Chapter-1 Vehicular IoT Module-5

Introduction
 The use of connected vehicles is increasing rapidly across the globe.
 Consequently, the number of on-road accidents and mismanagement of traffic is also
increasing.
 The increasing number of vehicles gives rise to the problem of parking.
 However, the evolution of IoT helps to form a connected vehicular environment to
manage the transportation systems efficiently.
 Vehicular IoT systems have penetrated different aspects of the transportation
ecosystem, including on-road to off-road traffic management, driver safety for heavy
to small vehicles, and security in public transportation.
 In a connected vehicular environment, vehicles are capable of communicating and
sharing their information.
 Moreover, IoT enables a vehicle to sense its internal and external environments to
make certain autonomous decisions.
 With the help of modern-day IoT infrastructure, a vehicle owner residing in Earth’s
northern hemisphere can very easily track his vehicular asset remotely, even if it is in
the southern hemisphere.
 This chapter, focus on the importance and applications of IoT in the vehicular systems.
 Figure represents a simple architecture of a vehicular IoT system.

 The architecture of the vehicular IoT is divided into three sub layers: device, fog, and
cloud.
 Device: The device layer is the bottom-most layer, which consists of the basic
infrastructure of the scenario of the connected vehicle.
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  This layer includes the vehicles and road side units (RSU). These vehicles contain
certain sensors which gather the internal information of the vehicles.
 On the other hand, the RSU works as a local centralized unit that manages the data
from the vehicles.
 Fog: In vehicular IoT systems, fast decision making is pertinent to avoid accidents and
traffic mismanagement.
 In such situations, fog computing plays a crucial role by providing decisions in real-
time, much near to the devices.
 Consequently, the fog layer helps to minimize data transmission time in a vehicular
IoT system.
 Cloud: Fog computing handles the data processing near the devices to take decisions
instantaneously.
 However, for the processing of huge data, fog computing is not enough.
 Therefore, in such a situation, cloud computing is used.
 In a vehicular IoT system, cloud computing helps to handle processes that involve a
huge amount of data.
 Further, for long-term storage, cloud computing is used as a scalable resource in
vehicular IoT systems.

Components of vehicular IoT

 Modern cars come equipped with different types of sensors and electronic
components.
 These sensors sense the internal environment of the car and transmit the sensed data to
a processor.
 The on-road deployed sensors sense the external environment and transmit the sensed
data to the centralized processor.
 Thereafter, based on requirements, the processor delivers these sensed data to fog or
cloud to perform necessary functions.
 These processes seem to be simple, but practically, several components, along with
their challenges, are involved in a vehicular IoT system.
 Figure depicts the components required for vehicular IoT systems.

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  Sensors: We have already discussed how sensors play a crucial role in an IoT-based
ecosystem.
 Similarly, in vehicular IoT, sensors monitor different environmental conditions and
help to make the system more economical, efficient, and robust.
 Traditionally, two types of sensors, internal and external, are used in vehicular IoT
systems.
 (i) Internal: These types of sensors are placed within the vehicle.
 The sensors are typically used to sense parameters that are directly associated with the
vehicle.
 Along with the sensors, the vehicles are equipped with different electronic
components such as processing boards and actuators.
 The internal sensors in a vehicle are connected with the processor board, to which they
transmit the sensed data.
 Further, the sensed data are processed by the board to take certain predefined actions.
 A few examples of internal sensors are GPS, fuel gauge, ultrasonic sensors, proximity
sensors, accelerometer, pressure sensors, and temperature sensors.
 (ii) External: External sensors quantify information of the environment outside the
vehicle.
 For example, there are sensors used in the smart traffic system that are capable of
sensing vacant parking lots in a designated parking area.
 The still images and videos from cameras are important inputs to generate decisions in
a vehicular IoT system.
 Therefore, on-road cameras are widely used as external sensors to capture still images
and videos.
 The captured images and videos are processed further, either in the fog or in the cloud
layer, to take certain pre-programmed actions.
 As an example, camera sensor can capture the image of the license plate of an over
speeding vehicle at a traffic signal; the image can be processed to identify the owner
of the vehicle to charge a certain amount of fine.
 Similarly, temperature, rainfall, and light sensors are also used in the vehicular IoT
infrastructure.

 Satellites: In vehicular IoT systems, automatic vehicle tracking and crash detection
are among the important available features.
 Satellites help the system to track vehicles and detect on-road crashes.
 The satellite image is also useful for detecting on-road congestions and road blocks.

 Wireless connectivity: As vehicular IoT deals with connected vehicles,

communication is an important enabling component.
 For taking any action or making decisions, the collective data from internal and
external sensors need processing.
 For transmitting the sensed data from multiple sensors to RSU (roadside unit) and
from RSUs to the cloud, connectivity plays an indispensable role.
 Moreover, in the vehicular IoT scenario, the high mobility of the vehicles necessitates
the connectivity type to be wireless for practical and real-time data transmission.
 Different communication technologies, such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GSM, are
common in the vehicular IoT systems.

