=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-3293/paper22
|storemode=property
|title=Radio Frequency Energy Harvesting System and the Utilization of Blockchain Technologies in Agriculture
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3293/paper22.pdf
|volume=Vol-3293
|authors=Evdokia Krystallidou,Achilles Boursianis,Panagiotis Diamantoulakis,Sotirios Goudos,George Karagiannidis,Giorgos Siachamis,Georgios Stavropoulos,Dimosthenis Ioannidis,Dimitrios Tzovaras
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/haicta/KrystallidouBDG22
}}
==Radio Frequency Energy Harvesting System and the Utilization of Blockchain Technologies in Agriculture==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3293/paper22.pdf
Radio Frequency Energy Harvesting System and the Utilization
of Blockchain Technologies in Agriculture
Evdokia Krystallidou 1, Achilles Boursianis 2, Panagiotis Diamantoulakis 3, Sotirios Goudos 2,
George Karagiannidis 3, Giorgos Siachamis 4, Georgios Stavropoulos 4, Dimosthenis
Ioannidis 4 and Dimitrios Tzovaras 4
1
American Farm School, Thessaloniki, 57001, Greece
2
ELEDIA@AUTH, Department of Physics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece
3
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, 54124,
Greece
4
Centre for Research & Technology Hellas – Information Technologies Institute, Thessaloniki, 57001, Greece
Abstract
Modern agriculture and livestock breeding look for sustainable models that improve the
efficiency of their ecosystem, while providing a secure and privacy-preserving IoT ecosystem.
Multi-collected and heterogeneous data coming from crops, livestock, or even better from
mixed farming systems that are coupled with AI capabilities is a promising approach that
enhances agriculture systems. Such technologies aim at transforming farmers everyday live,
promising accessibility, personalization and precision to the users, but they also suffer from
significant issues. In particular, security, integrity and auditability have been major issues that
need to be addressed, and one way of dealing with the aforementioned is by using Distributed
Ledger Technologies (DLT), such as blockchain.
Keywords 1
IoT, blockchain, harvesting, radio frequency, sensors, sustainability
1. Introduction
The Internet of Things (IoT) is enabled by heterogeneous technologies, devices, and platforms,
where they work together towards providing sensing, collecting, acting, processing, managing and
analysing data. Within the IoT concept, intelligent embedded devices, such as smart sensors, wearable
devices, and autonomous vehicles, are connected to each other and they are able to communicate
without human intervention. The emergence of the IoT concept has led to the pervasive interconnection
of people, services, and devices. However, new systems in the IoT domain that employ smart solutions
having embedded intelligence, connectivity and processing capabilities for edge devices rely on real
time processing at the edge of the IoT network near the end user. Current, traditional cloud computing
and IoT solutions are not able to support real time applications since they are designed to offer non real
time services, e.g., stress detection in IoT smart farming applications, while they are offered in high
cost The computation remains at the cloud, i.e., at the provider datacenter, while heavy analytics,
visualisations, and user aware services need long times, they are high cost, and they pose privacy issues
since personal information is stored and processed in the backbone centralized servers. However, new
generation systems and solutions require low latency and ultrafast analytics, given that they bring
advanced smart technologies and applications with embedded intelligence, connectivity, and processing
capabilities. A new cost-effective approach is needed, where these new IoT systems could be closer to
Proceedings of HAICTA 2022, September 22–25, 2022, Athens, Greece
EMAIL: ekryst@afs.edu.gr (A. 1); bachi@physics.auth.gr (A. 2); padiaman@auth.gr (A. 3); sgoudo@physics.auth.gr (A. 4);
geokarag@auth.gr (A. 5); giosiach@iti.gr (A. 6); stavrop@iti.gr (A. 7); djoannid@iti.gr (A. 8); dimitrios.tzovaras@iti.gr (A. 9)
ORCID: 0000-0001-6488-4309 (A. 1); 0000-0001-5614-9056 (A. 2); 0000-0001-7795-8311 (A. 3); 0000-0001-5981-5683 (A. 4); 0000-
0001-8810-0345 (A. 5); 0000-0002-4648-4675 (A. 7); 0000-0002-5747-2186 (A. 8); 0000-0001-6915-6722 (A. 9)
©️ 2022 Copyright for this paper by its authors.
Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
CEUR Workshop Proceedings (CEUR-WS.org)
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the data source; low latency services and applications are viable, while the d at privacy could be
increased. The vision of TERMINET project is to provide a novel next generation reference architecture
based on cutting-edge technologies such as SDN, multiple-access edge computing, and virtualisation
for next generation IoT, while introducing new, intelligent IoT devices for low-latency, market-oriented
use cases. The User Centric Devices in Smart Farming use case is one of the six cases that TERMINET
uitilises and is used to validate, demonstrate and assesse key aspects of the TERMINET platform in one
of the most popular IoT ecosystems, smart farming. Two of the elements used for the implementation
are presented in this paper.
2. Radio Frequency Energy Harvesting System
Radio Frequency (RF) Harvesting (EH) has attracted significant interest during the last years since
it is one of the most promising techniques to self-power systems that require small amounts of energy
to operate [1]. Although it can be applied as an alternative technique, it is expected to play a pivotal
role in wireless networking and bring several transformative changes [2]. Wireless sensor networks, by
the deployment of the Internet of Things (IoT) and Cyber-Physical systems, will be the dominant field
of RF EH applications [3]. Beyond self-power and perpetual operation, RF energy harvesting in
wireless networks can significantly reduce the demand for conventional energy and the associated
carbon footprint, as well as the requirement of mobility to recharge conventional batteries [4]. The 24-
hour availability and the spatial coverage of wirelessly transmitted power, specifically in urban areas,
are the most comparative characteristics of RF EH against other widely used EH techniques [5].
The advent of the Fifth Generation (5G) network has brought several requirements to the
characteristics of cellular communications. Among them, the increase in system capacity by 1000 times,
the increase in spectral efficiency by 10 times, the higher energy efficiency, and data rate (i.e., 1 Gb/s
in high mobility and 10 Gb/s in low mobility), and the improvement of the average cell throughput by
a term of 25 times, are some of the key performance indicators that present a significant improvement
in 5G cellular networks. 5G network is the first cellular communication system that combines micro-
and millimeter-wave frequency bands of operation for outdoor and indoor coverage, accordingly [6].
Within the 5G ecosystem, various key-enabling technologies have emerged. One of the most
representative examples of a technology that is combined with 5G is the Internet of Things (IoT) [7].
IoT has brought a breakthrough to wireless communication systems and artificial intelligence
technologies, having applicability to many different fields and applications [8]. The deployment of
billions of sensors in IoT networks will create vast amounts of data to be processed. So, the next
generation of IoT, which combines artificial intelligence and the capabilities of 5G networks, will be
emerged.
Typical RF energy harvesting systems are characterized by specific key performance numbers.
These include the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of the rectenna (rectifier + antenna), the average
and maximum output voltage of the rectifier, the rectifying antenna reflection coefficient, efficiency,
and gain, and the proper impedance matching between the antenna and the rectifying circuit. These key
performance numbers, if we consider that the RF energy harvesting systems operate in the ultra-high
(300 MHz - 3 GHz) or the sub-6 GHz frequency band, are ultimately affected by a series of factors
including, (a) the rectenna profile (i.e., the overall physical size of the rectenna compared to the
wavelength of the operating frequency), (b) the type of the rectifying antenna (dipole, monopole, patch,
E-shaped, slot, inverted-F, bow-tie, etc.), (c) the type of the impedance matching network (Π-, L-, T-
network, etc.), (d) the type of the rectifying circuit (full-wave or bridge rectifier, Villard, Dickson or
Greinacher topology, etc.), and (e) the maximum harvested energy that can be achieved [9]. As a result,
rectenna systems that operate in the ultra-high or the sub-6 GHz frequency band usually require
relatively high values of input power (>-20 dBm) to achieve an acceptable power conversion efficiency
(20% - 40%) [10]. They usually occupy a significant board area compared to the wavelength of the
operating frequency and they achieve relatively low values of efficiency in the rectifying antenna
module. The implementation of a rectifying antenna and the corresponding rectifier circuit that operates
in a dual-, triple- or multi-frequency band improves the maximum values of harvested energy against
the overall size occupied by the rectenna in the substrate. Finally, the polarization of the rectifying
antenna is of great importance to the maximum harvested energy [11].
