact on the IoT devices, in terms of energy, processing time, and available memory. The findings show how solutions based on the proposed architecture can be implemented with only 6% of additional energy budget compared to the normal operations of the IoT devices. Besides showing new means to energy-efficiently integrate IoT data sources in a permissionless blockchain, the validation results make our contribution a strong candidate for use in automated and incentive-based irrigation water management systems as well as a key component in fostering increased sustainability of the whole agricultural sector
Exploiting Cost-Effective IoT Devices for Trustless Agri-Food Supply Chain Management: A Practical Case Study
No full textThe exponential rise in the adoption of diverse Internet of Things (IoT) devices has reached the Agriculture and Food (Agri-Food) supply chains. Small and cost-effective sensing IoT devices are fostering substantial research and innovation toward developing reliable, auditable, and transparent traceability systems. Current IoT-based traceability and provenance systems for Agri-Food supply chains are built on top of centralized infrastructures, introducing security and privacy issues such as data integrity, tampering, and single points of failure. In recent years, blockchain technology is attracting the interest of the IoT as a decentralized platform for a trusted record of information, realizing decentralized trustless systems. The inherent properties of this digital technology provide fault-tolerance, immutability, transparency, and full traceability of the stored transaction records. However, there has been little discussion on the role of cost-effective IoT devices in these blockchain-based systems. In this chapter, we propose an architecture for a blockchain-based traceability system for Agri-Food supply chain management. Our architecture seamlessly integrates cost-effective IoT devices producing and consuming digital data along the process. To effectively assess our proposal, we first defined a classical use case within the given vertical domain, namely from-farm-to-fork. Then, we deploy a full-fledged showcase using off-the-shelf constrained sensing devices and two different blockchain implementations. From a device perspective, we measure the overhead that our architecture introduces in the system in terms of memory and program space footprint, processing time, and power consumption. Our results show that cost-effective devices, with an internal clock running at less than 100 MHz, can support our proposed solution in both Ethereum and Hyperledger Sawtooth blockchain networks
Rationale and Practical Assessment of a Fully Distributed Blockchain-based Marketplace of Fog/Edge Computing Resources
No full textOn modern electronic marketplaces, the buyers and sellers (i.e., the users) trade products over software platforms provided by trusted third-party entities. In exchange for better user experience, the users allow these intermediaries to set their own arbitrary rules, which may influence reciprocal interactions and also favor some products over others. Recently, researchers have shown an increased interest in blockchain technology as a possible solution for creating decentralized marketplaces, thus avoiding the need for intermediaries. However, due to the young age of this technology, the majority of architectures proposed in the literature still rely on other types of centralized services, mainly to guarantee better user experiences. Although these schemes offer several benefits over traditional centralized architectures, they introduce other issues, such as single points of failure for the whole system. This paper presents a software architecture and the implementation of a fully decentralized marketplace solely relying on a public blockchain network. To test its effectiveness, we implemented a full-fledged marketplace of Fog/Edge computing resources, evaluating several design decisions and trade-offs in terms of monetary cost versus performance. Our experiments show that the current capabilities of blockchain technology may support such fully decentralized marketplaces, providing seamless user experiences
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