EAGER: Magnetic Induction Based Communications for Fresh Food Distribution Monitoring

由于消费的增加和公众对"新鲜度"的期望，新鲜食品的运输和分销是一项巨大且不断增长的业务。然而，新鲜食品运输和配送（TD）在大量腐败和浪费、TD容量的惨淡利用以及运输和储存的大量能源和碳足迹方面是非常低效的。&&此外，新鲜食品几乎是美国和其他地方每年食源性疾病发病率高的全部原因。本研究的目的是开发基本的通信和本地化技术的新鲜度和污染的新鲜食品的在线监测，因为它通过T D系统开始在包装中心的零售商或机构客户。& 新鲜食品通常包装在盒子中，盒子进一步堆叠到托盘或其他更大的包装中，并在载体（例如，卡车）或存储在仓库中，在它们去往分发端点的途中。 假设每个盒子里都有一个合适的传感器和一个无线电，这项研究探讨了食品质量和污染的沟通到下一个层次（例如，卡车或仓库）。这将有助于部署大规模的信息技术基础设施，用于监测和决策，以提高食物的新鲜度，安全性和可追溯性，减少食物浪费，并提高T D的使用率和能源效率。& 由于非常密集的无线电、困难的无线电传播介质（组织、水、盐）以及对极低能耗的需求，使用正常射频（RF）机制的盒级通信是相当具有挑战性的。本研究的关键命题是，基于磁感应（MI）的通信可以在这种环境中以非常低的能耗可靠地工作。通过实际的实验和模拟，本研究将开发用于各种情况的MI信道模型（例如，不同类型的新鲜食品、盒子、盒子布置），并研究导电材料的各向同性、干扰和影响的关键问题（例如，卡车墙）。它将利用表征来研究两个关键功能：（a）使用多跳MI通信将感测数据转发到位于卡车/仓库中的"中心节点"，从那里它可以使用RF通信技术进行转发，以及（B）可靠的定位，或发送数据的盒子的识别。 该研究还将研究将传感器寿命最大化至多年的机制，以便在很大程度上避免电池更换问题。

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.