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  Road Side Unit (RSU): The RSU is a static entity that works collaboratively with
internal and external sensors.
 Typically, the RSUs are equipped with sensors, communication units, and fog devices.
 Vehicular IoT systems deal with time critical applications, which need to take
decisions in real time.
 In such a situation, the fog devices attached to the RSUs process the sensed data and
take necessary action promptly.
 If a vehicular system involves heavy computation, the RSU transmits the sensed data
to the cloud end.
 Sometimes, these RSUs also work as an intermediate communication agent between
two vehicles.
 Cloud and fog computing: We have already discussed the importance of fog
computing and cloud in the context of IoT applications.
 In vehicular IoT systems, fog computing handles the light-weight processes
geographically closer to the vehicles than the cloud.
 Consequently, for faster decision making, fog computing is used in vehicular IoT
systems.
 However, for a heavy-weight process, fog computing may not be a suitable option.
 In such a situation, cloud computing is more adept for vehicular IoT systems.
 Cloud computing provides more scalability of resources as compared to fog
computing.
 Therefore, the choice of the application of fog and cloud computing depends on the
situation.
 For example, the location and extent of short on-road congestion from a certain
location can be determined by fog computing with the help of sensed data.
 Further, the congestion information can be shared by the RSU among other on road
vehicles, thereby suggesting that they avoid the congested road.
 On the other hand, for determining regular on-road congestion, predictions are
typically handled with the help of cloud computing.
 For the regular congestion prediction, the cloud end needs to process a huge amount of
instantaneous data, as well as, historical data for that stretch of road spanning back a
few months to years.

 Analytics: Similar to different IoT application domains, in vehicular IoT, analytics is

a crucial component.
 Vehicular IoT systems can be made to predict different dynamic and static conditions
using analytics.
 For example, strong data analytics is required to predict on-road traffic conditions that
may occur at a location after an hour.

Advantages of vehicular IoT

 The evolution of IoT resulted in the development of a connected vehicular
environment.
 Moreover, the typical advantages of IoT architectures directly impact the domain of
connected vehicular systems.
 Therefore, the advantages of IoT are inherently included in vehicular IoT
environments.

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  A few selected advantages of vehicular IoT are shown in Figure.

(i) Easy tracking:

 The tracking of vehicles is an essential part of vehicular IoT.
 Moreover, the system must know from which location and which vehicle the system is
receiving the information.
 In a vehicular IoT system, the tracking of vehicles is straightforward; the system can
collect information at a remote location.

(ii) Fast decision making:

 Most of the decisions in the connected vehicle environment are time critical.
 Therefore, for such an application, fast and active decision making are pertinent for
avoiding accidents.
 In the vehicular IoT environment, cloud and fog computing help to make fast
decisions with the data received from the sensor-based devices.
(iii) Connected vehicles:
 A vehicular IoT system provides an opportunity to remain connected and share
information among different vehicles.
(iv) Easy management:
 Since vehicular IoT systems consist of different types of sensors, a communication
unit, processing devices, and GPS, the management of the vehicle becomes easy.
 The connectivity among different components in a vehicular IoT enables systems to
track every activity in and around the vehicle.
 Further, the IoT infrastructure helps in managing the huge number of users located at
different geographical coordinates.
(v) Safety:
 Safety is one of the most important advantages of a vehicular IoT system.
 With easy management of the system, both the internal and external sensors placed at
different locations play an important role in providing safety to the vehicle, its
occupants, as well as the people around it.
(vi) Record:
 Storing different data related to the transportation system is an essential component of
a vehicular IoT.
 The record may be of any form, such as video footage, still images, and
documentation.

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  By taking advantage of cloud and fog computing architecture, the vehicular IoT
systems keep all the required records in its database.

Crime assistance in a smart IoT transportation system

 In this section, we discuss a case study on smart safety in a vehicular IoT
infrastructure.
 The system highlights a fog framework for intelligent public safety in vehicular
environments (fog-FISVER).
 The primary aim of this system is to ensure smart transportation safety (STS) in public
bus services.
 The system works through the following three steps:

(i) The vehicle is equipped with a smart surveillance system, which is capable of
executing video processing and detecting criminal activity in real time.
(ii) A fog computing architecture works as the mediator between a vehicle and a police
vehicle.
(iii) A mobile application is used to report the crime to a nearby police agent.

Architecture
 The architecture of the fog-FISVER consists of different IoT components.
 Moreover, the developers utilized the advantages of the low-latency fog computing
architecture for designing their system.
 Fog-FISVER is based on a three-tiered architecture, as shown in Figure.
 We will discuss each of the tiers as follows:

 Tier1—In-vehicle FISVER STS Fog: In this system component, a fog node is placed
for detecting criminal activities.
 This tier accumulates the real sensed data from within the vehicle and processes it to
detect possible criminal activities inside the vehicle.

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  Further, this tier is responsible for creating crime-level metadata and transferring the
required information to the next tier.
 For performing all the activities, Tier 1 consists of two subsystems: Image processor
and event dispatcher.

