Interoperability Of Devices Research Articles

Service-Oriented Medical Device Connectivity: Particular Standards for Endoscopic Surgery.

To translate recent advances in medical device interoperability research into clinical practice, standards are being developed that specify precise requirements towards the network representation of particular medical devices connecting through ISO/IEEE 11073 SDC. The present contribution supplements this protocol standard with specific models for endoscopic camera systems, light sources, insufflators, and pumps. Through industry consensus, these new standards provide modular means to describe the devices' capabilities and modes of interaction in a service-oriented medical device communication architecture. This enables seamless data exchange and the potential for new assistive systems to support the caregiver.

Achieving sustainability through smart city applications: protocols, systems and solutions using IoT and wireless sensor network

Smart city applications is not just limited to the use of technology in building better cities and improving the citizens’ quality of lives. In reality, it is capable of building comprehensive solutions for the development of sustainable communities, irrespective of being urban or rural. Different communities will have their own dynamics and complexity, some communities are widespread and distributed, while some are more dense and concentrated. Each of these characteristics can either become an advantage or a barrier while developing solutions for these communities, which can be addressed with the proper use of technology. Internet of things (IoT) and wireless sensor networks (WSN), are the technologies in particular that can help in building comprehensive solutions for creating sustainable communities as they have a wide variety of applications such as disaster management, healthcare, energy, water, surveillance, structural health monitoring and environmental monitoring. This paper describes about four major research works in smart city application areas such as (a) design and deployment of an IoT system for early warning of landslides, (b) heterogeneous wireless communication design and optimization for enabling real-time management of interoperation of heterogeneous devices and data services in a hybrid electrical network, (c) development of (low-cost) IoT sensors for remote patient monitoring and (d) design and deployment of systems and solution for providing mobile offshore connectivity for fishing vessels—internet over sea. This paper details the current state of the art, challenges to be solved, and the methodology that we have adapted for developing solutions in all these research areas. The extensive research in IoT, WSN and its applications has resulted in receiving the award, titled “World Center of Excellence in Landslide Risk Reduction” and five patents, namely (a) network-based system for predicting landslides and providing early warnings (b) mobile infrastructure for coastal region offshore communications and networks (c) wearable wireless tongue controlled devices (d) Systems, methods, and devices for remote health monitoring and management (e) Systems, methods, and devices for remote health monitoring and management using internet of things sensors

Customer-in-Loop Adaptive Supply Chain Migration Model to Enable IoT

Poised to smart citizenry engagement, an unprecedented deluge of high quality streaming services induce a major data traffic challenge in Fourth Generation (4G) bandwidth and coverage, the upcoming smart city expectations cannot be ignored, eventually. The bottlenecks in ever exploiting benefits such as e-Life, to name a few at Mobile Equipment Providers (MEP) tiers, are complemented at Device Dependent Device Independent (D3I) configurations inherent at various tiers of Mobile Service Providers (MSP). While enabling a Supply Chain Management (SCM) augments a unique system support involving the MSPs and MEPs for desired Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Ad hoc Resource Planning (ARP), which we found prevalent in migration scenario from 4G to 5G technology deployment. Despite its complexity both in term of one-to-many and many-to-one across diverse MSP and MEP options, SCM operational objectives sets forth a unique challenge, hence is the main objective for our work presented here. In this paper, we presented a framework to enhance the 4G legacy in mobile service provider capacity for smart city Machine-to-Machine (M2M) backbone. The migration process is assessed with proposed strategic, technical and operational indicators, which demonstrate its adaptability and flexibility while integrating in conventional 4G deployments, especially taking into account radio devices and applications. Web-enabled Software Define Radio devices and applications are used to index the migration cost and support SCM planning and execution. We identify, the decentralization of mobile service providers infrastructure plays a major role in reducing the embedded complexity which often appears as primary bottleneck. MSP as a key player in the elasticity of migration, we presented a platform to support large as well as low MEP-MSP co-deployments. Pareto multi-criteria optimization is used to find the strategic indicators which are primary Transformation Steering Factors (TSF), valid in both device dependent or device independent M2M migration. We expose our result for achieving TSF, while rolling interoperability and reconfiguration of device deployed in a typical volatile inter-MSP or intra-MSPs tiers. Pareto Migration Indicators (MI) are optimized successively progressing across the transformation schemes; relative to base-line MSP services, hence enabling a lucrative choice while elasticity of provider-centric cost depends adaptively on technology legacy and M2M access of User Equipment (UE).

