Sensors and Devices

Module1
Introduction to Internet of things
# Introduction: IoT comprises things that have unique identities and are
connected to internet. By 2020 there will be a total of 50 billion devices /things
connected to internet. IoT is not limited to just connecting things to the internet
but also allow things to communicate and exchange data.
# Definition: A dynamic global n/w infrastructure with self configuring
capabilities based on standard and interoperable communication protocols
where physical and virtual ―things‖ have identities, physical attributes and
virtual personalities and use intelligent interfaces, and are seamlessly integrated
into information n/w, often communicate data associated with users and their
environments.
# Characteristics:
1) Dynamic & Self Adapting: IoT devices and systems may have the capability
to dynamically adapt with the changing contexts and take actions based on their
operating conditions, user‗s context or sensed environment. Eg: the surveillance
system is adapting itself based on context and changing conditions.
2) Self Configuring: allowing a large number of devices to work together to
provide certain functionality.
3) Inter Operable Communication Protocols: support a number of interoperable
communication protocols and can communicate with other devices and also
with infrastructure.
4) Unique Identity: Each IoT device has a unique identity and a unique
identifier (IP address).
5) Integrated into Information Network: that allow them to communicate and
exchange data with other devices and systems.
# Applications of IoT:
1) Home 2) Cities 3) Environment 4) Energy 5) Retail 6) Logistics 7)
Agriculture 8) Industry 9) Health & Life Style
# Sensors:
A sensor is a device that measures a physical input from its
environment and convert it into data that can be interpreted by either a
human or a machine.
Sensors play a pivotal role in the internet of things (IoT). They
make it possible to create an ecosystem for collecting and processing data
about a specific environment so it can be monitored, managed and
controlled more easily and efficiently. IoT sensors are used in homes, out
in the field, in automobiles, on airplanes, in industrial settings and in
other environments. Sensors bridge the gap between the physical world
and logical world, acting as the eyes and ears for a
computing infrastructure that analyzes and acts upon the data collected
from the sensors.

Types of sensors:
Sensors can be categorized in multiple ways. One common approach is to
classify them as either active or passive.
An active se nsor is one that requires an external power source to be able to
respond to environmental input and generate output. For example, sensors used
in weather satellites often require some source of energy to provide
meteorological data about the Earth's atmosphere.

A passive sensor, on the other hand, doesn't require an external power source to
detect environmental input. It relies on the environment itself for its power,
using sources such as light or thermal energy. A good example is the mercury-
based glass thermometer. The mercury expands and contracts in response to
fluctuating temperatures, causing the level to be higher or lower in the glass
tube. External markings provide a human-readable gauge for viewing the
temperature.

Sensors are also commonly categorized by the type of environmental factors

they monitor. Here are some common examples:

● Accelerometer. This type of sensor detects changes in gravitational

acceleration, making it possible to measure tilt, vibration and, of course,
acceleration. Accelerometer sensors are used in a wide range of
industries, from consumer electronics to professional sports to aerospace
and aviation.
● Humidity. These sensors can detect the level of water vapors in the air to
determine the relative humidity. Humidity sensors often include
temperature readings because relative humidity is dependent on the air
temperature. The sensors are used in a wide range of industries and
settings, including agriculture, manufacturing, data centers, meteorology,
and heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC).
● Level. A level sensor can determine the level of a physical substance
such as water, fuel, coolant, grain, fertilizer or waste. Motorists, for
example, rely on their gas level sensors to ensure they don't end up
stranded on the side of the road. Level sensors are also used in
tsunami warning systems.
● Motion. Motion detectors can sense physical movement in a defined
space (the field of detection) and can be used to control lights, cameras,
parking gates, water faucets, security systems, automatic door openers
and numerous other systems. The sensors typically send out some type of
energy -- such as microwaves, ultrasonic waves or light beams -- and can
 detect when the flow of energy is interrupted by something entering its
path.
● Proximity. Proximity sensors detect the presence of an object or
determine the distance between objects. Proximity monitors are used in
elevators, assembly lines, parking lots, retail stores, automobiles, robotics
and numerous other environments.
● Temperature. These sensors can identify the temperature of a target
medium, whether gas, liquid or air. Temperature sensors are used across a
wide range of devices and environments, such as appliances, machinery,
aircraft, automobiles, computers, greenhouses, farms, thermostats and
many other devices.
● Touch. Touch sensing devices detect physical contact on a monitored
surface. Touch sensors are used extensively in electronic devices to
support trackpad and touchscreen technologies. They're also used in
many other systems, such as elevators, robotics and soap dispensers.

