Building enhanced environmental traceability solutions: From Thing-to-Thing communications to Generalized Cyber-Physical Systems

In the last decade, many different paradigms related to the named “next-generation technological systems” have appeared: from the Internet-of-Things to Cyber-Physical Systems and Machine-to-Machine communications. Traditionally these systems only consider hardware devices in their designs. However, the experience has proved that the really valuable solutions are which are human focused or environment-focused (biological signal monitoring, people traceability, assisted-living, etc.). In this context, previous machine-focused paradigms have to be redefined. Therefore, this paper analyzes the requirements of technological solutions for environmental monitoring and proposes a coherent framework for their design. Moreover, most important components are identified and some relevant problems in this field are addressed; mainly the identifier management and the system modeling. Finally, a prototype for people traceability based on the proposed paradigms and Bluetooth Beacons technology is described. Results showed that the quality of the provided information is much higher in these new systems than in traditional approaches.