Review

Edge Machine Learning for AI-Enabled IoT Devices:

A Review
Massimo Merenda 1,2,*, Carlo Porcaro 1,2 and Demetrio Iero 1,2
1 Department of Information Engineering, Infrastructure and Sustainable Energy (DIIES),
University Mediterranea of Reggio Calabria, 89124 Reggio Calabria, Italy; [email protected] (C.P.);
[email protected] (D.I.)
2 HWA srl-Spin Off dell’Università Mediterranea di Reggio Calabria, Via Reggio Campi II tr. 135,

89126 Reggio Calabria, Italy

* Correspondence: [email protected]; Tel.: +39-0965-1693-441

Received: 22 March 2020; Accepted: 25 April 2020; Published: 29 April 2020

Abstract: In a few years, the world will be populated by billions of connected devices that will be
placed in our homes, cities, vehicles, and industries. Devices with limited resources will interact
with the surrounding environment and users. Many of these devices will be based on machine
learning models to decode meaning and behavior behind sensors’ data, to implement accurate
predictions and make decisions. The bottleneck will be the high level of connected things that could
congest the network. Hence, the need to incorporate intelligence on end devices using machine
learning algorithms. Deploying machine learning on such edge devices improves the network
congestion by allowing computations to be performed close to the data sources. The aim of this
work is to provide a review of the main techniques that guarantee the execution of machine learning
models on hardware with low performances in the Internet of Things paradigm, paving the way to
the Internet of Conscious Things. In this work, a detailed review on models, architecture, and
requirements on solutions that implement edge machine learning on Internet of Things devices is
presented, with the main goal to define the state of the art and envisioning development
requirements. Furthermore, an example of edge machine learning implementation on a
microcontroller will be provided, commonly regarded as the machine learning “Hello World”.

Keywords: artificial intelligence; machine learning; Internet of Things; edge devices; deep learning

1. Introduction
The Internet of Things (IoT) scenario [1,2] has gained a lot of notoriety in recent years. It
encompasses an infrastructure of software and hardware that connects the physical world with the
Internet. Due to the explosive growth of interest in this paradigm, the number of IoT devices has
increased dramatically in recent years. It has been estimated that by 2025, more than 75 billion devices
will be connected to the Internet [3], leading to an economic impact on the global market. IoT devices
typically have limited computing power, small memories, and could generate large amounts of data.
Low-power and connected systems including mainly sensors will be used in our homes, cities,
vehicles, and industries. Cloud computing might be suitable for the IoT sector growth but the delay
caused by the data transfer is unacceptable for some tasks (e.g., health monitoring), in addition to
possible bandwidth saturation. So, due to the greater numbers of connected devices, the only-cloud
processing could become impractical and would lead to greater latency, bandwidth decrease, and
privacy and reliability problems [4]. Hence the need to bring the calculation as locally as possible,
incorporating intelligence on end devices to limit cloud traffic. This means giving a sort of
“consciousness” to the devices that become able to interact also in the absence of the connection,

Sensors 2020, 20, 2533; doi:10.3390/s20092533 www.mdpi.com/journal/sensors

Sensors 2020, 20, 2533 2 of 33

elaborating complex behavior, and adapting to rapidly changing situations, a sort of “Internet of
Conscious Things”. Unfortunately, limitations in the computational capabilities of resource-scarce
devices restrict the implementation of complex machine learning (ML) algorithms on them, although
several frameworks based on software agents provide reliable and effective solutions for the
optimizations of different edge computing implementation [5–7]. The tasks that can be delivered to
the edge elements are related to low-data fusion [8], while for a deeper understanding of the data
(e.g., decision-making purposes) it is necessary to assign the calculation to more efficient systems.
However, the transferring of raw data to cloud servers increases communication costs, causes
delayed system response, and exposes private data. To address these issues, a practical solution is to
consider processing data closer to its sources and transmitting to remote servers only the data needed
for further cloud processing. Edge computing refers to computations being performed as close to
data sources as possible, instead of remote locations.
Both search engines and libraries were used to write the review. As reported on Google Trends
[9], in these years there has been an increase of interest from the scientific community on the topic
and issues of edge computing (Figure 1) and a total of 6342 papers are reported from Scopus [10]. The
keywords employed to obtain the papers to be analyzed was edge computing.

Edge Computing Interest

100 100

90 89
85 84
82 83
80
78

73
70
68
66 666665
63 64
60 61
59

50 51 51
4949494850
45 4645

40 39
37

3232
30

24 24
21 2222
20 19
16 1517
13 13
10 11 111110
888 7 9 9 9
7 7
5 5 5 444 565655 6
323 33432443243 4423
0
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

Figure 1. Edge computing interest (Google Trends).

In order to discern which papers to use, only papers written in English were considered.
Furthermore, to observe the recent evolution in this field, the selected papers were published from
the years 2014 to the first months of 2020. Finally, a total of about 100 papers were utilized to compile
this review.
The distribution of the papers regarding the country of the first author providing the countries
that investigate edge computing systems are mainly China, USA, UK, and Italy. China is the country
with the highest number of papers with a total of 2193 papers, 34.7% of the total.
The solution paved from the usage of edge machine learning (eML) is a viable way to meet the
latency, scalability, and privacy challenges described earlier.
In order to make possible this scenario, efficient artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm could be
deployed on the devices as SVM (support vector machine) [11,12], deep learning (DL) [13,14] and,
inter alia, neural networks (NNs) [15,16]. It is noteworthy that NNs require less computational power
in the application phase than in the training phase. This feature can be exploited to execute algorithms
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of AI on devices with limited resources, as microcontrollers (MCUs), allowing local data processing.
In fact, in the learning phase, a large amount of data is used to calculate the weights and biases of the
network, thus requiring a performing machine in this phase. Once the learning phase has been
completed and the network has been trained, the model can be used for inference (in statistic field, it
is the process of using data analysis to deduce properties of an underlying probability distribution)
with a lower computational request. In fact, once the coefficients have been calculated, they are stored
in the program memory and the AI algorithm can be executed on a device with a low capacity in
terms of RAM (random access memory). ML algorithms are used for different topics such as smart
cities [5,17–22], computer vision [23–27], health care [28–33], automotive [34–37], and others.
Concerning these fields, there are different examples of how machine learning could be brought on
edge devices. Anandhalli and Baligar in 2017 proposed in [18] a video processing algorithm that
identified and counted the vehicles on a road. The algorithm was run on a Raspberry Pi3 (1.2 GHz
quad-core ARMv8, 1 GB of RAM) with a built-in camera, using the library OpenCV5 (Open Source
Computer Vision Library [38]). In [23], the authors developed a face recognition algorithm for law
enforcement agencies within a smart city. A portable wireless camera mounted on the uniform of a
police officer is used to capture the images that are then passed on to a Raspberry Pi3 to perform
facial recognition. The Viola-Jones algorithm [39] is first used to identify faces in the images, then the
ORB algorithm [40] extracts the peculiar features from the faces that are then transmitted to an SVM
algorithm in the cloud to identify people. Therefore, for IoT purposes, the devices must be sufficiently
powerful to perform certain tasks, even though, in general, it is possible to insert AI even in any
embedded devices by exploiting a certain class of algorithms. The use of ML algorithms also allows
the extension of the average battery life of the device, with power saving one of the fundamental
tasks of the IoT world. For example, authors in [28] focused on increasing the battery life of a device
used for e-health purposes by optimizing sampling times and data transfers using ML algorithms.
Any unnecessary data that are transferred, stored, and processed appear to be a potential waste of
energy. Using an SVM algorithm, based on the RBF (radial basis function) [41], kernel function, and
varying the sampling frequency, it was possible to increase the life of the device from 2 weeks to
years (997 days). In the same scenario considered, the wearable sensor platform for health-care in a
residential environment (SPHERE) [42] is used to classify human activity into three categories:
Sedentary, moderate, and sportive. The data measured by an accelerometer are sent to the MCU using
Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) protocol. After processing the data, they are packed by the
microcontroller and sent using advertisement mode to a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) radio, which
transmits data outside the smart home to a central unit. The use of SVM can also be found in [43],
which highlights how the use of ML algorithms allows greater efficiency and low consumption in
predicting patients’ seizures. In fact, crisis prediction is a difficult task due to the variability of the
electroencephalography (EEG) signal depending on the patient. A neurostimulator able to identify
and react to a principle of crisis can facilitate applications that would not otherwise be feasible, such
as the possibility of generating a stimulus to suppress the crisis itself. The article demonstrates how
ML techniques like SVM can be used to identify possible crises in each patient. The use of NN on
embedded devices can be found in [44], which deals with the use of learning algorithms on an
inexpensive robot built to perform sense-motor tasks. The robot, in particular, learns to trace objects
by identifying the peculiarities of the object itself. The algorithm uses a CNN (convolutional neural
network) to combine color, brightness, motion, and audio information while training is carried out
using supervised ML algorithms. The images are properly analyzed to eliminate redundant input
data. A Motorola board populated with a 68HC11, an 8-bit MCU with Complex Instruction Set
Computer (CISC) architecture is used, which converts and processes the gyroscope outputs and
generates sound feedback and timing signals for 14 servomotors that allow 3 degrees of freedom for
each of the four legs and two degrees of freedom for the robot’s head. A Charge-Coupled Device
(CCD) camera is mounted on the top of the robot, which acts as the robot’s eye.
As seen from the previous papers, ML algorithms can be implemented on devices with limited
computational power and this can be used to improve the IoT field [45,46], thus enabling the edge
computing. A related term, fog computing, describes an architecture where the cloud is extended to be
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closer to the IoT end devices, thereby improving latency and security by performing computations
near the network edge [4]. Therefore, also for the fog computing, the task is to bring the processing
phase closer to where the data are generated but the main difference is where the “intelligence” is
located. In fog computing the processing phase is at the LAN (local-area network) level, in a fog node
or IoT gateway. In edge computing, data are mainly processed directly on the devices to which the
sensors are attached (physically very close to the sensors). The closer to the sensor, the better it is in
terms of privacy and power consumption because of the reduction of the energy request related to
data transmission. In this scenario, a variety of possibilities of energy harvesting from different
sources paves the way for AI-enabled passive or semipassive IoT sensor platforms [47–51].
This survey focused on ML systems deployed on edge devices. Section 2 provides a comparison
between the ML algorithms implementable in edge computing. In Section 3, the process of bringing
ML to the edge is analyzed. Section 4 describes edge server-based architectures while in Section 5 the
wireless standards for AI-enabled IoT devices are introduced. Section 6 provides edge-specific
solutions for offloading techniques, detailing the differences of the joint computation alternatives.
Section 7 deals with privacy issues and how to protect user privacy in uploading data. Section 8
describes the edge implementations of the training phase, in ML design. In Section 9, an example of
edge machine learning implementation is provided, commonly regarded as the machine learning
“Hello World”. The conclusions are, finally, drawn in Section 10.