Physical Design of IoT

1) Things in IoT:
The things in IoT refers to IoT devices which have unique
identities and perform remote sensing, actuating and monitoring
capabilities. IoT devices can exchange data with other connected
devices applications. It collects data from other devices and
process data either locally or remotely.
An IoT device may consist of several interfaces for
communication to other devices both wired and wireless.
These includes (i) I/O interfaces for sensors, (ii) Interfaces
for internet connectivity (iii) memory and storage interfaces and
(iv) audio/video interfaces.
 2) IoT Protocols:

a)Link Layer : Protocols determine how data is physically sent over the
network‗s physical layer or medium. Local network connect to which host is
attached. Hosts on the same link exchange data packets over the link layer using
link layer protocols. Link layer determines how packets are coded and signaled
by the h/w device over the medium to which the host is attached.
Protocols:
∙ 802.3-Ethernet: IEEE802.3 is collection of wired Ethernet standards for the
link layer. Eg: 802.3 uses co-axial cable; 802.3i uses copper twisted pair
connection; 802.3j uses fiber optic connection; 802.3ae uses Ethernet over fiber.
∙ 802.11-WiFi: IEEE802.11 is a collection of wireless LAN(WLAN)
communication standards including extensive description of link layer. Eg:
802.11a operates in 5GHz band, 802.11b and 802.11g operates in 2.4GHz band,
802.11n operates in 2.4/5GHz band, 802.11ac operates in 5GHz band, 802.11ad
operates in 60Ghzband.
∙802.16 - WiMax: IEEE802.16 is a collection of wireless broadband standards
including exclusive description of link layer. WiMax provide data rates from
1.5 Mb/s to 1Gb/s.
∙ 802.15.4-LR-WPAN: IEEE802.15.4 is a collection of standards for low rate
wireless personal area network(LR-WPAN). Basis for high level
communication protocols such as ZigBee. Provides data rate from 40kb/s
to250kb/s.
∙ 2G/3G/4G-Mobile Communication: Data rates from 9.6kb/s(2G) to up
to100Mb/s(4G).

B) Network/Internet Layer: Responsible for sending IP datagrams from source

n/w to destination n/w. Performs the host addressing and packet routing.
Datagrams contains source and destination address.
Protocols:
∙IPv4: Internet Protocol version4 is used to identify the devices on a n/w using a
hierarchical addressing scheme. 32 bit address. Allows total of 2**32addresses.
∙IPv6: Internet Protocol version6 uses 128 bit address scheme and allows
2**128 addresses.
∙ 6LOWPAN:(IPv6overLowpowerWirelessPersonalAreaNetwork)operates in
2.4 GHz frequency range and data transfer 250 kb/s.

C) Transport Layer: Provides end-to-end message transfer capability

independent of the underlying n/w. Set up on connection with ACK as in TCP
and without ACK as in UDP. Provides functions such as error control,
segmentation, flow control and congestion control.
Protocols:
∙ TCP: Transmission Control Protocol used by web browsers(along with HTTP
and HTTPS), email(along with SMTP, FTP). Connection oriented and stateless
protocol. IP Protocol deals with sending packets, TCP ensures reliable
transmission of protocols in order. Avoids n/w congestion and congestion
collapse.
∙ UDP: User Datagram Protocol is connectionless protocol. Useful in time
sensitive applications, very small data units to exchange. Transaction oriented
and stateless protocol. Does not provide guaranteed delivery.
D) Application Layer: Defines how the applications interface with lower layer
protocolsto send data over the n/w. Enables process-to-process communication
using ports.
Protocols:
∙HTTP: Hyper Text Transfer Protocol that forms foundation of WWW. Follow
requestresponse model Stateless protocol.
CoAP: Constrained Application Protocol for machine-to-machine (M2M)
∙
applications with constrained devices, constrained environment and constrained
n/w. Uses clientserver architecture.
∙ WebSocket: allows full duplex communication over a single socket
connection.
∙ MQTT: Message Queue Telemetry Transport is light weight messaging
protocol based on publish-subscribe model. Uses client server architecture. Well
suited for constrained environment.
∙ XMPP: Extensible Message and Presence Protocol for real time
communication and streaming XML data between network entities. Support
client-server and server-server communication.
∙ DDS: Data Distribution Service is data centric middleware standards for
device-to-device or machine-to-machine communication. Uses publish-
subscribe model.
∙ AMQP: Advanced Message Queuing Protocol is open application layer
protocol for business messaging. Supports both point-to-point and publish-
subscribe model.
# IoT Communication Models:

