Scientific Workshop 4: Intelligent Objects for the

Internet of Things: Internet of Things Application of

Sensor Networks in Logistics
Christian Flgel and Volker Gehrmann
Fraunhofer IIS

Abstract. Current logistics processes demand more detailed and more up-todate information about the logistic objects and their state than is provided by
bar codes or RF-ID smart labels. Several aspects of the logistic chain can be
improved by storage, processing and transmission of more sophisticated kinds
of information and data. All of these aspects require more intelligent solutions
such as intelligent objects or smart items. This document gives an overview
over some of the technical challenges that need to be overcome to build such
networks, sample applications that have already been realized and necessary
technologies that are required by applications in logistics.

1 Introduction
The exchange or handling of goods and information is central to every process in
logistics. So far there has always been a significant gap between the real world and
the information world. Reducing or even closing that gap has always been the goal of
every improvement in those logistical processes.
Current logistics processes demand more detailed and more up-to-date information
about logistics objects and their state than what is provided by bar codes or RF-ID
smart labels. This is a consequence of an increasing need for higher process transparency: What? Where? When? In which condition? Several aspects of the logistics
chain can be improved by storage, processing and transmission of more sophisticated
kinds of information and data.
Until now that information has been mostly used for identification of goods. Classic way bills, bar codes and RF-ID smart labels do just that, they help to uniquely
identify goods along the logistics chain. The identification is then used for different
purposes, e.g. basic tracking, automated processing and distribution and the automated retrieval of data from back-end systems.
Identification, however, is not the only kind of information current logistics processes require. New regulations, standards or services may require the state of certain
goods monitored. Perishables for example need to be kept at certain temperatures at
all times, fragile goods need to be handled carefully and in compliance with handling
instructions and might need to be recorded, electronics are susceptible to liquids and
humidity and adverse conditions need to be detected along the logistic chain and
so on.
H. Gerhuser et al. (Eds.): AmI 2008 Workshops, CCIS 32, pp. 1626, 2009.
Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2009

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x:

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Virtual or Information World

a
c
Barcode from 1970
x

Way-bill 1922

Smart Label
1997
Smart Object
20xx

Fig. 1. Gap between real and information world

Also, process control and goal-oriented tracking and delivery of orders need more
sophisticated kinds of information than can be provided by current identification systems such as RF-ID smart labels. There is also a growing need for consistent localization of expensive goods.
All of these aspects require more intelligent solutions such as intelligent objects or
smart items. All of these aspects can be summarized under the terms: ubiquitous
computing, pervasive computing or ambient intelligence.

2 From Bar Codes to Smart Objects

There are currently more than 200 different kinds of RF-ID smart labels on the market
and they are sold by companies such as Siemens, Balluf, Schreiner, X-Ident, Texas
Instruments or Philips Semiconductors. Passive RF-ID technology, however, does
have some drawbacks. For instance RF-ID labels need reader stations that provide
them with the necessary energy for transmitting information. The readers are unwieldy and have a limited range of not more than 10 meters. Bigger reader gates even
have to be stationary, tags cannot communicate actively or among themselves, there is
no capability for processing (intelligence) and reading of a large amount of labels
concurrently is problematic due to collisions and permeation and shadowing problems. Intelligent objects could solve most of those problems and are able to provide
more sophisticated services for the needs of today.
Extending the functional range will lead to intelligent objects and environments.
The basic attributes are the ability to communicate and cooperate among intelligent
objects or between objects and their environment, the ability to autonomously react to
changes in the environment or changing situations and the capability for embedded
processing and distributed computing of data on every node.

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C. Flgel and V. Gehrmann

Wireless Network

Decentralized Application

Smart Item

Fig. 2. Smart objects

Each smart object consists of a microcontroller, the capability for wireless data
transmission, persistent storage, embedded sensors to monitor certain aspects of the
environment and an energy source, e.g. a battery. Each node needs to be able to function for months or even years on a single and possibly very limited supply of energy,
since the replacement of batteries might be too expensive or even impractical. Conservation of energy is therefore a primary design goal in such systems.
In order for these items to cooperate and communicate with each other some sort of
wireless communication protocol is needed. Wireless ad hoc networking protocols
provide the foundation for such smart object networks.
These ad hoc networking protocols provide the means for meshed communication,
i.e. every object is able to communicate with any other object in the network either
directly or via intermediate nodes that relay the information. Since forwarding of data
is done by intermediate nodes, those networks are often called multi-hop networks
(each message is relayed by intermediate nodes and hops from node to node).
Meshed network protocols increase the number of possible communication partners
that can relay information which means that redundancy is increased; hence the reliability of all communication is increased.
The most important areas of research in wireless meshed networking protocols regard power saving techniques as well as self-organization of the nodes in the network.