2. Machine Learning Algorithms

We now discuss ML algorithms that could be used in resource-constrained settings at the edge
of the network. The machine learning algorithms introduced in the next paragraphs are the most
used in the papers that afford the problem of bringing AI in devices with resource-constrained
hardware.

2.1. Deep Learning

A deep learning model can be thought as a combination of weights and biases [52]. These
parameters are varied by an optimization function (ADAM [53] optimization algorithm is generally
used) based on an objective function (loss function or reward function, if the learning is, respectively,
supervised or reinforcement) that measures the predictive power of the model. Following a training
phase, the AI algorithm identifies an underlying pattern between the data, predicting a value as a
function of the inputs’ data. Depending on the training phase, we can distinguish various learning
techniques: (1) Supervised learning (both inputs and outputs are provided to the algorithm), (2)
unsupervised learning (only inputs are provided), and (3) reinforcement learning (an objective
reinforcement function is maximized). During the inference, the inputs’ data pass through the layers
and each layer performs matrix multiplications. The output of the final layer is either a number or a
classification output. A deep neural network (DNN) [13] (Figure 2) is an artificial neural network
(ANN) with multiple layers between the input and output layers and the operations include linear
or nonlinear functions. A special case of DNNs involves the usage of the matrix multiplications with
convolutional filter operations, which is common in DNNs that are designed for image and video
analysis. This type of models is known as convolutional neural networks (CNNs) [54] and they are
used when the numbers of input variables are high. The DNNs designed especially for time series
prediction are called recurrent neural networks (RNNs) [55], characterized by having loops in their
layer connections to keep state and enable predictions on sequential inputs.
There are many possible choices on how to design a NN model, provided that different
hyperparameters of the network bring a different level of accuracy. In particular, a model with high
accuracy requires more memory than a model with low accuracy due to the number of parameters.
The metric used to measure accuracy depends on the domain in which the ML algorithm is applied.
For example, in object detection, the accuracy may be measured by the mean average precision (mAP)
[56], which measures how well the predicted object location overlaps with the ground-truth location,
averaged across multiple categories of objects.
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Figure 2. Deep Neural Network (DNN) example.

2.2. RNN, GAN, K-NN

A particular type of NN are the RNNs (recurrent neural networks) [57]. In this type of NN, the
output values of a high layer are used as input for a lower one. This interconnection allows the use
of one of the layers as state memory. Providing a temporal sequence of values as input, it allows us
to model also dynamic temporal behavior. This makes them applicable to predictive analysis tasks
on data sequences, such as handwriting recognition or speech recognition [58]. A particular RNN is
LSTM (long short-term memory) [59]. A LSTM unit is composed of a cell, an input gate, an output
gate, and a forget gate. The cell remembers the values over the time and the gates regulate the flow
of information into and out of the cell. In particular, the forget gate can learn what information is kept
or forgotten during training.
Another type of NN is the generative adversarial network (GAN) [60]. They consist of two
networks: Generator and discriminator. The first generates data after it learns the data distribution
from a training dataset of real data. The second one is in charge of classifying the real data from the
fake ones generated by the generator.
K-nearest neighbors algorithm (K-NN) [61] is an algorithm used in the field of patterns
recognition, based on the characteristics of the objects close to the one considered. This method is
used both for classification and regression problems. There are different modified versions of k-NN
that helps to implement the algorithm in hardware-constrained devices and the most innovative is
ProtoNN [62]. It is a k-NN-based algorithm. The main problems of the K-NN for the computation at
the edge are: The training data size (the algorithm generates prediction using the entire datasets), the
prediction time, and the choice of the distance metric. To address these issues, ProtoNN works on a
smaller training dataset excluding the unnecessary data. The dataset is then projected to a low
dimension matrix and jointly learned across all data points. Gupta et al. implemented ProtoNN on
an Arduino Uno to evaluate its performance using 14 datasets and reported almost the same
classification accuracy as the state of the art.

2.3. Tree-Based ML Algorithms

Tree-based ML algorithms are used for classification and regression problems that are a very
common practice in the IoT field. However, due to the limited resources of the devices, the usual tree
algorithms could not be brought on them. An emerging algorithm is Bonsai [63]. The tree algorithm
[64] is designed specifically for severely resource-constrained IoT devices and it maintains prediction
Sensors 2020, 20, 2533 6 of 33

accuracy while minimizing model size and prediction costs. It learns first a single sparse tree reducing
the size model, then it makes nonlinear predictions through the internal nodes and the leaf ones.
Eventually, Bonsai learns sparse matrix, projecting all data into a low dimensional space in which the
tree is learned. This allows the algorithm to be brought on tiny devices like IoT ones.
The referenced implementation was carried out on an Arduino board populated with an 8-bit
ATmega328P microcontroller with 16 MHz operating frequency, 2 kB of Static Random Access
Memory (SRAM), and 32 kB of read-only flash memory and on BBC Micro:Bit which has an ARM
architecture 32-bit Cortex with an operating frequency of 16 MHz, 16 kB of SRAM and 256 kB of flash.

