9970 IEEE INTERNET OF THINGS JOURNAL, VOL. 8, NO.

12, JUNE 15, 2021

Edge-Based Hybrid System Implementation for

Long-Range Safety and Healthcare IoT Applications
Fan Wu , Member, IEEE, Chunkai Qiu , Graduate Student Member, IEEE, Taiyang Wu , Member, IEEE,
and Mehmet Rasit Yuce , Senior Member, IEEE

Abstract—In many conventional Internet-of-Things (IoT) An IoT gateway is a crucial element between various smart
applications, data are transferred directly from the sensor devices and cloud applications, which is the core of the
network to the cloud via a gateway for further data process- network layer connecting smart IoT devices of the bottom
ing. However, this typical usage of a gateway is not suitable for
every application. For short-range IoT wireless protocols [e.g., layer (perception layer) to various applications in the upper
Bluetooth low energy (BLE)], multiple gateways are required to application layer [8]. It is responsible for some essential tasks,
achieve broader coverage, which is inconvenient. In this article, such as translating protocols between sensors and the Internet
an edge-based hybrid network system architecture is presented. and providing local data storage [9]–[11]. In many cloud-based
The proposed system consists of hybrid routers and an IoT gate- IoT applications, the data acquired from sensors are directly
way. The router supports two wireless protocols, BLE and long
range (LoRa), and is equipped with a solar energy harvester to transferred to a centralized server via gateway devices for data
extend the router’s lifetime. It can extend the coverage of short- processing, analyzing, and storing, after which data consumers
range BLE network by utilizing LoRa wireless technology, and can access the required information [12]. However, with the
support fundamental edge computing tasks such as preliminary increasing of IoT devices and data, the network bandwidth
data processing. The IoT gateway can support multiple IoT pro- (BW) is becoming a bottleneck of cloud computing. The pri-
tocols, including LoRa, BLE, and XBee. It can perform more
advanced edge computing tasks, such as data filtering, storage, mary limitation of cloud computing is delay [13]. Besides,
processing, user interface, and cloud connection. Three case stud- since the cloud server is typically located in a centralized posi-
ies incorporating a wearable safety monitoring sensor network, tion that is far away from the IoT devices, cloud computing
a healthcare monitoring application, and a smart hospital appli- mainly relies on the Internet protocol (IP) network. As a con-
cation are studied with the proposed edge network system to sequence, once the IP connection becomes intermittent, users
demonstrate its promising capabilities to support IoT applica-
tions. Experimental evaluations indicate that by processing data may lose access to the data and services. This typical usage of
at the edge, the minimal delay is only 11.5 ms. Furthermore, with a gateway and cloud-based computing is not suitable for appli-
the hybrid LoRa network implementation, the BLE network can cations that require real-time and low-latency feedback, such
be extended to 2.4 km. as healthcare, emergency monitoring, and safety applications.
Index Terms—Bluetooth low energy (BLE), edge computing, Edge computing and fog computing are efficient enabling
gateway, Internet of Things (IoT), long range (LoRa), wireless technologies that allow computation and storage to be per-
sensor network. formed or located at the edge of the network in proximity
to IoT devices and sensors rather than processed in the
cloud server [12]–[15]. The concept of edge/fog computing
I. I NTRODUCTION
is proposed by researchers in multiple works in the present
NTERNET of Things (IoT) has become a promising tech-
I nological paradigm in current and future generations of
networking, sensing, and data collection in many environ-
IoT design paradigm [16]–[21]. They can reduce the delay
and latency, improve scalability, address the safety and pri-
vacy issue, and mitigate network traffic burden and BW. Both
ments. It is predicted that by 2030, 100 billion devices will fog and edge computing are heterogeneous network infras-
be connected to the Internet [1]. These devices will be widely tructure and can be connected to edge devices via various
deployed in different IoT application domains, such as smart wireless technologies [e.g., ZigBee, Bluetooth low energy
cities, healthcare monitoring, smart agriculture, and cam- (BLE), long range (LoRa), etc.]. Edge-/fog-assisted system
pus monitoring [2]–[7]. With the increasing demand for IoT design can interoperate with all these edge devices and support
devices, there is a need for a generalized IoT architecture that different IoT services even though the Internet connection is
can support better multiple IoT applications and standards. intermittent.
Manuscript received September 24, 2020; revised December 15, 2020; The terms of fog computing and edge computing can be
accepted December 23, 2020. Date of publication January 11, 2021; interchangeable, but fog computing focuses more on the infras-
date of current version June 7, 2021. This work was supported by the tructure side, where edge computing focuses more on the
Australian Research Council Future Fellowships under Grant FT130100430.
(Corresponding author: Mehmet Rasit Yuce.) things side [12]. In addition, the function of fog comput-
The authors are with the Department of Electrical and Computer Systems ing can sometimes be interchangeable with edge computing.
Engineering, Monash University, Melbourne, VIC 3800, Australia (e-mail: According to [22], fog computing and edge computing are
fan.wu@monash.edu; chunkai.qiu@monash.edu; taiyang.wu@outlook.com;
mehmet.yuce@monash.edu). synonymous with the tasks executed at somewhere between
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JIOT.2021.3050445 the cloud and end devices rather than at the cloud center.
2327-4662 
c 2021 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
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WU et al.: EDGE-BASED HYBRID SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION FOR LONG-RANGE SAFETY AND HEALTHCARE IoT APPLICATIONS 9971

