Evaluating the Performance Parameters of Cryptographic Algorithms for IOT-based Devices

Nowadays, terabytes of digital data are generated and sent online every second. However, securing this extent of information has always been a challenging task. Cryptography is a fundamental method for securing data, as it makes data unintelligible for attackers, offering privacy to authorized clients. Different cryptographic algorithms have different speeds and costs that make them suitable for different applications. For instance, banking applications need outrageous security amenities, as they utilize superior algorithms having greater requirements, while gaming applications focus more on speed and cost reduction. Consequently, cryptographic algorithms are chosen based on a client's prerequisites. This study compared DES, AES, Blowfish, and RSA, examining their speed, cost, and performance, and discussed their adequacy for use in wireless sensor networks and peer-to-peer communication.

The Use of Augmented Reality in Collaboration Within the Construction Industry

Site visitation is a crucial aspect of civil engineers’ job scope as it provides them with first-hand construction data. However, due to the recent COVID-19 pandemic, construction site visitations are restricted, making the tasks of a civil engineer impossible to achieve. The main objective of this research is to find out and suggest a remedy to the problems commonly faced by civil engineers through the help of Augmented Reality (AR). Hence, the study’s objective is to analyse AR’s functionalities and suggest its best application to communicate spacious awareness via visual feedback for civil engineers. For maximum usability, an integrated software suite is proposed that provides access to AR worksites, measured data, and allows peer communication. This addressed the whole spectrum of problems faced by civil engineers with the switch to remote working. However, with the COVID-19 pandemic, the limitation of this project is that testing could not be executed to determine the efficacy of the said solution. Furthermore, the proposed solution has limitations, such as requiring pre-constructed infrastructure in applicable construction sites. Therefore, regular quality assurance (QA) and quality control (QC) are required to ensure proper functionality. In the future, AR LiDAR sensors could be a possibility as it provides increased accuracy of AR measurements which is critical in engineering.

Status-Authority Asymmetry between Professions: The Case of 911 Dispatchers and Police Officers

Status-authority asymmetry in the workplace emerges when lower-status professionals are ascribed with higher functional authority to oversee higher-status professionals and elicit compliance from them. However, eliciting compliance from the higher-status professionals is ridden with challenges. How and when lower-status professionals with functional authority could elicit compliance from higher-status professionals? To examine this question, I conducted a 24-month ethnography of 911 emergency coordination to understand how 911 dispatchers (lower-status professionals with functional authority) were able to elicit compliance from the police officers (higher-status professionals). I identify a set of relational styles – entailing interactional practices and communication media – enacted by the 911 dispatchers. Findings suggest that as compared to the customizing and the escalating relational styles enacted via the private communication medium, the publicizing relational style (i.e., publicizing the noncompliant behavior of an officer to his immediate peers) enacted via the peer communication medium enabled the dispatchers to elicit compliance. Such peer publicizing triggered self-disciplining, as that noncompliant officers’ trustworthiness is on the line in front of the peer group. More generally, through enrolling the alters’ peers in the compliance process, the lower-status professionals with functional authority were able to generate second-degree influence and elicit compliance from the higher-status professionals.

Decentralized and Centralized Optimal Control of HVAC Systems

Utility service providers are often challenged with the synchronization of thermostatically controlled loads. Load synchronization, resulting from naturally occurring or demand response events, can damage power distribution equipment and reduce the grid's efficiency. Because thermostatically controlled loads constitute most of the power consumed by the grid at any given time, the proper control of such devices can lead to significant energy savings and improved grid stability. The contribution of this thesis is developing optimal control algorithms for both single-stage and variable-speed heat pump HVAC systems. Our control architecture allows for regulating home temperatures through selective peer-to-peer communication while simultaneously minimizing aggregate power consumption and aggregate load volatility. For comparison purposes, various low-level and centralized optimal controllers are explored and compared against their decentralized counterparts.

Centralized and Decentralized Optimal Control of Variable Speed Heat Pumps

Utility service providers are often challenged with the synchronization of thermostatically controlled loads. Load synchronization, as a result of naturally occurring and demand-response events, has the potential to damage power distribution equipment. Because thermostatically controlled loads constitute most of the power consumed by the grid at any given time, the proper control of such devices can lead to significant energy savings and improved grid stability. The contribution of this paper is the development of an optimal control algorithm for commonly used variable speed heat pumps. By means of selective peer-to-peer communication, our control architecture allows for the regulation of home temperatures while simultaneously minimizing aggregate power consumption, and aggregate load volatility. An optimal centralized controller is also explored and compared against its decentralized counterpart.

BlueFlood

Bluetooth is an omnipresent technology, available on billions of devices today. While it has been traditionally limited to peer-to-peer communication and star networks, the recent Bluetooth Mesh standard extends it to multi-hop networking. In addition, the Bluetooth 5 standard introduces new modes to allow for increased reliability. In this article, we evaluate the feasibility of concurrent transmissions (CT) in Bluetooth via modeling and controlled experiments and then devise an efficient network-wide data dissemination protocol, BlueFlood, based on CT for multi-hop Bluetooth networks. First, we model and analyze how CT distorts the received waveform and characterize the Bit Error Rate of a Frequency-Shift Keying receiver to show that CT is feasible over Bluetooth. Second, we verify our analytic results with a controlled experimental study of CT over Bluetooth PHY. Third, we present BlueFlood, a fast and efficient network-wide data dissemination in multi-hop Bluetooth networks. In our experimental evaluation, in two testbeds deployed in university buildings, we show that BlueFlood achieves 99.9% end-to-end delivery ratio with a duty-cycle of 0.4% for periodic dissemination of advertising packets of 38 bytes with 200 milliseconds intervals at 2 Mbps. Moreover, we show that BlueFlood can be received by off-the-shelf devices such as smartphones, paving a seamless integration with existing technologies.

A LoRa-Based Mesh Network for Peer-to-Peer Long-Range Communication

LoRa is a long-range and low-power radio technology largely employed in Internet of Things (IoT) scenarios. It defines the lower physical layer while other protocols, such as LoRaWAN, define the upper layers of the network. A LoRaWAN network assumes a star topology where each of the nodes communicates with multiple gateways which, in turn, forward the collected data to a network server. The main LoRaWAN characteristic is the central role of the gateways; however, in some application scenarios, a much lighter protocol stack, relying only on node capabilities and without the presence of gateways, can be more suitable. In this paper, we present a preliminary study for realizing a LoRa-based mesh network, not relying on LoRaWAN, that implements a peer-to-peer communication between nodes, without the use of gateways, and extends node reachability through multi-hop communication. To validate our investigations, we present a hardware/software prototype based on low-power-consumption devices, and we preliminarily assess the proposed solution.