Search Results (301)

Rural regions face significant barriers to adopting IoT technologies, due to limited connectivity, energy constraints, and poor technical infrastructure. While urban environments benefit from advanced digital systems and cloud services, rural areas often lack the necessary conditions to deploy and evaluate secure and autonomous IoT solutions. To help overcome this gap, this paper presents the Smart Rural IoT Lab, a modular and reproducible testbed designed to replicate the deployment conditions in rural areas using open-source tools and affordable hardware. The laboratory integrates long-range and short-range communication technologies in six experimental scenarios, implementing protocols such as MQTT, HTTP, UDP, and CoAP. These scenarios simulate realistic rural use cases, including environmental monitoring, livestock tracking, infrastructure access control, and heritage site protection. Local data processing is achieved through containerized services like Node-RED, InfluxDB, MongoDB, and Grafana, ensuring complete autonomy, without dependence on cloud services. A key contribution of the laboratory is the generation of structured datasets from real network traffic captured with Tcpdump and preprocessed using Zeek. Unlike simulated datasets, the collected data reflect communication patterns generated from real devices. Although the current dataset only includes benign traffic, the platform is prepared for future incorporation of adversarial scenarios (spoofing, DoS) to support AI-based cybersecurity research. While experiments were conducted in an indoor controlled environment, the testbed architecture is portable and suitable for future outdoor deployment. The Smart Rural IoT Lab addresses a critical gap in current research infrastructure, providing a realistic and flexible foundation for developing secure, cloud-independent IoT solutions, contributing to the digital transformation of rural regions. Full article

Modern microgrids face critical challenges in maintaining stability and efficiency due to renewable energy intermittency and dynamic load demands. This paper proposes a novel real-time energy management framework that synergizes a bio-inspired T-Cell optimization algorithm with decentralized voltage-based droop control to address these challenges. A JADE-based multi-agent system (MAS) orchestrates coordination between the T-Cell optimizer and edge-level controllers, enabling scalable and fault-tolerant decision-making. The T-Cell algorithm, inspired by adaptive immune system dynamics, optimizes global power distribution through the MAS platform, while droop control ensures local voltage stability via autonomous adjustments by distributed energy resources (DERs). The framework is rigorously validated through Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) testing using OPAL-RT, which interfaces MATLAB/Simulink models with Raspberry Pi for real-time communication (MQTT/Modbus protocols). Experimental results demonstrate a 91% reduction in grid dependency, 70% mitigation of voltage fluctuations, and a 93% self-consumption rate, significantly enhancing power quality and resilience. By integrating centralized optimization with decentralized control through MAS coordination, the hybrid approach achieves scalable, self-organizing microgrid operation under variable generation and load conditions. This work advances the practical deployment of adaptive energy management systems, offering a robust solution for sustainable and resilient microgrids. Full article

The rapid growth of Internet of Things (IoT) deployment has led to an unprecedented volume of interconnected, resource-constrained devices. Securing their communication is essential, especially in vehicular environments, where sensitive data exchange requires robust authentication, integrity, and confidentiality guarantees. In this paper, we present an empirical evaluation of TLS (Transport Layer Security)-enhanced MQTT (Message Queuing Telemetry Transport) on low-cost, quad-core Cortex-A72 ARMv8 boards, specifically the Raspberry Pi 4B, commonly used as prototyping platforms for On-Board Units (OBUs) and Road-Side Units (RSUs). Three MQTT entities, namely, the broker, the publisher, and the subscriber, are deployed, utilizing Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) for key exchange and authentication and employing the AES_256_GCM and ChaCha20_Poly1305 ciphers for confidentiality via appropriately selected libraries. We quantify resource consumption in terms of CPU utilization, execution time, energy usage, memory footprint, and goodput across TLS phases, cipher suites, message packaging strategies, and both Ethernet and WiFi interfaces. Our results show that (i) TLS 1.3-enhanced MQTT is feasible on Raspberry Pi 4B devices, though it introduces non-negligible resource overheads; (ii) batching messages into fewer, larger packets reduces transmission cost and latency; and (iii) ChaCha20_Poly1305 outperforms AES_256_GCM, particularly in wireless scenarios, making it the preferred choice for resource- and latency-sensitive V2X applications. These findings provide actionable recommendations for deploying secure MQTT communication on an IoT platform. Full article

