An IoT-Aware System for Managing Patients’ Waiting Time Using Bluetooth Low-Energy Technology

It is a common observation that whenever patients arrives at the front desk of a hospital, outpatient clinic, or other health-associated centers, they have to first queue up in a line and wait to fill in their registration form to get admitted. The long waiting time without any status updates is the most common complaint, concerning health officials. In this paper, UrNext, a location-aware mobile-based solution using Bluetooth low-energy (BLE) technology is presented to solve the problem. Recently, a technology-oriented method, the Internet of Things (IoT), has been gaining popularity in helping to solve some of the healthcare sector’s problems. The implementation of this solution could be illustrated through a simple example of when a patient arrives at a clinic for a consultation. Instead of having to wait in long lines, that patient will be greeted automatically, receive a push notification of an admittance along with an estimated waiting time for a consultation session. This will not only provide the patients with a sense of freedom but would also reduce the uncertainty levels that are generally observed, thus saving both time and money. This work aims to improve the clinics’ quality of services, organize queues and minimize waiting times, leading to patients’ comfort while reducing the burden on nurses and receptionists. The results demonstrate that the presented system is successful in its performance and helps achieves a pleasant and conducive clinic visitation process with higher productivity.     

Coastal trapped waves in the southern Caspian Sea

Previous studies reported coastal trapped waves (CTWs) in the Caspian Sea (CS). This study deals with the generation mechanisms, the temporal and spatial variability of CTWs in this area, and their transformations during propagation from the origin to the destination using recent measurements and high-resolution numerical simulations. CTWs are observed at all stations with periods of 2–6 days after northerly storms. The Absheron Peninsula, old Sefidrud delta, and Nur coasts were identified as the CTWs prone regions. The generation of CTWs in these locations was confirmed using numerical experiments. The propagation away from the generating location of CTWs was analyzed using a representative real wind storm. In the west part of the CS, the generation mechanism of CTWs is mainly similar to the barotropic Kelvin waves; in contrast, it is similar to the continental shelf waves in the southern shelves. The results can be used to study the contribution of generated CTWs to the transport of sediment and biological materials in all large lakes.     

HSDN‐GRA: A hybrid software‐defined networking‐based geographic routing protocol with multi‐agent approach

We propose in this paper a Hybrid Software‐Defined Networking‐based Geographical Routing Protocol (HSDN‐GRA) with a clustering approach. It takes into account three different criteria to select the best relay to send data: (1) the contact duration between vehicles, (2) the available load of each vehicle, (3) and the log of encountered communication errors embedded in each cluster head. The multi‐criteria strategy allows the selection of the most reliable vehicles by avoiding communication problems and ensuring connection availability. Once the hybrid control plane has found out the next eligible neighbor, the data plane will be in charge of dividing and sending data. To validate our approach, HSDN‐GRA has been modeled and implemented in JADE, a multi‐agent platform, to be compared to other multi‐agent based protocols. Simulation results show that HSDN‐GRA achieves good performance with respect to the average routing overhead, the packet drop rate, and the throughput.     

基于NB分类器重访概率预测的Web缓存替换策略

Web缓存是用来解决网络访问延迟和网络拥塞问题，缓存替换策略直接影响缓存的命中率。为此，提出一种朴素贝叶斯（NB）分类器重访概率预测的Web缓存替换策略；根据用户之前访问日志，通过分区操作提取多项特征来表示每次访问的对象，并构建特征数据集；训练NB分类器，用来确定缓存中对象被再次访问的概率，为对象分配权重；结合LRU策略来合理删除一些对象。仿真结果表明，提出的策略在保证较高命中率的同时有效降低了执行时间。     

Modeling and analysis of multiple access channel capacity based on hybrid energy storage and energy harvesting

Energy harvesting (EH) has been considered as a promising technology to solve the constrained energy problem in the devices of IoT with its advantages of flexible deployment and sustainable energy supply.For multiple access channel with energy harvesting,a hybrid energy storage structure model composed by super capacitor and battery was proposed for the devices of IoT.According to the peculiarities of medium access channel and energy harvesting system,an optimized energy allocation strategy with exponential-type decline (ETD) was presented,the upper and lower bounds of the average throughput were deduced,in particular,the gap of two bounds was derived to be a constant.The channel capacity was further obtained by utilizing the relationship between the average throughput and the channel capacity.In the simulations,the effect of harvested energy,storage capacity and the number of nodes on the channel capacity were analyzed respectively.Experiment results show that compared with the conventional wireless node with single battery storage,the proposed hybrid energy storage structure can improve the harvested energy value and increase the multiple access channel capacity by using adaptive modulation scheme when transmitting the signals.     