Fog computing emphasizes more on a virtualized platform, application. Section V discusses the second use case, namely,
which can be a distributed infrastructure, such as a dedicated a healthcare monitoring sensor network. Section VI presents
fog server. In contrast, edge computing is closer to the IoT the third use case, namely, a smart hospital application.
devices. The computing can be performed in a dedicated gate- Section VII concludes this work.
way device, a simple network router, or even IoT end devices,
such as a smartphone or smartwatch.
Different wireless protocols are typically required to con- II. R ELATED W ORKS
nect IoT sensors to the edge computing devices. Short-range There have been multiple IoT applications based on edge
wireless protocols such as BLE generally have a limited range computing concepts providing and supporting better QoS for
of up to 100 m, and they cannot connect to the Internet the applications. One typical edge-based architecture to sup-
directly [23], [24]. Hence, multiple gateways are required to port the healthcare industry is presented in [9]. The researchers
enable the Internet connection to cover a larger area and con- propose an edge architecture named BodyEdge, which consists
nect these devices to the Internet. However, gateway devices of a tiny mobile client BodyClient (BE-MBC) and a gateway
are generally more expensive than IoT end devices and com- (BE-GTW) device. The BE-MBC is a software application
plicated in terms of network protocol, hardware, and software that can be installed on a smartphone and communicate with
implementation, which are challenging to implement and will body sensors. Such an edge architecture greatly supports the
increase the total deployment cost. Hybrid networks can be healthcare applications in local environments, and in addition,
utilized to tackle some of these issues by combining long- it reduces the data traffic toward the cloud.
range wireless technologies with short-range technologies to The work [11] presents an edge-based gateway design for
improve the coverage. Emerging low-power wide-area network smart IoT healthcare applications. The features of the smart
(LPWAN) technologies, such as LoRa, Sigfox, and narrow e-Health gateway (UT-GATE) are: 1) local data processing
band Internet of Things (NB-IoT), can be applied to increase capabilities; 2) adaptivity; 3) local storage; 4) local actuation;
the network coverage [25]–[27]. For instance, the work in [25] 5) security; 6) interoperability and reconfigurability; 7) IoT
proposes an information monitoring based on LoRa and NB- device discovery and mobility support; 8) energy efficiency
IoT. The work in [26] proposes an approach by using various support for sensor nodes; and 9) reduced latency. Local data
sub-GHz technologies (e.g., XBee-PRO 900HP and XBee analysis module can greatly improve the system reliability in
868LP) to extend the range of short-range IoT protocols. the case of unavailability of Internet connection. Such an edge-
In this article, an IoT edge architecture incorporating an based smart gateway can help to improve challenges, such
edge gateway and a hybrid edge router that can support as mobility, energy efficiency, scalability, interoperability, and
multiple wireless technologies and applications is presented. security issue.
The proposed gateway can support different wireless proto- Another fog computing-based IoT architecture is proposed
cols, provide local storage, enhance data security, and provide in [26]. The authors propose a hybrid architecture consisting of
local data processing and filtering functions. The edge router micro IoT collectors uHub and more powerful macro gateways
can connect the short-range IoT devices with a remote gateway to combine the short-range radio technologies with long-range
via a LoRa-based LPWAN network. Such an edge system can radio technologies. The uHub provides services in microenvi-
facilitate the deployment process for various IoT applications, ronments using IEEE 802.15.4/IEEE 802.11 technologies. It
extend the range of short-distance IoT protocols, improve the has the ability to collect data from connected networks, store
IoT heterogeneity, as well as provide better Quality of Service data in the local database, transmit the data to the cloud via
(QoS). Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) protocol, as well as
The major contributions of this article are as follows. forward data to macro IoT gateways via a sub-GHz network
1) We propose an edge-computing-based system architec- for further processing. The macro IoT gateway where the data
ture with a hybrid router and an edge gateway for processing is performed has higher performance compared to
connected safety and healthcare IoT applications. uHub and is providing services in wider areas. This approach
2) We design the software architecture of the gateway to is of great importance for smart cities and smart campus mon-
support advanced edge computing tasks. The gateway itoring scenarios with improved connectivity and processing
supports multiple wireless protocols and provides local power of the short-ranged IoT devices.
database, data processing, and cloud connection. Fraga-Lamas et al. proposed a fog computing-based archi-
3) We design the hardware and software components of the tecture using LoRaWAN for smart campus applications [28].
hybrid router to extend the coverage of short-range BLE The architecture comprises three layers: 1) bottom; 2) middle;
protocol and perform some basic edge computing tasks. and 3) top layer. This is one of the few academic solutions
4) We integrate and evaluate the proposed edge architecture that is based on LoRaWAN infrastructure and fog comput-
with three practical IoT applications, demonstrating its ing methodology. The bottom layer is the node layer, which
promising capabilities. contains multiple LoRaWAN nodes deployed across the cam-
The remainder of this article is organized as follows. pus. The middle later contains multiple fog gateways that
Section II discusses some related works. Section III presents provide fast location-aware responses to the nodes’ requests.
the system architecture and focuses on both the design and By adopting fog computing concept, the fog nodes through-
implementation of the gateway and router. Section IV dis- out the campus support physically distributed, low latency, and
cusses the first use case, namely, a wearable safety monitoring location-aware applications that reduce the network traffic and

