My Research proposal for final year project_Masters

 

 

Research proposal

 

Title:

“IoT-based Intelligent Energy Efficiency Management System for Smart Industries”

Case study:

Agro-processing industries in Rwanda

 

 

SUPERVISORS: Dr. Frederic Nzanywayingoma

          Dr. Omar Gatera

 

 

NAMES: Clement Regis Tuyishime_215028351

 

 

Specialization: ACEIoT_ Wireless intelligent sensor networks (Wisenet)

 

 

 

                                                                                      

 

 

 

1. Abstract

 

The internet of things (IoT) and wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are rapidly developed technologies. IoT Technologies are mainly used to enable the physical objects to collect and exchange data by using wireless network protocols. Moreover, IoT technologies have been applied in different applications including energy control and monitoring. However, energy efficiency has been the main challenge in industries, when comparing the energy consumption, production and cost. Therefore, this research project will develop an IoT-based intelligent energy efficiency management system and algorithm to enhance energy efficiency in current industries and the fourth industrial revolution or industry 4.0 by focusing on agro-processing industries in Rwanda.

 

Keywords: Internet of things (IoT), Wireless sensor networks (WSNs), Energy efficiency, agro-processing industries, and industry 4.0.

 

2. Introduction

 

The myriad of potential applications supported by wireless sensor networks (WSNs) has generated much interest from the research community. Various applications range from small size low industrial monitoring to large-scale energy constrained environmental monitoring. In all cases, an operational network is required to fulfill the application missions. In addition, energy consumption of nodes in different industries is a great challenge in order to minimize the cost of production[1].

 

Industry 4.0 promises to make existing factories smart enough for producing high-quality products with lower manufacturing costs but there are still a lot of challenges based on high-energy consumption in industries. Therefore, it has exerted a considerable impact on controlling and realizing the physical production processes in real-time to achieve greater productivity, worldwide. It will enable a variety of desired quality level products with a high degree of freedom at a constant price, which will be available for customers anytime and anywhere in the world. Currently, all manufacturers demand an autonomous interaction and highly stable local and global interconnectivity among various systems and subsystems in their factories to overcome the growing interconnectivity issues of operators, machines, and products presently, all devices within the factories connected through wired or wireless communication technologies working over traditional industrial protocols for providing stable networking. However, wireless communication technologies, because of their number of advantages, can play an important role to streamline the management of operations in Industry 4.0.[2].

Unlike other networks, WSN has been designed for specific applications, and thus, they must satisfy a set of requirements that differs from one application to another. As a result, great efforts have been devoted to overcoming the energy-saving problem and reliability. Some of the potential application domains are agriculture-industry, healthcare, environment, security and transportation systems. WSNs are the most important technologies that affects these domains in real-world environments, thus, we need more efficient strategies to enhance energy efficiency as one of the main challenges [3].

 

The use of WSN for industrial applications requires accomplishing a set of hard constraints. For instance, monitoring and control of a specific process, demands the development of particular network architectures, mechanisms, and algorithms that guarantee a high communication quality and reliability of the system. In addition, environmental conditions may be hard for industry implementations must ensure data reliability at all times. Finally, the design of an industrial communication network using wireless sensors must ensure the availability of the data, authenticity, and confidentiality[3].

 

WSNs use tiny and inexpensive sensor node devices; these multifunctional miniature devices perform limited and specific monitoring and sensing functions. They permit very low energy consumption and have very low processing power as well as low radio ranges. The sensor nodes will sense, process and then transmit the data to a certain remote sink node (base station) in an autonomous and unattended manner [4].

 

In this project, an IoT-based intelligent energy efficiency management system will be developed with the purpose to enhance energy efficiency in smart industries. With a focus on agro-processing industries, a typical setup of such industries will be determined and simulated to observe certain important parameters that affect the energy efficiency in industries such as energy consumption, temperature, humidity, noise emission, frequency, and illumination. An algorithm will be developed to analyze the data and to create notification on the required action, which can help the operators in industries to act accordingly. This will help the industries to utilize the energy efficiently, to produce in terms quality and quantity, to reduce the cost of production and thus to increase the benefits as well as to enhance the global economy.