Smart firefighting construction in China: Status,problems, and reflections

“Smart firefighting” construction as a part of the “smart city” has been a concern of the public security and fire agencies at all levels. In this study, the status, problems, and reflections of “smart firefighting” construction in China are discussed. A recent survey indicates that China has launched its smart firefighting construction and initially created a new perspective on its regional smart firefighting work based on three main aspects: intelligent disaster perception by Internet of Things (IoT) construction, intelligent disaster prevention by big data construction, and intelligent disaster disposal by emergency rescue platform construction. However, the current smart firefighting construction in China still has some prominent problems such as the data interconnectivity and normalized management of various platforms, the extensibility of smart firefighting platforms, and the intelligent level of smart firefighting researches, which need to be solved urgently. Therefore, we argue that smart firefighting construction in China should establish data interconnectivity, industrial normalized management, 2D/3D geographic information interaction and extension, high-integration fire protection theory, and many other aspects in the near future and truly realize firefighting visualization and efficient data applications for 4D time space. This study could provide valuable reference for smart firefighting and smart city construction.     

基于序列模型的无线传感网入侵检测系统

随着物联网(IoT)的快速发展，越来越多的IoT节点设备被部署，但伴随而来的安全问题也不可忽视。IoT的网络层节点设备主要通过无线传感网进行通信，其相较于互联网更开放也更容易受到拒绝服务等网络攻击。针对无线传感网面临的网络层安全问题，提出了一种基于序列模型的网络入侵检测系统，对网络层入侵进行检测和报警，具有较高的识别率以及较低的误报率。另外，针对无线传感网节点设备面临的节点主机设备的安全问题，在考虑节点开销的基础上，提出了一种基于简单序列模型的主机入侵检测系统。实验结果表明，针对无线传感网的网络层以及主机层的两个入侵检测系统的准确率都达到了99%以上，误报率在1%左右，达到了工业需求，这两个系统可以全面有效地保护无线传感网安全。     

A Traceable Capability-based Access Control for IoT

Delegation mechanism in Internet of Things (IoT) allows users to share some of their permissions with others. Cloud-based delegation solutions require that only the user who has registered in the cloud can be delegated permissions. It is not convenient when a permission is delegated to a large number of temporarily users. Therefore, some works like CapBAC delegate permissions locally in an offline way. However, this is difficult to revoke and modify the offline delegated permissions. In this work, we propose a traceable capability-based access control approach (TCAC) that can revoke and modify permissions by tracking the trajectories of permissions delegation. We define a time capability tree (TCT) that can automatically extract permissions trajectories, and we also design a new capability token to improve the permission verification, revocation and modification efficiency. The experiment results show that TCAC has less token verification and revocation/modification time than those of CapBAC and xDBAuth. TCAC can discover 73.3% unvisited users in the case of delegating and accessing randomly. This provides more information about the permissions delegation relationships, and opens up new possibilities to guarantee the global security in IoT delegation system. To the best of our knowledge, TCAC is the first work to capture the unvisited permissions.     

“Mapping” Smart Cities

ABSTRACT

Smart cities are designed to use data to optimize resources, maintain sustainability, and improve people’s quality of life. While many urban technologies are employed to make cities “smart,” one constellation of technologies has been less examined in the academic literature—digital maps and the spatial data infrastructure. This paper is an attempt to systematically review the functions and evolution of digital maps and the spatial data infrastructure, with examples from Asia and beyond, in supporting and making smart cities possible. Based on the conceptual framework and empirical case studies, four major research directions of smart mapping are identified to better support smart city initiatives.