EEEM048/COM3023- Internet of Things

Lecture 6- Intelligent Data Processing

Dr Payam Barnaghi, Dr Chuan H Foh

Centre for Communication Systems Research
Electronic Engineering Department
University of Surrey

Autumn Semester 2015/2016 1

 Wireless Sensor (and Actuator)
Networks
Inference/
Processing of
IoT data Services?

End-user
Operating
Systems? Core network
Gateway e.g. Internet
Protocols?
Protocols? Data
Aggregation/
In-node Data Fusion
Processing
Sink
Gateway Computer services
node

- The networks typically run Low Power Devices

- Consist of one or more sensors, could be different type of sensors (or actuators)
Key characteristics of IoT devices

−Often inexpensive sensors (actuators) equipped with

a radio transceiver for various applications, typically
low data rate ~ 10-250 kbps (but not always).
−Deployed in large numbers
−The sensors should coordinate to perform the
desired task.
−The acquired information (periodic or event-based) is
reported back to the information processing centre
(or some cases in-network processing is required)
−Solutions are often application-dependent.

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3
Beyond conventional sensors

− Human as a sensor (citizen sensors)

− e.g. tweeting real world data and/or events
− Software sensors
− e.g. Software agents/services generating/representing data

Road block, A3

Road block, A3

4
Suggest a different route
 The benefits of data processing in IoT

− Turn 12 terabytes of Tweets created each day into sentiment analysis

related to different events/occurrences or relate them to products and
services.
− Convert (billions of) smart meter readings to better predict and balance
power consumption.
− Analyze thousands of traffic, pollution, weather, congestion, public
transport and event sensory data to provide better traffic and smart city
management.
− Monitor patients, elderly care and much more…

− Requires: real-time, reliable, efficient (for low power and resource limited
nodes), and scalable solutions.

5
Partially adapted from: What is Bog Data?, IBM
IoT Data Access

− Publish/Subscribe (long-term/short-term)
− Ad-hoc query
− The typical types of data request for sensory data:
− Query based on
− ID (resource/service) – for known resources
− Location
− Type
− Time – requests for freshness data or historical data;
− One of the above + a range [+ Unit of Measurement]
− Type/Location/Time + A combination of Quality of Information attributes
− An entity of interest (a feature of an entity on interest)
− Complex Data Types (e.g. pollution data could be a combination of
different types)

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Sensor Data

− The sensory data represents physical world observations and

measurements and requires time and location and other
descriptive attributes to make the data more meaningful.
− For example, a temperature value of 15 degree will be more
meaningful when it is described with spatial (e.g. Guildford
city centre) and temporal (e.g. 8:15AM GMT, 14-11-2014),
and unit (e.g. Celsius) attributes.
− The sensory data can also include other detailed meta-data
that describe quality or device related attributes (e.g.
Precision, Accuracy).

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Sensor Data

15, C, 08:15, 51.243057, -0.589444

8
Data Processing and Interpretation

−Intelligent Processing and Interpretation of

data (this week)
−Meta-data enhancement, annotation and
semantically described IoT data
(next week)

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“Each single data item could be important.”

“Relying merely on data from sources that are

unevenly distributed, without considering
background information or social context, can
lead to imbalanced interpretations and
decisions.”

10
IoT Data Challenges

− Interoperability: various data in different formats, from

different sources (and different qualities)
− Discovery: finding appropriate device and data sources
− Access: Availability and (open) access to resources and data
− Search: querying for data
− Integration: dealing with heterogeneous device, networks and
data
− Interpretation: translating data to knowledge usable by people
and applications
− Scalability: dealing with large number of devices and myriad of
data and computational complexity of interpreting the data.