2.4. SVM
One of the most widely used ML algorithms at the embedded level is the SVM [28,29,43,52].
SVM is a supervised learning algorithm that can be used for both classification and regression
problems. The algorithm discriminates between two or more classes of data by defining an optimal
hyperplane that separates all classes (Figure 3a). The support vectors are the data closest to the
hyperplane, which, if removed, would result in a redefinition of the hyperplane itself. For these
reasons they are considered the critical elements of the dataset. Usually, the loss function used by the
algorithm is the Hinge loss and the optimization function is the descending gradient technique.

(a) (b)
Figure 3. (a) Hyperplane that separate two classes of data, (b) kernel trick.

Sometimes the data are linearly separable, but this only represents a subset of cases. SVM can
efficiently perform a classification using the kernel trick. Suppose we face the problem represented
in Figure 3b: It is impossible to find a single line to separate the two classes in the input space. But,
after projecting the data into a higher dimension, it is possible to find the hyperplane which classifies
the data. Kernel helps to find a hyperplane in the higher dimensional space without increasing the
computational cost too much.

3. Bringing Machine Learning to the Edge

3.1. Architectures
To meet latency requirements, different architectures for quick-performing model inference
have been proposed. The research focused on three important architectures (depicted in Figure 4): (1)
On-device computation, where DNNs are executed on the end device; (2) edge server-based
architectures (the data are sent from the end devices to edge servers for computation); and (3) joint
computation which includes the possibility to have cloud processing.
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Figure 4. (a) On-device computation, (b) edge server-based architectures, and (c) joint computation.

3.2. Model and Hardware

Several research papers focused on the possibility of bringing artificial intelligence to devices
with limited resources [44,65–67] and there have been efforts in decreasing the model’s inference time
on the device. To bring an AI model on embedded devices, ML developers should deal with the
proper hardware choice that fits model design and compression.

3.2.1. Model Design

ML developers focus on designing models with a reduced number of parameters in the DNN
model, thus reducing memory and execution latency, while aiming to preserve high accuracy. There
are several efficient models designed specifically to execute a NN on devices with low computational
capacity and power, such as MobileNets [68] or SqueezeNet [69], originally born for computer vision
tasks. MobileNets are based on a streamlined architecture that uses depth-wise separable
convolutions to build light-weight deep NNs. SqueezeNet downsamples the data using special 1 × 1
convolution filters.

3.2.2. Model Compression

The model compression allows us to run the model on tiny devices [70] and there are two main
ways to reduce the network: Lower precision (fewer bits per weight) and fewer weights (pruning).
Post-training quantization reduces computing power demand and energy consumption at the
expense of a slight loss in accuracy. By default, the model weights are float32 type variables, which
lead to two problems: Firstly, the model is very large because 4 bytes are associated at each weight,
with a considerable memory requirement; secondly, the execution is remarkably slow compared to
uint8 type variables. It is possible to considerably reduce the weights from 32 bits to 8 bits, obtaining
a 4x reduction in the size of the NN. Note that post-quantization is a technique that is carried out
after training the model, but it could be done even before training. ML libraries, such as Tensorflow
[71] or Keras [72], give the possibility to apply quantization. As stated above, the reduction of the
model size can be obtained not only with quantization, but also with pruning techniques that allow
the elimination of connections that are not useful to the NN (Figure 5); this leads to a decrease of the
computation request and program memory. Quantization and pruning approaches have been
considered individually as well as jointly [70]. These two techniques are the basis of NN compression,
from which further techniques have been developed. DeepIoT [73] presents a pruning method for
commonly used deep learning structures in IoT devices, and the pruned DNN can be immediately
deployed on edge devices without modification. Loss-approximating Taylor expansion was used in
[74] as a gradient-based importance metric used for pruning. Anwar et al. [75] selected pruning
Sensors 2020, 20, 2533 8 of 33

candidate by hundreds of random evaluations. Yang et al. [76] selected pruning candidate weighted
by energy consumption. Early pruning [77] and dynamic pruning [78] explored how to integrate
pruning with a better retraining, and saved the retraining time. A technique that is not among those
of pruning and quantization, but which has a significant value, is the knowledge distillation. This
involves creating a smaller DNN that imitates the behavior of a larger one [79]. This is done by
training the smaller DNN using the output predictions produced from the larger one and the smaller
DNN approximates the function learned by the larger one.

Figure 5. Pruning effect on the network.

3.2.3. Hardware Choice

The choice of the algorithm to be used is important to run a model on an edge device. However,
this must also be coupled to an optimal choice of hardware. The metric to be used for choosing the
hardware is based on accuracy, energy consumption, throughput, and cost [67]. The accuracy of ML
algorithms must be measured on a dataset large enough to be able to affirm that the obtained result
is valid. Energy efficiency, on the other hand, is closely related to the programmability and size of
the NN. By “programmability” we mean the adaptation of the model to the variation of the context,
i.e., the model varies the weights as the scenario varies. By “NN size” we mean, instead, the number
of layers that the processor must support. The high size and the variability of the scenario imply an
increase in terms of computation. In particular, the high size of the NN increases the number of data,
and, instead, the programmability involves the need to access the memory, read the weight value,
and modify it. This generally involves an increase in energy consumption. By “throughput” we mean
the number of operations required in the unit of time and with “cost” the amount of memory
required.
Microcontrollers can be used for AI but implementing the algorithm on them is challenging.
They are excellent choices in IoT applications and may run networks that are not too large for low-
data fusion tasks. A good tool to facilitate the implementation of a DNN on a microcontroller is the
X-CUBE-AI [80], suitable only for STMicroelectronics MCUs. It is an expansion of the STM32CubeMX
environment that extends the potential of the tool, allowing an automatic conversion of pretrained
NNs to low-resource hardware. X-CUBE-AI also optimizes libraries by modifying layers and
reducing the number of weights to make the network more “memory-friendly”.
Tiny hardware that can be used for IoT purposes and recommended on the Tensorflow lite
website [81] are:
- Arduino Nano 33 BLE Sense [82]
- SparkFun Edge [83]
- STM32 microcontrollers [84]
- Adafruit EdgeBadge [85]
Sensors 2020, 20, 2533 9 of 33

- Espressif ESP32-DevKitC [86]

- Espressif ESP-EYE [87]
Arm has provided its own solution for the IoT field [88]. Recently [89], they announced the
introduction of new features on their AI platform, among which new ML Intellectual Property, the
Arm® Cortex®-M55 processor that can be up to 15 times faster than the previous version, and Arm
Ethos™-U55 NPU, the first micro-NPU (neural processing unit) for Cortex-M architecture, which can
speed up ML performance by up to 480 times.
A selection of hardware used for IoT devices that implement edge computing is reported in
Table 1.

Table 1. Hardware used for Internet of Things (IoT) devices that implement edge computing.

Work DNN Model Application End Devices Key Metrics

This work STM32F401RE fast
CNN Image Recognition
(Section 9) (ARM® Cortex® -M4) inference
Raspberry Pi model 3 fast
[23] SVM Image Recognition
(ARM® v8) inference
Raspberry Pi model 3
[90] DNN Distributed Computing hierarchical
(ARM® v8)
Raspberry Pi model 3 fast
[91] SVM, CNN Video Analysis
(ARM® v8) inference
Raspberry Pi model 3 fast
[92] SVM Video Analysis
(ARM® v8) inference
Battery Lifetime
[28] SVM SPHERE energy
Estimation
Image Recognition, fast
[44] CNN Motorola 68HC11
Sensor Fusion inference
[65] SVM Code execution ARM® v7 accuracy
Logistic Human Activity
[93,94] ESP32 accuracy
Regression Recognition
[95] CNN Speech Recognition Sparkfun Edge accuracy