A Distributed CoRE-Based Resource Synchronization Mechanism

Representational state transfer (REST) application programming interfaces and event processing are the cornerstone of the dynamic Internet of Things. While the former is required for device interoperability, the latter is important for autonomous and responsive systems. In recent years, both topics have received a lot of attention and have been drastically changing due to the emergence of new applications, which end up working inefficiently with current standards and architectures. More recently, event processing started to move down from the top (cloud) to bottom (edge devices). At the same time, the Internet Engineering Task Force, which normally solves low-layer protocol-related problems, has also started looking at event processing and resource synchronization from a bottom-up perspective. This article explores the intersection of these efforts by making an in-depth overview of currently existing standards, and Internet drafts, that allow building complex event processing chains. Next, a new reusable and scalable event processing mechanism, which can be distributed across multiple end-devices, is introduced. Its optimal distribution across end-devices is mathematically addressed, and results confirm its effectiveness.

Medical Device Integration with Electronic Health Records: A Case Study of University of Nairobi Health Services, Kenya

In this study, we describe a demonstration in which available electronic medical records system (EMR) was successfully integrated with a wireless blood pressure monitor (BPM). This was implemented by adopting the use of RESTful Application Programming Interface (API) technologies and commonly established standards designed for medical devices interoperability. Before deploying the prototype, we conducted pilot tests at the University of Nairobi, nursing station to get feedback on the time spent using the conventional blood pressure data capture methods and the newly integrated application. Clinical data from the device was exchanged adhering to the HL7/XML standard communication protocol. The findings indicate a positive outcome was availed on the time taken for the blood pressure readings, time spent by the patient at the nursing station, doctor’s time to search the patients’ blood pressure readings as well as the data accuracy fed in the EMR system.

FLA-IoT: Virtualization Enabled Architecture for Heterogeneous Systems in Internet of Things

A flexible architecture is always required when trying to communicate with heterogeneous kind of systems, and IoT is the largest communication network of the history, which is bringing life to everything around us. Currently available three and four layered communication architectures are the popular basic structures to implement IoT. Where three Layers architecture is composed of perception, network and application layers and four layer architecture is composed of perception, network, service, application layer. The problem with existing architectures is that some layers are not well managed and complex in structure and lacks in the interoperability of different kind devices. In this research we present a virtualization enabled architecture Flexible Layered Architecture for Internet of Things (FLA-IoT) to overcome those challenges. FLA-IoT provides a simple structure with well-organized layers and introduces the creation of Virtual Mote (virtual object) from all real-world devices to enable the communication between unlike devices. This results in an indiscriminate communication between different real-world devices with a well-managed layered architecture.

Multiple-Site Diversification of Regulatory Sequences Enables Interspecies Operability of Genetic Devices.

The features of the light-responsive cyanobacterial CcaSR regulatory module that determine interoperability of this optogenetic device between Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas putida have been examined. For this, all structural parts (i.e., ho1 and pcyA genes for synthesis of phycocyanobilin, the ccaS/ccaR system from Synechocystis, and its cognate downstream promoter) were maintained but their expression levels and stoichiometry diversified by (i) reassembling them together in a single broad host range, standardized vector and (ii) subjecting the noncoding regulatory sequences to multiple cycles of directed evolution with random genomic mutations (DIvERGE), a recombineering method that intensifies mutation rates within discrete DNA segments. Once passed to P.putida, various clones displayed a wide dynamic range, insignificant leakiness, and excellent capacity in response to green light. Inspection of the evolutionary intermediates pinpointed translational control as the main bottleneck for interoperability and suggested a general approach for easing the exchange of genetic cargoes between different species, i.e., optimization of relative expression levels and upturning of subcomplex stoichiometry.

