CC7173 MOBILE APPLICATIONS DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT (DISTANCE LEARNING)

Changing our daily life with Internet of Things

enabled mobile app
(revised Jan 2017)
RESEARCH REPORT SUBMITTED FOR CC7173 MOBILE APPLICATIONS DESIGN AND
DEVELOPMENT (DISTANCE LEARNING)

AbstractThe Internet of Things is a cutting-edge topic in technical, social and economic perspective. Consumer electronic
device, cars, industrial components, sensors are being combined with Internet connectivity. Smart devices are not limited to the
scope of smart home, the capabilities of cell phone have been dramatically evolved into a powerful computing device.

The advancement of the mobile network such as 4G network and the coming 5G network facilitate the application of the big
data combining with the IoT devices.

The impact of IoT on the Internet and economy are impressive. There will be more than 100 billion connected IoT devices
generating the global economic impact of more than $11 trillion by 2025.

The aim of this report explores the different application perspectives of the android IoT device. Nowadays, sensors, smart
watches, activity trackers and other wearable devices are the very common devices surrounding us. Android smartphones is
now the hubs for the personal IoT network. IoT is changing our everyday lives with the different application of technologies such
as the tracking device in police force, healthcare tracking device, smart home, smart cars, etc.

Keywords Internet of Things(IoT), Mobile home base automation, Smart City, Health-care application, Bio-medical
Application, Smart Public Transportation System, Future technologies with wearables, New horizon for IoT in everyday life

1 INTRODUCTION
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The Internet of Things (IoT) was dated back to 1999. If

all objects and people in daily life were equipped with
identifiers, computers could manage and inventory them.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is the network of physical
objects devices, vehicles, buildings and other items
embedded with electronics, software, sensors, and
network connectivity that enables these objects to
collect and exchange data [11].

There are many different usage perspectives of IoT in the

world. Smart home, health-care, public transportation,
smart-car, bio-medical application is some of the key
domains of the IoT application.

Figure 1: Architecture illustration for the

Android is the most popular smart-phone OS with a
market share of 86.8% in the 3rd quarter of 2016. [1] It is
now coming to have more and more interaction between
the IoT sensors with the Android enabled device. The
android device is playing the role of the control panel and
interface communicating to the IoT sensors.
The advancement of technologies inspires the change
of our daily life. There is some emerging idea with IoT
application such as a new economy to environmental
protection in food, consumable sharing among our
neighborhood. This advocates the sharing economy using
IoT sensors, it could be the change of people household
lifestyle in the community [1].
2 LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Mobile home base automation
There are two communication mediums for
connecting the Smart-home devices and the Android
phone such as Bluetooth and Ethernet.
home automation system with using
Bluetooth [3]
The android phone receives the data sending by the
Arduino board through Bluetooth, this demonstrated the
wireless smart home application with the control panel
on Android mobile phone. However, there is limitation of
the single strength with using Bluetooth which is a short
range wireless communication medium working up to 20
meters. [3] It causes certain limitation for integrating the
out-door devices such as CCTV camera.
There is an alternative implementation with using
Ethernet connectivity. The single range limitation could
be resolved by having the Arduino board connected to the
Ethernet module. The devices are connected to the IP
network and the android phone communicates to the
Arduino controller through WIFI [3].

There is research done with the implementation of

the prototype which is based on an open source platform
called Arduino. Arduino could be used to receive
keyboard input and sensor data. Android phone
establishes the Bluetooth connection with the Bluetooth
module connected to the Arduino macro-controller [3].
Figure 2: Architecture illustration for the home
automation system with using Ethernet [3]

However, the security of the smart home network is a

concern and its require the appropriate measurement on
network security. This will be discussed more in the later
section of the report.
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customer to do more exercise and keep health. The

2.2 Smart City
This is a research of smart-city with the prototype to
propose a framework for IoT which uses mobile agents for
information transfer between the IoT devices. The service
domains include location based application such as
location of gas station, ATM machines, restaurant,
entertainment centers etc [4].
customers wear the IoT device like smart-swatch which
helps to track the daily exercises. There is also a mobile
app to be the user client to retrieve the log records. The
insurance company offers some discount or benefits to
their customer who participate such scheme and meet the
exercise target.

The prototype makes use of wireless communication

medium such as Near Field Communication (NFC) and
Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID). Mobile agents is
the web based interface to collect the information from
the IoT sensors [4].
This prototype also interacts with speech processing
module to facilitates the voice commands and voice
prompt, this is useful for smart driving application with
real-time traffic information [4].
2.4 Bio-medical Application
IoT sensor could also be embedded with shoes, clothes
and so on. There is research on tracking health condition
with using IoT sensor integrated shoe. The IoT sensor
collects the plantar pressure of the patients and elderly
persons, this helps to assess and determine the
impairments in neurological disorders [6].

Smart-city is a big scope of IoT application, NFC

becomes a common protocol for e-payment which
embedded to Android or IOS platform. The NFC sensor
attached to POS machines accept the e-payment that
connected to bank account through the smart-phone.

Android phone is the control panel interacting with

variety of daily activities.

