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DEMO: Mobile Relay Architecture for Low-Power IoT Devices

Authors:
Ahsan Manzoor at University of Oulu
Ahsan Manzoor
Pawani Porambage at VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland
Pawani Porambage
Madhusanka Liyanage at University College Dublin
Madhusanka Liyanage
Mika Ylianttila at University of Oulu
Mika Ylianttila
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Abstract and Figures

Internet of Things(IoT) devices need pervasive and secure connections to transfer the aggregated data to the central servers located in remote clouds where the collected data further processed and stored. However, most of low-power IoT devices can not transmit the collected the data directly to such servers due the limited transmission power and range. Thus, third-party devices such as smart mobile phones are used as an relay to establish the communication link between IoT devices and the cloud server. This paper demonstrate a mobile-based relay assistance solution for secure end-to-end connectivity between low-power IoT sensors and cloud servers by using Bluetooth Low Energy(BLE) technology. The prototype implementation verifies the technical readiness of the proposed solution.
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DEMO: Mobile Relay Architecture for Low-Power IoT Devices
Ahsan Manzoor∗, Pawani Porambage∗, Madhsanka Liyanage∗, Mika Ylianttila∗, Andrei Gurtov†
∗Centre for Wireless Communications, University of Oulu, Finland,
†Department of Computer and Information Science, Link¨
oping University, Sweden
Email: ∗firstname.lastname@oulu.fi, †gurtov@acm.org
Abstract—Internet of Things (IoT) devices need pervasive and
secure connections to transfer the aggregated data to the central
servers located in remote clouds where the collected data further
processed and stored. However, most low-power IoT devices
cannot transmit the collected the data directly to such servers
due the limited transmission power and range. Thus, third-
party devices such as smart mobile phones are used as a relay
to establish the communication link between IoT devices and
the cloud server. This paper demonstrates a mobile-based relay
assistance solution for secure end-to-end connectivity between
low-power IoT sensors and cloud servers by using Bluetooth Low
Energy (BLE) technology. The prototype implementation verifies
the technical readiness of the proposed solution.
Index Terms—Bluetooth Low Energy, Internet of Things,
Relay, Security, Sensors, Ambient Assisted Living
I. INTRODUCTION
Billions of smart devices are available in digital world
due to the advancement of the Internet of Things (IoT).
Thus, the proliferation of IoT technologies is closely coupled
with day-to-day human activities[1]. Especially, IoT sensor
devices are widely used in healthcare applications. The IoT
integration into medical devices greatly improves the quality
and effectiveness of health service, bringing especially high
value for the elderly, patients with chronic conditions, and
those requiring constant supervision. IoT integration has the
potential to not only keep patients safe and healthy but to
improve how physicians deliver care as well.
Many IoT devices in healthcare and AAL applications
are equipped with unlicensed band short-range radio access
technologies, including Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), HaLow,
ZigBee, and Smart Utility Networks (SUNs). [2]. Among
them, BLE is the best-known and most used low-power
communication technology that supports connectivity for Body
Area Networks (BANs) and a large number of medical IoT
devices which operate with coin cell batteries [3].
We define this particular objective of exploiting mobile-
based relays for the back-end connectivity of BLE devices
in terms of a specific AAL use case as illustrated in Figure 1.
The elderly or people with chronic conditions may require
continuous monitoring of their health records or localize with
the help of different BLE sensor nodes. There are certain inter-
ested parties (e.g., family or caretakers) who need to track their
behavior and examine the health conditions based on the data
retrieved from the remote central cloud. Typically, the back-
end connectivity between the BLE wearable sensor and the
cloud data center is maintained by a dedicated mobile phone
which possessed by the same individual [4], [5]. However, the
elderly people may forget to bring the mobile phone when
they are exceeding the comfort zone or the battery might be
dead. Therefore, we proposed to use the help of some random
mobile users who are performing as relays in our system. In
order to keep the in-line with this mechanism, the unknown
mobile user needs to be rewarded by the remote cloud for
his relaying service. To the best of authors’ knowledge, this
will be the first attempt of exploiting third-party unknown
mobile relays for the forwarding of medical data generated by
BLE sensors.In this demo, we show the viability of realizing
the proposed architecture through a prototype implementation
with off-the-shelf IoT sensors and mobile devices 1.
Section II describes the system architecture and Section
III presents a prototype implementation. Section IV gives
an overview of the showcase we intend to present at the
Demo Session, followed by Section V which specifies a set
of technical requirements.
II. SY STE M ARCHITECTURE
The network architecture is illustrated in Figure 1 with
reference to the AAL use case. BLE sensor advertises its
availability of data. There can be one or number of anonymous
mobile phones who receive the advertisement and accept to
cooperate with further communication as a relay node. The
best relay node is selected based on the received signal strength
indicator (RSSI). The link between the mobile and the central
server (CS) in IoT cloud will be securely established over the
Internet in a conventional manner (e.g., Hypertext Transfer
Protocol Secured (HTTPS)). When the data is received from
the BLE device, CS will update the database which is dedi-
cated to that particular user.