Validation Method for Simulation Model of Internet of Things-Aided Power System

Validation of power system simulation models is essentially a similarity analysis problem based on multivariate time series. With the development of the internet of things (IoT) technology in the power system, the interoperability and integration of devices in the practical project are improved, and the cross interaction in the simulation process becomes more complex correspondingly. It is critical to explore the inherent correlation from the high dimensional data to evaluate the credibility and to locate the error of the simulation model. Thus, a model validation method based on factor analysis and the Prony method is proposed in this paper. Firstly, the multivariate time series of the simulation model and the practical/acknowledged system are replaced by a low number of common factors with physical meanings by factor analysis. Secondly, the modified adaptive Prony method is applied to extract the features of each common factor to ensure the best fitting of the non-stationary signal. Then the complete similarity evaluation model of the simulation system is established based on energy proportion, information entropy, and variance of the contribution rate. Finally, the error location is identified in the evaluation process based on the physical meaning of extracted features. The feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method are verified by an application in the simulation model of a power electronics system developed in PSASP.

Real Time Operation of IEC 61850 Based Digital Substation

The advancement in technologies applied on substation studies are leading towards substation automation systems (SAS). In SAS network interoperability of substation devices is an important factor that needs good media of communication. IEC 61850 protocol has a greater role in device communications and protection functions of an integrated system. Also this standard can address the problem of interoperability of devices from various vendors. With the implementation of IEC 61850 standards in SAS networks, integration of latest devices like, intelligent electronic devices (IEDs), analog merging units (AMUs) and Ethernet networks are becoming possible. IEC 61850 standards will upgrade a conventional substation model into Digital Substation providing IEDs and modern substation devices are getting installed. In this paper IEC 61850 standard with its various operational levels have been studied for basic understanding of the protocol. A digital substation model with operational architecture has been shown and its various process bus communication messages have been discussed. To establish the concept of interoperability of subsation devices in a substaion model, a digital substation laboratory model has been developed here with IEC 61850 standard implementation. Real time analysis of protection functions with process bus communications of the substation model have been executed. The study of IEC 61850 standard and digital substation with its real time hardware test results will give the reader a clear idea about digital substations, substation devices interoperability operations and protection functions. This implementation and application of IEC standards in substation communication and protection functions can get used effectively in future for testing some other network topology.

Simulation-Based Performance Validation of Homomorphic Encryption Algorithms in the Internet of Things

IoT systems consist of Hardware/Software systems (e.g., sensors) that are embedded in a physical world, networked and that interact with complex software platforms. The validation of such systems is a challenge and currently mostly done by prototypes. This paper presents the virtual environment for simulation, emulation and validation of an IoT platform and its semantic model in real life scenarios. It is based on a decentralized, bottom up approach that offers interoperability of IoT devices and the value-added services they want to use across different domains. The framework is demonstrated by a comprehensive case study. The example consists of the complete IoT “Smart Energy” use case with focus on data privacy by homomorphic encryption. The performance of the network is compared while using partially homomorphic encryption, fully homomorphic encryption and no encryption at all.As a major result, we found that our framework is capable of simulating big IoT networks and the overhead introduced by homomorphic encryption is feasible for VICINITY.

An Interoperable Component-Based Architecture for Data-Driven IoT System.

The advancement of the Internet of Things (IoT) as a solution in diverse application domains has nurtured the expansion in the number of devices and data volume. Multiple platforms and protocols have been introduced and resulted in high device ubiquity and heterogeneity. However, currently available IoT architectures face challenges to accommodate the diversity in IoT devices or services operating under different operating systems and protocols. In this paper, we propose a new IoT architecture that utilizes the component-based design approach to create and define the loosely-coupled, standalone but interoperable service components for IoT systems. Furthermore, a data-driven feedback function is included as a key feature of the proposed architecture to enable a greater degree of system automation and to reduce the dependency on mankind for data analysis and decision-making. The proposed architecture aims to tackle device interoperability, system reusability and the lack of data-driven functionality issues. Using a real-world use case on a proof-of-concept prototype, we examined the viability and usability of the proposed architecture.

A Survey of IoT Management Protocols and Frameworks

As the complexity of Internet of Things (IoT) systems increases, a large variety of tools and technologies for IoT management are making their way into both research setups and the market. IoT management solutions must consider the resource restrictions of embedded devices, as well as their heterogeneity and network dynamics. With these in mind, the Internet Engineering Task Force developed several standards targeting the integration and interoperation of heterogeneous devices, such as the Representational State Transfer Configuration Protocol (RESTCONF) or the Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) Management Interface. Concurrently, the Open Mobile Alliance developed the Lightweight Machine-to-Machine protocol, for IoT device management. This paper provides a comprehensive, up-to-date overview of IoT management technologies, frameworks and protocols. Also, it proposes a taxonomy for IoT devices management. In addition to presenting the various solutions, the paper provides comparative views, standardization timeline, and market analysis. The presented analysis ranges from traditional network management protocols, such as Simple Network Management Protocol, to the newest IoT management and configuration protocols, such as CoAP Management Interface and Lightweight Machine-to-Machine protocols. Moreover, this survey identifies remaining challenges and solutions offered by recent management protocols, not covered by previous surveys.

