EAGER: Magnetic Induction Based Communications for Fresh Food Distribution Monitoring

EAGER：基于磁感应的通信，用于生鲜食品配送监控

• 批准号: 1744187
• 负责人: Krishna Kant
• 金额: $ 15万
• 依托单位: Temple University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2017-08-01 至 2019-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1744187&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: EAGER; Magnetic; Induction; Based; Communications

Transportation and distribution of fresh food is a huge and growing enterprise due to increasing consumption and expectations of "freshness" from the public. Yet, fresh food transportation and distribution (T&D) is very inefficient in terms of substantial spoilage and wastage, dismal utilization of T&D capacity, and large energy and carbon footprint for transportation and storage. Furthermore, fresh food is almost entirely responsible for large annual incidence of food borne illnesses in the US and elsewhere. The purpose of this research is to develop basic communications and localization technologies for online monitoring of the freshness and contamination in fresh food as it flows through the T&D system starting at a packaging center up to the retailer or institutional customer. Fresh food is usually packed in boxes, which are further stacked into pallets or other bigger packages and carried on carriers (e.g., trucks) or stored in warehouses on their way to the distribution endpoints. Assuming a suitable sensor and a radio deployed in each box, the research explores the communication of food quality and contamination out to the next level (e.g., truck or warehouse). This would enable deployment of large scale information technology infrastructure for monitoring and decision making to enhance food freshness, safety and traceability, reduce food waste, and increase T&D utilization and energy efficiency. The box level communication is quite challenging using normal radio frequency (RF) mechanisms due to very densely packed radios, a difficult radio propagation media (tissue, water, salts), and the need for extremely low energy consumption. The key proposition of this research is that Magnetic Induction (MI)-based communication can work reliably in this environment with very low energy consumption. Through actual experiments and simulations, this research will develop the MI channel model for a variety of situations (e.g., different types of fresh food products, boxes, box arrangements) and study key issues of isotropicity, interference, and impact of conductive material (e.g., truck walls). It will exploit the characterization to study two key functionalities: (a) use of multihop MI communications to forward sensed data to a "hub node" located in the truck/warehouse, from where it can use RF communications technologies for forwarding, and (b) reliable localization, or identification of the box sending the data. The research will also study mechanisms to maximize sensor lifetimes to multiple years so that battery change issues are largely avoided.

由于消费量的增加和对公众的“新鲜感”的期望，新鲜食品的运输和分配是一个巨大而又不断增长的企业。然而，在实质性变质和浪费，T＆D容量的惨淡利用以及对运输和存储的大量能源和碳足迹方面，新鲜食品运输和分配（T＆D）非常低效。此外，新鲜食品几乎完全负责美国和其他地方的大量食物出生疾病。这项研究的目的是开发基本的通信和本地化技术，以在线监视新鲜食品的新鲜度和污染，因为它从T＆D系统流过的是从包装中心开始，直到零售商或机构客户。 新鲜食品通常包装在盒子里，这些食物在托盘或其他较大的包裹中进一步堆叠，并在载货车（例如卡车）或仓库中存放在仓库中。 假设每个盒子中都有合适的传感器和一个无线电，研究探讨了食物质量和污染的通信，例如卡车或仓库。这将使大规模信息技术基础设施的部署用于监测和决策，以增强食品新鲜度，安全性和可食用性，减少食物浪费，并提高T＆D利用率和能源效率。 使用正常的射频（RF）机制，由于非常密集的无线电，艰难的无线电传播介质（组织，水，盐）以及对极低能源消耗的需求，盒子水平的通信非常具有挑战性。这项研究的关键主张是，基于磁性诱导（MI）的通信可以在这种环境中可靠地起作用，而能源消耗非常低。通过实际的实验和模拟，这项研究将开发用于各种情况（例如，不同类型的新鲜食品，盒子，盒子布置）的MI通道模型，并研究了各向同性，干扰和导电材料影响（例如，卡车墙）的关键问题。它将利用研究两个关键功能的表征：（a）使用多台上MI通信将感知的数据转发到卡车/仓库中的“集线器节点”，从那里它可以使用RF通信技术进行转发，以及（b）可靠的本地化或识别发送数据的框的识别。 该研究还将研究将传感器寿命最大化到多年的机制，以便在很大程度上避免了电池变化问题。

项目成果

Internet of Perishable Logistics: Building Smart Fresh Food Supply Chain Networks

• DOI: 10.1109/access.2019.2894126
• 发表时间: 2019-01-01
• 期刊: IEEE ACCESS
• 影响因子: 3.9
• 作者: Pal, Amitangshu;Kant, Krishna
• 通讯作者: Kant, Krishna

Experimental Evaluation of a Near-Field Magnetic Induction Based Communication System

• DOI: 10.1109/wcnc.2019.8885541
• 发表时间: 2019-04
• 期刊: 2019 IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC)
• 作者: R. K. Gulati;Amitangshu Pal;K. Kant

Towards Building Low Power Magnetic Communication Protocols for Challenging Environments

• DOI: 10.1109/icccn.2019.8847145
• 发表时间: 2019-07
• 期刊: 2019 28th International Conference on Computer Communication and Networks (ICCCN)
• 作者: Amitangshu Pal;R. K. Gulati;K. Kant