Concern about everything related to energy is increasingly latent in the world and therefore the use of energy saving concepts has been increasing over the past several years. The interest in the subject has allowed a conceptual evolution in the scientific community regarding the understanding of the adequate use of energy. The objective of this work is to determine the contribution made by international institutions to the specialized publications in the area of energy-saving from 1939 to 2018, using Scopus Database API Interface. The methodology followed in this research was to perform a bibliometric analysis of the whole scientific production indexed in Scopus. The world’s scientific production has been analysed in the following domains: First the trend over time, types of publications and countries, second, the main subjects and keywords, third, main institutions and their main topics, and fourth, the main journals and proceedings that publish on this topic. Then, these data are pr... [more]

In the current energy ecosystem, the need for a Hybrid Appliance Load Monitoring System (HALMS) to establish a smarter grid and energy infrastructure is undeniable. The increasing popularity of the Internet of Things (IoT) has suddenly pushed the demand for smart and connected devices. This review introduces the term smart plug as a device that uses IoT for establishing HALMS. These smart plugs are a handy solution to make the so-called ‘dumb’ devices smart. The strategy of smart plugs to enhance the energy management experience in connected spaces is presented. This study extensively highlights the current smart plug technologies and the relevant activities and limitations that need to overcome the requirements of HALMS.

In order to build a local electricity market (LEM), community members can trade electricity peer-to-peer (P2P) with their neighbors. This paper proposes a Hierarchical Bidding and Transaction Structure based on blockchain (HBTS). First, combined with the multi-agents, each microgrid corrects the estimated cost probability distribution of other microgrids by Bayesian theorem, making its probability closer to the accurate probability. Second, for maximize the benefits of the microgrid, this paper uses the Nash equilibrium in the Cournot model to find the optimal quotation and output of different bidding strategies for the microgrid under different power demand conditions. Then the exchange of electricity translates into an exchange of digital proof of electricity purchases and sales of electricity on the Hyperledger Fabric, ensuring the security of the transaction process and the irreparable modification of ledgers. Finally, we verify the effectiveness of the bidding strategy through exp... [more]

Blockchain is a peer-to-peer trustless network that keeps records of digital assets without any central authority. With the passage of time, the sustainability issue of blockchain is rising. This paper discusses two major sustainability issues of blockchain: power consumption and scalability. It discusses the challenge of power consumption by analyzing various approaches to estimating power consumption in the literature. A case study of bitcoin is presented for this purpose. The study presents a review of the growing energy consumption of bitcoin along with a solution for immersion cooling in blockchain mining. The second challenge addressed in this research is scalability. With the increase in network size, scalability issues are also increasing as the number of transactions per second is decreasing. In other words, blockchain is observing low throughput with its increase in size. The paper discusses research studies and techniques proposed in the literature. The paper then investigat... [more]

Nowadays, the Internet of Things (IoT) has a wide impact on many potential applications. The impact of IoT on performing demand-side management (DSM) in an Indian educational institution has not been researched in depth before. In this research work, an IoT-enabled SDSMS (Smart DSM System) has been deployed with the main objective of minimizing electricity tariff and also to tweak the quality of user comfort. It can be feasible by prioritizing available renewable PV solar energy during peak hours in an Indian educational institution. DSM has been performed using day-ahead load shifting and rescheduling the different classes of institutional loads by applying hybrid BPSOGSA (Binary Particle Swarm Optimization and Gravitational Search Algorithm). The BPSOGSA performance on DSM has been evaluated based on electricity tariff, peak demand range, and PAR and compared with the outcomes of both binary conventional algorithms BPSO and BGSA, respectively. The proposed method enhances the degree... [more]

Information technologies possess the significant potential to improve the efficiency of resources and optimize energy usage, as well as make a significant contribution to the sustainable circular economy (CE). The concept of digital sufficiency provides a framework for understanding how information technology can be part of significant achievements in the circular economy, especially when embraced by business companies. Moreover, the possibility of the implementation of closed-loop resources has become possible with the development of digital manufacturing technologies. However, the research of establishing the CE in SMEs, especially in fossil-energy-abundant countries, such as the Russian Federation, is quite limited. Our paper fills in this gap by studying the adoption of CE practices as well as the investments for promoting CE in Russian SMEs through such factors as the existence of R&D, bank loans, and access to grants at the national and international level. It achieves this based... [more]

