Caracterización Avanzada de Tanques de Fermentación de Café mediante una Red Multidistribuida de Sensores RFID

La fermentación de las bayas de café se considera una et apa crítica en el procesado del café debido a su impacto en la calidad final del producto. La temperatura es una de las principales variables de control que puede ser utilizada para predecir el final del proceso, teniendo en cuenta que varios autores indican que el control de esta etapa es fundamental para evitar la mala calidad de la be bida final. En la práctica, la fermentación es el paso menos controlado del proceso, haciendo que los beneficiaderos operen lejos de sus condiciones óptimas en términos de costes de operación (es decir, elevados consumos de energía y agua) y de calidad del producto final. El objetivo de este trabajo es caracterizar los gradientes de temperatura que se dan en los tanques de fermentación mediante una red multi-distribuida de sensores autónomos, inalámbricos y de bajo coste (registradores de temperatura del tipo RFID, identificadores de radiofrecuencia semipasivos modelo TurboTag®).Para ello se utilizan dos metodologías: la interpolación espacial en coordenadas polares y los diagramas de espacio de fase. Se supervisaron dos fermentaciones reales de café, en El Cauca (Colombia), mediante sensores sumergidos directamente en la masa en fermentación. Los fermentadores eran tanques de plástico cubiertos, uno de ellos colocado en el interior de un almacén, permaneciendo el otro a la intemperie. El rango de variación máximo de temperatura en los tanques fue de 4,5ºC. La interpolación espacial mostró, incluso en el fermentador bajo las condiciones menos desfavorables en el interior del almacén, un gradiente radial de temperatura instantáneo de 0,1 °C/cm desde el centro hasta el perímetro del tanque y un gradiente vertical de temperatura de 0,25 °C/cm para sensores con coordenadas polares iguales. La combinación de ambas metodologías permitió la identificación consistente de los puntos calientes y fríos de ambas fermentaciones.

Caracterización Avanzada de Tanques de Fermentación de Café medinate una Red Multidistribuida de Sensores RFID

Las hortalizas mínimamente procesadas (MP) son productos frescos, higienizados, que sufren alteraciones físicas durante el proceso de elaboración que afectan a su metabolismo, determinando incrementos en la tasa respiratoria y producción de etileno. Los daños que se originan por las operaciones físicas, vuelven a estos productos más susceptibles a la colonización de microorganismos, inducen procesos de cicatrización de heridas y afectan su calidad organoléptica y funcional. Por ello en estos productos es especialmente crítico el aseguramiento de las condiciones de refrigeración desde el productor hasta el consumidor. En este estudio se presenta el análisis de las temperaturas registradas en Santiago (Chile) durante la cadena de producción y distribución de lechugas baby leaf MP tipo Salanova®, monitorizadas mediante sensores de temperatura y humedad relativa (I-Buttons®) y tarjetas RFID con sensor de temperatura (TurboTag®), colocados en el interior de las bolsas de lechuga y en el exterior de las cajas de agrupación. El objetivo del presente trabajo es generar información sobre el historial térmico de estos productos desde la huerta a la nevera del consumidor, así como optimizar los protocolos de colocación de dispositivos y sistematizar procedimientos de análisis de datos espacio-temporales. Con los datos registrados, se simuló la cadena de producción, distribución y venta, realizando un seguimiento de la calidad comercial del producto, evaluándose la tasa respiratoria y las características sensoriales sin degustación. Se observó que no solo se producen saltos térmicos discretos, sino que las lechugas estuvieron durante gran parte de su vida útil en condiciones sub-óptimas de temperatura, comprometiéndose su calidad sensorial.