3 Conserving Power
Nodes in a smart object network have limited energy supply and need to operate
for long amounts of time without recharging or replacing the energy source. In addition the network has to provide a certain quality of service sufficient for the kind of

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Latency

Energy

Scalability

Throughput

Topology
Fig. 3. Tradeoff space

application that needs to be provided. Radio communication is the dominant factor for
determining system lifetime because depending on the frequency band, data rate and
transmission power those systems can draw up to 20 or 30 milliamps of current and
put a lot of strain on the limited energy supply of the node.
Obviously tradeoffs between different kinds of competing goals are necessary:
Energy: How long can a system operate with limited power supply?
Latency: The amount of time needed for message propagation and processing.
Throughput: The maximum amount of data that can be transported through the
network.
Scalability: How many devices are supported?
Topology: Who must communicate with whom?
This conflict of goals lies at the heart of every communication protocol for sensor
networks. Depending on the intended application a tradeoff between these goals must
be found.
The major sources for waste of energy in meshed networking protocols are connected to the reception and transmission of messages, mainly overhearing, packet
collisions, control-packet overhead and idle listening.
Overhearing occurs when a node listens to messages that are not directed to him. In
order to ascertain that such a message is not addressed to that node, he needs to process and therefore to receive it first. Thus energy is wasted because nodes process
messages they are not interested in.

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Collisions occur when two nodes try to send messages at the same time without
coordination. Since wireless communication occurs on a shared medium those messages interfere with each other and need to be resent, wasting unnecessary energy in
the process. A protocol suitable for smart object networks has to take measures
against packet collisions. This could be achieved by implementing some sort
of collision avoidance protocol or by securing data transmissions via control
packets.
Idle listening plays by far the largest role when waste of energy is concerned. Idle
listening means that the receiver is listening to potential messages although those
messages are never sent, thus the receiver is idle most of the time. Measurements
have shown that in certain meshed network protocols idle listening consumes between
50%-100% of the energy required for reception. Thus idle listening is the main source
of energy waste in sensor networks.

4 Protocol Standards
There already exist a limited number of standardized protocols, either governed by a
standards body or as industry standards, the most popular being ZigBee.
Table 1. Examples of different protocol stacks

Standardized Proprietary Proprietary (Open-Source)

ZigBee

Ant

TinyOS

Bluetooth

NanoNet

SMAC

IEEE 802.11 Ember

(WLAN)

B-MAC

Millenial Net T-MAC

Fraunhofer
Slotted-MAC

Common among all of these standards, however, is the wish to cover a broad range
of possible application scenarios, either for marketing reasons more possible applications makes the resulting stack more marketable or as a result of the differing
requirements of the stakeholders.
Since there is always a tradeoff necessary between different goals (see Figure 1)
protocols for sensor networks have to be application specific. No single stack provides good performance in all possible application scenarios and big standards tend to
focus on the lowest common denominator.

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5 Technology Example: Slotted MAC

Prevention of idle listening requires the use of duty cycling in contention based MACprotocols. TDMA protocols could alleviate most of the problems mentioned above,
unfortunately most TDMA protocols are not suited for use in wireless ad-hoc multihop networks. It is very difficult to maintain the TDMA schedule when operating in a
multi-hop network because of delay and drift that naturally occurs when transporting
data over multiple hops. The dynamic nature of nodes in such a network makes it
difficult to maintain the slot assignment because most nodes are in motion and change
location often.
The most important benefit of TDMA-based contention protocols, however, is the
fact that those protocols use the medium more efficiently than contention-based protocols. In TDMA-based protocols every node in the network could employ a low duty
cycle without the drastic reduction in bandwidth since the schedule is fixed and
known by all other nodes.
The communication networks department of the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated
Circuits IIS has developed a MAC-layer protocol called Slotted MAC whose purpose
is to combine the benefits of TDMA (efficiency) with those of contention-based protocols (scalability, flexibility). Slotted MAC also integrates certain technologies
usually only found in the network layer so that no extra routing is required.