Wireless technologies are increasingly used in industrial applications. These technologies reduce cabling, which is costly and troublesome, and introduce several benefits for their application in terms of flexibility to modify the layout of the nodes and scaling of the number of connected devices. They may also introduce new functionalities since they ease the connections to mobile devices or parts. Although they have some drawbacks, they are increasingly accepted in industrial applications, especially for monitoring and supervision tasks. Recently, they are starting to be accepted even for time-critical tasks, for example, in closed-loop control systems involving slow dynamic processes. However, wireless technologies have been evolving very quickly during the last few years, since several relevant technologies are available in the market. For this reason, it may become difficult to select the best alternative. This perspective article intends to guide application designers to choose t... [more]

Rooftop solar power generation is becoming more widespread in residential microgrids. As well as new concepts of electricity markets, such as peer-to-peer (P2P) markets, where consumers and prosumers can directly exchange locally generated energy with each other without any intermediary third party for sustainable development. Data security is a big concern with energy trading; therefore, blockchain technology is being used more and more in energy markets. It has the potential to simplify P2P energy trading. In this paper, blockchain is designed to fit into the decentralized nature of the P2P market, securing the payment mechanism and transaction data store. The blockchain-enabled platform is developed using the Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus algorithm, and is verified with the help of the Postman application programming interface (API). All transactions involving the buying and selling of energy are handled by a miner without the help of any third parties. The study of a five-user resi... [more]

With more and more wind turbines coming into operation, inspecting wind farms has become a challenging task. Currently, the inspection robot has been applied to inspect some essential parts of the wind turbine nacelle. The detection of multiple objects in the wind turbine nacelle is a prerequisite for the condition monitoring of some essential parts of the nacelle by the inspection robot. In this paper, we improve the original YOLOX-Nano model base on the short monitoring time of the inspected object by the inspection robot and the slow inference speed of the original YOLOX-Nano. The accuracy and inference speed of the improved YOLOX-Nano model are enhanced, and especially, the inference speed of the model is improved by 72.8%, and it performs better than other lightweight network models on embedded devices. The improved YOLOX-Nano greatly satisfies the need for a high-precision, low-latency algorithm for multi-object detection in wind turbine nacelle.

Around 20% of the population is disabled. Many people have mobility problems, including the elderly and people with young children. It is crucial to adapt cities to the needs of these people and, at the same time, to the needs of all residents. This is the subject of universal design, which should consider inhabitants’ needs and habits. This information can be collected by Internet of Things (IoT) devices that observe and listen to residents. Residents do not accept constant surveillance, so the public may not accept data collection by IoT sensors. This study aimed to identify and evaluate factors influencing the acceptance of data collection by IoT devices for universal design. For this purpose, an online survey was prepared by the Warsaw University of Technology. The following statistical methods were used to analyze the data: descriptive statistics, exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, reliability analysis and structural equation modeling. This paper identifies... [more]

This paper proposes an octagonal layout for enhancing the ability of resisting electromagnetic interference in Through Silicon Via (TSV) array. The influential factors of crosstalk noise between TSVs are investigated, including the TSV pitch, signal and ground TSVs location, and signal types (single-end and differential signal) by using a coplanar wave guide (CPW) testing structure. These results, based on traditional TSV arrays, show that a staggered TSV layout with differential signals had lower crosstalk noise. On this basis, the octagonal layout of TSV array is proposed and we show that it has obvious superiority in reducing occupied silicon area and crosstalk noise. Compared with traditional TSV arrays, the crosstalk noise is almost reduced by 44%. In order to further reduce the silicon area occupied by TSV without worsening crosstalk noise, the new division TSV structure is proposed in which a large TSV was substituted by four smaller TSVs. The area occupied by a single TSV and T... [more]

For the task of garbage classification, to overcome the main disadvantages of the Yolov4 target detection algorithm, such as the large network model and lower detection accuracy for small objects, a lightweight Yolov4 target detection network based on the EfficientNet-B0 fusion ECA mechanism is presented. The lightweight EfficientNet was used to replace the original backbone network, which reduces the parameters of the network model and improves the detection accuracy. Moreover, a deep detachable convolution block replaced the common convolution block in the original network, which further reduced the number of parameters in the model. In the feature pyramid model PANet, a lightweight ECA attention mechanism was introduced to realize the weight analysis of the importance of different channel feature maps through cross-channel interaction, allowing the network to extract more obvious features with which to distinguish categories. Finally, a Soft-NMS algorithm was introduced in the post-... [more]

The etiology of cardiovascular disease is still an unsolved world problem, and high morbidity, disability, and mortality are the main characteristics of cardiovascular diseases. There is, therefore, a need for effective and rapid early prediction of likely outcomes in patients with cardiovascular disease using artificial intelligence (AI) techniques. The Internet of Things (IoT) is becoming a catalyst for enhancing the capabilities of AI applications. Data are collected through IoT sensors and analyzed and predicted using machine learning (ML). Existing traditional ML models do not handle data inequities well and have relatively low model prediction accuracy. To address this problem, considering the data observation mechanism and training methods of different algorithms, this paper proposes an ensemble framework based on stacking model fusion, from Support Vector Machines (SVM), K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN), Logistic Regression (LR), Random Forest (RF), Extra Tree (ET), Gradient Boosting D... [more]

