Abstract
ÂB is an Energy Aware Communication Protocol (EACP) prototype which has been developed for the communication subsystem of Hydration Automation (HA)—an agricultural Internet of Things (IoT) system currently under research and development at Santa Clara University’s Ethical, Pragmatic, and Intelligent Computing (EPIC) laboratory.
IoT systems are ideally comprised of energy efficient sensors and actuators which are individually placed in a low power state (i.e. sleep mode) when each is not in use. A difficulty in taking maximum advantage of the sleep cycles of the varying components of a communications network is the unpredictability of the time of arrival for incoming packets. Also, a global synchronization of clocks is extremely difficult as even a single asynchrony can result in complete system failure. However, sleep cycle duration synchronization is possible using a regional arbiter of the time remaining in the system’s overall sleep cycle. We define a protocol that takes advantage of each individual network component’s low power modes using sleep cycle duration synchronization as an Energy Aware Communication Protocol (EACP).
In the [IEEE 9th Annual Computing and Communication Workshop and Conference (CCWC), 659-665, (2019)] we discussed the design and implementation of low cost, small factor, and sustainable Sensing Units (SUs) which use ultrasonic sensors to measure the available space in a water tank and communicate the water levels to the Actuating Unit (AU) they are assigned to, so that the AU can operate the valves and/or pumps necessary to send the exact amount of water needed to restore the water tanks’ designated levels. There we discussed the design of the SUs and indicated that a next step is to create an energy efficient communications subsystem which allows for multi-hop communication between the SUs and their assigned AUs without loss of the low power (sleep mode) cycle of the SUs and intermediary Relay Units (RUs). Together with cost effective, energy efficient, and small form factor RU hardware, ÂB is the actualization of that subsystem in the form of an EACP prototype.
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Acknowledgment
Many thanks to Professor Michael McElfresh from the Electrical Engineering Department at Santa Clara University’s School of Engineering for his continued support of the project both in design and providing his ranch (Red Thistle Ranch Weis (2018)) and water tanks as a test-bed for HA. This project would not have been possible without real world testing of the ÂB Protocol and the HA system.
Also thanks to Santa Clara University’s Frugal Innovation Hub for a generous grant for development of HA in it’s early stages which was obtained from EPICS in IEEE. The Hub’s support allows for the continuation of the project.
Lastly, thanks are also due to the departments of Mathematics and Computer Science (MCS) and Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) for their continued support of SCU’s EPIC (Ethical, Pragmatic, and Intelligent computing) laboratory.
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Shaghaghi, N., Cameron, Z., Kniveton, N., Mayer, J., Tuttle, W., Ferguson, P. (2020). ÂB: An Energy Aware Communications Protocol (EACP) for the Internet of Things (IoT). In: Barolli, L., Amato, F., Moscato, F., Enokido, T., Takizawa, M. (eds) Web, Artificial Intelligence and Network Applications. WAINA 2020. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 1150. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44038-1_80
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