The Distributed, Horizontal IoT Infrastructure, in the Perspective of the eHealth Vertical

The economic impact of the Internet of Things (IoT) and Everything (IoE, or IoX) are forecasted by Cisco to grow by $19 trillion between 2014 and 2020, with sensors representing the enabling bottom of the value chain at about $1 trillion. This will be is the biggest economic tide in the history of humans, with a 6 year growth exceeding the entire 2013 US economy ($16.5T).

In 2013, IoX got a significant boost, making that growth possible, through the broad commitment of a number of major US Corporations: Cisco, Amazon, Intel, Qualcomm, Microsoft, IBM and GE.

The success of the Internet of Things will be predicated, to a large extent, on the evolution and deployment of a horizontal networking, computing, storage and services platform, supporting and enabling multiple vertical applications and use cases. Key elements of this platform will be a more deterministic, more software defined network, connecting a widely distributed set of computing and storage resources, manifesting as Cloud, Fog, and Swarm resources.

Fog Computing extends the Cloud Computing paradigm to the edge of the network, thus enabling a new breed of applications and services. A few defining characteristics of the Fog are: a) Low latency and location awareness; b) Wide-spread geographical distribution; c) Mobility; d) Very large number of nodes; e) Predominant role of wireless access; f) Strong presence of streaming and real time applications; g) Heterogeneity; h) Integration, motivated by cost, power, space considerations.

Swarm Computing refers to the communications, computing and storage deeply embedded in potentially highly mobile sensors and actuators, at the very fringes of the Internet of Things.

In this keynote we will describe these key elements of the Internet of Things horizontal platform, and explore their interplay. Furthermore, we will explore a number of technology areas, which will be critical enablers for this platform. This will include the systematic adoption of a more deterministic wired and wireless networking paradigm, the adoption of efficient virtualization approaches, enabling the secure sharing of infrastructure resources, from sensors and actuators, all the way to cloud resources, and the co-existence of real-time and non-real-time domains.

Furthermore, we will discuss how this distributed platform will support the collection, distributed storage, and movement of large amount of data across the infrastructure, from sensors/actuators Swarms to Fog and Cloud and back, and how the Fog paradigm can reduce the amount of data transmitted. We will then discuss the role of distributed, coordinated data analytics supported by the IoT horizontal platform, as well as the enabling of distributed applications.

Finally, the key IoT platform attributes of security, privacy, and reliability, and a number of enabling technologies for these attributes will be discussed.

The presentation will project our IoT platform technology discussion in the context of a fundamental IoT vertical: eHealth, with its connection to the active domain of body sensors and wearable devices. We will illustrate early eHealth use cases based on both these new devices, and the leveraging, in the Cloud and Fog, of their measurements, to inspire new analysis and new applications.

This vertical is characterized by a number demanding requirements, and manifests well the impact of distributed (real-time) computing, storage and networking, and the value of data management and analytics at all the layers of the platform. The attributes of security and privacy are also paramount here.

Throughout our presentation, an effort will be made to keep the sensor and actuator specific interest, requirements and technologies, always in focus, but to contextualize them in the perspective of the ultimate end-to-end solutions in which they play their role.

The success of the Internet of Things will in fact be determined by how the various communities of interest contributing to the complex end-to-end solutions will be able to stretch their minds and business understanding to embrace a broader percentage of the overall picture.

Biography

Flavio Bonomi is the founder and the Chief Executive Officer at IoXWorks, Inc., which is engaged in the launch of new activity in the domain of the Internet of Things.

Previously, Flavio was a Cisco Fellow, Vice President, and the Head of the Advanced Architecture and Research Organization at Cisco Systems, in San Jose, California.

He was co-leading (with JP Vasseur) the vision and technology direction for Cisco’s Internet of Things initiative. This broad, Cisco-wide initiative encompasses major verticals, including Energy, Connected Vehicle and Transportation, and Connected Cities. In this role, with the support of his team, he shaped a number of research and innovation efforts relating to mobility, security, communications acceleration, distributed computing and data management.

Before joining Cisco in 1999, Flavio Bonomi was at AT&T Bell Labs from 1985 and 1995, with architecure and research responsibilities, mosty relating to the evolution of the ATM technology, and then was Principal Architect at two Silicon Valley startups, ZeitNet and Stratum One.

He received an Electrical Engineering degree from Pavia University in Italy, and the Masters and PhD in Electrical Engineering degrees in 1981 and 1985, respectively, from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

Internet of Everything: the next phase of the Internet?