As the global market develops along with technological advances, especially the opening of markets in developing and underdeveloped countries, the logistics industry is considered by managers to be a useful tool to link different functions of corporate strategy. Logistics is the process of planning, implementing and controlling the movement of goods or information that are related to raw materials (inputs) and final products (outputs) from the point of origin to the point of consumption in order to meet customer requirements. The logistics industry brings about many positive effects, not only for the national economy but also for creating equal business opportunities for businesses of all economic sectors. However, large companies in the logistics industry still depend on EDI or APIS to exchange secure authentication data, which increase the security of operations within the industry, but this is the cause of a lot of confusion with serious consequences on the supply chain when it is t... [more]

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has spread quickly around the globe. COVID-19 has affected the education sector due to partial or complete lockdowns that were implemented throughout the world between 2019 and 2022. This pandemic severely affected the education sectors in developing countries such as Pakistan. All the educational institutions in Pakistan turned to online education. However, the education sector lacked the teaching experts, digital experts, the Internet of Things (IoT), and resources needed for online education. The shift from traditional to online education has created many challenges for developing countries during a pandemic such as COVID-19, for example, access to the IoT. This paper aims to introduce the factor model (F model), which will provide guidelines for the government and universities for minimizing the deficiencies related to online education. The F-model will identify all the factors that affect the performance and guide the user about their importance. Thi... [more]

During the current post-epidemic period, hygiene requirements and health needs in the hospitality industry keep increasing, and consumers become more concerned about the cleanliness of hotels and have stronger demands for contactless services in hotels. The growth and popularity of IoT technology in China make it more accessible to a wider range of service industries and provides the basis for the application of IoT in the hospitality industry. The application of IoT devices in hotels mainly includes intelligent robots, intelligent guest control, systems, etc., which helps to realize contactless services in hotels. This research reviews the entire development cycle of the application of IoT in the hospitality industry, from the founding, development, and expansion of companies to their IPO and post-IPO maturity. From a perspective combined with IoT technology, we can cope with the changing industry models, business models, and operation modes in the hospitality industry more efficientl... [more]

In the last decades, the increasing complexity of industrial information technology has led to the emergence of new trends in manufacturing. Factories are using multiple Internet of Things (IoT) platforms to harvest sensor information to improve production. Such a transformation contributes to efficiency growth and reduced production costs. To deal with the heterogeneity of the services within an IoT system, Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is referred to in the literature as being advantageous for the design and development of software to support IoT-based production processes. The aim of SOA-based design is to provide the leverage to use and reuse loosely coupled IoT services at the middleware layer to minimise system integration problems. We propose a system architecture that follows the SOA architectural pattern and enables developers and business process designers to dynamically add, query or use instances of existing modular software in the IoT context. Furthermore, an analysi... [more]

Cybersecurity protocols enable several levels of protection against cyberattacks (digital attacks) that spread across network devices, platform programs, and network applications. On the Internet of Things (IoT), cyberattacks are generally intended to access and change/destroy sensitive information, which may reduce IoT benefits. Moreover, recent IoT systems are experiencing a critical challenge in designing a lightweight and robust cybersecurity mechanism on resource-constrained IoT devices. The cybersecurity challenges facing the IoT that should be taken into consideration are identifying compromised devices, data/service protection, and identifying impacted IoT users. This paper proposes an unforgeable digital signature integrated into an effective lightweight encryption (ELCD) mechanism that utilizes the secure key distribution in an elliptic curve Diffie−Hellman (ECDH) and resolves the weak bit problem in the shared secret key due to the Diffie−Hellman exchange. The ELCD mechanism... [more]

Unifying research data collection methods and capturing data streams in an organized and standardized manner are becoming increasingly important in laboratories as digital processes and automation progressively shape the laboratory workflows. In this context, the Internet of Things (IoT) not only offers the opportunity to minimize time-consuming and repetitive tasks by delegating them to machines, but it also supports scientists in curating data. As a contribution to the establishment of IoT tools in academic research laboratories, a microscale reaction calorimeter is exemplarily connected to a modular open-source IoT-platform. The microcalorimeter’s process data is streamed to the data platform for data repository and analysis. Advantages of the platform from academia’s point of view are presented. Finally, the application of the platform was successfully tested with the hydrolysis of acetic anhydride. The data were accessed and analyzed exclusively via the IoT-platform, which provide... [more]