4. Edge Server-Based Architectures

The solutions described in the previous sections allow us to run the AI algorithm on end devices
but implementing powerful DNNs on tiny devices is still challenging (e.g., decision making and real-
time execution). In some circumstances, it is necessary to transfer the computations from end devices
to more powerful entities [96]. Since the edge server is close to users, it could be the best approach to
solve the problems related to the calculation in optimal times. The easiest way to utilize the edge
server is to offload all the computation from end devices to the edge server: The end devices will
send their data to a nearby edge server and receive the corresponding results after server processing.
When sending data to an edge server, data preprocessing is useful to reduce redundancy and thus
decrease communication time. An example could be Glimpse [97] that is a continuous, real-time,
object recognition system for camera-equipped mobile devices. Starting from the video, Glimpse
identifies objects and labels and traces them. Because the algorithms for object recognition entail
significant computation, Glimpse runs almost always on server machines. It uses change detection to
filter which camera frames are offloaded. If no changes are detected, Glimpse will perform frame
tracking locally on the end device. This preprocessing makes real-time object recognition possible.
Obviously, if the data processing is outsourced to an edge server, more edge devices will belong
to it. This should bring the problem of the shared resources. So, the developer should look for the
right trade-offs between accuracy, latency, and other performance metrics, such as a number of
requests served. A practical solution [98] could be to assign the computation across a hierarchy of
edge and cloud servers jointly tuning all the DNN hyperparameters. Mainstream [99] considers a
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similar scenario but the proposed solution uses transfer learning to reduce the computational
resources consumed by each request. Transfer learning enables multiple applications to share the
common lower layers of the DNN model and computes higher layers unique to the specific
application, thus reducing the overall amount of computation.

5. Wireless Standards for AI-Enabled IoT Devices

Most of the energy in the IoT device is wasted due to the communication protocol. Indeed, any
unnecessary data that are transferred, stored, and processed appear to be a potential waste of energy.
Consequently, excellent algorithms must also be accompanied by efficient communication protocols.
According to the specific scenario, the developers can use different communication protocols (Table
2). This is because we can distinguish protocols that allow us to transmit a small amount of data over
long distances with a low energy consumption and protocols that can transmit a great amount of data
over long distances with a high consumption. If the spectrum band use is considered, we can also
classify them into technologies that use the licensed or the unlicensed spectrum, e.g., Industrial,
Scientific and Medical (ISM) bands [100]. Among the many communication technologies, we include
BLE [101], an example [102] that presents the design and optimization of a smart sensor supplied by
2.4 GHz Radio Frequency (RF) power and performing infrared-based motion detection and BLE
communication. Bluetooth wireless technology is widely used, including the introduction of
Bluetooth 5 [103,104] that uses less power and supports mesh topology, enables large-scale device
networks, and many-to-many communications. Bluetooth 5 meets the requirements for recent IoT
devices with its good range, increased speed up to 2 Mbps, and a long-range mode with higher
sensitivity at lower bit rates.
ZigBee [105] is one of the main IoT communication standards. It is based on IEEE 802.15.4 [106]
standard for WPAN (wireless personal area network) and its primary application is in the field of
wireless sensor networks (smart energy and home automation) [107]. It could be used in different
fields: Smart cities [108,109], agriculture [110,111], automotive [112,113], and health care [114,115].
ZigBee operates mainly in the 2.4 GHz, but also supports the 868 MHz and 916 MHz ISM bands.
Another solution is Z-Wave, a sub-GHz mesh network protocol often used for security systems,
home automation, and lighting controls [116]. Like Zigbee, Z-Wave is a low-power technology based
on IEEE 802.15.4 that transfers small amounts of data over short and medium distances. Z-wave uses
a proprietary radio system and has a strictly regulated product ecosystem targeting smart homes,
while Zigbee devices can be used for a variety of applications and are not fully interoperable.
ANT [117] is a proprietary protocol operating in the 2.4 GHz band designed for low bit rate and
low-power networks. It supports point-to-point, star, tree, and mesh networks and up to 65,533 nodes
for each of the available channels. It was originally used in sports and fitness sensors but later used
for home automation and industrial applications. ANT+ is a standardized layer on top of the ANT
protocol allowing devices’ interoperability [118].
In the wake of the market demands of direct IP-based connectivity, new wireless mesh
networking standards have been developed. The 6LoWPAN (IPv6 over low-power wireless personal
area networks) [119] is a light-weight, IP-based communication and is an open IoT network protocol,
primarily used for home and building automation. However, the standard only defines an efficient
adaptation layer between the 802.15.4 data link layer and the TCP/IP stack. Thread [120] is a secure
and reliable mesh protocol for home automation running over 6LoWPAN and IEEE 802.15.4 radio.
The stack is an open standard built as a collection of existing standards and is optimized for low-
power operation, but the application layer is not standardized.
The aforementioned WPAN solutions require an application-level gateway that runs the TCP/IP
stack via Ethernet or WiFi. Instead, 6LoWPAN-based solutions use an edge router that only forwards
packets at the network layer and does not implement an application layer state, allowing low-cost
bridging to other IP networks.
WiFi networks (IEEE 802.11) use an access point (AP) as an Internet gateway and have good data
capacity and coverage inside buildings. Until recently it was quite expensive to integrate WiFi
connectivity into devices with low computing performance, due to the size and complexity of WiFi
Sensors 2020, 20, 2533 11 of 33

and TCP/IP software and the high power consumption that make it not suitable for use with battery-
powered devices. Now, however, new devices support WiFi and TCP/IP software and have reduced
power consumption. The power consumption of these devices can be further reduced by activating
the radio section only for short periods, allowing them to operate for over a year with two AA
batteries [121].
Many different WiFi protocols are available and operate at either 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz. IEEE 802.11n
and IEEE 802.11ac are the most widely used protocols but different versions have been developed in
the past years for higher versatility. WiFi HaLow (IEEE 802.11ah) is designed for low data rate and
long-range devices [122]. It operates in the sub-GHz ISM band and implements power-saving
techniques, such as target wake time (TWT) that wake up the device at defined intervals for a very
short time. HaLow was released in 2016, but is not yet widely used in commercial products. The
802.11af [123] has the same target applications of HaLow but it relies on unused TV spectrums in
UHF and VHF bands and never took off.
The 802.11ax [124] is a more recent version of WiFi technologies that support higher transfer
speed and also introduce power-saving features such as TWT, making it more attractive for IoT
applications. It also includes features that allow it to extend the range and allows the partition of the
channel into smaller subchannels to reduce the data rates while extending the number of devices that
can be reliably connected to an access point, allowing it to scale up to thousands of devices.
Radio-frequency identification (RFID) is a technology that uses sub-GHz ISM bands, designed
specifically so devices without batteries could send a signal [125]. NFC (near-field communication)
is a protocol used for very close communication [126]. It operates in the 13.56 MHz and is designed
to exchange data with another NFC device, allowing bidirectional communications. The low data
rate and short communication distance make it suitable only for niche IoT applications.
LoRa (long range) [127,128] is a low-power, wide-area network (LPWAN) technology. It is based
on spread spectrum modulation techniques and it could be used for empowering the IoT scenario
[129]. In [130], it is presented a solution of machine learning on edge devices with the use of LoRa as
a low-power transmission protocol. Implementing machine learning with LoRa allow it to reduce
transmitted data by 512 times and extend battery life by 3 times for that specific scenario. Nowadays,
the most common strategy for processing data is the use of the cloud, but the transmission of large
amounts of data requires frequent recharging of the devices, thus negating the prerogatives of the
IoT. In addition, IoT applications could require long-distance data transmission, such as for traffic
monitoring. IoT devices must, therefore, have a low-energy profile and sometimes be able to transmit
over great distances for a given scenario [125,130,131]. Furthermore, IoT devices require edge
processing for bandwidth, latency, and privacy issues. Under these conditions, the efficient use of
data reduction and local processing must be coupled with long-range and small-bandwidth
transmission protocols and this could be obtained using LoRa.
SigFox [132] is another LPWAN solution. It is a narrowband technology and allows the use of
simpler devices that are available from different manufacturers. However, it requires the use of
sophisticated and expensive gateways and access points and the network is controlled by SigFox and
has a fee. On the contrary, LoRa is open and its use is free with no subscriptions and no constraints
on installation of gateways and network servers. However, the production of LoRa radio is a Semtech
exclusive.
LTE (long-term evolution), commonly known as “4G LTE”, is a standard for wireless broadband
communication based on GSM/EDGE and UMTS/HSPA technologies [133]. After the LTE
introduction, it began to compete with the emerging technologies for IoT field such as BLE,
narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT), ZigBee, and LoRa. The 4G has improved the capabilities of
cellular networks but it is not fully optimized for IoT applications [134,135].
NB-IoT [136], has been introduced to provide low-cost, low-power, wide-area cellular
connectivity for the Internet of Things. NB-IoT is a standards-based low-power wide-area (LPWA)
technology developed to enable a wide range of new IoT devices and services. NB-IoT significantly
improves the power consumption of user devices, system capacity, and spectrum efficiency,
especially in deep coverage. NB-IoT is built [137] from existing LTE functionalities with essential
Sensors 2020, 20, 2533 12 of 33

