1,720,986 research outputs found
RF-Health: an integrated management system for a hospital based on passive RFID technology
No full textThe studied and realized system uses the RFID identification technology in order to make more efficient the management of items and people in sanitary environments. This system has three main functions, covering respectively the tracking of items, the tracking and the identification of the employees, and the identification of the patients, including in this case also the function of electronic case history. For each of this cases specific studies have been made in order to identify the right technological solutions. For the first two applications a specific antenna has been created in order to reach the required performances. All these functions have been integrated into a single software platform managing all the activities of detection and identification, and providing all the required information to the users of the system
Lopatran: Low power asset tracking by means of narrow band iot (nb-iot) technology
Full text linkThe narrowband Internet-of-Things (NB-IoT) communication standard is gaining mo-mentum within the big picture of the Internet-of-Things (IoT) owing to its capabilities of ensuring pervasive and wide coverage while limiting power consumption. Therefore, it turns out to be a valuable enabling technology within a considerable number of applications. Apart from traditional remote monitoring and data acquisition purposes where comparable Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) facilities have ruled for years, NB-IoT can potentially carve out space within specific alcoves in which low latency, low power, high data-rates and ubiquitous coverage are fundamentals requirements. Long term asset tracking definitely falls within such niches, and in particular NB-IoT can become a valuable alternative to be exploited by both replacing the conventional Global Position System (GPS) system, or supporting it. To this end, this paper proposes an innovative tracking system prototype for asset shipping which relies on two enabling technologies: GPS and NB-IoT. While position transmission is always put into effect via NB-IoT, it can be fetched by resorting to both GPS (like a standard tracker) or NB-IoT (thus establishing a GPS-less method). As a result, two localization techniques are arranged: the former one is preciser but energy hungrier, while the latter one is coarser but more low power. Such working principles were successfully tested on the field by means of two road tests in as much itineraries. Tests results are in agreement with the expectations underlying the two working principles since the finer one provides a more accurate tracking. In addition, a consumption analysis was also performed aiming at assessing the prototype lifetime. Finally, tests pursuing the assessment of the tracking error were carried out underling the fact that it strongly depends on the geographic deployment of NB-IoT towers
Pilot Analysis on Soil Moisture Impact on Underground to Aboveground LoRaWAN Transmissions for IoUT Contexts
No full textData transmission from the underground can be a relevant task for a wide range of Internet of Things (IoT) applications (e.g., from Smart Agriculture to environmental monitoring) thus paving the way to the recent paradigm of the Internet of Underground Things (IoUT). In this context, Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) technologies proved to be reliable solutions for underground to aboveground (UG2AG) data transmission: Long Range (LoRa) modulation and LoRa Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) protocol in particular, demonstrated to be able to transmit from depths down to 1.5 m. Nevertheless, the quality of the transmission channel may significantly vary due to several factors: ranging from soil composition to presence of water. Specifically, soil moisture may have an attenuating effect on the transmitted signal. The aim of this paper is to preliminary analyze the impact of different Volumetric Water Contents (VWCs) in soil on the LoRa transmission channel. Radio parameters are collected by burying a LoRaWAN transmitter inside a plastic case filled up with sand. The underground attenuation is measured reproducing different VWCs by progressively adding different quantities of water: this methodology allows to re-create in laboratory well-defined VWCs unlike a real environment where the actual VWC is due to a plethora of different factors. Results achieved in this paper demonstrate the correlation among VWC and losses though showing the potential feasibility of LoRa links also in case of elevate VWC levels
RFID Applications for Sanitary Environments
No full textHealthcare represents one of the most significant sectors where the diffusion of RFID technology is growing day by day. Many different applications have already been studied and developed, with both active and passive devices working at all the available operative frequencies.
Sanitary environments are nowadays extremely complex structures employing several thousands of people with very strict safety requirements: in emergency situations for example 5 minutes can make the difference for a patient between survive and die. RFID is especially indicated to be employed in these scenarios for two main reasons: first of all because it’s a particularly reliable technology, with good performances, few errors and fast interaction, and secondly because, due to the presence of many different technological systems, ad-hoc solutions can be designed on the specific requirements of the application to be realized.
At present the most common RFID applications in healthcare can be divided into two main categories: the items tracking and the tracking and identification of people, patients and sanitary operators. The items tracking is performed in order to avoid the loss of expensive devices and to reduce wasting of time during assistance operations: systems studied and realized for this purpose cover all the range of RFID systems and provide different services according to their different performances.