Biometric authentication of users through iris by using key binding and similarity preserving hash functions = Autenticación biométrica de usuarios a través del iris mediante la ocultación de claves y funciones resumen que preservan la similitud

El extraordinario auge de las nuevas tecnologías de la información, el desarrollo de la Internet de las Cosas, el comercio electrónico, las redes sociales, la telefonía móvil y la computación y almacenamiento en la nube, han proporcionado grandes beneficios en todos los ámbitos de la sociedad. Junto a éstos, se presentan nuevos retos para la protección y privacidad de la información y su contenido, como la suplantación de personalidad y la pérdida de la confidencialidad e integridad de los documentos o las comunicaciones electrónicas. Este hecho puede verse agravado por la falta de una frontera clara que delimite el mundo personal del mundo laboral en cuanto al acceso de la información. En todos estos campos de la actividad personal y laboral, la Criptografía ha jugado un papel fundamental aportando las herramientas necesarias para garantizar la confidencialidad, integridad y disponibilidad tanto de la privacidad de los datos personales como de la información. Por otro lado, la Biometría ha propuesto y ofrecido diferentes técnicas con el fin de garantizar la autentificación de individuos a través del uso de determinadas características personales como las huellas dáctilares, el iris, la geometría de la mano, la voz, la forma de caminar, etc. Cada una de estas dos ciencias, Criptografía y Biometría, aportan soluciones a campos específicos de la protección de datos y autentificación de usuarios, que se verían enormemente potenciados si determinadas características de ambas ciencias se unieran con vistas a objetivos comunes. Por ello es imperativo intensificar la investigación en estos ámbitos combinando los algoritmos y primitivas matemáticas de la Criptografía con la Biometría para dar respuesta a la demanda creciente de nuevas soluciones más técnicas, seguras y fáciles de usar que potencien de modo simultáneo la protección de datos y la identificacíón de usuarios. En esta combinación el concepto de biometría cancelable ha supuesto una piedra angular en el proceso de autentificación e identificación de usuarios al proporcionar propiedades de revocación y cancelación a los ragos biométricos. La contribución de esta tesis se basa en el principal aspecto de la Biometría, es decir, la autentificación segura y eficiente de usuarios a través de sus rasgos biométricos, utilizando tres aproximaciones distintas: 1. Diseño de un esquema criptobiométrico borroso que implemente los principios de la biometría cancelable para identificar usuarios lidiando con los problemas acaecidos de la variabilidad intra e inter-usuarios. 2. Diseño de una nueva función hash que preserva la similitud (SPHF por sus siglas en inglés). Actualmente estas funciones se usan en el campo del análisis forense digital con el objetivo de buscar similitudes en el contenido de archivos distintos pero similares de modo que se pueda precisar hasta qué punto estos archivos pudieran ser considerados iguales. La función definida en este trabajo de investigación, además de mejorar los resultados de las principales funciones desarrolladas hasta el momento, intenta extender su uso a la comparación entre patrones de iris. 3. Desarrollando un nuevo mecanismo de comparación de patrones de iris que considera tales patrones como si fueran señales para compararlos posteriormente utilizando la transformada de Walsh-Hadarmard. Los resultados obtenidos son excelentes teniendo en cuenta los requerimientos de seguridad y privacidad mencionados anteriormente. Cada uno de los tres esquemas diseñados han sido implementados para poder realizar experimentos y probar su eficacia operativa en escenarios que simulan situaciones reales: El esquema criptobiométrico borroso y la función SPHF han sido implementados en lenguaje Java mientras que el proceso basado en la transformada de Walsh-Hadamard en Matlab. En los experimentos se ha utilizado una base de datos de imágenes de iris (CASIA) para simular una población de usuarios del sistema. En el caso particular de la función de SPHF, además se han realizado experimentos para comprobar su utilidad en el campo de análisis forense comparando archivos e imágenes con contenido similar y distinto. En este sentido, para cada uno de los esquemas se han calculado los ratios de falso negativo y falso positivo. ABSTRACT The extraordinary increase of new information technologies, the development of Internet of Things, the electronic commerce, the social networks, mobile or smart telephony and cloud computing and storage, have provided great benefits in all areas of society. Besides this fact, there are new challenges for the protection and privacy of information and its content, such as the loss of confidentiality and integrity of electronic documents and communications. This is exarcebated by the lack of a clear boundary between the personal world and the business world as their differences are becoming narrower. In both worlds, i.e the personal and the business one, Cryptography has played a key role by providing the necessary tools to ensure the confidentiality, integrity and availability both of the privacy of the personal data and information. On the other hand, Biometrics has offered and proposed different techniques with the aim to assure the authentication of individuals through their biometric traits, such as fingerprints, iris, hand geometry, voice, gait, etc. Each of these sciences, Cryptography and Biometrics, provides tools to specific problems of the data protection and user authentication, which would be widely strengthen if determined characteristics of both sciences would be combined in order to achieve common objectives. Therefore, it is imperative to intensify the research in this area by combining the basics mathematical algorithms and primitives of Cryptography with Biometrics to meet the growing demand for more secure and usability techniques which would improve the data protection and the user authentication. In this combination, the use of cancelable biometrics makes a cornerstone in the user authentication and identification process since it provides revocable or cancelation properties to the biometric traits. The contributions in this thesis involve the main aspect of Biometrics, i.e. the secure and efficient authentication of users through their biometric templates, considered from three different approaches. The first one is designing a fuzzy crypto-biometric scheme using the cancelable biometric principles to take advantage of the fuzziness of the biometric templates at the same time that it deals with the intra- and inter-user variability among users without compromising the biometric templates extracted from the legitimate users. The second one is designing a new Similarity Preserving Hash Function (SPHF), currently widely used in the Digital Forensics field to find similarities among different files to calculate their similarity level. The function designed in this research work, besides the fact of improving the results of the two main functions of this field currently in place, it tries to expand its use to the iris template comparison. Finally, the last approach of this thesis is developing a new mechanism of handling the iris templates, considering them as signals, to use the Walsh-Hadamard transform (complemented with three other algorithms) to compare them. The results obtained are excellent taking into account the security and privacy requirements mentioned previously. Every one of the three schemes designed have been implemented to test their operational efficacy in situations that simulate real scenarios: The fuzzy crypto-biometric scheme and the SPHF have been implemented in Java language, while the process based on the Walsh-Hadamard transform in Matlab. The experiments have been performed using a database of iris templates (CASIA-IrisV2) to simulate a user population. The case of the new SPHF designed is special since previous to be applied i to the Biometrics field, it has been also tested to determine its applicability in the Digital Forensic field comparing similar and dissimilar files and images. The ratios of efficiency and effectiveness regarding user authentication, i.e. False Non Match and False Match Rate, for the schemes designed have been calculated with different parameters and cases to analyse their behaviour.