simplifications and optimizations. At the physical layer, it occupies 180 kHz of spectrum, which is
substantially smaller than LTE bandwidths of 1.4–20 MHz. At the higher layers, simplified LTE
network functions are supported. Compared to other LPWAN solutions, NB-IoT has the great
advantage of eliminating the need for a specific gateway, so sensor data is sent directly to the cloud
server, reducing infrastructure costs.
LTE Cat-M1 [138] is a LPWAN that enables cellular services for the IoT world. Compared to
NB-IoT, this technology provides higher data rate and the ability to use voice over the network, but
requires more bandwidth and, therefore, the devices are more complex and expensive. NB-IoT and
Cat-M1 have different and somewhat complementary target applications with the former suitable for
small sensors and meters and the latter for devices that require higher data rates and have a higher
power budget.
The 5G networks and standards are expected to solve challenges that are facing 4G networks.
The 5G is the fifth generation of mobile, cellular technologies, networks, and solutions. Although not
just ‘built’ for the Internet of Things (IoT), it will be the major driver of the growth of IoT. The 5G IoT
is a novel [139], intelligent network based on 5G communication, which is designed to connect
sensing regions (sensors) and processing center (cloud) provided by AI algorithms. It presents the
different emerging technologies, involving massive Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO)
networks, dense static small-cell networks, and mobile small-cell networks. The 5G fulfills the needs
of the IoT [135]:
- high data rate;
- high scalable and fine-grained networks, to increase network scalability;
- very low latency;
- long battery lifetime, to support billions of low-power and low-cost IoT devices.
Reducing the latency in the communications, 5G eliminates part of the bottleneck related to the
remote execution of ML algorithms [140].
ML developers should properly define the communication technology based on specific design
requirements, as well as architectures, hardware, latency, and strategy of computation [141–143].

Table 2. Main communication technologies used in IoT.

Distance
Group Technology Data Rate Works
(Indoor/Outdoor)
Contactless NFC 424 kbps 0–4 cm [126]
Contactless RFID 640 kbps 10–20 m [125]
LPWAN LoRa 0.3 to 50 kbps 5–10 km [127,128,144–148]
LPWAN SigFox 100 or 600 bps 30–50km [143,148–151]
WPAN Zigbee 250 kbps 10–100 m [152–155]
WPAN Z-Wave 100 kbps 100 m [116,156]
WPAN Bluetooth LE 1 Mbps 10 m/50 m [102,157–159]
WPAN Bluetooth 5 2 Mbps 40 m/200 m [160–162]
WPAN ANT 60 kbps 30 m [163]
WiFi IEEE 802.11n 600 Mbps 70 m/250 m [164]
WiFi IEEE 802.11ax 9600 Mbps 30 m/120 m [124]
WiFi IEEE 802.11af 570 Mbps 280 m/1 km [165,166]
WiFi IEEE 802.11ah 347 Mbps 140 m/500 m [122,166,167]
Cellular NB-IoT 200 kbps 280 m/1 km [136,137,150,168]
Cellular LTE-M1 1 Mbps 5–100 km [138]
Cellular 4G/LTE 150 Mbps 15 km [169]
Cellular 5G 10–50 Gbps 2 km [170–172]

6. Joint Computation
Sensors 2020, 20, 2533 13 of 33

Although the edge server can accelerate DNN processing, it is not always necessary to have the
edge devices executing DNNs on edge servers. We will introduce three offloading scenarios (Figure
6): (1) partial offloading of partitioned DNN (the decision is what fraction of the DNN computations
should be offloaded), (2) hierarchical architectures (offloading is performed across a combination of
edge devices, edge servers, and cloud), and (3) distributed computing approaches (the DNN
computation is distributed across multiple peer devices).

Figure 6. Joint computation among devices, edge, and cloud servers.

6.1. Partial Offload

In model partitioning approaches, some layers are computed on the device and the others are
computed by the edge server or the cloud. This approach can potentially offer latency reductions
thanks to the compute cycles of other edge devices. Indeed, after the first few layers of the DNN
model have been computed, the size of the intermediate results is relatively small and the output can
be sent over the network to an edge server in a faster way than the original raw data [90]. Critical is
the choice of the point where the network needs to be partitioned and one algorithm that can be used
is Neurosurgeon [173]. It is a light-weight scheduler used to automatically partition DNN
computation between mobile devices and datacenters at the granularity of NN layers. So, it decides
where to partition the DNN, layer-wise, while accounting for network conditions.
The partition could also be applied to the input data (e.g., raw image) and this is useful for
hardware with constrained memory that is largely used in the IoT scenario, such as IoT sensors.
However, input-wise partitioning can result in increased data dependence, as computing subsequent
DNN layers requires data results from adjacent partitions. DeepThings [90] uses input-wise
partitioning.

6.2. Hierarchical Architectures

ML algorithm can be performed on edge devices and on the cloud. Entrusting the computational
task to the cloud could create a latency problem. Instead, the use of powerful computational cloud
resources can potentially decrease the total processing time. For example, Li et al. [45] divided the
DNN model into two parts: The edge server computes the initial layers (lower layers) of the DNN
model after it received the input data and then the cloud computes the higher layers of the DNN. The
cloud sends back the final results to the end devices after processing. In this way, the cloud helps the
edge server with the heavier computations. There are also other approaches like DDNN [174]
(distributed deep neural networks) in which the computing is distributed across an hierarchical
system, consisting of the cloud, the edge (fog), and end devices. DDNN also allows fast and localized
Sensors 2020, 20, 2533 14 of 33

inference using shallow portions of the NN at the edge and end devices. Due to the distributed
nature, DDNNs improve the fusion of the data from network sensors, system fault tolerance, and
privacy for users. Generally, a common feature for the edge approaches is that the edge server serves
a limited geographical area, so the input data and, thus, their DNN outputs may be similar.

6.3. Distributed Computing

Hierarchical scenario is based on the offload of the network to more powerful entities like edge
devices or cloud. In the distributed perspective the DNN computations can be distributed across
multiple peer edge devices, like in DeepThings [90]. It distributes the DNN executions between end
devices such as Raspberry Pi and Android smartphones. The DNN partition choice is based on the
computation capabilities and memory of the end devices.

7. Privacy
Both in edge server-based architectures and in joint computation, the data are exchanged over the
network (e.g., from end device to edge server or from edge server to cloud) and it may contain
sensitive information. This can lead to privacy issues. In fact, as already mentioned, edge servers
work locally in a geographically limited area. Therefore, the origin of the data is practically known.
Although ML on edge devices allows the data reduction on the network and, therefore, improving
privacy by itself, it is possible to improve the system through additional techniques, such as adding
noise to data or cryptographic techniques.

7.1. Add Noise to Data

A solution is to add noise to the samples uploaded on the network during inference. Wang et al.
[175] deployed a smaller DNN locally on the edge device to extract features, add noise to the features,
and then upload the features to the cloud for further inference processing by a more powerful DNN.
The DNN on the cloud is pretrained with noisy samples so that the noisy inference samples uploaded
from the end devices can still be classified with high accuracy at test time. This is based on differential
privacy mechanism [176–179].