IoT devices are found everywhere and will enable circulatory intelligence in the
future. For operational perception, it is important and useful to understand how
various IoT devices communicate with each other. Communication models used in
IoT have great value. The IoTs allow people and things to be connected any time, any
space, with anything and anyone, using any network and any service
Types of IoT Communication models: 1) Request -Response communication model
2) Publisher-subscriber communication model
3) Push-pull communication model
4) Exclusive pair communication model
1) Request-Response Model:
In which the client sends request to the server and the server replies to requests. It is an
each request-response pair is independent of others.

● The client, when required, requests the information from the server. This
request is usually in the encoded format.
● This model is stateless since the data between the requests is not retained
and each request is independently handled.
● The server Categories the request, and fetches the data from the database
and its resource representation. This data is converted to response and is
transferred in an encoded format to the client. The client, in turn, receives
the response.
● On the other hand — In Request-Response communication model client
sends a request to the server and the server responds to the request. When
the server receives the request, it decides how to respond, fetches the data
retrieves resources, and prepares the response, and sends it to the client.

2) Publish-Subscibe Model:
● Involves publishers, brokers and consumers.

● Publishers are source of data. Publishers send data to the topics which are managed by the
broker.
● Publishers are not aware of the consumers.

● Consumers subscribe to the topics which are managed by the broker. When the broker
receives data for a topic from the publisher, it sends the data to all the subscribed
consumers.
 ● Hence, Brokers responsibility is to accept data from publishers and send it
to the appropriate consumers. The broker only has the information
regarding the consumer to which a particular topic belongs to which the
publisher is unaware of.

3) Push-Pull Model:

The push-pull model constitutes data publishers, data consumers, and data queues.
● Publishers and Consumers are not aware of each other.
● Publishers publish the message/data and push it into the queue. The
consumers, present on the other side, pull the data out of the queue. Thus,
the queue acts as the buffer for the message when the difference occurs in
the rate of push or pull of data on the side of a publisher and consumer.
● Queues help in decoupling the messaging between the producer and
consumer. Queues also act as a buffer which helps in situations where there
is a mismatch between the rate at which the producers push the data and
consumers pull the data.
4) Exclusive Pair: is bi-directional, fully duplex communication model that uses a persistent
connection between the client and server. Once connection is set up it remains open until
the client send a request to close the connection. Is a stateful communication model and
server is aware of all the open connections.

#IoT Enabling Technologies

IoT is enabled by several technologies including Wireless Sensor Networks, Cloud
Computing, Embedded Systems.
1) Wireless Sensor Network(WSN): Comprises of distributed devices with sensors
which are used to monitor the environmental and physical conditions. Zig Bee is one
of the most popular wireless technologies used byWSNs.
WSNs used in IoT systems are described as follows:
∙ Weather Monitoring System: in which nodes collect temp, humidity and other data,
which is aggregated and analyzed.
 ∙ Indoor air quality monitoring systems: to collect data on the indoor air quality and
concentration of various gases.
∙ Soil Moisture Monitoring Systems: to monitor soil moisture at variouslocations. ∙
Surveillance Systems: use WSNs for collecting surveillance data(motiondata
detection).
∙ Smart Grids : use WSNs for monitoring grids at variouspoints.
∙ Structural Health Monitoring Systems: Use WSNs to monitor the health of
structures(building, bridges) by collecting vibrations from sensor nodes deployed at
various points in the structure.
2) Cloud Computing: Services are offered to users in different forms.
∙ Infrastructure-as-a-service(IaaS):provides users the ability to provision computing
and storage resources. These resources are provided to the users as a virtual
machine instances and virtual storage.
∙ Platform-as-a-Service(PaaS): provides users the ability to develop and deploy
application in cloud using the development tools, APIs, software libraries and
services provided by the cloud service provider.
∙ Software-as-a-Service(SaaS): provides the user a complete software application or
the user interface to the application itself.
3) Embedded Systems: is a computer system that has computer hardware and software
embedded to perform specific tasks. Embedded System range from low cost
miniaturized devices such as digital watches to devices such as digital cameras, POS
terminals, vending machines, appliances etc.,

It includes microcontroller and microprocessor memory, networking

units (Ethernet Wi-Fi adapters), input output units (display keyword etc. )
and storage devices (flash memory).
It collects the data and sends it to the internet.
Embedded systems used in
Examples –
1. Digital camera
2. DVD player, music player
3. Industrial robots
4. Wireless Routers etc.