 

3. Problem statement

        i.            Insufficiency of Energy efficiency in agro-processing industries.

Rwanda‘s energy balance shows that about 85% of its overall primary energy consumption is based on biomass (99% of all households use biomass for cooking), 11% from petroleum products (transport, electricity generation and industrial use) and 4% from hydro sources for electricity. In April 2011 about 14% of the total population had access to electricity from the grid and the government has started a roll-out programme to rapidly increase this to 16% (350 000 connections) by 2012 and 60% by 2020 [5].

Efficient energy use, sometimes simply called energy efficiency can be interpreted as the reduction of energy use for a given service or level of activity, or more aptly as the art of “Doing more with less”. Energy efficiency and renewable energy are said to be the twin pillars of a sustainable energy policy. In industry, electrical energy is the lifeblood of manufacturing since it is used to convert raw materials into finished products. Furthermore, electrical energy is also one of the most convenient, safe and form of energy for use in the home. But with climate change and declining economies taking center stage globally in recent years, it is imperative that energy shall be used efficiently both to cut usage costs and protect the environment [6].

The agro-industries in Rwanda are one of the major players in the economic sustainability of the country due to the processing of agriculture products. Here, it is noted that more than 80% of population in Rwanda depend their lives on agriculture activities. The use of ICT tools is very in in agro-processing industries and in agriculture in general is very limited. Most of the agro-processing industries use traditional way of processing the production. Therefore, an urgent intervention is required to increase the production and profitability in this sector where efficient energy management system is a key [7].

      ii.            Adoption of the internet of things (IoT) based on WSNs in agro-processing industries.

Researchers and policy makers are now struggling with making rules and setting the standards for adopting in a good manner the usage of wireless sensor networks and the internet of things in general as a mainstream technology in agriculture. This requires the integration of connected devices, cloud computing, big data analytics, high management of rules and policies, new applications, and services to be created in the agriculture sector and related industries which should affect positively the production, cost and economy in general.

 

4. The objectives of the project

General objective:

·         To design an intelligent Energy Efficiency Management System based on IoT Technologies and algorithm for agro-processing industries.

 

Specific objectives:

 

·         To design a system that makes intelligent decisions and able to control the appliances devices at the industry with delivering real time data based on the control parameters including: Temperature, humidity, noise emission, illuminance, energy consumption, and frequency.

·         To implement the proposed system model and algorithm through simulation.

 

 

5. Rationale and literature review

 