7.2. Cryptographic Techniques

Cryptographic techniques can be used to compute the inference with a high level of privacy. The
target of secure computation [66] is to ensure that the end device receives an inference result without
learning anything about the DNN model on the edge server and vice versa. One method of secure
computation is homomorphic encryption, in which the communicated data are encrypted and
computation can be performed on the encrypted data, as done in CryptoNets [180–182]. The DNN is
converted in CryptoNets, approximating the common activation functions and operations in a DNN,
in a low-degree polynomial, which guarantees the homomorphic encryption. However, a bottleneck
of the homomorphic encryption tends to be its compute times. Multiparty computation is another
technique for secure computation. In secure multiparty computation, multiple machines work
together and communicate in multiple rounds to jointly compute a result. Secure multiparty
computation focuses on the privacy of the intermediate computation steps, but its bottleneck tends
to be the communication complexity.

8. Training
Thus far, edge computing and deep learning have mostly been discussed assuming that a deep
learning model has already been trained offline on a prebuilt dataset. This section presents a
discussion on training algorithms and hardware for the edge field. Usually, training data produced
by end devices would be sent to the cloud, which would then perform the training and finally
distribute the trained model back to the edge devices. Leaving data at the edge is useful when privacy
is highly desired and also helps to reduce the network bandwidth requirements.
Sensors 2020, 20, 2533 15 of 33

8.1. Training Algorithms

Exchanging model parameters and other data between edge devices and cloud servers is
mandatory for training an edge–cloud-based DL model. However, as the size of the training model
increases, more data needs to be exchanged between edge devices and servers. The high network
communication cost is a bottleneck for a training model, and a local edge training implementation is
required. An example of local networks is a mobile computing system for DNN applications
(MoDNN). MoDNN [183] uses a pretrained DNN model and scans each layer of the DNN model to
identify layer types. If the layer is a convolutional one, the input layer is divided by biased one-
dimensional partition (BODP) method. BODP decreases the computing by reducing the input size. If
a fully connected layer is detected, the layer input is assigned to different work nodes (mobile
devices) to achieve the minimum total execution time. In this case the network does not change the
weights as the external scenario varies because it is pretrained. However, the structure of the edge
system is hierarchical and the training can be distributed among peer edge devices and the cloud.
In-edge AI [6] is a framework which allows better collaboration among devices and edge nodes to
exchange the learning parameters for a better training and inference of the model. It integrates deep
reinforcement learning techniques and federated learning for mobile computing purpose.
Teerapittayanon et al. [174] used a cloud server for training the DDNN among different devices
(including edge devices and the cloud), while the most powerful one trains the network. The training
of DDNNs is difficult because of multiple exit points. To address this issue, the network was trained
jointly by combining losses from each exit point during back-propagation. The training could be
made also on pruned model: Chandakkar et al. [184] designed a new architecture to retrain a pruned
network on an edge device. A complete DNN is trained for an epoch (when an entire dataset is passed
forward and backward through the DNN) on the original data. Also, layer-wise, magnitude-based
weight pruning is performed with a user-defined threshold value. This approach greatly reduces the
computational complexity by removing connections in a DNN model and makes it suitable to run on
a limited resources device. Unfortunately, any pruning process reduces the accuracy of a model. To
overcome this issue, this approach finds the indices of the most important weights for an important
feature and excludes these elements from being pruned. Finally, the pruned DNN network is used
while training the next epoch because these operations are performed cyclically.
To reduce communication costs and keep model accuracy high, Tao and Li introduced a new
method called edge stochastic gradient descent (eSGD) [185]. In this approach, all edge devices run
training tasks separately with independent data and the gradient values generated by the edge
devices are sent to the cloud servers. The server, after obtaining the gradients from the end devices,
uniforms the gradients by performing the average. After that, it updates the parameters by using this
average value. These updated parameters are sent back to the edge devices for the next training step.
This process is called parameter synchronization. Unfortunately, this gradient selection technique
decreases model accuracy. The eSGD uses two mechanisms to maintain a high level of accuracy for
the training:
• ‘Important’ updating: After each mini-batch, only a small fraction of the gradient coordinates need
to be updated. The algorithm determines main gradients, which will then be updated by the server.
This process significantly reduces communication cost.
• Momentum residual accumulation: This mechanism is applied for tracking and accumulating out-
of-date residual gradients, which helps to avoid low convergence rate caused by the previous
important updating method.
The eSGD is capable of reducing the gradient size of a CNN model by up to 90%. Unfortunately,
high gradient shrinking leads to bad accuracy. Tao and Li used Modified National Institute of
Standards and Technology (MNIST) database in their experiments and reported 91.22% accuracy
with a 50% gradient drop.

8.2. Training Hardware

Sensors 2020, 20, 2533 16 of 33

Updating the neural network or computing complex algorithms cannot be completely entrusted
to tiny hardware like microcontrollers. Field-programmable gate array (FPGA) and graphical
processing unit (GPU) consume too much power (the FPGA is still a better choice than the GPU since
it is versatile and consumes less power), but they turn out to be excellent for training NNs or
performing powerful algorithms [186]. GPUs use temporal architectures such as SIMD (single
instruction multiple data) or SIMT (single instruction multiple threads) to perform the MACs in
parallel and there are software libraries designed for GPUs that optimize the matrix multiplications
e.g., NVIDIA CUDA® Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms (cuBLAS) [187], NVIDIA CUDA® Deep
Neural Network library (cuDNN) [188]. The matrix multiplications on these platforms can be further
improved by applying transforms to the data to reduce the number of multiplications. Fast Fourier
transform (FFT) [189] is a well-known approach that reduces the number of multiplications from
O((N2o)(N2f)) to O(N2olog2No), where the output size is No*No and the filter size is Nf *Nf; however, the
benefits of FFTs decrease with filter size. Other approaches include Strassen [190] and Winograd
[191].
Recently, some very interesting devices are emerging, such as the Hailo-8 DL [192] from the
Hailo company. The Hailo-8 DL is a processor suitable for performing deep-learning at high levels
and allows for very high performance on end devices with minimum power consumption, size, and
costs. In particular, it offers high performance (26 tera-operations per second) and is very efficient
and highly flexible (reprogrammable). Google has developed an ASIC (application-specific
integrated circuit) dedicated to the TensorFlow library TPU (Tensor processing unit) [193], whose
computational capacity is 180 teraflops. These are examples of IA accelerators, such as NPU, that is a
class of microprocessors designed to provide hardware acceleration to artificial NNs, automatic
vision, and ML algorithms for robotics, IoT, and other data-based applications [194]. While hardware
DNN accelerators are quite new, there have already been two branches of designs. The first class of
accelerators only looked at the data flow, ignoring the memory energy consumption. The second one
tried to address the amount of energy consumption due to memory access. The first style of
accelerators include ConvNet Processor (CNP) [195], Neuflow [196], and dynamically configurable
(DC) CNN [197], proposing customized logic to map convolution to hardware with more parallelism
and flexibility. The second wave of accelerators focused on optimizing memory transfer and data
movement. As modern NNs get larger, researchers realize that memory access and moving data is
more critical than matrix products between layers. Among these accelerators (TPU is included in this
class of accelerators), DianNao [198] implements an array of multiply-add units to map large DNNs
onto its core architecture. It has customized on-chip buffer to minimize Dynamic Random Access
Memory (DRAM) traffic. DaDianNao [199] and ShiDianNao [200] eliminate the DRAM access by
having all weights on-chip. An interesting AI accelerator is Movidius stick [201] suited for edge
computing because it makes easy to add deep learning capabilities to existing computing platforms.
It is designed mainly for computer vision tasks at the edge [202] and allows deploying CNNs on low-
power applications that require real-time inferencing. A detailed guide on the use is reported in [203].
Another AI accelerator is Coral [204]. It is a platform from Google that allows realizing devices
with local AI, providing hardware acceleration for neural networks at the edge of the network
without any help from the clouds. At the base of Coral there is Google’s Edge TPU, an ASIC chip
optimized to run lightweight machine learning algorithms. Many applications are reported by Coral
project itself [205]. A selection of AI accelerator devices that implement edge computing is reported
in Table 3.