Signal Processing Techniques for Chipless UWB RFID Thermal Threshold Detector Detection.

This letter presents signal processing techniques to detect a passive thermal threshold detector based on a chipless time-domain ultrawideband (UWB) radio frequency identification (RFID) tag. The tag is composed by a UWB antenna connected to a transmission line, in turn loaded with a biomorphic thermal switch. The working principle consists of detecting the impedance change of the thermal switch. This change occurs when the temperature exceeds a threshold. A UWB radar is used as the reader. The difference between the actual time sample and a reference signal obtained from the averaging of previous samples is used to determine the switch transition and to mitigate the interferences derived from clutter reflections. A gain compensation function is applied to equalize the attenuation due to propagation loss. An improved method based on the continuous wavelet transform with Morlet wavelet is used to overcome detection problems associated to a low signal-to-noise ratio at the receiver. The average delay profile is used to detect the tag delay. Experimental measurements up to 5 m are obtained.

A Computational Architecture Based on RFID Sensors for Traceability in Smart Cities

Information Technology and Communications (ICT) is presented as the main element in order to achieve more efficient and sustainable city resource management, while making sure that the needs of the citizens to improve their quality of life are satisfied. A key element will be the creation of new systems that allow the acquisition of context information, automatically and transparently, in order to provide it to decision support systems. In this paper, we present a novel distributed system for obtaining, representing and providing the flow and movement of people in densely populated geographical areas. In order to accomplish these tasks, we propose the design of a smart sensor network based on RFID communication technologies, reliability patterns and integration techniques. Contrary to other proposals, this system represents a comprehensive solution that permits the acquisition of user information in a transparent and reliable way in a non-controlled and heterogeneous environment. This knowledge will be useful in moving towards the design of smart cities in which decision support on transport strategies, business evaluation or initiatives in the tourism sector will be supported by real relevant information. As a final result, a case study will be presented which will allow the validation of the proposal.

