Abstract: Raising awareness among young people and changing their behaviour and habits concerning energy usage is key to achieving sustained energy saving. Additionally, young people are very sensitive to environmental protection so raising awareness among children is much easier than with any other group of citizens. This work examines ways to create an innovative Information & Communication Technologies (ICT) ecosystem (including web-based, mobile, social and sensing elements) tailored specifically for school environments, taking into account both the users (faculty, staff, students, parents) and school buildings, thus motivating and supporting young citizens¢ behavioural change to achieve greater energy efficiency. A mixture of open-source IoT hardware and proprietary platforms on the infrastructure level, are currently being utilized for monitoring a fleet of 18 educational buildings across 3 countries, comprising over 700 IoT monitoring points. Hereon presented is the system¢s high-level architecture, as well as several aspects of its implementation, related to the application domain of educational building monitoring and energy efficiency. The system is developed based on open-source technologies and services in order to make it capable of providing open IT-infrastructure and support from different commercial hardware/sensor vendors as well as open-source solutions. The system presented can be used to develop and offer new app-based solutions that can be used either for educational purposes or for managing the energy efficiency of the building. The system is replicable and adaptable to settings that may be different than the scenarios envisioned here (e.g., targeting different climate zones), different IT infrastructures and can be easily extended to accommodate integration with other systems. The overall performance of the system is evaluated in real-world environment in terms of scalability, responsiveness and simplicity.
Abstract: Wireless sensor networks are a recently introduced category of ad hoc computer networks, which are comprised by nodes of small size and limited computing and energy resources. Such nodes are able of measuring physical properties such as temperature, humidity, etc., wireless communication between each other and in some cases interaction with their surrounding environments (through the use of electromechanical parts).
As these networks have begun to be widely available (in terms of cost and commercial hardware availability), their field of application and philosophy of use is constantly evolving. We have numerous examples of their applications, ranging from monitoring the biodiversity of a specific outdoor area to structural health monitoring of bridges, and also networks ranging from few tens of nodes to even thousands of nodes.
In this PhD thesis we investigated the following basic research lines related to wireless sensor networks:
a) their simulation,
b) the development of data propagation protocols suited to such networks and their evaluation through simulation,
c) the modelling of ``hostile'' circumstances (obstacles) during their operation and evaluation of their impact through simulation,
d) the development of a sensor network management application.
Regarding simulation, we initially placed an emphasis to issues such as the effective simulation of networks of several thousands of nodes, and in that respect we developed a network simulator (simDust), which is extendable through the addition of new data propagation protocols and visualization capabilities. This simulator was used to evaluate the performance of a number of characteristic data propagation protocols for wireless sensor networks. Furthermore, we developed a new protocol (VRTP) and evaluated its performance against other similar protocols. Our studies show that the new protocol, that uses dynamic changes of the transmission range of the network nodes, performs better in certain cases than other related protocols, especially in networks containing obstacles and in the case of non-homogeneous placement of nodes.
Moreover, we emphasized on the addition of ``realistic'' conditions to the simulation of such protocols, that have an adversarial effect on their operation. Our goal was to introduce a model for obstacles that adds little computational overhead to a simulator, and also study the effect of the inclusion of such a model on data propagation protocols that use geographic information (absolute or relative). Such protocols are relatively sensitive to dynamic topology changes and network conditions. Through our experiments, we show that the inclusion of obstacles during simulation can have a significant effect on these protocols.
Finally, regarding applications, we initially proposed an architecture (WebDust/ShareSense), for the management of such networks, that would provide basic capabilities of managing such networks and developing applications above it. Features that set it apart are the capability of managing multiple heterogeneous sensor networks, openess, the use of a peer-to-peer architecture for the interconnection of multiple sensor network. A large part of the proposed architecture was implemented, while the overall architecture was extended to also include additional visualization capabilities.
Abstract: As the Internet of Things (IOT) arises, the use of
low-end devices on a daily basis increases. The wireless nature
of communication that these devices provide raises security and
privacy issues. For protecting a user’s privacy, cryptography
offers the tool of zero knowledge proofs (ZKP). In this
paper, we study well-established ZKP protocols based on the
discrete logarithm problem and we adapt them to the Elliptic
Curve Cryptography (ECC) setting, which consists an ideal
candidate for embedded implementations. Then, we implement
the proposed protocols on Wiselib, a generic and opensource
algorithmic library. For the first time, we present a thorough
evaluation of the protocols on two popular hardware platforms
equipped with low end microcontrollers (Jennic JN5139, TI
MSP430) and 802.15.4 RF transceivers, in terms of code size,
execution time, message size and energy requirements. This
work’s results can be used from developers who wish to achieve
certain levels of privacy in their applications.
Abstract: A collection of pervasive street games is presented in this paper, that constitute a new social form of play taking place in public spaces, such as city parks, public spaces and streets. The main characteristic of these games is the ability to scale to a large number of players (in some cases involving more than 40 players) and can engage players located simultaneously in dispersed areas. Players interact with each other using a wide range of hardware devices that are either generic (such as smart phones) or specific (such as wireless sensor devices). We discuss a set of fundamental issues related to game design emphasizing on the one hand the interaction of the players with the ubiquitous computing environment and on the other hand the embedding of the game rules within the environment. The games are developed using opensource technologies and evaluated in a series of events such as the Athens Plaython 2012 festival. The feedback received from the players indicates that this new form of gaming is indeed very promising.
Abstract: Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) is one of the
most promising alternatives to conventional public
key cryptography, such as RSA and ElGamal, since
it employs keys of smaller sizes for the same level
of cryptographic strength. Smaller key sizes imply
smaller hardware units for performing the arithmetic
operations required by cryptographic protocols and,
thus, ECC is an ideal candidate for implementation
in embedded systems where the major computational
resources (speed and storage) are limited.
In this paper we present a port, written in ANSI C
for maximum portability, of an opensource ECCbased
cryptographic library (ECC-LIB) to ATMEL¢s
AT76C520 802.11 WLAN Access Point. One of the
major features of this port, not found in similar ports,
is that it supports Complex Multiplication (CM) for
the construction of Elliptic Curves with good security
properties. We present some experimental results that
demonstrate that the port is efficient and can lead to generic embedded systems with robust ECC-based
cryptographic protocols using cryptographically strong
ECCs generated with CM. As an application of the
ported library, an EC Diffie-Hellman key exchange
protocol is developed as an alternative of the 4-way
key handshake protocol of the 802.11 protocol.