Table 3. Artificial Intelligence (AI) accelerator devices that implement edge computing.

Work DNN Model Application End Devices

[206–208] SVM/CNN Image and Video Analysis Movidius
[209–211] CNN Image and Video Analysis, Robotics Jetson TX1
[212,213] YOLO [214] Image Recognition, Robotics Jetson TX2
[98] AlexNet Image Classification Nvidia Tegra K1
[196] CNN Image Analysis Neuflow
Sensors 2020, 20, 2533 17 of 33

[215] CNN, DNN Image Recognition DianNao

[200] CNN Vision Processing ShiDianNao

9. MNIST Example
In this section we will analyze how it is possible to port a NN to the embedded environment
using one of the most famous models in machine learning world: the MNIST, the ML “Hello World”.
We will show how to create the neural network using the Tensorflow library and subsequently Keras,
using techniques such as pruning and quantization to reduce the size of the model. Finally, the
algorithm will be implemented on the NUCLEO-F746ZG board through the X-CUBE-AI tool.

9.1. Dataset
The dataset MNIST was developed by Yann LeCun [216], Director of the Facebook Research
Center for Artificial Intelligence, to recognize numeric digits. The dataset was created from a series
of documents made available by the NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) [217] and
the images were normalized in size and centered. In particular, the dataset provides 28 × 28
handwritten images with a total of 784 pixels per image, with a splitting of the dataset to implement
training and evaluation of the model to overcome the overfitting issue. The training set consists of
60,000 samples and the test set of 10,000 samples. The objective is to write an algorithm that allows
recognizing which digit has been written. Since there are 10 types of digits (numbers from 0 to 9), the
problem can be seen as clustering task with 10 possible classes. In a first instance, we will show the
realization of the NN using a DNN with 2 hidden layers between input and output; then we will
show how to implement the same problem using a CNN and Dropout [218] to increase the accuracy
of the model.

9.2. Model with Tensorflow

In this first investigation, we will present the implementation of the NN with Tensorflow. The
image was saved in a vector of 784 elements in which each element corresponds to the intensity of
the color associated to the pixel. With the samples normalized, the values closer to 0 are close to white,
and those closer to 1 are classified as black. As already said, this is a classification problem, so the
targets are categories. One way to represent the classes is one hot encoding, which is optimal in the
case of limited classes: The target for each sample fed to the NN is a vector of length 10 (e.g., if we
feed the NN with the digit of value 4, the target associated with it should be [0,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0]).
The NN consists of an input layer (dimensions: 784), two hidden layers (dimensions: 50), and an
output layer (dimensions: 10). Since we are working with a DNN, activation functions are mandatory.
On the basis of several test carried out, the choice falls on a relu for the first layer and a sigmoid
function for the second layer, as this couple produce the higher level of accuracy (Table 4).

Table 4. Accuracy for different activation functions.

First Level Second Level Accuracy on Test

relu relu 96.20%
tanh tanh 96.80%
sigmoid sigmoid 96.96%
relu tanh 97.18%
tanh relu 96.64%
sigmoid relu 96.88%
relu sigmoid 97.25%
tanh sigmoid 97.21%
sigmoid tanh 97.10%

The loss function used, being a classification problem, is the cross entropy applied directly on the
softmax. The function tf.nn.softmax_cross_entropy_with_logits(logits, labels), combines the two operations
Sensors 2020, 20, 2533 18 of 33

making it faster, but also numerically stable. Instead, as optimization function it is possible to use an
adaptive function, i.e., ADAM. Once the model is defined, we have all the requirements for the training
of the NN. Before starting the training, it is necessary to initialize the variables (weights and biases)
using the tf.global_variables_initializer() method. Tensorflow uses Xavier [219] as default initialization.
Then, it is necessary to define the size of the batches, their number as a function of the size of the dataset,
and a threshold for the loss function related to the validation dataset, so that if the error increases, early
stopping prevents overfitting. It should be noted that the threshold has been set at a high value, so that
early stopping will not occur at the first time. The final part of the required code is related to the actual
training, realized through a cycle. For each period, which is repeated to be a complete iteration of the
dataset, a relative to the batches is defined, through which it is possible to calculate the average error
relative to the single period as the sum of the errors associated with the batches on the number of
batches. At the end of each epoch, it is possible to calculate the loss relative to the validation dataset; if
the current validation error is higher than the previous one, then the model has conformed too much to
the dataset and, therefore, has no ability to adapt and it is necessary to stop learning using early
stopping.
The model made with Tensorflow is too heavy in terms of memory occupation for an edge
application; in this example the NN weighed around 15 MB. Tensorflow Lite (TFLite) [220] was
created specifically to overcome this problem, proposing a set of tools that help programmers to run
embedded, mobile, and IoT devices IA models. In the following, we will show how to use TFLite to
bring the NN on a microcontroller. The workflow that we will follow in this tutorial is the following:
- Definition of the model in Keras (using Tensorflow backend),
- Conversion of the model from Keras to TFLite,
- Implementation of a post-training quantization to further decrease the dimension of the
NN,
- Design of a Graphical User Interface (GUI) to draw the digit, and
- Test on hardware devices.

9.3. Keras Model

The NN can be built using CNN and the dropout technique. The use of CNN is not necessary,
but it is recommended since the number of input variables is very high (CNN allows training the
model on a smaller dataset, reducing considerably the number of parameters to learn). The model is
defined using the Sequential() method which, according to the documentation [221], allows defining
the model as a linear stack of layers. The first layer is a 2D convolution layer that creates a
convolutional kernel that is superimposed convolutionally with the input layer to produce an output
tensor.
To the second layer, also convolutional, is added the MaxPooling operation for spatial data (2D).
The Dropout is then applied to the network in input. The last two layers are densely connected layers;
at the penultimate layer a relu is applied as activation function, whereas at the last one a softmax.
Finally, for the training phase, crossentropy is used as loss function and Adadelta as optimization
function. A summary of the parameters is shown in Table 5.

Table 5. Model outline.

Layer (type) Output Shape Param #

conv2d_1 (Conv2D) (None, 26, 26, 32) 320
conv2d_2 (Conv2D) (None, 24, 24, 64) 18496
max_pooling2d_1 (MaxPooling2) (None, 12, 12, 64) 0
dropout_1 (Dropout) (None, 12, 12, 64) 0
flatten_1 (Flatten) (None, 9216) 0
dense_l (Dense) (None, 64) 589888
dropout_2 (Dropout) (None, 64) 0
dense_2 (Dense) (None, 10) 650
Sensors 2020, 20, 2533 19 of 33

Total parameters, 609,354; trainable parameters, 609,354; nontrainable parameters, 0.

After defining the model and parameters for the training phase, it is possible to train the
network. With the presented configuration, it is possible to observe that the use of a CNN is able to
increase the model accuracy from 96% to 99%.

9.4. Tensorflow Lite

The model in Keras was too heavy for an embedded solution (7172 kB), having embedded
devices memories of a few hundred of kB. However, TFlite and the TFliteConverter tool allows
considerably scaling the NN down to 2.4 MB. TFlite is characterized by two main components [222]:
- The interpreter runs the optimized models on different hardware types (including mobile
phones, low computational capacity devices, and microcontrollers), and
- The converter, which converts the model to a more efficient format for use by the interpreter.
In our case, the converter was used to adapt the model to the TFLite format (serial format is
based on FlatBuffers library [223]).

model = ‘Model_Keras_MNIST_CNN_Test.h5’.
converter = tf.lite.TFLiteConverter.from_keras_model_file(model)
tflite_model = converter.convert()

Tensorflow provides tools (Tensorflow Model Optimization Toolkit) for the optimization of the
model. The toolkits support techniques used to:
- Reduce latency and inference costs, and
- Implement IA models on edge devices with limited capacity and low-power profile.
These techniques include post-training quantization and pruning techniques. Unfortunately, the
quantization of TFLite models is not supported by X-CUBE-AI and, therefore, we selected the NN
compression adopted by the ST software.