The key attributes of this protocol should include the
following:
1) Ubiquitous access and mobility support irrespective of
the user’s location.
2) Adaptability to arbitrary community or provider.
3) Real life compatibility.
4) Lightweight authentication between the BLE sensor and
CS.
We consider few pre-requisites and key assumptions: The
BLE devices will undergo an initial registration with CS in the
IoT cloud. In order to maintain E2E secure communication,
the BLE device and CS should share the cryptographic keys
for data encryption and decryption, and the authentication
credentials (e.g., User ID (UID), hash chain, etc.). The mobile
should be able to handle multiple peripherals in one instance.
1A teaser video about this demonstration is published here: https://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=mIMh6Sfo84s&feature=youtu.be978-1-5386-4725-7/18/$31.00 c
2018 IEEE
Fig. 1. The network architecture
Fig. 2. Testbed setup
The link quality is guaranteed for all the communication
channels over the period of communication. No mutual or
transitive trusts are required between the relay device and
sensor /CS. For the sake of rewarding mechanism, the mobile
needs to be registered with CS in advance and the secure
links (i.e. Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol) should be
established between the two entities. The functionality of CS
is utterly trusted which will grant the incentives to the relay
device at the end of successful service.
III. PROTOTY PE SE TUP
We have accomplished the prototype implementation on
a testbed with a BLE sensor, mobile, and cloud platform
(Figure 2). The Internet access was achieved by the general
university WiFi network (i.e., PanOULU network2).
Texas Instrument SensorTag3CC2650 and Samsung Galaxy
Note 8 were respectively used as the sensor and mobile hard-
ware platforms. In accordance with the protocol, we slightly
2https://www.panoulu.net/open-wireless-internet- access
3http://www.ti.com/lit/ug/tidu862/tidu862.pdf
modified the BLE stack 2.2.1 on CC2650 using SmartRF
Flash programmer 2. Table I shows the custom BLE stack
configuration on the CC2650 sensor.
The mobile application (Figure 4) was developed on An-
droid 7.1.1 operating system using Android Studio 3.0 li-
braries. This mobile application scans in the background to
discover devices and connects to the BLE sensors. This BLE
sensor is then paired with the mobile automatically, using the
passcode 0000. After paring, sensor initiates data uploading
directly to the Cloud platform. The last part of the implementa-
tion was to deploy the cloud server on Google Firebase where
the user of the mobile application can authenticate himself and
the sensor can upload the sensed data to a JSON database. The
user needs to log in the application for authentication by CS
and the collection of rewards.
The application monitors the amount of data transferred
from the sensor to the cloud and after the confirmation from
the CS, the application automatically credits the reward to the
user account. In order to keep the reward mechanism simple
and profitable, for transferring every 1 KB of data, the user
TABLE I
BLE CO NFIG UR ATIO N SE TT IN GS F OR CC2650
Attribute Configured values
Transmission power 0 dB
Number of running services 6 services
Periodic event 1000 ms
Advertising interval 100 ms
Connection timeout 1000 ms
Broadcast delay 500 ms
Packet size 18 byte
Fig. 3. Demonstration Flowchart
Fig. 4. BLE Mobile Application
gets one point which can later be used for different purposes.
Moreover, Firebase uses HTTPS connection over TLS for
secure communications between the mobile and cloud server
along with real-time database security.
IV. DEM ONS TR ATION A ND IN TER ACTI ON
A. Demonstration Content
In this demonstration, we will visualize the whole process
as shown in Figure 3. The demonstration is divided into three
parts. The first part includes the user authentication from the
cloud server and initialization of the scanning process from the
mobile. After the scanning is complete, the application will
select the sensor based on its signal strength and establish
a connection. The last part includes the transfer of the data
from the sensor to the Google firebase cloud. As the data is
uploaded, the connection is terminated and the user account
is rewarded according to the amount of data transferred.
B. Interaction Content
The attendees will be able to interact with this demo in two
ways. In the first case, the attendee will be able to download
the developed Android application on their mobile phone and
register as a user. They will be able to visualize the whole
demonstration process on their mobiles. In the second case,
the attendee can use one of the authors mobile, with the pre-
installed android application. The attendees can also look at
the data uploaded using their account on the cloud server.
V. TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS
We require 3 Texas Instrument Sensor Tag CC2650 updated
with custom BLE stack 2.2.1, one laptop and one mobile
with Android version 7.1+. Authors will bring the required
equipment for demonstration.
ACK NOWL ED GEM EN T
This work has been performed under the framework of the
Infotech Doctoral Program of UniOGS and the three projects,
6Genesis Flagship (grant 318927), SECUREConnect (Secure
Connectivity of Future Cyber-Physical Systems) and Towards
Digital Paradise. These projects are funded by Academy of
Finland and TEKES, Finland. It is also supported by Center
for Industrial Information Technology (CENIIT).
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