 Image Processor: The image processor inside Tier 1 is a potent component, which
has a capability similar to the human eye for detecting criminal activities.
 Developers of the system used a deep-learning-based approach for enabling image
processing techniques in the processor.
 To implement the fog computing architecture in the vehicle, a Raspberry-Pi-3
processor board is used, which is equipped with a high-quality camera.
 Further, this architecture uses template matching and correlation to detect the presence
of dangerous articles (such as a pistol or a knife) in the sub-image of a video frame.
 Typically, the image processor stores a set of crime object templates in the fog-
FISVER STS fog infrastructure, which is present in Tier 2 of the system.
 The image processor is divided into the following three parts:
 (a) Crime definition downloader: This component periodically checks for the
presence of new crime object template definitions in fog-FISVER STS fog
infrastructure.
 If a new crime object template is available, it is stored locally.
 (b) Crime definition storage: In order to use template matching, the crime object
template definition is required to be stored in the system.
 The crime definition storage is used to store all the possible crime object template
definitions.
 (c) Algorithm launcher: This component initiates the instances of the registered
algorithm in order to match the template with the video captured by the camera
attached in the vehicles.
 If a crime object is matched with the video, criminal activity is confirmed.

 Event dispatcher: This is another key component of Tier 1.

 The event dispatcher is responsible for accumulating the data sensed from vehicles
and the image processor.
 After the successful detection of criminal activity, the information is sent to the fog-
FISVER STS fog infrastructure.
 The components of the event dispatcher are as follows:
 (a) Event notifier: It transfers the data to the fog-FISVER STS fog infrastructure,
after receiving it from the attached sensor nodes in the vehicle.
 (b) Data gatherer: This is an intermediate component between the event notifier and
the physical sensor; it helps to gather sensed data.
 (c) Virtual sensor interface: Multiple sensors that sense data from different locations
of the vehicle are present in the system.
 The virtual sensor interface helps to maintain a particular procedure to gather data.
 This component also cooperates to register the sensors in the system.

 (ii) Tier 2—FISVER STS Fog Infrastructure: Tier 2 works on top of the fog
architecture.

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  Primarily, this tier has three responsibilities—keep updating the new object template
definitions, classifying events, and finding the most suitable police vehicle to notify
the event.
 FISVER STS fog infrastructure is divided into two sub-components:
 Target Object Training: Practically, there are different types of crime objects.
 The system needs to be up-to-dated regarding all crime objects.
 This subcomponent of Tier 2 is responsible for creating, updating, and storing the
crime object definition.
 The algorithm launcher uses these definitions in Tier 1 for the template matching
process.
 The template definition includes different features of the crime object such as color
gradient and shape format.
 A new object definition is stored in the definition database.
 The database requires to be updated based on the availability of new template
definitions.
 Notification Factory: This sub-component receives notification about the events in a
different vehicle with the installed system.
 Further, this component receives and validates the events. In order to handle multiple
events, it maintains a queue.
 (iii) Tier 3 consists of mobile applications that are executed on the users’ devices.
 The application helps a user, who witnesses a crime, to notify the police.

Assignment Questions
1. What is the role of cloud and fog computing in vehicular IoT?
2. What are the applications of IoT in transportation?
3. What are the advantages of vehicular IoT?
4. Give an example of image processing in vehicular IoT.
5. What are roadside units (RSUs)?
6. How can data analytics help in a vehicular IoT system?
7. What are the uses of a camera sensor in vehicular IoT?
8. How can a vehicular IoT system ensure the safety of drivers?
9. Design a use case for developing an IoT-based driver sleep detection system. Please
mention all types of sensors required for developing the same.

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Chapter-2 Healthcare IoT Module-5

Introduction
 Internet of Things (IoT) has resulted in the development and emergence of a variety of
technologies that has had a huge impact on the medical field, especially wearable
healthcare.
 The salient features of IoT encourage researchers and industries to develop new IoT-
based technologies for healthcare.
 These technologies have given rise to small, power-efficient, health monitoring and
diagnostic systems.
 Consequently, the development of numerous healthcare technologies and systems has
rapidly increased over the last few years.
 Currently, various IoT-enabled healthcare devices are in wide use around the globe for
diagnosing human diseases, monitoring human health conditions, caring/monitoring
for elders, children, and even infants.
 Moreover, IoT-based healthcare systems and services help to increase the quality of
life for common human beings; in fact, it has a promising scope of revolutionizing
healthcare in developing nations.
 IoT-based healthcare devices provide access and knowledge about human
physiological conditions through hand held devices.
 With this development, users can be aware of the risks in acquiring various diseases
and take necessary precautions to avoid preventable diseases.
 The basic skeleton of an IoT-based healthcare system is very similar to the
conventional IoT architectures.
 However, for IoT-based healthcare services, the sensors are specifically designed to
measure and quantify different physiological conditions of its users/patients.
 A typical architecture for healthcare IoT is shown in Figure. We divide the
architecture into four layers.
 The detailed description of these layers are as follows:

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  (i) Layer 1: We have already explained in previous chapters that sensors are one of the
key enablers of IoT infrastructure.
 Layer 1 contains different physiological sensors that are placed on the human body.
 These sensors collect the values of various physiological parameters. The
physiological data are analyzed to extract meaningful information.
 (ii) Layer 2: Layer 1 delivers data to Layer 2 for short-term storage and low-level
processing.
 The devices that belong to Layer 2 are commonly known as local processing units
(LPU) or centralized hubs.
 These units collect the sensed data from the physiological sensors attached to the body
and process it based on the architecture’s requirement.
 Further, LPUs or the centralized hubs forward the data to Layer 3.
 (iii) Layer 3: This layer receives the data from Layer 2 and performs application
specific high-level analytics.
 Typically, this layer consists of cloud architecture or high-end servers. The data from
multiple patients, which may be from the same or different locations, are accumulated
in this layer.
 Post analysis of data, some inferences or results are provided to the application in
Layer 4.
 (iv)Layer 4: The end-users directly interact with Layer 4 through receiver-side
applications.
 The modes of accessibility of these services by an end user are typically through
cellphones, computers, and tablets.