9.5. Pruning
The reduction of the model can be obtained not only with quantization techniques, but also with
pruning techniques that allow eliminating connections not essential for the NN and consequently
reduce the number of computations and the demand of memory space for the NN. Also, for this
purpose, it is possible to use the libraries provided by TensorFlow and their examples [224]. As
discussed in the previous paragraph, the network is redefined importing the tensor-
flow_model_optimization Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). The APIs can be applied either
to the single layer or to the whole model. In our example, we applied the APIs to the single layer. The
pruning technique consists of iteratively removing connections between layers, given a sparsity
parameter (percentage of weights eliminated) and scheduling (pruning frequency). To help the
model convergence, connections should not be eliminated immediately but every tot; in this example
we set the elimination starting from 2000 step every 100 steps. Next, it is necessary to define, among
the pruning parameters, the end step. Then, the model is defined by setting the pruning parameters
and applying them to the NN. Finally, it is possible to convert the model and make the quantization.
The technique reduces the number of parameters and the computations, preserving the model’s
accuracy in terms of predictions. The main impact is due to quantization, but also pruning contributes
to this purpose by increasing the inference speed and reducing the amount of energy used, thus
allowing the use of the IA model on devices with low energy profile and low computational power.

9.6. Graphical User Interface

To test the model validity once brought to the microcontroller, a suitable GUI that allows the
user to type the numeric digit can be used, as well as the direct transfer of saved handwritten digit as
Sensors 2020, 20, 2533 20 of 33

input data. The GUI can be made with PIL [225] (Python Imaging Library), Tkinter [226], de facto
standard of GUIs in Python. The GUI allows drawing the numeric digit using the mouse motion on
the canvas object (Figure 7). Once the drawing is finished, it is possible to export the image as csv, a
format supported for the validation on target made by X-CUBE-AI tool.

Figure 7. Digit “6” drawn by the user.

9.7. Validation on Target

The STMicroelectronics NUCLEO-F746ZG board [227] (Figure 8) and the STM32CubeMx tool
were used for deploying the model to a real hardware. To guarantee higher performance, the
operating frequency of the microcontroller must be set to 216 MHz, and the cache should be enabled.
To test the model on the microcontroller, it is necessary to enable the X-CUBE-AI tool by choosing
Validation as project mode. The Universal Synchronous-Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitter
(USART) can be used to let the Personal Computer (PC) communicate with the microcontroller. The
artificial intelligence tool [80] is used to bring the model on the device. The tool does not yet support
techniques such as quantization for NNs defined with TFlite and pruning, but it is possible to load
on the microcontroller the nonquantized model using the compression provided by the program
itself. In particular, the compression method aims to optimize memory usage both in terms of Read-
only memory (ROM) and RAM, using a dataset-less approach. The reduction of the NN by the tool
is made possible through the use of various expedients [80]:
- Weight compression: It is applicable only to dense layers (or fully connected layers) and
is based on weight-sharing algorithms such as K-means clustering.
- Layers fusion: It allows merging two layers to optimize data placement, decreasing the
number of the DNNs layers (e.g., nonlinearities or pooling after a convolutional layers).
- Activation function optimization: Part of the memory is used to store temporary hidden
layers values, so activation memory is reused across different layers.
- Once the model is compressed (in this example we opted for a x4 compression), the tool
gives the possibility to make an analysis of the NN to understand if it is loadable on the
chosen microcontroller and to visualize the diagram of the loaded model. The Table 6
reports the output analysis of the network implemented in the example. It includes:
- RAM: Indicates the size of the memory required to store the intermediate calculations;
- ROM/Flash: Indicates the memory size needed to store weight and bias after compression;
and
- Complexity: Reports the complexity of the model in MAC (multiply-accumulate
operations), unit of measure used also to express the complexity of the activation
functions.
Sensors 2020, 20, 2533 21 of 33

Figure 8. STMicrolectronics NUCLEO-F746ZG.

Table 6. Prediction of model on hardware.

Name RAM FLASH Complexity

Network 135.68 kBytes 668.97 kBytes 11497654 MAC

Finally, it is possible to proceed to the validation to compare the defined model with the one
generated in C language by the ST tool, feeding both models the same set of data. The validation can be
carried out as:
- Validation on desktop: The model in C is executed on the PC.
- Validation on target: The generated model is executed on the device of interest. It is
necessary to load the code on the microcontroller and set a serial communication to
communicate with the host.
In both cases the data can be either randomly generated by the tool or can be imported from
outside as csv file. After loading the code on the microcontroller, it is possible to enable the validation
on the target, and to load the data generated using the GUI as input. The STM32CubeMx reports the
model results and it is possible to notice that, in this case, the NN allows effectively recognizing the
numeric digit between 10 classes (Figure 9) with an accuracy of 100.00%, root-mean-square error
(rmse) = 0.0000, and medium average error (mae) = 0.0000. In Figure 10, the results obtained during
validation are reported; the calculation took about 330 ms and the execution time layer by layer is
shown in Table 7.
With this example, the full implementation of an eML application of image recognition has been
designed and put into practice with good performances.
Sensors 2020, 20, 2533 22 of 33

Figure 9. Inference result showing the recognition of the digit “6” drawn by the user
(accuracy = 100.00%, root-mean-square error (rmse)= 0.0000, medium average error (mae) = 0.0000, 10
classes, 1 sample).

Figure 10. Inference details.

Table 7. Time contribution of each layer.

Description Shape ms
10004/(2D Convolutional) (26, 26, 32) 9.328
10011/(Merged Conv2d/Pool) (12, 12, 64) 299.524
10005/(Dense) (1, 1, 64) 19.562
10009/(Nonlinearity) (1, 1, 64) 0.006
10005/(Dense) (1, 1, 10) 0.022
10009/(Nonlinearity) (1, 1, 10) 0.014
328.458 (total)

10. Conclusions
Deploying machine learning on Internet of Things devices reduces the network congestion by
allowing computations to be performed close to the data sources, preserving privacy in uploading
data, and reducing power consumption for continuous wireless transmission to gateways or cloud
servers. The aim of this work was to provide a review of the main techniques that guarantee the
execution of machine learning models on hardware with low performances in the Internet of Things
paradigm, paving the way to the Internet of Conscious Things.
Sensors 2020, 20, 2533 23 of 33

In this work, a detailed review on models, architectures, and requirements on solutions that
implement edge machine learning on IoT devices was presented, with the main goal to define the
state of the art and envisioning development requirements.
The review focused on ML systems deployed on edge devices, providing a comparison between
the ML algorithms implementable in edge computing. In addition, the process of bringing ML to the
edge was analyzed in detail, considering edge server-based architectures and joint computation, thus
envisioning both the case of the absence (and the related effect on privacy and local computational
operations) and the presence (and how it impacts on cloud/edge server communications and remote
data transmission power consumption) of data transmission to gateways or servers.
The actual state of development of edge computing foresees a series of variegated solutions able
to satisfy a plurality of needs. Depending on the requirements (privacy, energy consumption,
computational complexity), it is possible to define a set of compatible hardware and software to
implement AI-enabled IoT effective solutions.
An example of edge machine learning implementation is provided in the review, demonstrating
the effectiveness and ease of use of the proper edge-platform used for implementing the machine
learning “Hello World”.
Author Contributions: Conceptualization, M.M.; methodology, M.M.; software, C.P.; validation, C.P., D.I. and
M.M.; formal analysis, M.M. and C.P.; investigation, C.P.; resources, M.M.; writing—original draft preparation,
C.P., D.I. and M.M.; writing—review and editing, C.P., D.I. and M.M.; supervision, M.M.; project administration,
M.M. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Funding: This research received no external funding.

Acknowledgments: Programma di Azione Coesione PAC Calabria 2014–2020, Asse Prioritario 12, Azione 10.5.12, is
gratefully acknowledged by one of the authors (D.I.).

Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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