NeTS: Small: Collaborative Research: Low-cost, Convenient, Non-intrusive Methods for Enabling the Internet of Things

物联网（IoT）在工业界和学术界都获得了发展势头。从手机到智能手机，从电表到智能电表，从汽车到联网汽车，由于嵌入式系统和传感器网络的快速发展，将小型计算设备与目标对象集成在一起，开发了具有增强的数据通信、传感和信息交换能力的新产品。然而，这种用新设计替换旧产品的方法可能是昂贵的，有时也不方便。物联网设备的额外成本和部署时间已成为采用物联网技术的障碍。拟议的项目将开发替代物联网技术，这些技术可以通过标记对象或其环境轻松部署。这种低成本、方便、非侵入性的方法在产生重大的实际影响和加快物联网部署方面具有巨大的潜力，而无需重新设计和更换已经使用的产品。该项目还提供了一个有趣的教育平台，用于学生培训，本科生研究参与和物联网领域的推广活动。该提案的目标是提供一种替代，方便和非侵入性的方法，能够将世界上大量现有的对象，无需重新设计，变成半智能对象，以实现物联网愿景所承诺的一些好处。拟议的项目侧重于将RFID标签贴在物体上或将标签放置在物体环境中的低成本方法。它利用标签物理层信号中嵌入的丰富信息，如相位，幅度，极化，波形和耦合效应，以支持物联网应用。拟议中的研究包括两个主要方面。第一个重点是研究对象被标记的物联网功能。基于从各个标签传输的信号的物理层属性，这些功能将确定标签载体的属性，包括它们的方向，位置，速度，间距，轨迹，振荡速率等。基于一组标签的联合物理层属性，这些功能将以非侵入式方式执行对象轨迹跟踪和隐藏内容检查。

The Internet of things (IoT) has been gaining momentum in both industry and academic communities. From phones to smart phones, from electricity meters to smart meters, from cars to connected vehicles, new products have been developed with enhanced capabilities in data communications, sensing, and information exchange, thanks to rapid advance in embedded systems and sensor networks, which integrate miniaturized computing devices with the target objects. However, this approach of replacing old products with new designs can be expensive and sometimes inconvenient. The extra cost and deployment time of IoT devices have become a barrier for the adoption of IoT technologies. The proposed project will develop alternative IoT-enabling technologies that are easily deployable through tagging the objects or their environment. Such low-cost, convenient, non-intrusive methods hold great potential in making significant practical impact and expediting IoT deployment without redesigning and replacing the products already in use. The project also offers an interesting education platform for student training, undergraduate research participation, and outreach activities in the IoT domain.The goal of this proposal is to provide an alternative, convenient and non-intrusive approach that is capable of turning a vast number of existing objects in the world, without redesign, into semi-smart objects for some of the benefits promised by the IoT vision. The proposed project focuses on low-cost methods that attach RFID tags to objects or place tags in the objects' environment. It exploits the rich information embedded in the physical-layer signals from tags, such as phase, amplitude, polarization, waveform, and coupling effect to support IoT applications. The proposed research consists of two major thrusts. The first thrust investigates the IoT functions where objects are tagged. Based on the physical-layer properties of the signals transmitted from individual tags, these functions will determine the properties of the tags' carriers, including their orientations, locations, speeds, spacing, trajectories, oscillation rates, etc. The second thrust investigates the IoT functions where the objects' environment is tagged. Based on the joint physical-layer properties from a set of tags, these functions will perform object trajectory tracking and hidden content inspection in a non-intrusive manner.