Types: Domain specific IoT’s-Home,city,Environment, Energy,Agriculture

and industry.
DOMAIN SPECIFIC IoTs

1) Home Automation:

a) Smart Lighting: helps in saving energy by adapting the lighting to the ambient conditions and
switching on/off or diming the light when needed.

b) Smart Appliances: make the management easier and also provide status information to the
users remotely.
c) Intrusion Detection: use security cameras and sensors(PIR sensors and door sensors) to detect
intrusion and raise alerts. Alerts can be in the form of SMS or email sent to the user.

d) Smoke/Gas Detectors: Smoke detectors are installed in homes and buildings to detect smoke
that is typically an early sign of fire. Alerts raised by smoke detectors can be in the form of
signals to a fire alarm system. Gas detectors can detect the presence of harmful gases such as
CO, LPGetc.,

2) Cities:

a) Smart Parking: make the search for parking space easier and convenient for drivers. Smart
parking are powered by IoT systems that detect the no. of empty parking slots and send
information over internet to smart application backends.

b) Smart Lighting: for roads, parks and buildings can help in saving energy.

c) Smart Roads: Equipped with sensors can provide information on driving condition, travel time
estimating and alert in case of poor driving conditions, traffic condition and accidents.

d) Structural Health Monitoring: uses a network of sensors to monitor the vibration levels in the
structures such as bridges and buildings.

e) Surveillance: The video feeds from surveillance cameras can be aggregated in cloud based
scalable storage solution.

f) Emergency Response: IoT systems for fire detection, gas and water leakage detection can help
in generating alerts and minimizing their effects on the critical infrastructures.

3) Environment:

a) Weather Monitoring: Systems collect data from a no. of sensors attached and send the data
to cloud based applications and storage back ends. The data collected in cloud can then be
analyzed and visualized by cloud based applications.

b) Air Pollution Monitoring: System can monitor emission of harmful gases(CO2, CO, NO, NO2
etc.,) by factories and automobiles using gaseous and meteorological sensors. The collected data
can be analyzed to make informed decisions on pollutions control approaches.

c) Noise Pollution Monitoring: Due to growing urban development, noise levels in cities have
increased and even become alarmingly high in some cities. IoT based noise pollution monitoring
systems use a no. of noise monitoring systems that are deployed at different places in a city. The
data on noise levels from the station is collected on servers or in the cloud. The collected data is
then aggregated to generate noise maps.

d) Forest Fire Detection: Forest fire can cause damage to natural resources, property and
human life. Early detection of forest fire can help in minimizing damage.

e) River Flood Detection: River floods can cause damage to natural and human resources and
human life. Early warnings of floods can be given by monitoring the water level and flow rate.
IoT based river flood monitoring system uses a no. of sensor nodes that monitor the water level
and flow rate sensors.

4) Energy:
 a) Smart Grids: is a data communication network integrated with the electrical grids that
collects and analyze data captured in near-real-time about power transmission, distribution and
consumption. Smart grid technology provides predictive information and recommendations to
utilities, their suppliers, and their customers on how best to manage power. By using IoT based
sensing and measurement technologies, the health of equipment and integrity of the grid can be
evaluated.

b) Renewable Energy Systems: IoT based systems integrated with the transformers at the point
of interconnection measure the electrical variables and how much power is fed into the grid. For
wind energy systems, closed-loop controls can be used to regulate the voltage at point of
interconnection which coordinate wind turbine outputs and provides power support.

c) Prognostics: In systems such as power grids, real-time information is collected using

specialized electrical sensors called Phasor Measurment Units(PMUs) at the substations. The
information received from PMUs must be monitored in real-time for estimating the state of the
system and for predicting failures

5) Agriculture:

a) Smart Irrigation: to determine moisture amount in soil.

b) Green House Control: to improve productivity.

6) Industry:

a) Machine diagnosis and prognosis

b) Indoor Air Quality Monitoring