Components of healthcare IoT

 A typical IoT healthcare architecture is composed of several components that are
essential to generate the whole architecture.
 Figure depicts different components and their usage in an IoT healthcare system.
 Each of these components plays a distinct role in the smooth execution of the system
as a whole.

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  (i) Sensors: We have already explained that Layer 1 mainly consists of physiological
sensors that collect the physiological parameters of the patient.
 Few commonly used physiological sensors and their uses are depicted in Table.
Sensor Purpose
Pulse and oxygen These sensors are used to measure the pulse and oxygen levels in
in blood (SpO2) blood.
Airflow Also known as breathing sensor. An airflow sensor measures the
change in respiratory rate.
Temperature With change in different physiological conditions, the body
temperature of a healthy adult also changes. Thus, measuring the
body temperature is a routine, yet essential part of medical
investigations. The temperature sensor helps to measure the body
temperature.
Blood pressure The blood pressure sensor measures the systolic, diastolic, and
mean arterial pressure of the blood.
Glucometer A glucometer measures the glucose levels in blood.
Galvanic skin A GSR sensor measures the intensity of stress on a human. This
response (GSR) sensor estimates the stress by measuring the variations in electrical
characteristics of the skin.
Electrocardiogram This device measures the electrical and muscular activity of the
(ECG) heart.
Electromyogram EMG is a very important device that measures the health of a
(EMG) muscle and a nerve cell. With the help of EMG, the disruption of
nerve and muscle of a body can be determined.

 (ii) Wireless Connectivity: Without proper connectivity and communication, the data
sensed by the physiological sensors are of no use in an IoT-based healthcare system.
 Typically, the communication between the wearable sensors and the LPU is through
either wired or wireless connectivity.
 The wireless communication between the physiological sensors and LPU occurs with
the help of Bluetooth and ZigBee.
 On the other hand, the communication between the LPU and the cloud or server takes
place with Internet connectivity such as Wi- Fi and WLAN.
 In Layer 4 of the healthcare IoT architecture, the healthcare data are received by the
end users with different devices such as laptops, desktops, and cellphones.
 These communication protocols vary depending on the type of device in use.
 For example, when a service is received by a cellphone, it uses GSM (global system
for mobile communications).
 On the other hand, if the same service is received on a desktop, it can be through
Ethernet or Wi-Fi.
 Communication and connectivity in healthcare IoT is an essential component.
 (iii) Privacy and Security: The privacy and security of health data is a major concern
in healthcare IoT services.
 In a healthcare IoT architecture, several devices connect with the external world.
Moreover, between LPU and the server/cloud, different networking devices work via
network hops (from one networked device to another) to transmit the data.

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  If any of these devices are compromised, it may result in the theft of health data of a
patient, leading to serious security breaches and ensuing lawsuits.
 In order to increase the security of the healthcare data, different healthcare service
providers and organizations are implementing healthcare data encryption and
protection schemes.
 (iv)Analytics: For converting the raw data into information, analytics plays an
important role in healthcare IoT.
 Several actors, such as doctors, nurses, and patients, access the healthcare information
in a different customized format.
 This customization allows each actor in the system to access only the information
pertinent to their job/role.
 In such a scenario, analytics plays a vital role in providing different actors in the
system access to meaningful information extracted from the raw healthcare data.
 Analytics is also used for diagnosing a disease from the raw physiological data
available.
 (v) Cloud and Fog Computing: In a healthcare IoT system, several physiological
sensors are attached to a patient’s body.
 These sensors continuously produce a huge amount of heterogeneous data.
 For storing these huge amounts of heterogeneous health data, efficient storage space is
essential.
 These data are used for checking the patient’s history, current health status, and future
for diagnosing different diseases and the symptoms of the patient.
 Typically, the cloud storage space is scalable, where payment is made as per the usage
of space.
 Consequently, to store health data in a healthcare IoT system, cloud storage space is
used.
 Analytics on the stored data in cloud storage space is used for drawing various
inferences.
 The major challenges in storage are security and delay in accessing the data.
 Therefore, cloud and fog computing play a pivotal role in the storage of these massive
volumes of heterogeneous data.
 (vi) Interface: The interface is the most important component for users in a healthcare
IoT system.
 Among IoT applications, healthcare IoT is a very crucial and sensitive application.
 Thus, the user interface must be designed in such a way that it can depict all the
required information clearly and, if necessary, reformat or represent it such that it is
easy to understand.
 Moreover, an interface must also contain all the useful information related to the
services.

Advantages and risk of healthcare IoT

 IoT has already started to penetrate the domain of medical science. In healthcare, IoT
has become significantly popular due to its various features, which have been covered
previously in this book.
 Healthcare IoT helps in managing different healthcare subsystems efficiently.
 Although it has many advantages, healthcare IoT has some risks too, which may be
crucial in real-life applications.

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  In this section, we discuss the different advantages and risks of healthcare IoT as
depicted in Figure.