IoMT Platform for Pervasive Healthcare Data Aggregation, Processing, and Sharing Based on OneM2M and OpenEHR.

Pervasive healthcare services have undergone a great evolution in recent years. The technological development of communication networks, including the Internet, sensor networks, and M2M (Machine-to-Machine) have given rise to new architectures, applications, and standards related to addressing almost all current e-health challenges. Among the standards, the importance of OpenEHR has been recognized, since it enables the separation of medical semantics from data representation of electronic health records. However, it does not meet the requirements related to interoperability of e-health devices in M2M networks, or in the Internet of Things (IoT) scenarios. Moreover, the lack of interoperability hampers the application of new data-processing techniques, such as data mining and online analytical processing, due to the heterogeneity of the data and the sources. This article proposes an Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) platform for pervasive healthcare that ensures interoperability, quality of the detection process, and scalability in an M2M-based architecture, and provides functionalities for the processing of high volumes of data, knowledge extraction, and common healthcare services. The platform uses the semantics described in OpenEHR for both data quality evaluation and standardization of healthcare data stored by the association of IoMT devices and observations defined in OpenEHR. Moreover, it enables the application of big data techniques and online analytic processing (OLAP) through Hadoop Map/Reduce and content-sharing through fast healthcare interoperability resource (FHIR) application programming interfaces (APIs).

An Automated Testing Method for PXI Chassis Software Driver

PCI extensions for instrumentation (PXI) chassis is a multi-vendor interoperable device. It can interconnect with many chassis, module and computers. To make sure a device driver is able to function in a specific configuration, it must go through a series of tests. The complexity of PXI software testing has increased when it needs to cover multiple configurations for a single driver. Majority of the automated test systems will execute tests without having the mechanism to verify the test environment. To improve the PXI chassis driver test duration, the current trend of automated software testing only executes a single test configuration. Thus, an automated test software with the capability to execute multi-test configuration is required. In order to develop this tool, a server-client concept is adopted. The advantage of server-client is to centralize the testing when multiple tests are performed. The software tool client will start once it is booted into the operating system; the test system will connect to server and wait for further action from server. When server detects incoming client connection, it will automatically verify and fix the testing environment; if the client fulfills the test suite requirement it will start to execute the test system. All client test summary results will be updated to the server. The results show an average of 17.1% test duration reduction on the planned test configuration when the automated software tool is applied on testing. Besides, the results indicate higher controller hardware performance can reduce the test duration.

GATOR: connecting integrated operating room solutions based on the IEEE 11073 SDC and ORiN standards.

Medical device interoperability in operating rooms (OR) provides advantages for both, patients and physicians. Several approaches were made to provide standards for successful device integration. However, with high heterogeneity of standards in the market, device vendors may reject these approaches. The aim of this work is therefore to provide a proof of concept for the connection of two promising integration solutions OR.NET and SCOT to increase vendor interest. The connection of devices between both domains is targeted by implementing an application to map device capabilities between the IEEE 11073 SDC and ORiN standards. Potential properties of the respective architectures are defined. The connection was evaluated by latency measurements in a demonstrator setup utilizing an OR light as an exemplary device. The latency measurements resulted in a similar transmission speed of the GATOR (53.0ms) and direct SDC-to-SDC (38.0ms) communication. Direct proprietary ORiN-to-ORiN communication was faster in any case (8.0ms). A connection between both standards was successfully achieved via the GATOR application. The results show comparable magnitudes of the communication between the standards compared to the direct standard-internal communication.

Service-Oriented Device Connectivity: Device Specialisations for Interoperability.

There are IEEE 11073 standards for foundational, structural, and semantic point-of-care medical device interoperability, but the first devices with this interface have yet to enter the market. One of the missing pieces for implementation and approval are Device Specialisations that specify how to use information and service models to represent a specific type of device on the network. Required and optional metrics need to be standardised as well as nomenclature terms, units of measure, and extension points. Finally, device-to-device interaction at runtime has to be defined for automatic verification during testing and approval. Applications include C-arm fluoroscopes used in different clinical settings.

