EAGER: Magnetic Induction Based Communications for Fresh Food Distribution Monitoring

由于消费的增加和公众对“新鲜”的期望，生鲜食品的运输和配送是一个庞大的、不断发展的企业。然而，生鲜食品运输和配送（T&amp；D）的效率非常低，原因包括大量的腐败和浪费，对T&amp；D能力的利用率很低，运输和储存的能源和碳足迹很大。此外，在美国和其他地方，每年大量食源性疾病的发病率几乎完全是由新鲜食品造成的。本研究的目的是开发基本的通信和定位技术，用于在线监测新鲜食品的新鲜度和污染，因为它流经从包装中心到零售商或机构客户的t&&d系统。新鲜食品通常包装在盒子里，然后再堆叠到托盘或其他更大的包装中，由运输工具（例如卡车）运输，或者在运往分销端点的途中储存在仓库中。假设在每个盒子中都安装了合适的传感器和无线电，该研究探索了食品质量和污染的沟通到下一个层次（例如，卡车或仓库）。这将使大规模信息技术基础设施得以部署，用于监测和决策，以提高食品的新鲜度、安全性和可追溯性，减少食品浪费，并提高食品的利用率和能源效率。使用普通射频（RF）机制，盒级通信非常具有挑战性，因为无线电非常密集，无线电传播介质（组织，水，盐）困难，并且需要极低的能耗。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下以非常低的能耗可靠地工作。本研究将通过实际实验和仿真，开发多种情况下（如不同类型的生鲜产品、箱体、箱体布置）的MI通道模型，并研究导电材料（如卡车壁）的各向同性、干扰和影响等关键问题。它将利用该特性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/仓库的“集线器节点”，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。该研究还将研究将传感器寿命延长至数年的机制，从而在很大程度上避免更换电池的问题。

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.