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IoT Data Processing
Data collections
and processing WSN
within the Network-enabled
networks Devices
WSN

Network
services/storage
and processing
units Data/service access
at application level

WSN
WSN
WSN

Data Discovery

Network-enabled
Devices Service/
Resource
Discovery
 In-network processing

− Mobile Ad-hoc Networks can be seen as a set of nodes that deliver bits
from one end to the other;
− WSNs, on the other end, are expected to provide information, not
necessarily original bits
− Gives additional options
− e.g., manipulate or process the data in the network
− Main example: aggregation
− Applying aggregation functions to a obtain an average value of measurement
data
− Typical functions: minimum, maximum, average, sum, …
− Not amenable functions: median

Source: Protocols and Architectures for Wireless Sensor Networks, Protocols and Architectures for Wireless Sensor Networks 13
Holger Karl, Andreas Willig, chapter 3, Wiley, 2005 .
 In-network processing

− Depending on application, more sophisticated processing of data can take

place within the network
− Example edge detection: locally exchange raw data with neighboring nodes,
compute edges, only communicate edge description to far away data sinks
− Example tracking/angle detection of signal source: Conceive of sensor nodes
as a distributed microphone array, use it to compute the angle of a single
source, only communicate this angle, not all the raw data
− Exploit temporal and spatial correlation
− Observed signals might vary only slowly in time; so no need to transmit all
data at full rate all the time
− Signals of neighboring nodes are often quite similar; only try to transmit
differences (details a bit complicated, see later)

Source: Protocols and Architectures for Wireless Sensor Networks, Protocols and Architectures for Wireless Sensor Networks 14
Holger Karl, Andreas Willig, chapter 3, Wiley, 2005 .
 Data-centric networking

− In typical networks (including ad-hoc networks), network transactions are

addressed to the identities of specific nodes
− A “node-centric” or “address-centric” networking paradigm
− In a redundantly deployed sensor networks, specific source of an event,
alarm, etc. might not be important
− Redundancy: e.g., several nodes can observe the same area
− Thus: focus networking transactions on the data directly instead of their
senders and transmitters; data-centric networking
− Specially this idea is reinforced by the fact that we might have multiple sources
to provide information and observations form the same or similar areas.
− Principal design change

Source: Protocols and Architectures for Wireless Sensor Networks, Protocols and Architectures for Wireless Sensor Networks 15
Holger Karl, Andreas Willig, chapter 3, Wiley, 2005 .
Data Aggregation

− Computing a smaller representation of a number of data

items (or messages) that is extracted from all the individual
data items.
− For example computing min/max or mean of sensor data.
− More advance aggregation solutions could use approximation
techniques to transform high-dimensionality data to lower-
dimensionality abstractions/representations.
− The aggregated data can be smaller in size, represent
patterns/abstractions; so in multi-hop networks, nodes can
receive data form other node and aggregate them before
forwarding them to a sink or gateway.
− Or the aggregation can happen on a sink/gateway node.
 Aggregation example

− Reduce number of transmitted bits/packets by applying an aggregation

function in the network

1 1

1
1
3 1
1 1
6 1

1 1

Source: Holger Karl, Andreas Willig, Protocols and Architectures for Wireless Sensor Networks, Protocols and Architectures for Wireless Sensor Networks, chapter 3, Wiley, 2005 .
Efficacy of an aggregation mechanism

− Accuracy: difference between the resulting value or representation and

the original data
− Some solutions can be lossless or lossly depending on the applied
techniques.
− Completeness: the percentage of all the data items that are included in the
computation of the aggregated data.
− Latency: delay time to compute and report the aggregated data
− Computation foot-print; complexity;
− Overhead: the main advantage of the aggregation is reducing the size of
the data representation;
− Aggregation functions can trade-off between accuracy, latency and overhead;

− Aggregation should happen close to the source.