Advantages of healthcare IoT

The major advantages of healthcare IoT can be listed as follows:
 Real-time: In healthcare sectors, different components, such as the condition of the
patients, availability of doctors and beds in a hospital, medical facilities with their
monetary charges, can vary dynamically with time.
 In such a dynamic scenario, one of the important characteristics of an IoT-based
healthcare system is real-timeliness.
 A healthcare IoT system enables users, such as doctors, end users at the patient-side,
and staff in a healthcare unit, to receive real-time updates about the healthcare IoT
components, as mentioned earlier.
 Moreover, a healthcare IoT system can enable a doctor to observe a patient’s health
condition in real-time even from a remote location, and can suggest the type of care to
be provided to the patient.
 On the other hand, users at the patient-end can easily take different decisions, such as
where to take a patient during critical situations.
 Moreover, the staff in a healthcare unit is better aware of the current situation of their
unit, which includes the number of patients admitted, availability of the doctors and
bed, total revenue of the unit, and other such information.
 Low cost: Healthcare IoT systems facilitate users with different services at low cost.
 For example, an authorized user can easily find the availability of the beds in a
hospital with simple Internet connectivity and a web-browser-based portal.
 The user need not visit the hospital physically to check the availability of beds and
facilities.
 Moreover, multiple registered users can retrieve the same information simultaneously.
 Easy management: Healthcare IoT is an infrastructure that brings all its end users
under the same umbrella to provide healthcare services.
 On the other hand, in such an infrastructure, the management of numerous tangible
and intangible entities (such as users, medical devices, facilities, costs, and security) is
a challenging task.
 However, healthcare IoT facilitates easy and robust management of all the entities.
 Automatic processing: A healthcare unit consists of multiple subsystems, for which
manual interventions are required.
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  For example, to register a patient with a hospital, the user may be required to enter
his/her details manually.
 However, automatic processing features can remove such manual intervention with a
fingerprint sensor/device.
 Healthcare IoT enables end-to-end automatic processing in different units and also
consolidates the information across the whole chain: from a patient’s registration to
discharge.
 Easy record-keeping: When we talk about a healthcare IoT system, it includes a huge
number of patients, doctors, and other staff.
 Different patients suffer from different types of diseases.
 A particular disease requires particular treatment, which requires knowledge of a
patient’s health history, along with other details about them.
 Therefore, the timely delivery of health data of the patient to the doctor is important.
 In such a situation, the permanent storage of the patients’ health data along with their
respective details is essential.
 Similarly, for the smooth execution of the healthcare unit, details of the staff with their
daily activity in a healthcare unit are also required for storage.
 A healthcare unit must also track its condition and financial transactions for further
development of the unit.
 A healthcare IoT enables the user to keep these records in a safe environment and
deliver them to the authorized user as per requirement.
 Moreover, these recorded data are accessible from any part of the globe.
 Easy diagnosis: We have already explained that a healthcare IoT system stores the
data of the patient in a secure manner.
 Sometimes, for diagnosing a disease, a huge chunk of prior data is required. In a
healthcare IoT system, the diagnosis of the disease becomes easier with the help of
certain learning mechanisms along with the availability of prior datasets.

Risk in healthcare IoT

 However, in a healthcare IoT system, there are multiple risks as well. Here, we discuss
the various risks associated with a healthcare IoT system.
 Loss of connectivity: A healthcare IoT system consists of different physiological
sensors that sense and transmit the sensed data to a centralized unit.
 Moreover, continuous data transmission from the patient is expected in a good
healthcare system.
 Intermittent connectivity may result in data loss, which may result in a life-threatening
situations for the patient.
 Proper and continuous connectivity is essential in a healthcare IoT system.
 Security: A healthcare IoT system contains the health data of different patients
associated with the system.
 The healthcare system must keep the data confidential. This data should not be
accessible to any unauthorized person.
 On the other hand, different persons and devices are associated with a healthcare IoT
system.
 In such a system, the risk of data tampering and unauthorized access is quite high.
 Error: Data analytics helps a healthcare IoT system to predict the patients’ condition
and diagnosis of diseases.

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  A huge amount of data needs to be fed into the system in order to perform accurate
analytics.
 Moreover, the management of a huge amount of data is a crucial task in any IoT-based
system.
 Particularly, in the healthcare system, errors in data may lead to misinterpretation of
symptoms and lead to the wrong diagnosis of the patient.
 It is a challenging task to construct an error-free healthcare IoT architecture.

Case Studies
(i) AmbuSens system
 In many developing countries, patients need to be transferred from primary-care to
tertiary-care hospitals for proper diagnosis and treatment.
 During the transit, the hospitals at both ends—the referring one as well as the referred
one—do not have any information about the patient’s health condition during transit.
 In such situations, the hospitals are unable to suggest any precautionary measures in
the event of some emergency during transit.
 Consequently, many patients die during the transit due to lack of proper suggestive
care by medical experts.
 To overcome these shortcomings, the Smart Wireless Applications and Networking
(SWAN) laboratory at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur developed a
system: AmbuSens.
 The system was primarily funded by the Ministry of Human Resource and
Development (MHRD) of the Government of India.
 This product system is a very crucial part of the healthcare IoT system.
 The primary objectives of the AmbuSens system are summarized as follows:
 Digitization and standardization of the healthcare data, which can be easily
accessed by the registered hospital authorities.
 Real-time monitoring of the patients who are in transit from one hospital to
another. At both hospitals, doctors can access the patients’ health conditions.
 Accessibility by which multiple doctors can access the patient’s health data at
the same time.
 Provision of confidentiality to the health data of the patients in the cloud.
 In the AmbuSens system, wireless physiological sensor nodes are used. These
sensor nodes make the system flexible and easy to use.