RFID systems for the identification of people probably represent the most interesting sector, due to the variety of different applications that can be studied and realized. The most common systems foresee the use of RFID for the tracking of sanitary operators or patients during their assistance operations. Along with this many other applications have been implemented, including systems operating the unambiguous matching between the patient and his treatments (for example the medicine or the blood sack) or between the mother and the child in the paediatrics departments. Finally the availability of a memory on the transponders fostered to the use of RFID technology also as a mean to promptly store and retrieve patient related information: for example electronic case history or electronic medical prescription applications have been studied and developed
Possible configurations and geometries of long range HF RFID antenna gates
No full textIn this article we discuss the realization of antenna gate structures for Inductively Coupled Passive HF RFID Systems. Antenna gates are currently used in several applications, from industrial tracking to access control: in these structures the identification process is realized with the use of more antennas disposed in a configuration that makes them similar to doors. Nowadays these structures can reach a maximum width of 1.50 - 1.60 meters due to the limitations deriving from the CEPT ERC Recommendation 70-03 annex 9 on electromagnetic emissions from electronic devices. Next to this, limitations also derive from the decrease of the electromagnetic field with the distance and from physical constrains due to the fact that the field strength is proportional to the dimensions of the antennas. The purpose of this article is to describe a possible optimum configuration of antennas allowing the detection of tags across a 2 meters wide gate reducing as much as possible its dimensions. © 2009 IEEE
A LoRaWAN network infrastructure for the remote monitoring of offshore sea farms
No full textFish farming is nowadays a crucial sector for food industry all around the world. While the total amount of captured fish production has remained almost constant in the last 30 years (around 90 millions tonnes according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United States), in the same span of time the quantity of bred fish has increased tenfold, almost reaching the quantity of the captured one. What was once little more than a hand-crafted production, is now an actual industrial sector, employing around 60 million workers all around the world. Like all industrial sectors, aquaculture can considerably benefit by the introduction of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, thus adopting them within the context of Industry 4.0 to optimize fish farming processes. In this context, this paper proposes a real-time monitoring infrastructure based on the use of Fixed Nodes and Mobile Sinks for the remote, real-time control of offshore sea farms. The proposed architecture exploits a LoRaWAN network infrastructure for data transmission: different configurations are tested on the field, proving the reliability of the communication channel in a worst case scenario up to a 8.33 km offshore distance. A complete real-time monitoring system is presented, allowing to measure in real time several parameters about the quality of water in the fish cages as well as their maintenance status
LoRaWAN vs NB-IoT: Transmission Performance Analysis within Critical Environments
No full textThis paper focuses on the comparison of transmission performances within critical environments (i.e., underwater, within metal enclosures and underground) for two of the most adopted enabling technologies for the Internet of Things (IoT): the Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) protocol and the Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) standard. After a literature review, the two technologies are surveyed and compared. Then, the most exploited path loss models for the aforesaid application scenarios are presented. In order to assess and compare performances, a multi-protocol wireless sensor node prototype exploiting both the technologies for transmitting is described. Such prototype is then employed within field tests which consisted of underwater, through-metal and underground broadcasts with the aim of measuring losses only ascribed to the media. Eventually, tests results are analyzed and compared with the theoretical models
Underwater to above water LoRaWAN networking: Theoretical analysis and field tests
No full textThe aim of this paper is to demonstrate the exploitability of Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) networking to set up a wireless transmission channel allowing the real time data collection from underwater depths up to more than 1 m. To this aim, a theoretical analysis is carried out to determine the actual feasibility of this link taking into account the technical features of the LoRa channel. Following this analysis, field tests in a swimming pool have been performed analyzing the transmission performance in terms of Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) and Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) for different transmission parameters and at increasing depths. Moreover, two test campaigns varying the antenna's sensor node and the packet payload length have been performed. Experimental results have seen a good corroboration of the theoretical analysis with efficient underwater LoRaWAN data transmission at depths up to 110 ±5 cm, considering 14 dBm transmitted power
Estimating Volumetric Water Content in Soil for IoUT Contexts by Exploiting RSSI-Based Augmented Sensors via Machine Learning
Full text linkThis paper aims at proposing an augmented sensing method for estimating volumetric water content (VWC) in soil for Internet of Underground Things (IoUT) applications. The system exploits an IoUT sensor node embedding a low-cost, low-precision soil moisture sensor and a long-range wide-area network (LoRaWAN) transceiver sending relative measurements within LoRaWAN packets. The VWC estimation is achieved by means of machine learning (ML) algorithms combining the readings provided by the soil moisture sensor with the received signal strength indicator (RSSI) values measured at the LoRaWAN gateway side during broadcasting. A dataset containing such measurements was especially collected in the laboratory by burying the IoUT sensor node within a plastic case filled with sand, while several VWCs were artificially created by progressively adding water. The adopted ML algorithms are trained and tested using three different techniques for estimating VWC. Firstly, the low-cost, low-precision soil moisture sensor is calibrated by resorting to an ML model exploiting only its raw readings to estimate VWC. Secondly, a virtual VWC sensor is shown, where no real sensor readings are used because only LoRaWAN RSSIs are exploited. Lastly, an augmented VWC sensing method relying on the combination of RSSIs and soil moisture sensor readings is presented. The findings of this paper demonstrate that the augmented sensor outperforms both the virtual sensor and the calibrated real soil moisture sensor. The latter provides a root mean square error (RMSE) of (Formula presented.), a virtual sensor of (Formula presented.), and an augmented sensor of (Formula presented.), which improves down to (Formula presented.) if filtered in post-processing
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