Motivation

Cyber-physical systems are well applicable to ports, where the right balance between economy and ecology is a key issue. The underlying benefits of a smart port range from more efficient traffic management over monitoring to controlling of supply chains and work flows. Research challenges involved are, e.g., the (regenerative) energy supply of all devices (i.e., sensors and actuators), medium access and network traffic control in densely colocated wireless networks as well as their cooperation. Here, the key challenge is to assess the capabilities of the neighboring devices: sensor networks and cyber-physical systems are expected to be heterogeneous. This applies to computing power and memory size but also energy consumption and budget. Finding out about these differences and balancing between these constraints is vital to accomplish common tasks efficiently and autonomously.
 

Goals and Contributions

Supported by the Hamburg Port Authority (HPA), the Institute smartPORT of the Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH) carries out research in this domain. We investigate aspects of miniature, low-power sensing and actuating devices regarding energy supply from the environment (solar, wind, water flow, vibrations) as well as low-power network protocols and control algorithms for a reliable access to the devices and a steady data flow. Furthermore, we assess the usage of low-power energy-harvesting WiFi sensors and actuators to integrate cyber-physical systems seamlessly into existing infrastructures. A central aspect is to optimize and schedule power consumption within the given boundaries of the WiFi standards. Applicable ideas cover solar energy harvesting with weather forecasting as well as intelligent wake-up scheduling and sensor/actuator power control.