An effective handling of secure data stream in IoT

Abstract

Internet-of-Things (IoT) applications are a primary domain for data streams, which travel through a heterogeneous network consisting of the Internet and low-speed IoT to be sent to a data collector. However, when a large data stream is transmitted, overhead results from the difference between the speed and maximum transfer unit of IoT and the existing Internet. The overhead increases as data size increases. This problem is a critical factor for IoT devices that are sensitive to power consumption and data streams that must be handled in real time. To solve this problem, we compressed the data stream using a low-density parity check (LDPC) code. Since compression using the LDPC code can be applied even when the data stream is encrypted, the compression can be used in applications requiring privacy or confidentiality. Therefore, this study proposes a method to improve the usability of encrypted data streams in the IoT environment. We implemented IoT devices that generated data streams using Raspberry Pi, a desktop computer, and collectors that collect data streams. The results of experiments using temperature sensor data show that the communication time for data stream transmission decreased by 56.1–75.5%. In addition, the power consumption of IoT devices for data transmission decreased by 54.8–75.3%. In order to perform compression handling by the IoT device, the maximum memory usage and CPU usage increased by 0.3% and 10.1%, respectively. As a result of this research, it is expected that the transmission time to collectors, as well as the power consumption of IoT devices, can be reduced while securing data streams generated by IoT devices.