CNS-1717948 NeTS: Small: Collaborative Research:

Low-cost, Convenient, Non-intrusive Methods for Enabling the Internet of Things

PIs: Prof. Shigang Chen and Prof. Chen Qian

University of Florida and University of California Santa Cruz

Project Summary

The Internet of things (IoT) brings transformative changes and novel applications to businesses and services. However replacing old products with new IoT designs can be expensive and time-consuming, which limits its scope of applicability in practice. In addition legacy products cannot benefit from the IoT applications. This proposal takes a different path to look for a relatively low-cost, convenient and non-intrusive way that is capable of turning a vast number of objects in the world, without redesign, into semi-smart objects for some of the benefits promised by the IoT vision.

Our approach is built upon Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) systems that have already gained wide acceptance in various industrial and business applications, due to the low-cost and battery-free properties. This project takes a different look at how to use RFID tags, from just using their IDs to exploiting the properties of the underlying physical-layer signals from tags, which carry far-richer information for determining the objects' orientation, location, spacing and speed that are useful in many IoT applications. We name these tags as signal tags. The goal of our project is to perform the first comprehensive investigation on the set of primitive functions that the signal tags are able to support, as well as their respective application scope. We propose to study the primitive functions of individual signal tags and signal tag aggregates.

Project Publications

X. Shi, S. Shi, M. Wang, J. Kaunisto, C. Qian, On-device IoT Certificate Revocation Checking with Small Memory and Low Latency, in Proc. of ACM CCS, 2021.

Xingyu Chen, Jia Liu, Fu Xiao, Shigang Chen, Lijun Chen, Thermotag: Item-level Temperature Sensing with a Passive RFID Tag, in Proc. of ACM MobiSys, June 2021.

H. Cai, G. Wang, X. Shi, J. Xie, M. Wang,?C. Qian, S. Chen, When Tags ‘Read’ Each Other: Enabling Low-cost and Convenient Tag Mutual Identification, in ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks.

M. Wang, C. Qian, X. Li, S. Shi, S. Chen, Collaborative Validation of Public-Key Certificates for IoT by Distributed Caching, in IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking.

Jia Liu, Xingyu Chen, Shigang Chen, Wei Wang, Dong Jiang, Lijun Chen, Retwork: Exploring Reader Network with COTS RFID Systems, USENIX Annual Technical Conference (USENIX ATC), Boston, MA, USA, JULY 2020.

G. Wang, H. Cai, C. Qian, J. Han, S. Shi, X. Li, H. Ding, W. Xi, J. Zhao, Hu-Fu: Replay-resilient RFID Authentication, in IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking.

G. Wang, C. Qian, K. Cui, X. Shi, H. Ding, W. Xi, J. Han, and J. Zhao, An Universal Method to Combat Multipaths for RFID Sensing, in Proc. of IEEE INFOCOM, 2020.

Ge Wang, Chen Qian, Longfei Shangguan, Han Ding, Jinsong Han, Kaiyan Cui, Jizhong Zhao, HMO: Ordering RFID Tags with Static Devices in Mobile Environments, in IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing.

Youlin Zhang, Shigang Chen, You Zhou, Yuguang Fang, Missing-Tag Detection With Unknown Tags, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, vol. 28, no. 3, pp. 1297-1310, June 2020.

Youlin Zhang, Shigang Chen, You Zhou, Olufemi Odegbile, Yuguang Fang, Efficient Anonymous Temporal-Spatial Joint Estimation at Category Level over Multiple Tag Sets With Unreliable Channels, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, vol. 28, issue 5, pp. 2174-2187, October 2020.

X. Shi, M. Wang, G. Wang, B. Huang, H. Cai, J. Xie, C. Qian, TagAttention: Mobile Object Tracing without Object Appearance Information by Vision-RFID Fusion, in Proc. of the IEEE International Conference on Network Protocols (ICNP), 2019.

H. Cai, G. Wang, X. Shi, J. Xie, M. Wang, C. Qian, When Tags ‘Read’ Each Other:Enabling Low-cost and Convenient Tag Mutual Identification, in Proc. of the IEEE International Conference on Network Protocols (ICNP), 2019.