The Internet has opened up exciting new opportunities for businesses, regardless of industry, bringing new levels of connectivity that can be harnessed to improve efficiency, streamline operations or boost sales. Surprisingly, less than 1% of things in the physical world are connected today, yet this is about to change. Technology continues to accelerate and drive the convergence of the physical and digital worlds, a process termed the Internet of Things (IoT). IoT, combined with the Internet of Everything (IoE) - connecting the previously unconnected and bringing together people, process, data, and things to make networked connections more relevant and valuable than ever before - is poised to revolutionize the global economy as powerfully as the first Internet revolution did. It is anticipated that IoE will drive incremental $19 Trillion of value for the global economy over the next ten years.

In this presentation, Maciej Kranz will outline the major trends driving the adoption of the Internet of Things in the manufacturing, energy/utility, transportation and other markets, including sensing, remote management and monitoring, big data and analytics, mobility and automation. He will share several use cases that are driving IT/OT convergence and address top-of-mind architectural and security concerns. You will gain actionable insight into what your organization needs to know in order for IT and OT teams to partner successfully to help achieve positive business outcomes.

Biography

Maciej Kranz leads the group focused on identifying and capitalizing on the next wave of technology disruptions, shaping and amplifying Cisco technology strategy, and conducting technology due diligence for potential investments/acquisitions. He drives the Internet of Things innovation strategy including IoE Innovation Centers.

Prior to this role, Kranz drove the vision, strategy and P&L for a new hyper-growth business unit focused on Internet of Things. As General Manager, Connected Industries Group, he built a 220-person team and $250M business from the ground up in 18 months and relentlessly evangelized the IoT opportunity across Cisco and the market.
 

Wireless Networking for the Trillion Sensor Future

Reliable, low-power wireless has been used to network sensors in industrial automation for close to a decade. This technology is recently standardized by the IEEE and the IETF for use in IPv6 networks for Internet of Things applications. This talk will cover applications of the technology, from past demonstrations to future applications, as well as an overview of the existing standards, and the open-source software that implements them.

Biography

The inventor of Smart Dust and a longtime leader in the academic wireless sensor networking community, Dr. Kristofer Pister co-founded Dust Networks in 2002 to deliver his vision of a commercially robust wireless sensor networking platform. Kris is the chief architect of Dust Networks’ patent pending Dust SmartMesh™ technology, and also provides a strong technology vision for the company and for the wireless sensing industry- Kris is a frequent invited speaker and lecturer on wireless sensor networking and related core technologies.

Prior to founding Dust, Kris successfully commercialized or licensed micromachine technologies with Tanner Research, OMM Inc., Xactix, and Sony. Kris holds a PhD and MS in electrical engineering and computer sciences from UC Berkeley and a BS from UC San Diego.

Kris is also a Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at University of California Berkeley.
 

Towards Trillion Sensors on Your Skin

Wearable sensors have garnered considerable recent interest owing to their tremendous promise for a wide range of healthcare, military, sport and wellness applications [1]. Such sensing platforms provide new avenues to continuously monitor individuals and can thus tender crucial information regarding a wearer’s health and performance in real time. This presentation will discuss recent developments in the field of wearable sensors, integrated directly on the epidermis or into textile materials, for various non-invasive monitoring applications [2-5]. Particular attention will be given to the use of temporary tattoos for fabricating body-compliant wearable electrochemical sensors for the simultaneous real-time monitoring of key electrolytes and metabolites. Such sensing devices couple favorable substrate-skin elasticity along with an attractive electrochemical performance. Efficient body-worn conformal power sources capable to extract biochemical energy from the epidermis will also be described. The preparation and characterization of skin-worn electrochemical sensors and biofuel cells will be discussed, along with their performance and the influence of the stretching and bending. Such mechanical stress studies indicate that tattoo and textile-based printed electrochemical sensors survive large deformations. Technical challenges and prospects for using tattoo- and textile-based based electrochemical sensors for monitoring the wearer’s health, fitness, or surrounding environment will be discussed, along with several demonstrations and prospects for future healthcare and sport applications.

Biography

Joseph Wang, is currently a Distinguished Professor in Department of Nanoengineering at University of California, San Diego. Previously, he was a Professor of the Department of Chemical Engineering at Arizona State University (ASU) and Director of Center for Bioelectronics and Biosensors at the Biodesign Institute. He obtained his higher education at the Technion and being awarded his D. Sc. in 1978. From 1978 to 1980 he served as a research associate at the University of Wisconsin (Madison) and joined New Mexico State University (NMSU) at 1980. From 2001-2004, he held a Regents Professorship and a Manasse Chair positions at NMSU. Since 1980, 20 Ph.D. candidates and 130 research associates and visiting scholars have studied with Professor Wang.