Digital Twins (DTs) are transforming manufacturing by bridging the physical and digital worlds, enabling real-time insights, predictive analytics, and enhanced decision making. In Industry 4.0, DTs facilitate automation and data integration, while Industry 5.0 emphasizes human-centric, resilient, and sustainable production. However, implementing DTs in robotic metal additive manufacturing (AM) remains challenging because of the complexity of the wire-based laser metal deposition (LMD) process, the need for real-time monitoring, and the demand for advanced defect detection to ensure high-quality prints. This work proposes a structured DT architecture for a robotic wire-based LMD cell, following a standard framework. Three DT implementations were developed. First, a real-time 3D simulation in RoboDK, integrated with a 2D Node-RED dashboard, enabled motion validation and live process monitoring via MQTT (message queuing telemetry transport) telemetry, minimizing toolpath errors and collisions. Second, an Industrial IoT-based system using KUKA iiQoT (Industrial Internet of Things Quality of Things) facilitated predictive maintenance by analyzing motor loads, joint temperatures, and energy consumption, allowing early anomaly detection and reducing unplanned downtime. Third, the Meltio dashboard provided real-time insights into the laser temperature, wire tension, and deposition accuracy, ensuring adaptive control based on live telemetry. Additionally, a prescriptive analytics layer leveraging historical data in FireStore was integrated to optimize the process performance, enabling data-driven decision making. Full article

An electronic nose is a device capable of characterizing samples of substances and products by their aroma. The development of such devices relies on a series of non-specific sensors that react to gases and generate different signals, which can be used for compound identification and sample classification. The deployment of such devices often requires the possibility of having remote access over the Internet to manage their operation and to collect the sampled data. In this context, the application of web technologies to the monitoring and supervision of these systems connected to the Internet, which can be considered as an Internet of Things (IoT) device, offers the advantage of not requiring the development of client-side applications. Users can employ a browser to connect to the IoT device and monitor or control its operation. Moreover, web design enables the development of cross-platform web monitoring systems. In addition, the inclusion of the MQTT protocol and the utilization of a virtual private network (VPN) enable a secure transmission and collection of the sampled data. In this work, all these technologies have been applied in the development of a system to manage and collect data to monitor rot in lemons treated with sodium benzoate before harvest. Full article

The efficient management of urban parking systems has emerged as a pivotal issue in today’s smart cities, where increasing vehicle populations strain limited parking infrastructure and challenge sustainable urban mobility. Aligned with the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the strategic goals of smart city planning, this study presents a sustainability-driven, multiagent simulation-based framework to model, analyze, and optimize smart parking dynamics in congested urban settings. The system architecture integrates ground-level IoT sensors installed in parking spaces, enabling real-time occupancy detection and communication with a centralized system using low-power wide-area communication protocols (LPWAN). This study introduces an intelligent parking guidance mechanism that dynamically directs drivers to the nearest available slots based on location, historical traffic flow, and predicted availability. To manage real-time data flow, the framework incorporates message queuing telemetry transport (MQTT) protocols and edge processing units for low-latency updates. A predictive algorithm, combining spatial data, usage patterns, and time-series forecasting, supports decision-making for future slot allocation and dynamic pricing policies. Field simulations, calibrated with sensor data in a representative high-density urban district, assess system performance under peak and off-peak conditions. A comparative evaluation against traditional first-come-first-served and static parking systems highlights significant gains: average parking search time is reduced by 42%, vehicular congestion near parking zones declines by 35%, and emissions from circling vehicles drop by 27%. The system also improves user satisfaction by enabling mobile app-based reservation and payment options. These findings contribute to broader sustainability goals by supporting efficient land use, reducing environmental impacts, and enhancing urban livability—key dimensions emphasized in sustainable smart city strategies. The proposed framework offers a scalable, interdisciplinary solution for urban planners and policymakers striving to design inclusive, resilient, and environmentally responsible urban mobility systems. Full article