G. Wang, C. Qian, K. Cui, H. Ding, H. Cai, W. Xi, J. Han, J. Zhao, A (Near) Zero-cost and Universal Method to Combat Multipaths for RFID Sensing, in Proc. of the IEEE International Conference on Network Protocols (ICNP), 2019.

Yu-e Sun, He Huang, Shigang Chen, You Zhou, Kai Han, Wenjian Yang, Privacy-preserving estimation of k-Persistent Traffic in Vehicular Cyber-Physical Systems, IEEE Internet of Things, vol. 6, no. 5, pp. 8296-8309, October 2019.

Jia Liu, Shigang Chen, Min Chen, Qingjun Xiao, Lijun Chen, Pose Sensing with a Single RFID Tag, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, vol. 28, issue 5, pp. 2023-2036, October 2020.

Yu-e Sun, He Huang, Shigang Chen, Hongli Xu, Kai Han, Yian Zhou, Persistent Traffic Measurement Through Vehicle-to-Infrastructure Communications in Cyber-Physical Road Systems, IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, vol. 18, no. 7, pp. 1616-1630, July 2019.

Youlin Zhang, Shigang Chen, You Zhou, Yuguang Fang, Chen Qian, Monitoring Bodily Oscillation with RFID Tags, IEEE Internet of Things Journal, vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 3840-3854, April 2019.

Qingjun Xiao, Youlin Zhang, Shigang Chen, Jia Liu, Min Chen, Guang Cheng, Junzhou Luo, Estimating Cardinality of Arbitrary Expression of Multiple Tag Sets in a Distributed RFID System, IEEE/ACM Transactions of Networking, vol. 27, issue 2, pp. 748-762, April 2019.

Xin Li, Minmei Wang, Shouqian Shi, and Chen Qian, VERID: Towards Verifiable IoT Data Management, in Proc. of ACM/IEEE Conference on Internet of Things Design and Implementation (IoTDI), 2019.

Xin Li, Minmei Wang, Huazhe Wang, Ye Yu, and Chen Qian, Towards Secure and Efficient Communication for the Internet of Things, in IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking.

Minmei Wang, Chen Qian, Xin Li, Shouqian Shi, Collaborative Validation of Public-Key Certificates for IoT by Distributed Caching, in Proc. of IEEE INFOCOM, 2019 (Accept rate: 288/1464 = 19.7%) [pdf]

Jia Liu, Shigang Chen, Qingjun Xiao, Min Chen, Bin Xiao, Lijun Chen, Efficient Information Sampling in Multi-category RFID Systems, to appear in IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, vol. 27, issue 1, pp. 159-172, February 2019.

Ge Wang, Chen Qian, Longfei Shangguan, Han Ding, Jinsong Han, Kaiyan Cui, Jizhong Zhao, HMO: Ordering RFID Tags with Static Devices in Mobile Environments, in IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing.

J. Han, C. Qian, Y. Yang, G. Wang, H. Ding, X. Li, K. Ren, Butterfly: Environment-Independent Physical-Layer Authentication for Passive RFID, in Proc. of ACM UBICOMP 2019 and Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies (IMWUT).

Qingjun Xiao, Shigang Chen, Jia Liu, Guang Cheng, A Protocol for Simultaneously Estimating Moments and Popular Groups in a Multigroup RFID System, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, vol. 27, issue 1, pp. 143-158, February 2019.

Hansong Guo, He Huang, Yu-e Sun, Youlin Zhang, Shigang Chen, Liusheng Huang, Chacc: Real-time and Fine-grained Rain Detection and Measurement using Smartphones, IEEE Internet of Things Journal, vol. 6, issue 1, pp. 997-1009, February 2019.

Yawei Pang, Haichuan Ding, Jianqing Liu, Yuguang Fang, Shigang Chen, A UHF RFID based System for Children Tracking, IEEE Internet of Things Journal, vol. 5, issue 6, pp. 5055-5064, December 2018.

Jia Liu, Youlin Zhang, Shigang Chen, Min Chen, Lijun Chen, Collision-resistant Communication Model for State-free Networked Tags, in Proc. of 39th IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing (ICDCS), Dallas, Texas, USA, July 2019.

Jia Liu, Xinyu Chen, Shigang Chen, Xiulong Liu, Yanyan Wang, Li-jun Chen, TagSheet: Sleeping Posture Recognition with an Unobtrusive Passive Tag Matrix, in Proc. of IEEE INFOCOM, 2019.