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9972 IEEE INTERNET OF THINGS JOURNAL, VOL. 8, NO. 12, JUNE 15, 2021

TABLE I
C OMPARISON OF E XISTING E DGE /F OG C OMPUTING S YSTEMS

the computational load of the cloud server. The top layer is

the cloud, which supports user applications, remote access,
and data storage services.
Gioia et al. [30] proposed an advanced IoT gateway solu-
tion AMBER to support heterogeneous IoT technologies. The
AMBER board, which is an open-hardware and open-source
software gateway solution to be used in IoT network to interact
with different IoT standards, supports modularity, flexibil-
ity, and scalability in IoT scenarios, providing distributed
processing power at the edge of the network. The design
concept of the AMBER is based on extender modules and
System on Modules (SoMs). Modularity is addressed by the
extender modules, which are basically connection sockets.
Common communication interfaces, such as interintegrated
circuit (I2 C), serial peripheral interface (SPI), universal asyn-
chronous receiver/transmitter (UART), are exported on the
sockets. SoM is an embedded module hosting computational
Fig. 1. Typical three layers IoT architecture.
and storage capabilities, which is normally a microproces-
sor with random access memory (RAM) and communication
interfaces.
Several other fog-/edge-based approaches have also been
proposed by researchers in work [18], [29], [31], [32]. Most III. S YSTEM A RCHITECTURE AND I MPLEMENTATION
of these works are focusing on one sector, such as health- A typical IoT system architecture is depicted in Fig. 1. There
care, and there is a need for developing and implementing are three layers, including an IoT network layer, an edge layer,
a practical edge-based gateway architecture that supports and a cloud layer. The bottom layer is the IoT network layer
multiple wireless technologies and various IoT applications. consisting of multiple IoT sensor devices, which is mainly for
Table I presents a detailed summary and comparisons of recent sensing different environments. The cloud layer is located in
edge/fog computing systems. Compared to existing studies, a remote data center, which receives the data from the edge
our proposed system presents a promising solution to support layer and is responsible for hosting a Web-based application,
various IoT applications at the edge, especially for connected storing sensor data, processing, and analyzing sensors’ data.
safety and healthcare sectors. It can greatly support hetero- The middle layer is the edge layer that is mainly in charge of
geneous IoT applications, realizing better IoT interoperability connecting the IoT devices to the cloud and performing some
and QoS. edge computing tasks at the proximity of IoT devices.