2.3 Health-care application

IoT could also be applied to the health-care perspective.
There is research project on health-care application which
built from the IoT platform Arduino. The prototype of
this project mainly provides three services. It utilizes the
GPS location based tracker to find the availability of the
blood and nearest Blood Bank Centre for the users. There
is also an emergency message notification service to push
health-care information to the registered mobile number.
Besides, the application also includes the vaccine or dose
reminder based on children age [5].
It is a very broad domain for the health-care
application based IoT. For instance, it is now getting very
popular for the insurance company to encourage their
Figure 3: IoT sensor integrated shoe [6]
The Convex curved inserts made out of Silicon Rubber
and inserted with FlexiForce force sensor. This helps to
measure human postures, localizing and detect falls in
real time [6].
2.5 Smart Public Transportation System
IoT and Adnroid could be integrated to form an
Intelligent Transportation System (ITS). ITS combines the
technologies like GPS, 3G network and Android smart
phone to provides explicit information to user such as the
nearest buses approaching the current location of bus
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stop. These information displays on user's Android phone
real-time [7].
Figure 4: Illustration of System
architecture [7]
ITS depends on the quality of the IoT sensors and the
micro-controllers. The on-board unit could be an Android
app utilizing the GPS components to track the location of
the buses continuously and keep updating the data back
onto the SERVER. The GPS component is also applied for
calculating the distance between each bus stop, this is to
estimate the arrival time of the bus to each bus stop. The
actual calculation is achieved by using geocoding of
coordinates [7].
The server of the prototype version of ITS is MySQL,
the dataset submitted by the Android on-board unit is in
JSON format. The server is multi-threaded in nature
which capable to handle simultaneous requests from
client devices [7]. In reality, there are some more
measurement on server side infrastructure required such
as load-balancer, security concern and fail-over
consideration etc.
The Client module is also the android phone with the
client app installed, the app retrieves the bus information
such as the current location and estimated arrival time to
a particular bus stop [7].
The ITS could integrate the use of NFC for handling
the collection of bus fares. Android phone is now getting
more and more popular in embedding the e-payment.
This also helps the bus company to count the volume of
passenger in particular time [7].
2.6 Future technologies with wearables
The mobile applications are becoming increasingly
penetrating to every corner of our daily life which
involves the both business-to-client (B2C) and business-to-
business (B2B) [10].
With IoT sensors, we could track different information
such as measuring the visits of a physical stores, number
of passenger of the public transport, tracking healthcare
information etc. All these applications are based on the
use of Sensors or in the form wearables IoT devices.
For healthcare perspective, doctor could track the
health condition of the patients with special designed
sensors such as tracking cardiopalmus [10].
The wearable technology could also be applied to field
technical workers. Sensors help to detect oxygen level or
toxic gas and return the data to control panel with
supervisor, this helps to avoid accidents which may be
related to exposure to heat or dangerous materials [10].
Mobile technologies could also be used for managing
events with massive numbers of participants like soccer
games, music concerts. The sensors help to track the
overcrowding and send alerts to the organizer [10].
The up coming trend of application are the integration
of wearable technology and augmented reality (AR)
systems and the biometric tools for mobile user security
[10]. For instance, Pokemon app and pokemon watch is an
application of wearable device and AR gaming, there are
many interactions between the sensors, GPS and AR
engine while the user is playing the game.
The increase of the number of users also leads to the
issues of privacy. These applications involve certain
degree of information sharing, security could be the
anticipated challenge of the development trend of IoT
wearable applications.
2.7 New horizon for IoT in everyday life
IoT supports the development and advancement of
smart home automation. This trend could be extended to
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the 'Sharing Economy' by opening up the home to an IoT
network of suppliers of goods and services for the
neighborhood [1]. For instance, the proactive IoT sensors
could trigger a purchase of food based on the stock at
home. Household furniture could be shared to some new
user if there is any disposal.
The idea consists of three major components: IoT
infrastructure, Appropriate method and 'Sharing
economy'.
The IoT infrastructure are the sensors, networks,
storage, presentation UI which is managable and
controllable by people with privacy and security [1].
The appropriate methods are the application layer
utilizing machine learning, activity sensing, modelling in
order to provide accountable, intelligible and responsive
result [1].
'Share economy' is the application using IoT to support
neighbours, communities alternative marketplaces that
advocates the sharing of goods and services [1].
GrovePi senors kits includes accelerometers, light,
motion, temperature sensors etc [1]. These devices could
be used to built the prototype of IoT application for
'sharing economy'.
3 RESULT
After evaluating the different application domains of
the IoT, it is now becoming the third wave of the internet
in term of the next mega trend. There are five key vertical
adoptions of IoT: connected wearable devices, connected
vehicles, connected homes, connected cities and industrial
Internet [8].
IoT using web services with Android mobile
technologies plays an important role in improving all
daily situations [9].
The significant driving forces are the advancement of
internet connectivity, the adds value of IoT and the
strategical value of big-data associating IoT.
However, there are shared concerns in privacy of IoT.
Devices collect some form of personal information such as
name, address, health information and even credit card
numbers. Some of the sensors are still transmitting data
unencrypted on home network, this may lead to security
breach [2]. The main concerns are the insufficient
authentication and authorization, lack of transport
encryption, insecure web interface and the insecure
software and firmware.
By 2020, there will be up to 26 billion IoT units
predicted to be using in the globe. Addressing the
concerns of security is a priority, a proper security review
is useful for each IoT application and it is to ensure the
implementation meeting the security standard and
ensuring security is a consideration throughout the
product lifecycle [2].
4 CONLCUSION
IoT is the unstoppable trend and keep changing the
practices of our daily activities. In this report, the the several
existing IoT applications have been introduced and evaluated
the rationale of them. Some new and evolving application will
also be available soon.
It is expected that our future daily life will be smarter and
more efficient with the aid from the variety of innovative IoT
applications.
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