 Publish/Subscribe

− Achieved by publish/subscribe paradigm

− Idea: Entities can publish data under certain names
− Entities can subscribe to updates of such named data
− Conceptually: Implemented by a software bus
− Software bus stores subscriptions, published data; names used as filters;
subscribers notified when values of named data changes

Publisher 1 Publisher 2
− Variations
− Topic-based P/S –
inflexible
− Content-based P/S – Software bus
use general predicates
over named data
Subscriber 1 Subscriber 2 Subscriber 3

Source: Holger Karl, Andreas Willig, Protocols and Architectures for Wireless Sensor Networks, Protocols and Architectures for Wireless Sensor Networks, chapter 12, Wiley, 2005
.
 MQTT Pub/Sub Protocol

− MQ Telemetry Transport (MQTT) is a lightweight broker-based

publish/subscribe messaging protocol.
− MQTT is designed to be open, simple, lightweight and easy to implement.
− These characteristics make MQTT ideal for use in constrained
environments, for example in IoT.
−Where the network is expensive, has low bandwidth or is
unreliable
−When run on an embedded device with limited processor or
memory resources;
− A small transport overhead (the fixed-length header is just 2 bytes), and
protocol exchanges minimised to reduce network traffic
− MQTT was developed by Andy Stanford-Clark of IBM, and Arlen Nipper
of Cirrus Link Solutions.

Source: MQTT V3.1 Protocol Specification, IBM, http://public.dhe.ibm.com/software/dw/webservices/ws-mqtt/mqtt-v3r1.html

 MQTT

− It supports publish/subscribe message pattern to provide one-to-many message

distribution and decoupling of applications
− A messaging transport that is agnostic to the content of the payload
− The use of TCP/IP to provide basic network connectivity
− Three qualities of service for message delivery:
− "At most once", where messages are delivered according to the best efforts of
the underlying TCP/IP network. Message loss or duplication can occur.
− This level could be used, for example, with ambient sensor data where it
does not matter if an individual reading is lost as the next one will be
published soon after.
− "At least once", where messages are assured to arrive but duplicates may
occur.
− "Exactly once", where message are assured to arrive exactly once. This level
could be used, for example, with billing systems where duplicate or lost
messages could lead to incorrect charges being applied.

Source: MQTT V3.1 Protocol Specification, IBM, http://public.dhe.ibm.com/software/dw/webservices/ws-mqtt/mqtt-v3r1.html

 MQTT Message Format

− The message header for each MQTT command message contains a fixed header.
− Some messages also require a variable header and a payload.
− The format for each part of the message header:

— DUP: Duplicate delivery

— QoS: Quality of Service
— RETAIN: RETAIN flag
—This flag is only used on PUBLISH messages. When a client sends a PUBLISH
to a server, if the Retain flag is set (1), the server should hold on to the message
after it has been delivered to the current subscribers.
—This allows new subscribers to instantly receive data with the retained, or
Last Known Good, value.

Source: MQTT V3.1 Protocol Specification, IBM, http://public.dhe.ibm.com/software/dw/webservices/ws-mqtt/mqtt-v3r1.html

Sensor Data as time-series data

− The sensor data (or IoT data in general) can be seen as time-
series data.
− A sensor stream refers to a source that provide sensor data
over time.
− The data can be sampled/collected at a rate (can be also
variable) and is sent as a series of values.
− Over time, there will be a large number of data items
collected.
− Using time-series processing techniques can help to reduce
the size of the data that is communicated;
− Let’s remember, communication can consume more
energy than communication;
Sensor Data as time-series data

− Different representation method that introduced for time-series data can

be applied.
− The goal is to reduce the dimensionality (and size) of the data, to find
patterns, detect anomalies, to query similar data;
− Dimensionality reduction techniques transform a data series with n items
to a representation with w items where w < n.
− This functions are often lossy in comparison with solutions like normal
compression that preserve all the data.
− One of these techniques is called Symbolic Aggregation Approximation
(SAX).
− SAX was originally proposed for symbolic representation of time-series
data; it can be also used for symbolic representation of time-series sensor
measurements.
− The computational foot-print of SAX is low; so it can be also used as a an
in-network processing technique.
 In-network processing
Using Symbolic Aggregate Approximation (SAX)

fggfffhfffffgjhghfff

jfhiggfffhfffffgjhgi

fggfffhfffffgjhghfff

SAX Pattern (blue) with word length of 20 and a vocabulary of 10 symbols

over the original sensor time-series data (green)
Source: P. Barnaghi, F. Ganz, C. Henson, A. Sheth, "Computing Perception from Sensor Data", 25
in Proc. of the IEEE Sensors 2012, Oct. 2012.
Symbolic Aggregate Approximation
(SAX)
− SAX transforms time-series data into symbolic string representations.
− Symbolic Aggregate approXimation was proposed by Jessica Lin et al at the
University of California –Riverside;
− http://www.cs.ucr.edu/~eamonn/SAX.htm .