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WU et al.: EDGE-BASED HYBRID SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION FOR LONG-RANGE SAFETY AND HEALTHCARE IoT APPLICATIONS 9973

Fig. 2. IoT gateway implementation.

In this work, we present an edge-assisted hybrid network

system that connects short- and long-range IoT applications.
The proposed system mainly focuses on the design and imple-
mentation of the edge layer, which incorporates an edge
gateway and a router. The role of the gateway and router is Fig. 3. IoT gateway software architecture.
summarized as follows.
1) The edge gateway provides low-cost and local edge
services for different IoT devices in the bottom layer.
low-cost and low-power LoRa transceiver with high sensi-
a) Devices management.
tivity. Two LoRa modules are included so that the gateway
b) Cloud connection.
can support two LoRa networks with two different modem
c) Data storage.
configurations. The XBee module is XBee-PRO 900HP long-
d) Data processing.
range module, which supports long-range mesh networking.
e) Security.
The ZigBee module from Digi company has the same footprint
f) Visualization.
as XBee. Therefore, these two modules are interchangeable,
2) The hybrid router provides services for nearby short-
and they can be replaced by other RF modules with the same
range IoT devices (i.e., BLE sensors in this work).
footprint. A BLE dongle based on nRF52840 is connected
a) Extend the range of wireless sensor nodes if
to the Raspberry Pi’s universal serial bus (USB) port, which
needed.
transfers data to the Pi via USB.
b) Provide prompt responses and fundamental edge
tasks. 2) Gateway Software Architecture: The Raspberry Pi pos-
c) Measure surrounding environments. sesses a Linux distribution (Raspbian) as its OS, where
programs can be written in Python, C, or Java. The local stor-
age can be utilized to store data when there is no Internet
A. Edge Gateway Implementation connection to successfully transmit the data from the edge
1) Hardware Implementation: The hardware of the gateway devices to the cloud. The software architecture is presented
is based on a Raspberry Pi Model 3B+, which is a single board in the edge layer of Fig. 3. There are six software modules:
computer with embedded Wireless Fidelity (WiFi), Ethernet, 1) IoT device management; 2) data processing; 3) local graph-
and BLE modules. The operating system (OS) is installed on a ical user interface (GUI); 4) database; 5) security; and 6) cloud
micro-SD card. A printed circuit board (PCB) is designed and connection.
integrated with Pi to support different wireless protocols, such a) IoT devices management module: This module is in
as LoRa, ZigBee, and XBee. Fig. 2 presents the prototype of charge of sensor nodes’ registration and network management.
the gateway with different wireless modules connected. The Each RF module has a unique media access control (MAC)
gateway consumes much lower power compared to a normal address. Hence, the device registration function can differen-
server or computer. The required supply voltage is only 5 V tiate whether the data are from a registered or an unregistered
with 2.5-A current. The gateway can be powered by a main device. If the wireless data are received from a new device,
power supply through a wall adapter. Besides, it can also be the registration process will be initialized, and the device MAC
powered by a portable power bank to increase mobility. With a address and join timestamp will be inserted into the database
20 000-mAh power bank, the gateway can maintain operation for future reference. The network management function is
for a maximum of 8 h. utilized to manage different networks, for instance, to per-
There is a low-power switch (TPS22918) for each radio form modem configuration for embedded LoRa network. The
frequency (RF) module. Each of the RF can be turned on data will be inserted into different databases according to the
and off depending on the different requirements of applica- wireless protocol.
tions. RF modules can be configured by the Raspberry Pi via b) Data processing module: It is important to process the
the UART or SPI interface. The LoRa module embedded in data at the edge of the network because such edge computing
this work is RFM95 from HoperRF electronics, which is a task can provide low latency, prompt feedback, and reduced