Architecture
 The AmbuSens system is equipped with different physiological sensors along with a
local hub.
 These sensors sense the physiological parameters from the patient’s body and transmit
those to a local data processing unit (LDPU).
 The physiological sensors and LDPU form a wireless body area network (WBAN).
 Further, this local hub forwards the physiological data to the cloud for storing and
analyzing the health parameters.
 Finally, the data are accessed by different users. The detailed layered architecture of
the AmbuSens system is depicted in Figure.

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  (i) Layer 1: This layer consists of multiple WBANs attached to a patient’s body.
 These WBANs acquire the physiological data from the patient and transmit them to
the upper layer.
 The physiological sensors are heterogeneous, that is, each of these sensors senses
different parameters of the body.
 Moreover, the physiological sensors require calibration for acquiring the correct data
from a patient’s body.
 Layer 1 takes care of the calibration of the physiological sensor nodes.
 Further, in order to deliver the patient’s physiological data from the sensor node to the
LDPU, it is essential to form a proper WBAN.
 The formation of WBAN takes place by connecting multiple physiological sensor
nodes to the LDPU so that the sensors can transmit the data to the LDPU,
simultaneously.
 (ii) Layer 2: In the AmbuSens system, cloud computing has an important role.
 Layer 2 is responsible for handling the cloud-related functions. From Layer 1,
WBANs attached to the different patients deliver data to the cloud end.
 The cloud is used for the long-term analysis and storage of data in the AmbuSens
system.
 Moreover, the previous health records of the patients are stored in the cloud in order to
perform patient-specific analysis.
 A huge volume of health data is produced by the WBANs, which are handled by the
cloud with the help of big data analytics for providing real-time analysis.
 (iii) Layer 3: In the AmbuSens system, the identity of the patients remains anonymous.

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  An algorithm is designed to generate a dynamic hash value for each patient in order to
keep the patient’s identity anonymous.
 Moreover, in the AmbuSens system, at different time instants, a new hash value is
generated for the patients.
 The entire hashing mechanism of the AmbuSens is performed in this layer.
 (iv) Layer 4: The users simply register into the system and use it as per requirement.

Hardware
 In the AmbuSens system, a variety of hardware components are used such as sensors,
communication units, and other computing devices.
 Sensors: The sensors used in the AmbuSens system are non-invasive.
 The description of the sensors used for forming the WBAN in the AmbuSens system
are as follows:
 (i) Optical Pulse Sensing Probe: It senses the photoplethysmogram (PPG) signal and
transmits it to a GSR expansion module.
 Typically, PPG signals are sensed from the ear lobe, fingers, or other location of the
human body.
 Further, the GSR expansion module transfers the sensed data to a device in real-time.
 (ii) Electrocardiogram (ECG) unit and sensor: The ECG module used in AmbuSens
is in the form of a kit, which contains ECG electrodes, biophysical 9” leads,
biophysical 18” leads, alcohol swabs, and wrist strap.
 Typically, the ECG sensor measures the pathway of electrical impulses through the
heart to sense the heart’s responses to physical exertion and other factors affecting
cardiac health.
 (iii) Electromyogram (EMG) sensor: This sensor is used to analyze and measure the
biomechanics of the human body.
 Particularly, the EMG sensor is used to measure different electrical activity related to
muscle contractions; it also assesses nerve conduction, and muscle response in injured
tissue.
 (iv) Temperature sensor: The body temperature of patients changes with the
condition of the body.
 Therefore, a temperature sensor is included in the AmbuSens system, which can easily
be placed on the body of the patient.
 (v) Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) sensor: The GSR sensor is used for measuring
the change in electrical characteristics of the skin.

 Local Data Processing Unit (LDPU): In AmbuSens, all the sensors attached to the
human body sense and transmit the sensed data to a centralized device, which is called
an LDPU.
 An LDPU is a small processing board with limited computation capabilities.
 The connectivity between the sensors and the LDPU follows a single-hop star
topology.
 The LDPU is programmed in such a way that it can receive the physiological data
from multiple sensor nodes, simultaneously.
 Further, it transmits the data to the cloud for long-term storage and heavy processing.

 Communication Module: Each sensor node consists of a Bluetooth (IEEE 802.15.1

standard) module.
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  The communication between the sensor nodes and the LDPU takes place with the help
of Bluetooth, which supports a maximum communication range of 10 meters in line-
of-sight.
 The LDPU delivers the data to the cloud with 3G/4G communication.

