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The emerging technology breakthrough of the Internet-of-Things (IoT) is expected to offer promising solutions for food supply chain (FSC) and in-home healthcare (IHH), which may significantly contribute to human health and well-being. In this thesis, we have investigated the technologies and architectures of the IoT for these two applications as so-called Food-IoT and Health-IoT respectively. We intend to resolve a series of research problems about the WSN architectures, device architectures and system integration architectures. To reduce the time-to-market and risk of failure, business aspects are taken into account more than before in the early stage of technology development because the technologies and applications of IoT are both immature today. The challenges about enabling devices that we have addressed include: the WSN mobility and wide area deployment, efficient data compression in resource-limited wireless sensor devices, reliable communication protocol stack architecture, and integration of acting capacity to the low cost intelligent and interactive packaging (I2Pack). Correspondingly, the WAN-SAN coherent architecture of WSN, the RTOS-based and multiprocessor friendly stack architecture, the content-extraction based data compression algorithm, and the CDM-based I2Pack solution are proposed and demonstrated. At the system level, we have addressed the challenges about effective integration of scattered devices and technologies, including EIS and information integration architectures such as shelf-life prediction and real-time supply chain re-planning for the Food-IoT, and device and service integration architectures for the Health-IoT. Additionally, we have also addressed some challenges at the top business level, including the Value Chain Models and Value Proposition of the Food-IoT, and the cooperative ecosystem model of the Health-IoT. These findings are generic and not dependent on our proprietary technologies and devices. To be more generalized, we ha, QC 20130523

A content-extraction based acceleration data compression algorithm is proposed for real-time transport quality monitoring in critical logistics applications. It splits the original data into three components, Tilt, Shock and Vibration, and compresses them separately by making use of the specific characteristics. Outstanding performances as well as low complexity and good scalability are achieved, which are essential for resource-constrained mobile wireless sensors. The algorithm has been proven by 46-day field test data. The compression ratio is up to 3.75 in loss-less mode, and up to 142 in lossy mode with 28.9dB SNR., QC 20130115

Food chain visibility and safety problems have caused huge loss of money and threat to public food safety. The blooming Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) technology has been highlighted as a promising solution to resolve these problems. Because nowadays food chains has become highly distributed, heterogeneous, cooperative, and globalized, a comprehensive system-picture is needed in design practices to meet the extremely diverse requirements. In this paper, a universal WSN platform is designed for food chain monitoring applications based on a scenario-based method. It classifies the complicated real food chains into five typical scenarios (Produce, Store, Transport, Sell, and Consume). All scenarios are supported by convergence of all the necessary technical requirements. And corresponding operation models, networking protocols, hardware, and software are implemented. Comparing to existing researches, this paper provides a more comprehensive system-picture and its technical feasibility is approved by practical implementation as well as field experiments., QC 20120124

In this paper a system level analysis andimplementation of two-layer mobile wireless sensor networkarchitecture is proposed for tracking and environmentalsupervision applications. It uses a mobile Master Sensor Node(MSN) that collects information inside a Sensor Area Network(SAN) where many semi-passive Slave Sensor Nodes (SSN) aredeployed. The collected information is sent through a WirelessWide Area Network (WWAN) infrastructure to a central server viaTCP/UDP. The communication interface between the user and theMSN is established through out mobile communication services orinternet mail services. The communication between the MSN andthe SSN is through asymmetric-link Radio FrequencyIdentification (RFID) based architecture. An MSN prototype hasbeen implemented and tested under real conditions forenvironmental supervision during the perishable goodstransportation., QC 20120119