Water is a precious resource that can be intelligently managed. Effective water usage demands computerized home water supply management in a culture where water tanks, motors, and pumps are ubiquitous. Water management is crucial for the government and the citizens in countries like Saudi Arabia. The issue is providing a constant, high-quality, low-cost water supply. This study introduces a smart water management (IoT-SWM) system that may be used in structures that do not have access to a constant water supply but instead have water stored in enormous tanks underneath. The GSM module collects water use data from each home in a community and transmits it to the cloud, where it is analyzed. A smart water grid is a hybrid application that uses an inspection mode to identify leaks and measure the resulting height differences to keep track of the tank’s water level. The system automatically deactivates the affected section after detecting any water shortage or malfunction in the system mech... [more]

Blockchain with its numerous advantages is often considered a foundational technology with the potential to revolutionize a wide range of application domains, including enterprise applications. These enterprise applications must meet several important criteria, including scalability, performance, and privacy. Enterprise blockchain applications are frequently constructed on private blockchain platforms to satisfy these criteria. Hyperledger Fabric is one of the most popular platforms within this domain. In any privacy blockchain system, including Fabric, every organisation needs to utilise a peer node (or peer nodes) to connect to the blockchain platform. Due to the ever-increasing size of blockchain and the need to support a large user base, the monitoring and the management of different resources of such peer nodes can be crucial for a successful deployment of such blockchain platforms. Unfortunately, little attention has been paid to this issue. In this work, we propose the first-eve... [more]

An excellent e-commerce logistic cycle is based on reducing the delivery time to satisfy customers, accelerating the distribution chain activities at each delivery station, increasing the transported stowage objects for mobilization parallelograms containers to ingest most orders, and reducing the unused area. Because the stowage steps are considered an NP-complexity, the authors introduce the Oriented Stowage Map (OSM) using one of the heuristic methods (i.e., the camel algorithm) that are programmed by the C-sharp software to be easily managed via the Internet of Things (IoT), which is embedded in the distribution chain. The authors called it Oriented Stowage’s Map by Camel algorithm “OSM-CA”. This methodology is considered one of the mat-heuristic approaches (i.e., decomposition metaheuristics) because we resorted to using mathematical steps (branch-and-bound). The OSM-CA reduces transport costs by 7% and delivery time by 14%. Additionally, it shows superiority over the solo Ant-col... [more]

The Internet of Things (IoT) has grown more pervasive in recent years. It makes it possible to describe the physical world in detail and interact with it in several different ways. Consequently, IoT has the potential to be involved in many different applications, including healthcare, supply chain, logistics, and the automotive sector. IoT-based smart healthcare systems have significantly increased the value of organizations that rely heavily on IoT infrastructures and solutions. In fact, with the recent COVID-19 pandemic, IoT played an important role in combating diseases. However, IoT devices are tiny, with limited capabilities. Therefore, IoT systems lack encryption, insufficient privacy protection, and subject to many attacks. Accordingly, IoT healthcare systems are extremely vulnerable to several security flaws that might result in more accurate, quick, and precise diagnoses. On the other hand, blockchain technology has been proven to be effective in many critical applications. Bl... [more]

The article deals with the quality of measured data, which is necessary for effective quality management and successful implementation of the concept Industry 4.0 and the related concept Quality 4.0. The quality of the measured data is determined by the properties of the used measurement system, which are evaluated by measurement system analysis (MSA). Attention is paid to increasing the effectiveness of the repeatability and reproducibility analysis often used in practice. The importance of graphical tools of analysis, which are often neglected in practice, is emphasized in this regard, and new or modified graphical tools are proposed. The proposed graphical tools allow more detailed analysis of the data collected for the study and reveal the causes of the measurement system variability. The information obtained by applying these graphical tools is a valuable basis for proposals of appropriate actions to improve the measurement system. The use of the proposed graphical tools is presen... [more]

The modern industry, production, and manufacturing core is developing based on smart manufacturing (SM) systems and digitalization. Smart manufacturing’s practical and meaningful design follows data, information, and operational technology through the blockchain, edge computing, and machine learning to develop and facilitate the smart manufacturing system. This process’s proposed smart manufacturing system considers the integration of blockchain, edge computing, and machine learning approaches. Edge computing makes the computational workload balanced and similarly provides a timely response for the devices. Blockchain technology utilizes the data transmission and the manufacturing system’s transactions, and the machine learning approach provides advanced data analysis for a huge manufacturing dataset. Regarding smart manufacturing systems’ computational environments, the model solves the problems using a swarm intelligence-based approach. The experimental results present the edge compu... [more]