Authors	Paper title	Purpose/Problem they are solving	Findings/ Results/ Weakness
1.Juan Aponte-Luis et Al	An Efficient Wireless Sensor Network for Industrial Monitoring and Control [3]	Purpose:   Enhance Low power consumption, Reliability and Security in communication   Solution:   ·         Design strategies(hardware and software) ·         Efficient architecture in power consumption	Findings/Results:   Research paper show the implementation of WSN system    Weakness:   How to achieve energy efficiently? Which types of WSN used?
2.S.Raza, M. Faheem and M. Guenes	Industrial wireless sensor and actuator networks in industry 4.0: Exploring requirements, protocols, and challenges—A MAC survey[2]	Purpose:   Fixing the existing challenges (packet loss, variable communication delay and data rate) of IoT and future directions.   Solution:   Exploring the requirement ,protocols and challenges_ using MAC survey, protocols and OSI models	Findings/Results: ·         Author emphasize on existing challenges and future directions. ·         Discussion and description of IWSN to industry 4.0. ·         Mac solution to solve issue of energy efficiency.   Weakness:   The methodology was not feasible because Mac protocol have disadvantage and IWSN has challenges for future directions
3.Đ.Banđur, B. Jakšić, M.Banđur, S. Jović⁎	An analysis of energy efficiency in WSNs applied in agriculture [8]	Purpose: ·         minimize collision ·         minimize overhearing ·         Minimize idle listening and minimize overhead.   Solution:   ·         Shutting down some of the  among nodes to avoid collision ·         Minimize numbers of packets sing MAC protocols to save energy ·         Enhancing Energy saving routing protocol in WSNs (geographical energy aware, exploiting data aggregation and clustering based energy efficient).	Findings/Results:   The diagram of the simulated network with 10m background greed by calculating :   ·         Average power consumption per node during the simulation runtime: (a) ContikiMAC protocol and (b) CX-MAC protocol)   ·         Simulation using contiki’s Cooja. Weakness: IoT is not considered during methodology
4.Ridha SOUA	Wireless Sensor Networks in Industrial Environment: Energy Efficiency, Delay and Scalability[1]	Purpose:   Description of energy efficiency technics and Protocol in WSN.   Solution: Solution focus on energy efficient routing and duty cycling	Findings/Results:   The author make a Summary of different techniques that tackle the energy efficiency challenge in WSNs and classification of technics into five classes.   Weakness: The methodology is not showing, how energy efficiency is enhanced in an industrial environment.
5.IEC	IEC work for energy efficiency[9]	Purpose:   Develop an  application on energy efficiency and reduction of standby losses   Solution: Technical way to improve energy efficiency	Findings/Results:   Report design of energy efficiency management system   Weakness: There is no proposed algorithm
6.Mininfra,Minecofin	Appliance labelling and MEPS for lights[10]	Purpose:   Proposition of energy efficiency metrics and requirement s on using MEPS levels   Solution:   Standard , threshold and labelling	Findings/Results:   The calculation of energy efficiency   Weakness: The author make a report Only , there is no proposed algorithm
7.P.Kulkarni, D.K.	Energy consumption using IoT and big data analytics approach at smart home[11]	Purpose:   Energy management system to integrate Home energy based on IoT and renewable energy resources.   Solution: ·         Design, implementation and testing of an embedded system.   ·         Smart energy management system based on Server performance , latency and throughput	Findings/Results:   A prototype was designed(hardware and software modules) Weakness:   The integration of IoT is shown!
8.Vignesh Mani, Abhilasha, Gunasekhar	IoT based smart energy management system[12]	Purpose:   Design of IoT based smart energy management system   Solution:   Reporting in controlling the appliance for energy consumption	Findings/Results:   The hardware prototype, Arduino IDE Environment of controlling the appliances, Python receiving side, Power consumption of appliances and total power visualization.   Weakness:   This system developed is not fully complete; a prototype based only for controlling two appliances
9.Republic of Rwanda, MINICT	Smart Rwanda master plan 2015-2020[13]	Purpose:   Improve business and industry productivity efficiently   Solution: ·         ICT sector planning plan(2013-2018)analysis   ·         Economic analysis(environmental) based on agriculture innovation and industrialization   ·         Technological environment  analysis(Wireless network and big data)	Findings/Results:   The development of policies and standardization strategies.   Weakness:   This Paper show only report and plan, there is no proposed algorithm related to enhance energy efficiency.
10.A. Haldikar, P. Lalwani, S. Pandey, A. Chitari.	IoT based industrial management[14]	Purpose:   Developing a system which will automatically monitor the industrial applications and generate alerts/alarms or take intelligent decisions using concept of IOT.     Solution: IoT system that control and manage Industry by using various sensors and control units.	Findings/Results:   No Results described   Weakness:   Methodology  is not shown
11.I. Khajenasiri, A. Estebsari, M. Verhelst, G.Gielen	Review on IoT solution for intelligent  energy  control in building in smart city applications[15]	Purpose:   This paper show an IoT architecture model has been described, in which the things, the people and the cloud services are combined to facilitate application tasks.   Solution: This paper is an overview of every key component for intelligent energy control in buildings for smart cities.	Findings/Results:   ·         The  applications of IoT  in Smart Cities   ·         IoT Software Platform   ·         IoT Hardware Enabling Technologies   ·         IoT Design Challenges   Weakness:   There is no description of an efficient IoT system.
12.J. Martín, L. E, J.G, M. A.G, J. M., D. T. P, L. A, A. H., L. Ernesto.	Review of IoT applications in Agro-industrial and environmental fields.[16]	Purpose:   Review of agro industrial-environmental applications.   Solution:   Development of IoT architecture for agro industry and environmental application Fig 13.	Findings/Results:   This paper provide a compact view of solutions proposed for agro-industrial and environmental problems during the last decade   Weakness:   Methodology is not feasible; there is no proposed algorithm to enhance energy efficiency at industry.
13.Zeeshan Ali Khan	Using energy efficient trust management to protect IoT networks for smart cities[17]	Purpose: Trust management algorithms using Subjective Logic have been proposed for IEEE 802.15.4 based IoT devices.   Solution: ·         On description of smart city and IoT.   ·          Solution have a proactive security mechanism that can identify and quarantine a malicious node that is captured by an adversary.	Findings/Results: ·         Design of a Trust based security Solutions that can minimize energy consumption.   ·         Description of energy sensed information varied with other aspects(Current, Time)   Weakness:   The methodology is not describing the way to enhance energy efficiency