Front End
 In the AmbuSens system, three actors—doctor, paramedic/nurse, and patient—are
able to participate and use the services.
 The web interface is designed as per the requirements of the actors of the system.
 Each of the actors has an option to log in and access the system.
 The confidentiality of a patient and their physiological data is important in a
healthcare system.
 Therefore, the system provides different scopes for data accessibility based on the
category of an actor.
 For example, the detailed health data of a patient is accessible only to the assigned
doctor.
 These data may not be required for the nurse; therefore, a nurse is unable to access the
same set of data a doctor can access.
 The system provides the flexibility to a patient to log in to his/her account and
download the details of his/her previous medical/treatment details.
 Therefore, in AmbuSens, the database is designed in an efficient way such that it can
deliver the customized data to the respective actor.
 Each of the users has to register with the system to avail of the service of the
AmbuSens.
 Therefore, in this system, the registration process is also designed in a customized
fashion, that is, the details of a user to be entered into the registration form are
different for different actors.
 For example, a doctor must enter his/her registration number in the registration form.

Assignment Questions
1. List the components of healthcare IoT.
2. Why privacy and security is important for healthcare?
3. What is a wireless body area network (WBAN)?
4. What is the difference between electrocardiogram (ECG) and electromyogram (EMG)
sensors?
5. List the advantages of healthcare IoT.
6. List the risks associated with healthcare IoT systems.
7. How can data analysis be used in healthcare IoT?
8. What is a local processing unit (LPU)?
9. Discuss an idea for developing an IoT-based healthcare system, where we can include
fingerprint sensor.
10.Why is cloud computing important for a healthcare IoT system?

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Chapter-3 IoT Analytics Module-5

Introduction
 These sensors collect data from the environment and serve different IoT-based
applications.
 The raw data from a sensor require processing to draw inferences.
 However, an IoT based system generates data with complex structures; therefore,
conventional data processing on these data is not sufficient.
 Sophisticated data analytics are necessary to identify hidden patterns. In this chapter,
we discuss a few traditional data analytics tools that are popular in the context of IoT
applications.
 These tools include k-means, decision tree (DT), random forest (RF), k-nearest
neighbor (KNN), and density-based spatial clustering of applications with noise
(DBSCAN) algorithms.
 Before discussing these algorithms, let us understand some of the basics related to
machine learning (ML).

Machine learning
 The term “machine learning” was coined by Arthur Lee Samuel, in 1959.
 He defined machine learning as a “field of study that gives computers the ability to
learn without being explicitly programmed”.
 ML is a powerful tool that allows a computer to learn from past experiences and its
mistakes and improve itself without user intervention.
 Typically, researchers envision IoT-based systems to be autonomous and self-
adaptive, which enhance services and user experience.
 To this end, different ML models play a crucial role in designing intelligent systems in
IoT by leveraging the massive amount of generated data and increasing the accuracy
in their operations.
 The main components of ML are statistics, mathematics, and computer science for
drawing inferences, constructing ML models, and implementation, respectively.

Advantages of ML
 Applications fueled by ML open a plethora of opportunities in IoT-based systems,
from triggering actuators to identifying chronic diseases from images of an eye.

 ML also enables a system to identify changes and to take intelligent actions that
relatively imitates that of a human.
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  As ML demonstrates a myriad of advantages, its popularity in IoT applications is
increasing rapidly. In this section, we discuss the different advantages of ML, as
depicted in Figure.

 (i) Self-learner: An ML-empowered system is capable of learning from its prior and
run-time experiences, which helps in improving its performance continuously.
 For example, an ML-assisted weather monitoring system predicts the weather report
of the next seven days with high accuracy from data collected in the last six months.
 The system offers even better accuracy when it analyses weather data that extends
back to three more months.
 (ii) Time-efficient: ML tools are capable of producing faster results as compared to
human interpretation.
 For example, the weather monitoring system generates a weather prediction report for
the upcoming seven days, using data that goes back to 6–9 months.
 A manual analysis of such sizeable data for predicting the weather is difficult and
time-consuming.
 Moreover, the manual process of data analysis also affects accuracy.
 In such a situation, ML is beneficial in predicting the weather with less delay and
accuracy as compared to humans.
 (iii) Self-guided: An ML tool uses a huge amount of data for producing its results.
 These tools have the capability of analysing the huge amount of data for identifying
trends autonomously.
 As an example, when we search for a particular item on an online e-commerce
website, an ML tool analyses our search trends.
 As a result, it shows a range of products similar to the original item that we searched
for initially.
 (iv)Minimum Human Interaction Required: In an ML algorithm, the human does
not need to participate in every step of its execution.
 The ML algorithm trains itself automatically, based on available data inputs.
 For instance, let us consider a healthcare system that predicts diseases.
 In traditional systems, humans need to determine the disease by analyzing different
symptoms using standard “if– else” observations.
 However, the ML algorithm determines the same disease, based on the health data
available in the system and matching the same with the symptoms of the patient.
 (v) Diverse Data Handling: Typically, IoT systems consist of different sensors and
produce diverse and multi-dimensional data, which are easily analyzed by ML
algorithms.
 For example, consider the profit of an industry in a financial year.
 Profits in such industries depend on the attendance of laborers, consumption of raw
materials, and performance of heavy machineries.
 The attendance of laborers is associated with an RFID (radio frequency identification)-
based system.
 On the other hand, industrial sensors help in the detection of machiney failures, and a
scanner helps in tracking the consumption of raw materials.
 ML algorithms use these diverse and multi-dimensional data to determine the profit of
the industry in the financial year.

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  (vi) Diverse Applications: ML is flexible and can be applied to different application
domains such as healthcare, industry, smart traffic, smart home, and many others.
 Two similar ML algorithms may serve two different applications.