− It extends Piecewise Aggregate Approximation (PAA) symbolic representation

approach.
− SAX algorithm is interesting for in-network processing in WSN because of its
simplicity and low computational complexity.
− SAX provides reasonable sensitivity and selectivity in representing the data.
− The use of a symbolic representation makes it possible to use several other
algorithms and techniques to process/utilise SAX representations such as hashing,
pattern matching, suffix trees etc.
Processing steps in SAX
− SAX transforms a time-series X of length n into the string of
arbitrary length, where typically, using an alphabet A of size a
> 2.
− The SAX algorithm has two main steps:
− Transforming the original time-series into a PAA
representation
− Converting the PAA intermediate representation into a
string during.
− The string representations can be used for pattern matching,
distance measurements, outlier detection, etc.
 Piecewise Aggregate Approximation

− In PAA, to reduce the time series from n dimensions to w

dimensions, the data is divided into w equal sized “frames.”
− The mean value of the data falling within a frame is calculated
and a vector of these values becomes the data-reduced
representation.
− Before applying PAA, each time series to have a needs to be
normalised to achieve a mean of zero and a standard
deviation of one.
− The reason is to avoid comparing time series with
different offsets and amplitudes;

Source: Jessica Lin, Eamonn Keogh, Stefano Lonardi, and Bill Chiu. 2003. A symbolic representation of time series, with implications for streaming algorithms. In
Proceedings of the 8th ACM SIGMOD workshop on Research issues in data mining and knowledge discovery (DMKD '03). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2-11.
SAX- normalisation before PAA

Timeseries (c): 2, 3, 4.5, 7.6, 4, 2, 2, 2, 3, 1

Mean (μ): μ= (2+3+4.5+7.6+4+2+2+2+3+1)/10= 3.11
Standard deviation (σ):
(2-3.11)2 = 1.2321
(3-3.11)2 = 0.0121
(4.5-3.11)2 = 1.9321
(7.6-3.11)2 = 20.1601
1.2321+0.0121+ 1.9321+ 20.1601+
(4-3.11)2 = 0.7921 0.7921+ 1.2321+ 1.2321+ 1.2321+
(2-3.11)2 = 1.2321 0.0121+4.4521 = 33.5211
(2-3.11)2 = 1.2321
(2-3.11)2 = 1.2321 σ = √ (33.5211/10) = 1.79691402131
(3-3.11)2 = 0.0121
(1-3.11)2 = 4.4521
Normalisation

Timeseries (c): 2, 3, 4.5, 7.6, 4, 2, 2, 2, 3, 1

Normalised: zi = (ci – μ)/ σ

σ = 1.79691402131
μ = 3.11
z1 = (2- 3.11)/1.79691402131 = -0.617725716
z2 = (3-3.11)/ 1.79691402131= -0.061216062
z3 = (4.5-3.11)/ 1.79691402131= 0.773548419
z4 = (7.6-3.11)/ 1.79691402131= 2.498728346
z5 = (4-3.11)/ 1.79691402131= 0.495293592
z6 = (2-3.11)/ 1.79691402131= -0.617725716
z7 = (2-3.11)/ 1.79691402131= -0.617725716
z8 = (2-3.11)/ 1.79691402131= -0.617725716
z9 = (3-3.11)/ 1.79691402131= -0.061216062
z10 = (1-3.11)/ 1.79691402131= -1.17423537

Normalised Time series (z): -0.617725716, -0.061216062, 0.773548419,

2.498728346, 0.495293592, -0.617725716, -0.617725716, -0.617725716, -
0.061216062, -1.17423537
PAA calculation

