A predictive analytics framework for sensor data using time series and deep learning techniques

Abstract

IoT devices convert billions of objects into data-generating entities, enabling them to report status and interact with their surroundings. This data comes in various formats, like structured, semi-structured, or unstructured. In addition, it can be collected in batches or in real time. The problem now is how to benefit from all of this data gathered by sensing and monitoring changes like temperature, light, and position. In this paper, we propose a predictive analytics framework constructed on top of open-source technologies such as Apache Spark and Kafka. The framework focuses on forecasting temperature time series data using traditional and deep learning predictive analytics methods. The analysis and prediction tasks were performed using Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA), Seasonal Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (SARIMA), Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM), and a novel hybrid model based on Convolution Neural Network (CNN) and LSTM. The purpose of this paper is to determine whether and how recently developed deep learning-based models outperform traditional algorithms in the prediction of time series data. The empirical studies conducted and reported in this paper demonstrate that deep learning-based models, specifically LSTM and CNN-LSTM, exhibit superior performance compared to traditional-based algorithms, ARIMA and SARIMA. More specifically, the average reduction in error rates obtained by LSTM and CNN-LSTM models were substantial when compared to other models indicating the superiority of deep learning. Moreover, the CNN-LSTM-based deep learning model exhibits a higher degree of closeness to the actual values when compared to the LSTM-based model.