Interactive packaging is an emerging research area in recent years. It brings people convenient and smart lives, reduces consumption of traditional packaging materials and direct or indirect labor costs as well. Being integrated in interactive packaging, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology becomes one of the most proactive development enablers. In this paper, an interactive and intelligent packaging solution integrating passive RFID system and Controlled Delamination Material (CDM) is given at first. Package opening action is electrically controlled by the RFID system. CDM is primarily used in aerospace applications in the past and the conductor/adhesive joint can be easily opened by applying a little electric power on to the material. Some related works will be shown about the electrochemical characteristics of CDM in order to facilitate the system design. A demonstration system was developed and the test results have proved feasibility of the solution and shown the potential of low cost for mass production. Based on this solution, an interactive medication package for pervasive healthcare is further developed, using EPCglobal Gen2 RFID technology. It will make the medication being accessible for patient only at the prescribed dose and time, and medication taking information will be delivered as well. Such medication package will not only give unprecedented high patient compliance, but also improve the communication between patients and healthcare staffs., QC 20111202

This paper explores the design space of mesh-based NoC architectures for multimedia applications. Via the systemlevel exploration, we intend to address one crucial question: given a multimedia application and node processing throughput, how to determine the optimal size of the mesh and link bandwidth? Equivalently we shall answer another question: given a multimedia application and its mapping to a given-sized mesh, how to optimally dimension the node processing throughput and link bandwidth? Based on the process models of an application, we analyze the computation and communication demand when mapping the application onto a circuit-switched mesh NoC. We also propose a simulation approach to verify our analysis and further explore the system-level design decisions. Experiments and a case study on a multiview video coding application validate our approach., QC 20120223

A global fresh food tracking service is presented, in which a set of primary environmental conditions for transport of fresh fruits and vegetables, including global position, temperature, relative humidity, concentrations of CO2, O2 and ethylene gases and 3-axis acceleration, is collected through mobile and remotely controllable wireless sensor nodes. Real time monitoring, tracking, alarming, close-loop controlling and information sharing could therefore be provided as WEB services with service oriented architecture. Fully functioned hardware modules, protocols and system software have been developed. A 50-day field test has been successfully carried out, proving the system concept and the robustness of hardware and software designed. Due to its worldwide deploy-ability and added-values to fresh food supply chain, it is feasible to establish a practical fresh food tracking service business., QC 20120124

Current passive RFID systems face the challenges to locate mobile objects in real time in indoor environments, including the realization of low delay as well as effective cooperation among readers and accurate ranging ability in the physical layer. In order to overcome these challenges, this paper presents a low delay multi-reader passive RFID system using ultra high frequency (UHF) radio as the forward link from readers to tags and orthogonal time hopping pulse-position modulation (TH-PPM) impulse ultra-wideband radio (IR-UWB) over the dynamic framed slotted ALOHA algorithm as the backward link from tags to readers. The asymmetric radio links overlap parts of the forward and backward transmission and avoid reader-tag collisions. Readers cooperate via network synchronization by a server and a contention-based update strategy to acknowledge tags. An optimal system configured with 4 readers using 16 orthogonal TH sequences is suggested and operates 3 times faster than the theoretical potential of EPC Class-1 Generation-2 protocol with the listen-before-talk scheme., QC 20110121. QC 20160214

The rapid development of wireless sensor network and RFID technologies offers a wide range of novel applications and services. In this paper, we present a two-layered wireless network for warehouses and supermarkets to monitor goods storage and sale, and assist for quality management and market analysis. The hierarchical architecture uses IEEE 802.15.4a impulse ultra-wideband radio (IR-UWB) communication protocol between slave sensor nodes and master sensor nodes, and IEEE 802.11b/g between master sensor nodes and server. The performance of our proposal is evaluated based on the widely used OMNeT++ simulation environment. Simulation results are presented and discussed according to different sampling rates and traffic loads for specific scenarios requirements. © 2009 IEEE., QC 20110121