Node: 1

Node: 4

Data concentrator
Node: 0

Child 1
Node: 2

Node: 3

Parent 1

Node: 5

Child 2

Fig. 4. Tree structure of a Slotted MAC network

Slotted MAC has several key features that make it suitable for wireless low power
systems. Each node has the ability to independently choose a beacon slot in such a
way that collisions of beacons and beacon slots are minimal. Packets only take one
frame to travel from a mobile node to the master or vice versa, up to a configurable
number of hops. This is achieved by the way the frames are organized. Frames are
cascaded in such a way that a packet can be forwarded by a node in the same frame in
which it was received. Localization information therefore will reach the data sink with
the least amount of delay possible.
Nodes using the Slotted MAC protocol have the capability to form meshed networks and automatically provide support for localization. This is achieved via a
broadcast area that is used for direct communication between neighbouring nodes.

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Frame Start

Frame Start

All nodes in the Slotted MAC system have to adhere to a certain frame structure.
The start of a frame is indicated by a master node that drives the frame timing. The
frame is divided in three areas, beacon area, data area and broadcast area.

beacon area

Layer 0

idle

Layer n

data area

idle

Layer 0

idle

Layer n

broadcast area

idle

Layer
0,3,..

idle

Layer
1,4,...

idle

Layer
2,5,...

idle

Frame Period

Fig. 5. Frame configuration

The beacon area can be used by nodes to transmit their own beacon to enable other
nodes to synchronize to the network, to set up the tree structure of the network or for
the forwarding of messages down the tree. The data area is used to send information
from a child node to its parent and the broadcast area is used for broadcast communication between neighbouring nodes (i.e. for positioning purposes).
Each intra network node transmits its own beacon in order to set up network timing
and the topology. Each node chooses the slot in which it will transmit its own beacon
independently from all other nodes in the network. The algorithm used for the assignment of beacon slots ascertains that no two nodes choose the same beacon slot
and cause collisions between beacons.
The way slots in the network are assigned enables all nodes in the network to be
asleep most of the time. Nodes only need to be active during their scheduled slots and
slots are cascaded in such a way as to enable fast data transfer and to use the medium
as efficiently as possible.
All of the features mentioned above make Slotted MAC a suitable system for low
power wireless networks. Slotted MAC creates a flexible distributed TDMA system
that offers long system lifetime while at the same time enabling fast data transfer.
Additional features, like a broadcast area and the cascading of slots for faster data
transfer make it a suitable alternative for wireless localization systems.

6 Positioning
Location information is the basis for environment aware behaviour and continuous
tracking and tracing of intelligent objects. Services for object tracking and tracing
have to be available both indoors and outdoors.
However GPS hardware is very expensive and also consumes a lot of power. GPS
also doesn't work when used indoors because visibility of satellites is limited or not
available. Hence a solution using GPS or Galileo is usually not feasible and the position has to be calculated by other means.

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Several algorithms and principles have been proposed for positioning and localization in wireless ad-hoc networks. A node could use angle of arrival (AoA), time of
arrival (TOA) or time difference of arrival (TDOA) for example or use other means
like the sampling of the received signal strength (RSSI) to estimate distances and for
position calculation. All of these algorithms use the basic principles of triangulation,
trilateration or multilateration for position estimation and usually differ in the way
they generate the necessary data to use those basic principles.
RSSI sampling for example is simple to use because almost all of the current transceiver chips have a built in RSSI unit. Since the RSSI value is a measure of the power
with which a packet has been received it is also a measure for the distance between
sender and receiver.
The weighted centroid localization WCL for example uses RSSI values to determine the position of nodes in the network. The transmitting (anchor-) nodes know and
broadcast their own positions and the receiving nodes can use this information to
calculate their own position with respect to those transmitter nodes. The RSSI value is
used as an estimate of the distance between the sender and the receiver, the higher the
RSSI value the shorter the distance to the transmitter. Therefore the position broadcast
of that node has to be given more 'weight' when the own position is calculated.
(x=5, y=4)

r2
r3
r1

(x=8, y=2)

(x=2, y=1)
Fig. 6. Calculation of position via WCL

The advantages of tracking and localization in wireless ad hoc networks are that
such a system is inherently fault tolerant due to the redundant paths generated by the
multi-hop routing algorithms employed, that it is able to scale to hundreds or thousands of nodes and that such a system will cost less than existing solutions relying on
GPS or W-LAN. Unlike GPS, wireless localization in ad hoc networks can also be
used indoors.