Manufacturing enterprises implementing Industry 4.0 technologies face significant challenges in integrating heterogeneous maintenance data sources and deploying AI solutions effectively. While various AI methods exist for predictive maintenance, the fundamental challenge lies in creating a cohesive architecture that enables seamless data flow and AI deployment. This paper presents a standardized architecture framework with initial implementation steps at Toyota Motor Manufacturing France. The proposed architecture introduces a four-layer approach: (1) a unified data acquisition layer integrating IoT sensors, CMMS, and legacy systems through standardized interfaces (OPC UA/MQTT), (2) a data quality and standardization layer ensuring consistent formats and automated validation, (3) a modular AI deployment layer supporting anomaly detection (Wavelet-based analysis and Deep Learning) and remaining useful life prediction (LSTM networks), and (4) a maintenance workflow integration layer with bi-directional feedback. Key innovations include a unified maintenance data model, configurable data quality pipelines, and human-in-the-loop decision support. A conceptual validation suggests this architecture can improve integration efficiency and reduce equipment downtime. This research contributes to smart maintenance by providing a scalable architecture that balances interoperability, data quality, and practical deployment in brownfield environments. Full article

Internet of Things (IoT) technology in healthcare has enabled innovative services that enhance patient monitoring, diagnostics and medical data management. However, securing sensitive health data while maintaining system efficiency of resource-constrained IoT devices remains a critical challenge. This work presents a comprehensive end-to-end IoT security framework for healthcare environments, addressing encryption at two key levels: lightweight encryption at the edge for resource-constrained devices and robust end-to-end encryption when transmitting data to the cloud via MQTT cloud brokers. The proposed system leverages multi-broker MQTT architecture to optimize resource utilization and enhance message reliability. At the edge, lightweight cryptographic techniques ensure low-latency encryption before transmitting data via a secure MQTT broker hosted within the hospital infrastructure. To safeguard data as it moves beyond the hospital to the cloud, stronger end-to-end encryption are applied to ensure end-to-end security, such as AES-256 and TLS 1.3, to ensure confidentiality and resilience over untrusted networks. A proof-of-concept Python 3.10 -based MQTT implementation is developed using open-source technologies. Security and performance evaluations demonstrate the feasibility of the multi-layer encryption approach, effectively balancing computational overhead with data protection. Security and performance evaluations demonstrate that our novel HECS4MQTT (Health Edge Cloud Security for MQTT) framework achieves a unique balance between efficiency and security. Unlike existing solutions that either impose high computational overhead at the edge or rely solely on transport-layer protection, HECS4MQTT introduces a layered encryption strategy that decouples edge and cloud security requirements. This design minimizes processing delays on constrained devices while maintaining strong cryptographic protection when data crosses trust boundaries. The framework also introduces a lightweight bridge component for re-encryption and integrity enforcement, thereby reducing broker compromise risk and supporting compliance with healthcare security regulations. Our HECS4MQTT framework offers a scalable, adaptable, and trust-separated security model, ensuring enhanced confidentiality, integrity, and availability of healthcare data while remaining suitable for deployment in real-world, latency-sensitive, and resource-limited medical environments. Full article

The Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) protocol remains a key enabler for lightweight and low-latency messaging in Internet of Things (IoT) applications. However, traditional broker implementations often struggle with the demands of large-scale point-to-point (P2P) communication. This paper presents a performance and architectural evaluation of TBMQ, an open source MQTT broker designed to support reliable P2P messaging at scale. The broker employs Redis Cluster for session persistence and Apache Kafka for message routing. Additional optimizations include asynchronous Redis access via Lettuce and Lua-based atomic operations. Stepwise load testing was performed using Kubernetes-based deployments on Amazon EKS, progressively increasing message rates to 1 million messages per second (msg/s). The results demonstrate that TBMQ achieves linear scalability and stable latency as the load increases. It reaches an average throughput of 8900 msg/s per CPU core, while maintaining end-to-end delivery latency within two-digit millisecond bounds. These findings confirm that TBMQ’s architecture provides an effective foundation for reliable, high-throughput messaging in distributed IoT systems. Full article

The increasing demand for distributed machine learning like Federated Learning (FL) in dynamic, resource-constrained edge environments, 5G/6G networks, and the proliferation of mobile and edge devices, presents significant challenges related to fault tolerance, elasticity, and communication efficiency. This paper addresses these issues by proposing a novel modular and resilient FL framework. In this context, resilience refers to the system’s ability to maintain operation and performance despite disruptions. The framework is built on decoupled modules handling core FL functionalities, allowing flexibility in integrating various algorithms, communication protocols, and resilience strategies. Results demonstrate the framework’s ability to integrate different communication protocols and FL paradigms, showing that protocol choice significantly impacts performance, particularly in high-volume communication scenarios, with Zenoh and MQTT exhibiting lower overhead than Kafka in tested configurations, and Zenoh emerging as the most efficient communication option. Additionally, the framework successfully maintained model training and achieved convergence even when simulating probabilistic worker failures, achieving a MCC of 0.9453. Full article

In the U-Space environment, seamless communication between key stakeholders—such as U-Space Service Providers (USSP), Common Information Service Providers (CISP), and drone operators—is very important for the safe and efficient management of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) operations. A major challenge in this context is minimizing communication latency, which directly affects the performance of time-sensitive services. This study investigates latency issues by evaluating two communication protocols: push–pull (using REST-API and ZeroMQ) and publish–subscribe (using AMQP and MQTT). Through a case study focused on drone detection, the research examines latency across critical operational activities, including conformance monitoring, flight plan confirmation, and the transmission of alerts via the USSP system under varying message intervals and payload sizes. The results indicate that while message interval has a significant influence on latency, message size has a minimal effect. Furthermore, the push–pull protocols consistently deliver lower and more stable latency compared to publish–subscribe protocols under the tested conditions. Both approaches, however, achieve latency levels that align with EASA’s operational requirements for U-Space systems. Full article

In this study, we introduce an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) centric visual semantic simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) framework that integrates RGB–D cameras, inertial measurement units (IMUs), and a 5G–enabled remote interaction module. Our system addresses three critical limitations in existing approaches: (1) Distance constraints in remote operations; (2) Static map assumptions in dynamic environments; and (3) High–dimensional perception requirements for UAV–based applications. By combining YOLO–based object detection with epipolar–constraint-based dynamic feature removal, our method achieves real-time semantic mapping while rejecting motion artifacts. The framework further incorporates a dual–channel communication architecture to enable seamless human–in–the–loop control over UAV–Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) teams in large–scale scenarios. Experimental validation across indoor and outdoor environments indicates that the system can achieve a detection rate of up to 75 frames per second (FPS) on an NVIDIA Jetson AGX Xavier using YOLO–FASTEST, ensuring the rapid identification of dynamic objects. In dynamic scenarios, the localization accuracy attains an average absolute pose error (APE) of 0.1275 m. This outperforms state–of–the–art methods like Dynamic–VINS (0.211 m) and ORB–SLAM3 (0.148 m) on the EuRoC MAV Dataset. The dual-channel communication architecture (Web Real–Time Communication (WebRTC) for video and Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) for telemetry) reduces bandwidth consumption by 65% compared to traditional TCP–based protocols. Moreover, our hybrid dynamic feature filtering can reject 89% of dynamic features in occluded scenarios, guaranteeing accurate mapping in complex environments. Our framework represents a significant advancement in enabling intelligent UAVs/UGVs to navigate and interact in complex, dynamic environments, offering real-time semantic understanding and accurate localization. Full article