Challenges in ML
 An ML algorithm utilizes a model and its corresponding input data to produce an
output.
 A few major challenges in ML are listed as follows:
 (i) Data Description: The data acquired from different sensors are required to be
informative and meaningful.
 Description of data is a challenging part of ML.
 (ii) Amount of Data: In order to provide an accurate output, a model must have
sufficient amount of data.
 The availability of a huge amount of data is a challenge in ML.
 (iii) Erroneous Data: A dataset may contain noisy or erroneous data.
 On the other hand, the learning of a model is heavily dependent on the quality of data.
 Since erroneous data misleads the ML model, its identification is crucial.
 (iv)Selection of Model: We have already discussed the use of ML algorithms in
different applications.
 Multiple models may be suitable for serving a particular purpose. However, one model
may perform better than others.
 In such cases, the proper selection of the model is pertinent for ML.
 (v) Quality of Model: After the selection of a model, it is difficult to determine the
quality of the selected model.
 However, the quality of the model is essential in an ML-based system.

Types of ML
 Typically, ML algorithms consist of four categories: (i) Supervised (ii) Unsupervised
(iii) Semi-supervised (iv) Reinforcement Learning (Figure).

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  As the name suggests, labeled data contain certain meaningful tags, known as labels.
 Typically, the labels correspond to the characteristics or properties of the objects.
 For example, in a dataset containing the images of two birds, a particular sample is
tagged as a crow or a pigeon.
 On the other hand, the unlabeled dataset does not have any tags associated with them.
 For example, a dataset containing the images of a bird without mentioning its name.

(i) Supervised Learning:

 This type of learning supervises or directs a machine to learn certain activities using
labeled datasets.
 The labeled data are used as a supervisor to make the machine understand the relation
of the labels with the properties of the corresponding input data.
 Consider an example of a student who tries to learn to solve equations using a set of
labeled formulas.
 The labels indicate the formulae necessary for solving an equation.
 The student learns to solve the equation using suitable formulae from the set.
 In the case of a new equation, the student tries to identify the set of formulae necessary
for solving it.
 Similarly, ML algorithms train themselves for selecting efficient formulae for solving
equations.
 The selection of these formulae depends primarily on the nature of the equations to be
solved.
 Supervised ML algorithms are popular in solving classification and regression
problems.
 Typically, the classification deals with predictive models that are capable of
approximating a mapping function from input data to categorical output.
 On the other hand, regression provides the mapping function from input data to
numerical output.
 There are different classification algorithms in ML. However, in this chapter, we
discuss three popular classification algorithms: (i) k-nearest neighbor (KNN), (ii)
decision tree (DT), and (iii) random forest (RF).
 We use regression to estimate the relationship among a set of dependent variables with
independent variables, as shown in Figure.
 The dependent variables are the primary factors that we want to predict.
 However, these dependent variables are affected by the independent variables.
 Let x and y be the independent and dependent variables, respectively.
 Mathematically, a simple regression model is represented as:

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  Where β represents the amount of impact of variable x on y and ε denotes an error.
 In the given equation, x0 creates β0 impact on y, which indicates that the value of y
can never be 0.
 Similarly, for multiple variables, say n, the regression model is represented as:

(ii) Unsupervised Learning:

 Unsupervised learning algorithms use unlabelled datasets to find scientific trends.
 Let us consider an example of the student similar to that described in the case of
supervised learning, and illustrate how it differs in case of unsupervised learning.
 As already mentioned, unsupervised learning does not use any labels in its operations.
 Instead, the ML algorithms in this category try to identify the nature and properties of
the input equation and the nature of the formulae responsible for solving it.
 Unsupervised learning algorithms try to create different clusters based on the features
of the formulae and relate it with the input equations.
 Unsupervised learning is usually applied to solve two types of problems: clustering
and association.
 Clustering divides the data into multiple groups. In contrast, association discovers the
relationship or association among the data in a dataset.

(iii) Semi-Supervised Learning:

 Semi-supervised learning belongs to a category between supervised and unsupervised
learning.
 Algorithms under this category use a combination of both labeled and unlabeled
datasets for training.
 Labeled data are typically expensive and are relatively difficult to label correctly.
 Unlabeled data is less expensive than labeled data.
 Therefore, semi-supervised learning includes both labeled and unlabeled dataset to
design the learning model.
 Traditionally, semi-supervised learning uses mostly unlabeled data, which makes it
efficient to use, and capable of overcoming samples with missing labels.

(iv) Reinforcement Learning:

 Reinforcement learning establishes a pattern with the help of its experiences by
interacting with the environment.
 Consequently, the agent performs a crucial role in reinforcement learning models.
 It aims to achieve a particular goal in an uncertain environment.
 Typically, the model starts with an initial state of a problem, for which different
solutions are available.
 Based on the output, the model receives either a reward or a penalty from the
environment.
 The output and reward act as inputs for proceeding to the next state.
 Thus, reinforcement learning models continue learning iteratively from their
experiences while inducing correctness to the output.

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Assignment Questions

1. What is machine learning (ML)? Why do we use ML?

2. What are the major challenges in ML?
3. What are the types of ML?
4. Compare supervised and unsupervised learning based on basic definition, type of data
used, and types of problems handled.
5. List the differences between k-means and KNN.

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