Table 1: Rational and literature review

 

 

Summary done on the same projects:

The Internet of Things (IOT) is the recent advancement in tele-communication that is the future, in which the devices of everyday life will be equipped with microcontrollers, transceivers for digital communication, and suitable protocol that will make them able to communicate with one another and with the users, becoming an integral part of the Internet. The IOT concept, aims in making the Internet more reliable and pervasive. Thus by enabling easy access and interaction with a wide variety of devices such as, for instance, home appliances, surveillance cameras, monitoring sensors, actuators, displays, vehicles, and so on, the IOT will help in the development of various applications that make use of the potentially enormous amount and variety of data generated by such objects to provide new services to citizens, companies, and public administrations[11].

 

Data analytics on this data using business intelligence (BI) platform plays an essential role in energy management decisions for homeowners and the utility alike. The data can be monitored, collected and analyzed using predictive analysis and advanced methods to actionable information in the form of reports, graphs and charts. Thus, this analyzed data in real-time can aid home owners, utilities and utility eco-systems providers to gain significant insights on energy

Consumption of smart homes. The energy service providers can use the power consumption data available with analytics engine to provide flexible and on-demand supply with appropriate energy marketing strategies. The consumers, being aware of their consumption behavior and having a close interaction with the electricity utilities, can adjust and optimize their power consumption and reduce their electricity bills. In order to have an effective cost saving system, it is important to monitor and control the operation of residential loads depending on the aggregate power consumption over desired period, the peak power consumption, the effect of weather/atmospheric conditions and consumption slab rates[11].

 

 

6. Methodology and Research Plan

·         Review of existing intelligent energy efficiency management systems based on IoT Technologies and related algorithms in literature.

·         Design a new intelligent energy efficiency management system based on IoT Technology for agro-processing industries.

·         Development of algorithm for data analysis and notification for the industry operations.

·         Evaluate the performance of new developed system and compare it with other existing findings in literature.

 

 

 

 

 

A.    Use case diagram

Figure 1: Use case diagram of the research project.

 

 

 

 

B. System architecture model

Figure 2: IoT-based system architecture model.

 

The above system architecture model can explained as follows:

 

Typical equipment in agro-processing industry include but not limited to lamps, ventilators, crushing machines, drying machines, cooling machines, packaging machines among others. All these machines and other appliances consume the energy, dissipate the temperature and noise. Power frequency is the conventional value used in the electricity supply; this value should be stable for the good operation of appliances or equipment. Illumination is another important parameter in closed environment; this should be in acceptable range for the good working environment, health and safety of people. All these parameters should be observed and well-regulated or controlled for the overall efficiency of the industry. 