Phenolic acids and abscisic acid in Australian Eucalyptus honeys and their potential for floral authentication

Seven phenolic acids related to the botanical origins of nine monofloral Eucalyptus honeys from Australia, along with two abscisic isomers, have been analyzed. The mean content of total phenolic acids ranges from 2.14 mg/100 g honey of black box (Eucalyptus largiflorens) honey to 10.3 mg/100 g honey of bloodwood (Eucalyptus intermedia) honey, confirming an early finding that species-specific differences of phytochemical compositions occur quantitatively among these Eucalyptus honeys. A common profile of phenolic acids, comprising gallic, chlorogenic, coumaric and caffeic acids, can be found in all the Eucalyptus honeys, which could be floral markers for Australian Eucalyptus honeys. Thus, the analysis of phenolic acids could also be used as an objective method for the authentication of botanical origin of Eucalyptus honeys. Moreover, all the honey samples analyzed in this study contain gallic acid as the main phenolic acid, except for stringybox (Eucalyptus globoidia) honey which has ellagic acid as the main phenolic acid. This result indicates that the species-specific differences can also be found in the honey profiles of phenolic acids. Further-more, the analysis of abscisic acid in honey shows that the content of abscisic acid varies from 0.55 mg/100 g honey of black box honey to 4.68 mg/ 100 g honey of bloodwood honey, corresponding to the contents of phenolic acids measured in these honeys. These results have further revealed that the HPLC analysis of honey phytochemical constituents could be used individually and/or jointly for the authentication of the botanical origins of Australian Eucalyptus honeys. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Flavonoids in Australian Melaleuca, Guioa, Lophostemon, Banksia and Helianthus honeys and their potential for floral authentication

Flavonoids in Australian honeys from five botanical species (Melaleuca, Guioa, Lophostemon, Banksia and Helianthus) have been analyzed in relation to their floral origins. Tea tree (Melaleuca quinquenervia) and heath (Banksia ericifolia) honeys show a common flavonoid profile comprising myricetin (3,5,7,3',4',5'-hexahydroxyflavone), tricetin (5,7,3',4,5'-pentahydroxyflavone), querectin (3,5,7,3',4'-pentahydroxyflavone) and luteolin (5,7,3',4'-tetrahydroxyflavone), which was previously suggested as a floral marker for an Australian Eucalyptus honey (bloodwood or Eucalyptus intermedia honey). These honeys of various floral species can be differentiated by their levels of total flavonoids, being 2.12 mg/100 g for heath honey and 6.35 m/100 g for tea tree honey. In brush box (Lophostemon conferta) honey, the flavonoid profile comprising mainly tricetin, luteolin and quercetin is similar to that of another Eucalyptus honey (yellow box or Eucalyptus melliodora honey). These results indicate that the flavonoid profiles in some of the Australian non-Eucalyptus honeys may contain more or less certain flavonoids from Eucalyptus floral sources because of the diversity and extensive availability of Eucalyptus nectars for honeybee foraging yearly around or a possible cross contamination of the monofloral honeys during collection, transportation and/or storage. Further analyses are required to differentiate and/or verify the botanical sources of the flavonoids that contribute to the flavonoid profiles of these honeys, by restricting honey sampling areas and procedures, employing other complementary analytical methods (e.g. pollen analysis, sugar profile) and using materials (e.g. nectar) directly sourced from the flowering plant for comparative studies. In Australian crow ash (Guioa semiglauca) honey, myricetin, tricetin, quercetin, luteolin and an unknown flavonoid have been found to be the main flavonoids, which is characteristic only to this type of honey, and could thus be used as the floral marker, while in Australian sunflower (Helianthus annuus) honey, the content of total flavonoids is the smallest amount comparing to those in the other honeys analysed in this study. However, the flavonoid quercetin and the flavonoid profile mainly consisting of quercetin, quercetin 3,3'-dimethyl ether (5,7,4'-trihydroxy3,3'-dimethoxyflavone), myricetin and luteolin are characteristic only to this sunflower honey and could thus be used for the authentication.