Mitigating network-layer security attacks on authentication-enhanced openICE

Integrated Clinical Environment (ICE) is a standardized framework for achieving medical device interoperability. It utilizes high-level supervisory and medical apps and low-level communication middle-ware to coordinate medical devices to accomplish a shared clinical mission. With the potential to significantly improve healthcare productivity and reduce medical errors, the interoperability of medical devices also subjects ICE systems to unprecedented security threats. In this paper, we present a set of security attacks, namely interception, tampering, and replay attack, to the network level of ICE systems, which we identify through a threat modeling analysis on OpenICE, the best-known instantiation of ICE system. For these security attacks, we devise corresponding defense mechanisms on top of OpenICE. Our experiments demonstrate that these defense mechanisms can effectively protect OpenICE from the identified attacks with acceptable computational overhead.

Routing Protocols for Low Power and Lossy Networks in Internet of Things Applications.

The emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT) and its applications has taken the attention of several researchers. In an effort to provide interoperability and IPv6 support for the IoT devices, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) proposed the 6LoWPAN stack. However, the particularities and hardware limitations of networks associated with IoT devices lead to several challenges, mainly for routing protocols. On its stack proposal, IETF standardizes the RPL (IPv6 Routing Protocol for Low-Power and Lossy Networks) as the routing protocol for Low-power and Lossy Networks (LLNs). RPL is a tree-based proactive routing protocol that creates acyclic graphs among the nodes to allow data exchange. Although widely considered and used by current applications, different recent studies have shown its limitations and drawbacks. Among these, it is possible to highlight the weak support of mobility and P2P traffic, restrictions for multicast transmissions, and lousy adaption for dynamic throughput. Motivated by the presented issues, several new solutions have emerged during recent years. The approaches range from the consideration of different routing metrics to an entirely new solution inspired by other routing protocols. In this context, this work aims to present an extensive survey study about routing solutions for IoT/LLN, not limited to RPL enhancements. In the course of the paper, the routing requirements of LLNs, the initial protocols, and the most recent approaches are presented. The IoT routing enhancements are divided according to its main objectives and then studied individually to point out its most important strengths and weaknesses. Furthermore, as the main contribution, this study presents a comprehensive discussion about the considered approaches, identifying the still remaining open issues and suggesting future directions to be recognized by new proposals.

Enabling Efficient Communications with Resource Constrained Information Endpoints in Smart Homes.

Smart Homes are one of the most promising real applications of Internet of Things and Cyber-Physical Systems. Devices and software components are deployed to create enhanced living environments where physical information is captured by sensors, sent to servers and finally transmitted to information endpoints to be consumed after its processing. These systems usually employ resource constrained components in dense architectures supported by massive machine type communications. Components, to adapt to different scenarios, present several configuration options. In machine type communications, these configuration options should be selected dynamically and automatically. Many works have addressed this situation in relation to sensor-server communications but endpoints are still mostly manually configured. Therefore, in this paper it is proposed an automatic and dynamic configuration algorithm, based on the idea of “efficiency,” for information endpoints in the context of Smart Homes. Different costs associated to endpoint-server communications in Smart Homes are identified and mathematically modelled. Using this model and real measurements, the most efficient configuration is selected for each endpoint at each moment, not only guarantying the interoperability of devices but also ensuring an adequate resource usage, for example, modifying the endpoints’ lifecycle or the information compression mechanism. In order to validate the proposed solution, an experimental validation including both real implementation and simulation scenarios is provided.

HABITAT: An IoT Solution for Independent Elderly.

In this work, a flexible and extensive digital platform for Smart Homes is presented, exploiting the most advanced technologies of the Internet of Things, such as Radio Frequency Identification, wearable electronics, Wireless Sensor Networks, and Artificial Intelligence. Thus, the main novelty of the paper is the system-level description of the platform flexibility allowing the interoperability of different smart devices. This research was developed within the framework of the operative project HABITAT (Home Assistance Based on the Internet of Things for the Autonomy of Everybody), aiming at developing smart devices to support elderly people both in their own houses and in retirement homes, and embedding them in everyday life objects, thus reducing the expenses for healthcare due to the lower need for personal assistance, and providing a better life quality to the elderly users.