 

In this project, these parameters will generated within a specific period of time and analyzed using a new developed algorithm; the results will be displayed together with the notification on the status of equipment or environment in general. The algorithm will create a notification according to the threshold values obtained through the survey in industries for typical equipment and standards values available in national or international standards. The following standards will be consulted but not limited to:

 

·         RS ISO 50001: Energy management system.

·         RS ISO 14001: Environment management system-Requirement with guidance for use.

·         RS 237: Acoustics – Noise Pollution – Tolerance limits.

 

A notification or alert may be: “normal environment temperature, high temperature in production room or on crushing machine, normal noise emission or high noise emission in a certain room/place, normal energy consumption or high energy consumption on a particular machine/equipment, normal frequency or unstable frequency”. All these notification will be generated periodically and will help the operators to adjust the machines, replace the equipment or to perform any other maintenance activity.

 

The system architecture model is composed of:

1.      Set up of typical equipment in agro-processing industry

 

2.      Microcontroller: an IoT microprocessor (ESP 8266) programmable to perform input/output tasks using LoRa protocol for data exchange.

 

3.      Sensors: different sensors that capture the required parameters in the industry (temperature, humidity, noise emission, illuminance, energy consumption, and frequency) at any given time. All parameters chosen to show the effect they will produce based on taking the values captured by the sensors at agro-processing industry and comparing them with an accepted value and set the required notification.

 

4.      Cloud server: a virtual server host the data of the industry through using Microcontroller and LoRa protocols for data communication.

 

5.      Application: A web-based application used to visualize and to analyze data captured with sensors. Data will be analyzed and compared with the standard thresholds values and determine the energy efficiency status of each equipment in industry. A notification or alert about the status will be sent to users through outlook or email to intervene where necessary. 

 

6.      User: a person or administrator in charge of controlling and/or monitoring energy efficiency in the industry.

 

7.      IoT protocols: in this research project, LoRa is the IoT communication protocol used to transfer data captured by sensors along a distance of  1Km from one device to another and is mainly applicable for its availability and low power consumption.

Gantt chart:

Activities	MONTHS/Timelines
	3	4	5	6	7
Research Proposal presentation
Literature Review
New system design and interpretation
Simulation and performance analysis using iFogsim or any other simulator.
Paper writing & submission
Data compilation Correction, and submission of thesis

 

Table 2:  Gantt chart that describes the planned activities and timeline to ensure a proposed research plan.

7. Budget proposal for research project

Activities/Total amount	Budget proposal
1.      Field transport for Data collection	200$
2.      Paper writing, submission and conference attendance	2500$
3.      Contingency	300$
Total amount	3000$

Table 3:  Requested budget for the planned activities based on proposed research plan.

 

8. Anticipated Outputs

·         Project methodology will put out an IoT-based intelligent energy efficiency management system design that monitor and analyze the sensing parameters (temperature, humidity, noise emission, illumination, energy consumption and, frequency).

 

·         An algorithm that analyze the data and create notification for industrial operations

 

·         The visualization of results and notification or alert on email or industry outlook application.

 

Note: The project is expected to continue working in future on the following:

·         Expending the work to other type of industries and increasing the sensing parameters

·         Working on automatic controls or operations of machines or equipment or any other appliance in industries

·         Implement a real scenario in industry or testbed application of the proposed system model.

 

9. Potential impacts of the project

This project will have an impact in the following different ways but not limited to:

·         Low energy consumption and high energy efficiency in industries

·         Enhancement of mass production in industries

·         Effective cost of production

·         Improvement of health and safety of staff in industries

·         Protection of the environment

·         Facilitating industry maintenance and operations

·         Implementation of the fourth industrial revolution technologies in industries

·         Contribution to stable development and sustainable economy of countries

·         Contribution to ICT-based economy application in agro-processing industries in Rwanda

·         Reduction of waste and increase of profitability

 

 

 

10. References

 

[1]      R. Soua, “Wireless sensor networks in industrial environment: energy efficiency, delay and scalability,” pp. 1–215, 2014.

