In wireless environments, transmission and reception costs dominate system power consumption, motivating research effort on new technologies capable of reducing the footprint of the radio, paving the way for the Internet of Things. The most important challenge is to reduce power consumption when receivers are idle, the so called idle-listening cost. One approach proposes switching off the main receiver, then introduces new wake-up circuitry capable of detecting an incoming transmission, optionally discriminating the packet destination using addressing, then switching on the main radio only when required. This wake-up receiver technology represents the ultimate frontier in low power radio communication. In this paper, we present a comprehensive literature review of the research progress in wake-up radio (WuR) hardware and relevant networking software. First, we present an overview of the WuR system architecture, including challenges to hardware design and a comparison of solutions presented throughout the last decade. Next, we present various medium access control and routing protocols as well as diverse ways to exploit WuRs, both as an extension of pre-existing systems and as a new concept to manage low-power networking.

Technology is a never ending process. To be able to design a product using the current technology that will be beneficial to the lives of others is a huge contribution to the community. This paper presents the design and implementation of a low cost but yet flexible and secure cell phone based home automation system. The design is based on a stand alone Arduino BT board and the home appliances are connected to the input/ output ports of this board via relays. The communication between the cell phone and the Arduino BT board is wireless. This system is designed to be low cost and scalable allowing variety of devices to be controlled with minimum changes to its core. Password protection is being used to only allow authorised users from accessing the appliances at home.

Energy efficiency is crucial in the design of battery-powered end devices, such as smart sensors for the Internet of Things applications. Wireless communication between these distributed smart devices consumes significant energy, and even more when data need to reach several kilometers in distance. Low-power and long-range communication technologies such as LoRaWAN are becoming popular in IoT applications. However, LoRaWAN has drawbacks in terms of (i) data latency; (ii) limited control over the end devices by the gateway; and (iii) high rate of packet collisions in a dense network. To overcome these drawbacks, we present an energy-efficient network architecture and a high-efficiency on-demand time-division multiple access (TDMA) communication protocol for IoT improving both the energy efficiency and the latency of standard LoRa networks. We combine the capabilities of short-range wake-up radios to achieve ultra-low power states and asynchronous communication together with the long-range connectivity of LoRa. The proposed approach still works with the standard LoRa protocol, but improves performance with an on-demand TDMA. Thanks to the proposed network and protocol, we achieve a packet delivery ratio of 100% by eliminating the possibility of packet collisions. The network also achieves a round-trip latency on the order of milliseconds with sensing devices dissipating less than 46 mJ when active and 1.83 $\mathsf{\mu }$ W during periods of inactivity and can last up to three years on a 1200-mAh lithium polymer battery.

Cloud computing provides great benefits for applications hosted on the Web that also have special computational and storage requirements. This paper proposes an extensible and flexible architecture for integrating Wireless Sensor Networks with the Cloud. We have used REST based Web services as an interoperable application layer that can be directly integrated into other application domains for remote monitoring such as e-health care services, smart homes, or even vehicular area networks (VAN). For proof of concept, we have implemented a REST based Web services on an IP based low power WSN test bed, which enables data access from anywhere. The alert feature has also been implemented to notify users via email or tweets for monitoring data when they exceed values and events of interest.Comment: 14 pages, 11 Figures, Journal Articl

This paper presents an extensible and flexible architecture for integrating Wireless Sensor Networks with the Cloud. REST based Web services is used as an interoperable application layer that can be directly integrated into other application domains for remote monitoring such as e-health care services and smart environments. For proof of concept, we have set up a REST based Web services on an IP based low power WSN test bed, which enables data accessibility from anywhere. The alert feature has also been implemented to notify users via email or tweets for monitoring data when they exceed values and events of interest.

As a step toward sustainable wireless sensing, we present a proof of concept system that uses a Plant Microbial Fuel Cells (PMFC) as a power source. To match the very low power production capabilities of the PMFC, we couple it with an ultra-low power wake-up receiver used as a trigger for sampling and transmission of the sensed value. We demonstrate that this combination, with a new, receiver initiated MAC-level communication protocol, results in a sustainable system for reasonable data rates, shown to be 30s in our laboratory setting. This work offers the first steps toward large-scale wireless sensor networks in applications where the sensors are surrounded by living plants that can provide a green and perpetual power supply.