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7 IP Integration of Smart Items: 6 LoWPAN

6 LoWPan is an open standard governed by the Internet engineering task force. Its goal is
the introduction of IPv6 technology into the area of wireless sensor networks. The application of IP technology is assumed to provide the following benefits: (from RFC4919).
The pervasive nature of IP networks allows use of existing infrastructure, IP-based
technologies already exist, are well-known, and proven to be working. Tools for diagnostics, management, and commissioning of IP networks already exist. IP-based
devices can be connected readily to other IP-based networks, without the need for
intermediate entities like translation gateways or proxies.
The many devices in a LoWPAN make network auto configuration and statelessness
highly desirable also the large number of devices poses the need for a large address
space, well met by IPv6. It shall also provide a simple interconnectivity to other IP
networks including the Internet.

8 Application Example: ViTOL

It is not uncommon for a few boxes of valuable goods to disappear from palettes on
the way to retail outlets. That is why Fraunhofer IIS is working on a new technical

Fig. 7. Wireless sensor nodes on a small load carrier are used to monitor the condition of goods
and localize logistical objects (in this case, temperature and condition)

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platform to safeguard such items. In this application smart objects are attached to
valuable goods that allow them to be monitored along the entire distribution chain. In
addition to technical implementation, this also entails integrating the technology into
the current process landscape and carrying out cost-benefit analyzes. The aim is
to show that wireless sensor networks have an advantage over RFID, especially in
open logistics systems, and that it makes sense to apply sensor network technology to
logistics.
Smart objects can increase the transparency of the flow of goods by, amongst other
things, making a comprehensive record of all items in a consignment. This also creates an active retail surveillance system, because smart items notice when something
is removed from the consignment and inform the supervising IT system about the
loss. This not only restricts losses from within the flow of goods: the sensors can also
register any manipulation or incorrect handling, therefore providing theft protection.

9 Application Example: OPAL Health

The goal of OPAL Health is the development of a system for wireless positioning and
condition monitoring of medical equipment and blood bottles. OPAL healths aim is
to optimize common medical tasks and to guarantee the quality of treatments.
This technology enables the tracking and tracing of medical equipment and can
be used to document transport, storage and usage information of those devices.
This facilitates management of medical devices and can help boost efficiency of

Fig. 8. OPAL system architecture

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commissioning and management of those devices by identifying surplus stock. Smart

objects attached to the devices or blood preservatives transmit position or temperature
information via multi-hop networking to a back end system where that information is
processed and displayed. This for example allows the continuous monitoring of the
state of blood bottles; the system can then raise an alarm if the temperature is not
within the limit.
OPAL Health is funded by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology
(www.opal-health.de).
The project consortium consists of T-Systems, Fraunhofer IIS, FriedrichAlexander- University of Erlangen-Nrnberg, Vierling Communication GmbH and
Delta-T GmbH.

10 Conclusion
Sensor network technology is a basis for the development of smart items for an
internet of things. Smart items offer more than just identification. They can communicate on their own accord, allow de-central data processing, are position aware
and hence are part of intelligent environments. There are already many different applications, although further standardization, as well as research and development
activities are necessary in the areas of communication technology, semi-conductor
technology and energy supply in order for the technology to grow to mass markets.

References
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Sensor Networks, USC/ISI Technical Report (January 2003)
Niculescu, D., Nath, B.: Ad Hoc Positioning System (APS) using AoA. In: Proceedings of
INFOCOM 2003, San Francisco (2003)
Gustafsson, F., Gunnarsson, F.: Positioning using Time-Difference of Arrival Measurements.
Linkping University,
Blumenthal, J., Reichenbach, F., Timmermann, D.: Position Estimation in Ad hoc Wireless
Sensor Networks with Low Complexity. University of Rostock,
Pflaum, A., Hupp, J.: Sensornetzwerke und Lokalisierungsverfahren als Schlsseltechnologien
fr die intelligente logistische Umwelt von morgen, Internet der Dinge. Springer, Heidelberg
(2007)
Flgel, C.: Challenges in the design of low power wireless localization systems. In: Proceedings embedded world conference (2006)
Kushalnagar, N., Montenegro, G., Schumacher, C.: RFC4919 - IPv6 over Low-Power Wireless
Personal Area Networks (6LoWPANs): Overview, Assumptions, Problem Statement, and
Goals, IETF (2007)