IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine

This article is a single-source introduction to the emerging concept of smart cities. It can be used for familiarizing researchers with the vast scope of research possible in this application domain. The smart city is primarily a concept, and there is still not a clear and consistent definition among practitioners and academia. As a simplistic explanation, a smart city is a place where traditional... View full abstract»

Today, the number of Internet of Things (IoT) devices in all aspects of life is increasing exponentially. Our cities are getting smarter and informing us about our surroundings in a contextual manner. However, we face significant challenges in deploying, managing, and collecting data from these devices. In addition, we must address the problem of storing and mining that data for higher-quality IoT... View full abstract»

The blockchain is emerging as one of the most propitious and ingenious technologies of cybersecurity. In its germinal state, the technology has successfully replaced economic transaction systems in various organizations and has the potential to revamp heterogeneous business models in different industries. Although it promises a secure distributed framework to facilitate sharing, exchanging, and th... View full abstract»

In 2008, the emergence of the blockchain as the foundation of the first-ever decentralized cryptocurrency not only revolutionized the financial industry but proved a boon for peer-to-peer (P2P) information exchange in the most secure, efficient, and transparent manner. The blockchain is a public ledger that works like a log by keeping a record of all transactions in chronological order, secured by... View full abstract»

In this article, we provided a tutorial on MEC technology and an overview of the MEC framework and architecture recently defined by the ETSI MEC ISG standardization group. We described some examples of MEC deployment, with special reference to IoT uses since the IoT is recognized as a main driver for 5G. After having also discussed benefits and challenges for MEC toward 5G, we can say that MEC has... View full abstract»

Current activities in the Internet of Things (IoT) are focused on architectures, protocols, and networking for the efficient interconnection of heterogeneous things, infrastructure deployment, and creation of value-added services. The majority of the IoT products, services, and platforms are supported by cloud-computing platforms. With the IoT being a multidisciplinary ecosystem, it is now being u... View full abstract»

In the last few years, we have witnessed an exponential growth in research activity into the advanced training of convolutional neural networks (CNNs), a field that has become known as deep learning. This has been triggered by a combination of the availability of significantly larger data sets, thanks in part to a corresponding growth in big data, and the arrival of new graphics-processing-unit (G... View full abstract»

Mobile banking refers to the use of a mobile device (e.g., a smartphone) to perform online banking activities, while away from the home computer, for transferring funds, monitoring account balance and bill payments, and so on. It provides a great convenience to bank customers, but it suffers from various types of attacks that are possible on the mobile banking infrastructure. We present the evolut... View full abstract»

A dvanced technological innovations and the Internet appear to be available everywhere. However, a large section of society is still on the wrong side of the digital divide, unable to fully enjoy the benefits of the revolutionary changes taking place. This article explores the scientific basis for secure easy-to-use Internet and web access for the elderly, the digitally illiterate, and others left... View full abstract»

If stolen, personal information collected from consumers by smart consumer devices connected to the Internet of Things (IoT) can cause enormous harm. That's why the success and wide adoption of IoT devices will rely heavily on gaining the trust of consumers. In this article, we offer a definition of consumer trust as it relates to IoT technology, and we propose a consumer trust model to reflect th... View full abstract»

The Internet-of-Things (IoT) has taken over the business spectrum, and its applications vary widely from agriculture and health care to transportation. A hospital environment can be very stressful, especially for senior citizens and children. With the ever-increasing world population, the conventional patient-doctor appointment has lost its effectiveness. Hence, smart health care becomes very impo... View full abstract»

Smart grid technology is being developed to upgrade the electric power grid through a smart communication structure, extensive computing resources, and information and sensing technologies. However, these cyberphysical components increase the security risk and introduce new vulnerabilities to the power system. This article presents a comprehensive survey of the major aspects of power system securi... View full abstract»

The Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the most promising technologies of the fifth-generation (5G) mobile broadband system. Data-driven wireless services of 5G systems require unprecedented capacity and availability. In this article, we introduce the potential issues of consumer devices under a unifying 5G framework. We provide a state-of-theart overview with an emphasis on the technical challeng... View full abstract»

Consumers, manufacturers, and inventors have been pondering the idea of electrifying transportation for decades, but engines on the road remain largely based on fossil fuel. Alternate technologies like hydrogen fuel cells and biofuels have been on the near horizon for years. Despite the advent of various strong policy incentives, electric vehicles (EVs) have had limited success in the market. Howe... View full abstract»

We live in the age of After Google (AG), where information is just one click away and talking just one touch away. The near future of the AG age is the Internet of Things (IoT), where physical things connected over a network will take part in Internet activities to exchange information about themselves and their surroundings. In other words, the IoT is nothing but a computing concept in which ever... View full abstract»

Advanced driver assistance systems (ADASs) are accelerating the growth of infrared (IR) devices used in automotive applications. Some of these are well-known applications, such as ambient light sensing, steering wheel sensors, and rain sensors. However, many new technologies for ADASs, such as LIDAR, driver monitoring, adaptive beam, and matrix lighting, are still in the early evolution phase of t... View full abstract»

Bitcoin, the first cryptocurrency, has the ability to transmit and verify digital assets on the Internet without specific management entities. There are currently more than 1,500 cryptocurrencies with a market capitalization of more than US$480 billion. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies were built on blockchain technologies to prevent forgery and falsification while distributing transaction data ... View full abstract»

As a distributed, heterogeneous, and pluralistic energy network, the Energy Internet has emerged as a promising solution to resolve the critical issues of environmental pollution and energy crisis. In the Energy Internet, a massive number of Internet of Things (IoT) devices are deployed for data collection and the timely collection of various energy-related data in large volume and high frequency,... View full abstract»

This article presents an approach for efficient operation of nonsmart household appliances under a smart grid environment using the proposed smart load node (SLN). In a real-world scenario, there are many nonsmart loads currently in use, and embedding appliance-specific intelligence into them to turn them into smart loads will be more expensive compared to the proposed SLN, which is a common solut... View full abstract»

Substantial ongoing research now uses smartphones as a research platform for various studies and interventions. With the aging population becoming a frequent focus of research, an increasing number of studies and projects attempt to develop technological interventions for the elderly population. The extent to which the elderly population (i.e., seniors) adopts and uses smartphones is not clear. Ma... View full abstract»

As we become more aware of the connection between emotional states and physical health, affective computing continues to rise as a field of interest. Affective computing uses both hardware and software technology to detect the affective state of a person. It is an active research area that has seen much growth in technology geared toward affective state analysis. Its origin is credited to Dr. Rosa... View full abstract»

Consumer electronics (CE) are considered an indispensable and inseparable part of the Internet of Things (IoT). The four-layer architecture of the IoT includes CE devices as its core layer. Furthermore, the IoT provides all necessary infrastructures for realization of the smart city concept. Various services offered in a smart city are implemented with the help of web service technology, and there... View full abstract»

Recently, intelligent systems have increased opportunities to leverage information for proactive and preventive health care. They also offer a way to incorporate patients into their health care as important players in disease management, thus reducing costs and improving diagnostics and treatment outcomes. By making measurements and analysis automatic, intelligent systems trigger new smart health ... View full abstract»

Smart tourism is an important component of smart cities. However, in many cities, insecurity, safety, fraud, and the lack of availability of proper information about resources are the biggest hurdles toward independent mobility. These issues can be overcome via proactive participation of local citizens to help tourists as well as by cooperation between citizens, city administration, and tourists. ... View full abstract»

A health-care system gathers comprehensive physiological information and medical records, making its data more important than ever. For example, for years now, the National Health Insurance Administration (https://www.nhi.gov.tw/English/) of Taiwan has requested every doctor, whether in a medical center or private clinic, to upload the diagnosis result, treatment, and prescription. These anamneses... View full abstract»