The integration of the sensors’ field with the Internet of Things (IoT) platform

Within INCOMESS project the I-SENSE Group of ICCS is responsible for the integration of the sensors’ field with the Internet of Things (IoT) platform. Another project partners, AIMEN has already developed a second version of a prototype of the Wireless Sensor Node (WSN), which consists of a set of sensors measuring various parameters in a moving vehicle, such as fuel level, 3-axis acceleration etc., and a microcontroller with an embedded telecommunication component for data transmission. Due to the requirements of the INCOMESS project for ultra-low power consumption in the WSN side, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) communication protocol is adopted for transmitting the measurement data to other devices.

Figure 1. Interconnection between first version of WSN (bottom right) and IoT gateway (top left).

I-SENSE Group has implemented an end-to-end Internet of Things (IoT) solution for gathering the measurement data from the WSN layer, using an IoT gateway and presenting them to users in the remote IoT platform hosted in the application layer. An IoT gateway, implemented in a Raspberry PI 4 model B, is used, apart from gathering the measurement data from the WSN, for harmonizing the measurement data, which temporarily stored and finally transmitted when a stable wired (i.e. Ethernet) or wireless (i.e. Wi-Fi, LTE) connection is established. The transmitted data are then permanently stored to a remote time series database, from which are available via a web Graphical User Interface (GUI) either for visualization or for exploring over past history measurement data.

Thus, I-SENSE Group has designed and developed the appropriate architecture of the IoT system, used for the interconnection both between IoT gateway and WSN and between IoT gateway and IoT platform. Future plans include the enhancement of the IoT platform with more features to be more interactive by sending alerts to users or control signals to the sensors’ field for enabling relevant actuators.