Timeseries (c): 2, 3, 4.5, 7.6, 4, 2, 2, 2, 3, 1

Normalised Timeseries (z): -0.617725716, -0.061216062,
0.773548419, 2.498728346, 0.495293592, -0.617725716, -
0.617725716, -0.617725716, -0.061216062, -1.17423537

PAA (w=5): -0.339470889, 1.636138382, -0.061216062, -

0.617725716, -0.617725716
PAA to SAX Conversion

− Conversion of the PAA representation of a time-series into

SAX is based on producing symbols that correspond to the
time-series features with equal probability.
− The SAX developers have shown that time-series which are
normalised (zero mean and standard deviation of 1) follow a
Normal distribution (Gaussian distribution).
− The SAX method introduces breakpoints that divides the
PAA representation to equal sections and assigns an alphabet
for each section.
− For defining breakpoints, Normal inverse cumulative distribution
function
 Breakpoints in SAX

− “Breakpoints: breakpoints are a sorted list of numbers B = β 1,…, β a-1

such that the area under a N(0,1) Gaussian curve from βi to βi+1 = 1/a”.

Source: Jessica Lin, Eamonn Keogh, Stefano Lonardi, and Bill Chiu. 2003. A symbolic representation of time series, with implications for streaming algorithms. In Proceedings of the
8th ACM SIGMOD workshop on Research issues in data mining and knowledge discovery (DMKD '03). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2-11.
 Alphabet representation in SAX

− Let’s assume that we will have 4 symbols alphabet: a,b,c,d

− As shown in the table in the previous slide, the cut lines for this alphabet
(also shown as the thin red lines on the plot below) will be { -0.67, 0, 0.67
}

Source: JMOTIF Time series mining, http://code.google.com/p/jmotif/wiki/SAX

SAX Represetantion

Timeseries (c): 2, 3, 4.5, 7.6, 4, 2, 2, 2, 3, 1

Normalised Timeseries (z): -0.617725716, -0.061216062,
0.773548419, 2.498728346, 0.495293592, -0.617725716, -
0.617725716, -0.617725716, -0.061216062, -1.17423537

PAA (w=5): -0.339470889, 1.636138382, -0.061216062, -

0.617725716, -0.617725716
Cut off ranges: {-0.67, 0, 0.67}
Alphabet: a ,b ,c, d

SAX representation: bdbbb

Features of the SAX technique

− SAX divides a time series data into equal segments and then
creates a string representation for each segment.
− The SAX patterns create the lower-level abstractions that are
used to create the higher-level interpretation of the
underlying data.
− The string representation of the SAX mechanism enables to
compare the patterns using a specific type of string similarity
function.
Interpretation of data

− A primary goal of interconnecting devices and

collecting/processing data from them is to create situation
awareness and enable applications, machines, and human users
to better understand their surrounding environments.
− The understanding of a situation, or context, potentially
enables services and applications to make intelligent decisions
and to respond to the dynamics of their environments.
− Next week, more on annotation and interpretation of data,.

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Quiz

− Consider this sensor measurements from a

stream:
− C = 2,3,5,0,1,3,2,0,0
− Calculate the normalised time series.
− Calculate PAA (w=3)
− Calculate SAX (alphabet size =3)
Acknowledgements

− Some parts of the content are adapted from:

− Holger Karl, Andreas Willig, Protocols and Architectures for Wireless Sensor
Networks, Protocols and Architectures for Wireless Sensor Networks,
chapters 3 and 12, Wiley, 2005 .
− Jessica Lin, Eamonn Keogh, Stefano Lonardi, and Bill Chiu. 2003. A symbolic
representation of time series, with implications for streaming algorithms. In
Proceedings of the 8th ACM SIGMOD workshop on Research issues in data mining
and knowledge discovery (DMKD '03). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2-11.
− JMOTIF Time series mining, http://code.google.com/p/jmotif/wiki/SAX
Questions?

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