EAGER: Magnetic Induction Based Communications for Fresh Food Distribution Monitoring

生鲜食品的运输和配送是一项巨大的、不断增长的事业，这是因为消费者的消费不断增加，以及公众对“新鲜”的期望。然而，生鲜食品运输和配送(T&amp；D)的效率非常低，表现为大量变质和浪费，T&A；D产能利用率低下，以及运输和储存所需的大量能源和碳排放。此外，在美国和其他地方，新鲜食品几乎是每年食源性疾病大量发生的全部原因。这项研究的目的是开发基本的通信和本地化技术，用于在线监控生鲜食品在流经T&A；D系统时的新鲜度和污染，从包装中心到零售商或机构客户。生鲜食品通常包装在盒子里，进一步堆叠成托盘或其他更大的包装，在运往配送终点的途中由承运人(如卡车)运输或储存在仓库中。假设在每个盒子里都部署了合适的传感器和无线电，这项研究探索了食品质量和污染的沟通到下一级(例如，卡车或仓库)。这将有助于部署用于监测和决策的大规模信息技术基础设施，以提高食品新鲜度、安全性和可追溯性，减少食品浪费，并提高研发利用率和能源效率。由于无线电非常密集，无线电传播介质(组织、水、盐)难度很大，并且需要极低的能量消耗，使用常规的射频(RF)机制进行箱级通信是非常具有挑战性的。本研究的关键命题是，基于磁感应(MI)的通信可以在这种低能耗的环境下可靠地工作。通过实际实验和模拟，本研究将建立适用于各种情况(例如，不同类型的生鲜食品、盒子、盒子排列)的MI通道模型，并研究导电材料(如卡车车壁)的各向同性、干扰和冲击等关键问题。它将利用这一特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”，从那里它可以使用射频通信技术进行转发，以及(B)可靠的定位，或识别发送数据的盒子。这项研究还将研究将传感器寿命最大化至数年的机制，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.