A flexible and high performance SoC is developed for networked media applications by integrating two RISC cores, Ethernet network interface and coarse-grained configurable video decoding unit. Real-time 1280x720@25fps MPEG-2/MPEG-4/RealVideo decoding is achieved for on-line video streams. The SoC is fabricated in 0.13um single-poly eight-metal CMOS technology with core size of 6.4mm * 6.4mm. To achieve low power design, flexible power management strategy is implemented for dynamically control of computational capabilities with various workloads. The maximum power consumption is 414mW at 1.2V supply voltage with the corresponding system frequency of 216MHz, when real-time HD (1280x720@25fps) video streams are decoded. When the SoC decodes real-time CIF (352x288@25fps) video streams, it requires 27MHz system frequency and consumes 95mW., QC 20120224

Pervasive healthcare solution for medication noncompliance problem would help to save $177 billion annually in the United States. And the rapidly increasing demanding of daily monitoring with onsite diagnosis and prognosis is driving homecare solutions to integrate more and more sensing and data processing capacities. So a powerful system is needed not only to address the medication noncompliance but also to be used as a Pervasive Healthcare Station in home. In this paper, a pervasive and preventive healthcare solution for medication noncompliance and daily monitoring is proposed using an intelligent package sealed by Controlled Delamination Material (CDM) and controlled by Radio Frequency Identification (RFID). Onsite diagnosis and prognosis capacities for kinds of health parameters are supported due to scalable and intensive computing capacitance of the 2D-Mesh-NoC based multi-core architecture. Additionally, friendly human-machine interface is emphasized to make it usable for the elderly, disabled and patients due to enhanced multimedia performance. Experimental results of an implemented prototype confirmed the necessity of the multi-core architecture and approved the feasibility of the proposed intelligent package., QC 20110222

A global fresh food tracking service is presented, in which a set of real-time primary environmental conditions for transport of fresh fruits and vegetables, including global position, temperature, relative humidity, concentrations of CO2, O2 and ethylene gases and 3-axis acceleration, is collected through mobile and remotely controllable wireless sensor nodes. Real time monitoring, tracking, alarming, close-loop controlling and information sharing could therefore be provided as WEB services with service oriental architecture. Fully functioned hardware modules, protocols and system software have been developed. A 50-day field test has been successfully carried out, proving the system concept and the robustness of hardware and software designed. Due to its worldwide deploy-ability and added-values to fresh food supply chain, it is now feasible to establish a practical fresh food tracking service business., QC 20120124

An enhanced dual-layer wide area wireless sensor network (WSN) system was developed and applied in fresh food tracking application. The sensor nodes of WSN provide a set of useful measurements about the environmental conditions during the fresh food transportation. Since the 3-axis acceleration data in such application account for more than 99% out of all collected source data, we propose a novel acceleration data compression scheme for this specific application, to overcome the resource and cost limitation imposed on embedded sensing nodes and wireless communication links in WSN. According to general fresh food transport behavior pattern, the acceleration data can be extracted into three components (D waveform, A waveform and P waveform). Each component could be compressed separately according to its distinct characteristic and then packetized as an encoded frame. In this paper we examine the experimental acceleration dataset from a field test (fresh melon fruit transport from Brazil to Sweden in 20 days) as a test case. Experimental results show that a high compression ratio (around 10:1) with the acceptable distortion could be achieved, confirming the effectiveness of the compression scheme proposed in this work., QC 20111202

A mobile and wide area deployable wireless sensor system, including hardware and software, is developed to enhance the mobility, deployment and capability of wireless sensors for networked services. Due to the dual-layer dual-directional wireless communication capability of a novel WAN-SAN coherent architecture and the removal of fix-installed gateway, all sensor nodes are remotely controllable and seamlessly integrated to internet services. Hardware modules are optimized for ultra low power and compact size. Abstract and extendable application interface is developed, based on SMS and TCP/UDP protocol, to be integrated easily into existing service systems. Hierarchical CPS-LPS Adaptive Localization, is supported based on CPS, wireless cellular ID, RFID, IR-UWB and inertial prediction. Specific data compression technique is adopted for high density data source. Finally, Fresh Food Tracking service is presented as an application example, including some field test data., QC 20110330