To promote sustainable development, adopting circular economy principles is crucial for preserving natural resources and ensuring environmental continuity. Among solid waste management strategies, composting plays a significant role by converting biodegradable waste into eco-friendly biofertilizers. Traditional composting methods, which rely on open-window techniques, face challenges in controlling critical physico-chemical parameters such as temperature, humidity, and gaseous emissions. Additionally, these methods require significant labor and over 100 days to achieve compost maturity. To address these issues, we propose an intelligent, automated composting system leveraging the Internet of Things (IoT) and wireless sensor networks (WSNs). This system integrates sensors for real-time monitoring of key parameters: DS18b20 for waste temperature, HD-38 for humidity, DHT11 for ambient conditions, and MQ sensors for detecting CO₂, NH₃, and CH₄. Controlled by an ESP32 microcontroller unit (MCU), the system employs a mixer and heating elements to optimize waste degradation based on sensor feedback. Data transmission is managed using the MQTT protocol, allowing real-time monitoring via a cloud-based platform (ThingSpeak). Furthermore, the degradation process was analyzed during the first 24 h, and a recurrent neural network (RNN) algorithm was employed to predict the time required for reaching optimal compost maturity, ensuring an efficient and sustainable solution. Full article

For modern power plants to be dependable, safe, sustainable, and provide the highest operational efficiency (i.e., enhance dynamic load distribution with a faster response time at reduced reactive losses), there must be an intelligent dynamic load management system based on modern computational techniques to prevent overloading of power devices (i.e., alternators, transformers, etc.) in grid systems. In this paper, a co-simulation framework (Panda-SDN Load Balancer) is designed to achieve maximum operational efficiency from the power grid with the prime objective of real-time intelligent load balancing of operational power devices (i.e., power transformers, etc.). This framework is based on the integration of two tools: (a) PandaPower (an open-source Python tool) used for real-time power data (voltage; current; real power, P_Real; apparent power, P_Apparent; reactive power, P_Reactive; power factor, PF; etc.) load flow analysis; (b) Mininet used for the designing of a Software-Defined Network (SDN) with a POX controller for managing the load patterns on power transformers after load flow analysis obtained through PandaPower via the synchronization tool Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) and Intelligent Electrical Devices (IEDs). In this research article, the simulation is performed in three scenarios: (a) normal flow, (b) loaded flow without the proposed framework, and (c) loaded flow with the proposed framework. As per simulation results, the proposed framework offered intelligent substation automation with (a) balanced utilization of a transformer, (b) enhanced system power factor in extreme load conditions, and (c) significant gain in system operational efficiency as compared to legacy load management methods. Full article

This paper presents the design, implementation, and testing of a traffic monitoring platform based on 5G-connected Ultra-Wideband (UWB) radars deployed on a university campus. The development of both connected radars and an IoT platform is detailed. The connected radars integrate commercial components, including a Raspberry Pi (RPi), a UWB radar, a standard enclosure, and a custom communication board featuring a 5G module. The IoT platform, which receives data from the radars via MQTT, is scalable, easily deployable, and supports radar management, data visualization, and external data access via an API. The solution was deployed and tested on campus, demonstrating real-time operation over a commercial 5G network with an estimated median latency between the radar and server of 75 ms. A preliminary evaluation conducted on a single radar during peak-hour traffic on a double-lane road, representing a challenging scenario, indicated a high detection rate of 94.81%, a low false detection rate of 1.02%, a high classification accuracy of 97.29%, and a high direction accuracy of 99.66%. These results validate the system’s capability to deliver accurate traffic monitoring. Full article