Phenolic acids in Australian Melaleuca, Guioa, Lophostemon, Banksia and Helianthus honeys and their potential for floral authentication

Eight phenolic acids and two abscisic acid isomers in Australian honeys from five botanical species (Melaleuca, Guioa, Lophostemon, Banksia and Helianthus) have been analyzed in relation to their botanical origins. Total phenolic acids present in these honeys range from 2.13 mg/100 g sunflower (Helianthus annuus) honey to 12.11 mg/100 g tea tree (Melaleuca quinquenervia) honey, with amounts of individual acids being various. Tea tree honey shows a phenolic profile of gallic, ellagic, chlorogenic and coumaric acids, which is similar to the phenolic profile of an Australian Eucalyptus honey (bloodwood or Eucalyptus intermedia honey). The main difference between tea tree and bloodwood honeys is the contribution of chlorogenic acid to their total phenolic profiles. In Australian crow ash (Guioa semiglauca) honey, a characteristic phenolic profile mainly consisting of gallic acid and abscisic acid could be used as the floral marker. In brush box (Lophostemon conferta) honey, the phenolic profile, comprising mainly gallic acid and ellagic acid, could be used to differentiate this honey not only from the other Australian non-Eucalyptus honeys but also from a Eucalyptus honey (yellow box or Eucalyptus melliodora honey). However, this Eucalyptus honey could not be differentiated from brush box honey based only on their flavonoid profiles. Similarly, the phenolic profile of heath (Banksia ericifolia) honey, comprising mainly gallic acid, an unknown phenolic acid (Phl) and coumaric acid, could also be used to differentiate this honey from tea tree and bloodwood honeys, which have similar flavonoid profiles. Coumaric acid is a principal phenolic acid in Australian sunflower honey and it could thus be used together with gallic acid for the authentication. These results show that the HPLC analysis of phenolic acids and abscisic acids in Australian floral honeys Could assist the differentiation and authentication of the honeys. © 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A sensor-based multimedia authentication system

User requirements of multimedia authentication are various. In some cases, the user requires an authentication system to monitor a set of specific areas with respective sensitivity while neglecting other modification. Most current existing fragile watermarking schemes are mixed systems, which can not satisfy accurate user requirements. Therefore, in this paper we designed a sensor-based multimedia authentication architecture. This system consists of sensor combinations and a fuzzy response logic system. A sensor is designed to strictly respond to given area tampering of a certain type. With this scheme, any complicated authentication requirement can be satisfied, and many problems such as error tolerant tamper method detection will be easily resolved. We also provided experiments to demonstrate the implementation of the sensor-based system

Context-enhanced authentication for infrastructureless network environments

Infrastructureless networks are becoming more popular with the increased prevalence of wireless networking technology. A significant challenge faced by these infrastructureless networks is that of providing security. In this paper we examine the issue of authentication, a fundamental component of most security approaches, and show how it can be performed despite an absence of trusted infrastructure and limited or no existing trust relationship between network nodes. Our approach enables nodes to authenticate using a combination of contextual information, harvested from the environment, and traditional authentication factors (such as public key cryptography). Underlying our solution is a generic threshold signature scheme that enables distributed generation of digital certificates.

RFID technology to support environmentally sustainable supply chain management

RFID is one of the contemporary technologies that has the potential to enable improved data gathering and cross-companies integration, and thus achieve cost efficiency. However, RFID has not yet become primary approach to collect data from the supply chain activities. This is partly due to (relative) high cost of implementation, partly due to technical deficiencies, as well as cross-company systems integration issues. This paper discusses a potential application area for RFID technology, which is environmentally sustainable supply chain management. The paper discusses the current practices in green supply chain management, and proposes possible applications of RFID enabling green supply chain management. The paper also proposes an idea of ad hoc RFID systems which are rapidly deployable and require minimal, if at all, pre-existing infrastructure. © 2010 IEEE.

Optimizing supply chain waste management through the use of RFID technology

This paper presents a Decision Support System framework based on Constrain Logic Programming and offers suggestions for using RFID technology to improve several of the critical procedures involved. This paper suggests that a widely distributed and semi-structured network of waste producing and waste collecting/processing enterprises can improve their planning both by the proposed Decision Support System, but also by implementing RFID technology to update and validate information in a continuous manner. © 2010 IEEE.