Youlin Zhang,Shigang Chen, You Zhou, Yuguang Fang, Using Wireless Tags to Monitor Bodily Oscillation, in Proc. of 15th International Conference on Mobile Ad-hoc and Sensor Systems (MASS), Chengdu, China, October 2018.

G. Wang, H. Cai, C. Qian, J. Han, X. Li, H. Ding, J. Zhao, Towards Replay-resilient RFID Authentication, in ACM MobiCom, 2018. (Acceptance rate: 22%)

G. Wang, J. Han, C. Qian, W. Xi, H. Ding, Z. Jiang, J. Zhao, Verifiable Smart Packaging with Passive RFID, accepted to IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing.

Y. Yu, D. Belazzougui, C. Qian, Q. Zhang, Memory-efficient and Ultra-fast Network Lookup and Forwarding using Othello Hashing, accepted to IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking. [Code of Othello Hashing] [pdf]

H. Ding, J. Han, C. Qian, F. Xiao, G. Wang, N. Yang, W. Xi, J. Xiao, Trio: Utilizing Tag Interference for Refined Localization of Passive RFID, in IEEE INFOCOM (Acceptance rate: 19.2%).

Youlin Zhang, Shigang Chen, You Zhou, Yuguang Fang, Anonymous Temporal-Spatial Joint Estimation at Category Level over Multiple Tag Sets, Proc. of IEEE INFOCOM, Honolulu, HI, USA, April 2018. (Acceptance rate: 19.2%)

Youlin Zhang, Shigang Chen, You Zhou, Olufemi Odegbile, Missing-Tag Detection With Presence of Unknown Tags, in Proc. of IEEE International Conference on Sensing, Communication, and Networking (SECON), Hongkong, China, June 2018. (Acceptance rate: 23.2%)

G. Wang, C. Qian, H. Cai, J. Han, and H. Ding, Replay-resilient Physical-layer Authentication for Passive RFID. in Proceedings of ACM/SIGMobile Workshop on Hot Topics in Wireless (HotWireless), 2017. [pdf]

G. Wang, C. Qian, J. Han, H. Cai, Poster: Combating Multipaths to Enable RFID Sensing in Practical Environments. in Proceedings of ACM MobiCom as Poster, 2017

Y. Yu, D. Belazzougui, C. Qian, and Q. Zhang, A Concise Forwarding Information Base for Scalable and Fast Name Lookups. in Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Network Protocols (ICNP), 2017. (Acceptance rate: 39/209=18.6%). [pdf]

Y. Yu, X. Li, C. Qian, SDLB: A Scalable and Dynamic Software Load Balancer for Fog and Mobile Edge Computing, in Proc of ACM SIGCOMM 2017 Workshop on Mobile Edge Communications (MECOMM), 2017. [pdf]

Jia Liu, Min Chen, Shigang Chen, Qingfeng Pan, Li-jun Chen, Tag-Compass: Determining the Spatial Direction of an Object with Small Dimensions, Proc. of IEEE INFOCOM, Atlanta, GA, USA, May 2017. (Acceptance rate: 20.9%)

Min Chen, Jia Liu, Shigang Chen, Yan Qiao, Yuanqing Zheng, DBF: A General Framework for Anomaly Detection in RFID Systems, Proc. of IEEE INFOCOM, Atlanta, GA, USA, May 2017. (Acceptance rate: 20.9%)

Jia Liu, Shigang Chen, Bin Xiao, Yanyan Wang, Lijun Chen, Category Information Collection in RFID Systems, in Proc. of IEEE ICDCS, 6 pages short paper, Atlanta, GA, USA, June 2017.

Students

Graduate: Youlin Zhang (UF), Dimitgrios Melissourgos (UF), Olufemi Odegbile (UF), Yuanda Wang (UF), Raymond Yu (UF), Minmei Wang (UCSC), Haofan Cai (UCSC), Xiaofeng Shi (UCSC)

Undergraduate: Bradley Puckett (UCSC), Alex Smirnov (UCSC), Ian Pham (UCSC), Jonne Kaunisto (UCSC), Robin Mathison (UCSC)

Classes related to the project