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Within the TERMINET project, a Radio-Frequency Energy Harvesting transceiver as a prototype
system will be designed, optimized, and fabricated. The prototype system will operate in the licensed-
free frequency bands of the Internet of Things (IoT) and/or Wi-Fi 2.4 GHz. Figure 1 portrays a generic
block diagram of the prototype system. In detail, the prototype system will include a transmitting
antenna, where its design will focus on the wireless power transfer of electromagnetic radiation. To this
end, the prototype transmitter will be optimized by utilizing modern evolutionary (EAs) or Swarm
Intelligence (SI) algorithms. Specific system metrics, such as impedance matching, directivity, and
gain, will be considered in the optimization process to obtain the optimal solution of the derived antenna
design. Moreover, the prototype system will include a receiving module, i.e., a rectenna (antenna +
rectifier), to harvest the electromagnetic radiation and convert it to DC power. In this context, the
prototype rectenna will also be optimized to obtain a feasible solution to the optimization problem. Both
prototype modules (transmitting antenna, rectenna) will be designed and optimized to operate in the
licensed-free radio frequency bands of IoT (EU863-870 (863-870/873 MHz) in Europe and/or Wi-Fi
2.4 GHz).
Figure 1: Generic block diagram of the RF EH Tx – Rx prototype system.
3. Blockchain Technologies in Agricultural Use Cases
With the rise of technologies such as IoT and Cloud Computing, there has been an ongoing digital
revolution attempting to utilize the aforementioned technologies. Such technologies aim at transforming
our everyday lives, promising accessibility, personalization and precision to the users, but they also
suffer from significant issues. In particular, security, integrity and auditability have been major issues
that need to be addressed, and one way of dealing with the aforementioned is by using Distributed
Ledger Technologies (DLT), such as blockchain [12]
Blockchain is a highly regarded technology that has a potentially huge untapped potential in its use
and could further revolutionize our lives. As a consequence, there has been a looming interest in this
technology, with many applications ranging in different fields, similar to the IoT revolution, thus it is
natural to try and combine IoT and Blockchain in order to leverage their capabilities, while minimizing
their shortcomings. Many different fields have been on the receiving end of blockchain’s benefits, most
importantly financing, supply chain management, healthcare, smart farming and many more.
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Blockchain is capable of providing a trustworthy and fault-tolerant system that has no single point of
failure and trusted third parties. It also provides an immutable record of transactions thus increasing
data security and integrity, which can also be used for logging and auditing.
Given the aforementioned information for IoT and Blockchain technologies, one can understand that
combining the two can bring further breakthroughs. That is because blockchain technology can provide
IoT systems with enhanced security and trust among devices, both critical for IoT applications, while
safeguarding privacy, as compromising risks are reduced and finally providing further reliability [12],
[13]. Another aspect that has been underappreciated when combining blockchain with IoT is the access
control capabilities blockchain possesses. Access control is particularly important, since IoT devices
can contain sensitive data, ranging from personal to business related data, which obviously need to
remain away from unintended viewers [14].
Specifically, for agricultural IoT applications, the addition of blockchain is deemed as quite unique
and is projected to improve the supervision and management of agriculture, as well as improve the
entire supply chain and potentially introduce product traceability and transparency. In general, there are
several categories in which blockchain can support the agricultural IoT applications. Those are: Supply
chain management, Farm overseeing, Trust Management, Agricultural products tracking and Agri-food
supply chain, all with different applications [15]. Finally, a more indirect support to agriculture is to
combine drones and authentication/key management capabilities, backed up with a private blockchain
solution can limit the insecure communication and subsequently limit attack vectors [16].
Within the TERMINET project, a permissioned blockchain network will be designed, along with
the respective smart contracts in order to provide supply chain management functionalities. More
specifically, the use of blockchain will be to be able to keep a full log and ultimately trace a product
from the start of its production all the way to the market. As a supplementary functionality, some form
of access control via blockchain will also be implemented, since sensitive business data will be the focal
point of the entire procedure, allowing only certain entities to access the data. By doing the
aforementioned, one can ensure that the entire trace of the product will be correct, as blockchain consists
of an immutable ledger and will also act as an audit mechanism, especially useful for faulty products,
but also safeguarding the confidential information of every farm to its respective trusted parties. Finally,
further optimizations for performance and particular business needs will also be implemented if needed.
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Figure 2: Reference diagram of the smart contracts functionalities with reference to agricultural use
cases.
4. Acknowledgements
This paper is part of TERMINET project which has received funding from the European Union’s
Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 957406.
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