[2]      S. Raza, M. Faheem, and M. Guenes, “Industrial wireless sensor and actuator networks in industry 4.0: Exploring requirements, protocols, and challenges—A MAC survey,” Int. J. Commun. Syst., vol. 32, no. 15, pp. 1–32, 2019, doi: 10.1002/dac.4074.

[3]      J. Aponte-Luis, J. A. Gómez-Galán, F. Gómez-Bravo, M. Sánchez-Raya, J. Alcina-Espigado, and P. M. Teixido-Rovira, “An efficient wireless sensor network for industrial monitoring and control,” Sensors (Switzerland), vol. 18, no. 1, 2018, doi: 10.3390/s18010182.

[4]      M. Masood, M. M. Fouad, S. Seyedzadeh, and I. Glesk, “Energy efficient software defined networking algorithm for wireless sensor networks,” Transp. Res. Procedia, vol. 40, pp. 1481–1488, 2019, doi: 10.1016/j.trpro.2019.07.205.

[5]      Energypedia, “Rwanda Energy Situation,” Webinar Series: Sustainable Energy in Humanitarian Settings. [Online]. Available: https://energypedia.info/wiki/Rwanda_Energy_Situation.

[6]      RURA, “Guidelines promoting energy efficiency measures,” pp. 1–10, 2012.

[7]      C. Alippi, G. Anastasi, M. Di Francesco, and M. Roveri, “IEEE Instrumentation & Measurement Magazine [List-Staff],” IEEE Instrum. Meas. Mag., vol. 16, no. 4, pp. 2a-2a, 2013, doi: 10.1109/mim.2013.6572940.

[8]      Đ. Banđur, B. Jakšić, M. Banđur, and S. Jović, “An analysis of energy efficiency in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) applied in smart agriculture,” Comput. Electron. Agric., vol. 156, no. December 2018, pp. 500–507, 2019, doi: 10.1016/j.compag.2018.12.016.

[9]      “IEC work for Energy Efficiency Tools to overcome barriers.”

[10]    T. Ministry, “Appliance Labelling and MEPS for Lights Standards , threshold and labelling Final Version,” pp. 1–42, 2019.

[11]    P. Kulkarni and D. K. Chitre, “Energy Consumption Using IoT and Big Data Analytics Approach in Smart Home,” pp. 10328–10338, 2018, doi: 10.15680/IJIRSET.2018.0710029.

[12]    V. Mani, Abhilasha, Gunasekhar, Lavanya, and S. Sankaranarayanan, “Iot based smart energy management system,” Int. J. Appl. Eng. Res., vol. 12, no. 16, pp. 5455–5462, 2017.

[13]    I. Ajala, “Abbreviations and Acronyms,” Eur. Muslims their Foreign Policy Interes. Identities Loyal., pp. vii–viii, 2018, doi: 10.2307/j.ctv4ncp1t.3.

[14]    A. Haldikar, “IOT Based Industrial Management,” Int. J. Res. Appl. Sci. Eng. Technol., vol. V, no. XI, pp. 2945–2947, 2017, doi: 10.22214/ijraset.2017.11406.

[15]    I. Khajenasiri, A. Estebsari, M. Verhelst, and G. Gielen, “A Review on Internet of Things Solutions for Intelligent Energy Control in Buildings for Smart City Applications,” Energy Procedia, vol. 111, no. September 2016, pp. 770–779, 2017, doi: 10.1016/j.egypro.2017.03.239.

[16]    J. M. Talavera et al., “Review of IoT applications in agro-industrial and environmental fields,” Comput. Electron. Agric., vol. 142, no. 118, pp. 283–297, 2017, doi: 10.1016/j.compag.2017.09.015.

[17]    Z. A. Khan, “Using energy-efficient trust management to protect IoT networks for smart cities,” Sustain. Cities Soc., vol. 40, pp. 1–15, 2018, doi: 10.1016/j.scs.2018.03.026.