An ASIC-design-based configurable SOC architecture, which is high performance, flexible, programmable, and compiler-independent, is designed for networked media applications. A coarse-grained parallel computing mechanism is employed in this architecture. Mapping this architecture to a specific application is demonstrated through an example in multimedia application. The design is validated in a powerful FPGA, consisting of two CPUs, working at 81MHz and five function units, working at 40.5MHz., QC 20110405

RFID Based Intelligent Sensing (RBIS) is a promising technology strategy for upcoming Internet of Things (IoT) which will boom up numbers of innovative applications in next decades. In order to introduce IoT applications to human daily life and get the value chain fully-formed, we must change the application model of RBIS from object-centric to user-centric and extend the business values from enterprise-centric to consumer-centric. In this paper, a user-centric model of RBIS for IoT applications is proposed based on generalization and abstraction of numbers of possible application scenarios. By extending the traditional two-role model (Reader and Tag) into three-role model (Mediator, Object and Visitor), a new role of Visitor is introduced to identify the human activities. Based on that, user-centric data gathering, personalized service delivery and privacy protection are enabled where the core-values of IoT applications lie in. An event-driven mechanism is introduced to improve the efficiency of communication and data processing in the system especially for long term monitoring of sparse events. The proposed model has been verified by implemented prototype system, the TouchMe system, including the hardware, software, interactive package boxes, and a novel passive RFID tag chip as the next generation solution. Experimental results approve that the proposed model clarifies the application requirements, technical architectures and added values of IoT applications. It is possible to establish feasible practical IoT services based on the proposed model in the future., QC 20120124

Mass customization (MC) under the context ofthe Internet of Things (IoT) is expected to reform traditionalmass manufacturing. To contribute to MC from information communication and user interaction aspects, this work proposes an Ultra-High Frequency (UHF) RFID tag with Impulse-Radio Ultra-Wide Band (IR UWB) transmitter and inkjet-printed Electrochromic (EC) display. First, compared to conventional UHF RFID tags, the proposed tag shows advantages of higher data rate while still keeping low power consumption. A modified communication protocol for such tag is proposed to decrease the response time in multi-tag accessing scenarios to less than 500 ms/1000 tags by the pipeline of IR UWB transmission of tag response and UHF RFID reception of reader acknowledgement and by reducingthe length of empty slots. Secondly, the tag is integrated with a flexible Electro-chromic (EC) display manufactured by inkjet-printing on the polyimide substrate. The tag with the display works as an automatically refreshed paper label which offers an intuitive human-to-device interface to improve the efficiency of the offline workers. To conquer material variation while make use of long retention time of the printed EC display, the threshold voltage of EC display is utilized and a feedback comparator is designed to start refreshing EC display based on the threshold voltage. For functional verification, a Silicon-on-Chip (SoC) is implementedin UMC 180 nm CMOS process. According to experimental results: 1) the IR UWB transmitter shows performances of 1.02 V pulse amplitude, 900 ps pulse duration and 18 pJ/pulse energy consumption; 2) the EC display driver with a feedback comparator automatically starts to refresh display when the image fades out, and reduces the power consumption for retaining image to 1.98 mW per 1 cm2 display size. The UHF/UWB RFID display tag integrated on polyimide substrate is conceptually demonstrated at the end of the paper., QS 2015

QC 20200506

QC 20200506

Primarily used in aerospace applications, Controlled Delamination Material (CDM) has recently drawn attention to the traditional packaging industry due to its low-cost and electrical easy-open. Sinuate®, a CDM product, consists of two aluminum foils bonded together with a conductive epoxy adhesive. When applying a little electricity on its surface, the material can open easily without violence and release without residue. In this paper, a brief introduction on Sinuate® will be presented at first. And some test results on the electrical properties of the joint opening/detaching process will be shown and analyzed.

QC 20220404