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9974 IEEE INTERNET OF THINGS JOURNAL, VOL. 8, NO. 12, JUNE 15, 2021

network BW. The data processing module contains the follow-

ing functions: initial filtering and preliminary processing. The
initial filtering function removes any unwanted wireless data,
such as duplicate data from the same network router or IoT
devices. The preliminary data processing processes the filtered
data, converts the machine data to meaningful data, and raises
an alert if there is an emergency that needs to be resolved or
requires attention. Fig. 4. Router: (a) block diagram and (b) router device.
c) Local GUI module: The local GUI provides data visu-
alization and other management functionalities for the network
operator and users. Therefore, the network can still be estab- simple and lightweight, which is ideal for resource-constrained
lished and managed without Internet connection. The GUI is IoT applications. It is a publish-subscribe-based two-way
developed using an open-source and cross-platform Node.js communication protocol and can easily support Web-based
and Node-RED package. user user interface (UI) design. Moreover, MQTT has three
d) Database management module: MongoDB is one of QoS settings to support reliable data transmission. Therefore,
the most popular NoSQL databases. It is installed in the MQTT is installed in the gateway as the default messaging
local gateway to support local data storage. The data are protocols to connect the gateway, cloud, and Web-based UI. In
stored in JSON-like (JavaScript Object Notation) documents addition, CoAP and representational state transfer (REST) can
and are very flexible and scalable. MongoDB supports repli- also be utilized to transfer data between the cloud and gateway
cated servers and indexing, and it offers drivers for different depending on the requirements of different applications.
programming languages [33]. A MongoDB Python driver
“PyMongo” is used to access and manage the MongoDB
database. Besides MongoDB, MySQL is also installed to B. Hybrid Router Implementation
support various applications’ requirements. The hybrid router is in proximity to the IoT devices, which
There are two levels of storage data: 1) level 1 and 2) level 2. is located between the gateway and the IoT sensor nodes as
The level 1 data contain all the raw data received from the presented in Figs. 1 and 3. For instance, in a hospital envi-
wireless sensor nodes, which is stored in the original format ronment, the router can be a network router located inside a
for future data recovery purposes. The level 2 data storage patient room. Fig. 4(a) and (b) presents the hardware block
contains all the processed data. diagram and the prototype of the router, respectively. The
e) Security module: Data security issue is a major con- router is composed of a power management unit (PMU), a
cern in current IoT design applications. To ensure the data high-performance microcontroller (MCU), BLE, LoRa, and an
are securely transmitted and stored in the gateway, a secu- onboard temperature and humidity sensor.
rity function is implemented in this work, which includes The PMU has three components, including an energy har-
data decryption and encryption. Initially, when all the data vesting unit (ADP5090), a buck-boost regulator (LTC3130-1),
are transferred from the sensor nodes to the gateway, the and an energy storage unit (a 2600-mAh rechargeable lithium
data are encrypted. After the gateway receives the data, battery). The energy harvesting circuit based on the ADP5090
the data decryption function will decrypt the RF payload if has been investigated in our previous work [34]. ADP5090
required. This is achieved by utilizing the advanced encryp- is a high efficiency and ultralow-power energy harvesting
tion standard (AES) 128-b encryption engine. Furthermore, the chip with maximum power point tracking (MPPT) and charge
data will be encrypted when transferred to the cloud. management function. It can convert DC power with more
A firewall named uncomplicated firewall (UFW) is installed than 80% conversion efficiency from a solar cell and store
to restrict the access to various protocols and ports. Only cer- into a rechargeable battery. LTC3130-1 is a low-power buck-
tain protocols and ports are enabled to allow transfer data boost regulator, which is utilized to provide constant output
between the gateway and the cloud. For example, message voltage (3.3 V) for the device. A commercial solar cell
queue telemetry transport (MQTT) utilizes transmission con- (55.0–67.5 mm) is chosen, which provides a maximum of
trol protocol (TCP) to transfer data to the cloud. Therefore, 310 mW power. The energy harvesting circuit can harvest
TCP protocol over port 1883 is enabled. Secure shell (SSH) enough energy during daytime and fully charged the battery to
over port 22 is also enabled so that the network operator can realize the continuous operation of the router in outdoor sce-
access the gateway via SSH to configure the gateway. Current narios. The average power consumption for the router is 12
work focuses on protecting the wireless data and gateway mA in continuous operating mode. Hence, in indoor condi-
access control based on OS level techniques. We plan to utilize tions, the router can continuously operate for about nine days.
advanced authentication method in our future work to improve After that, a battery charging or replacement will be required.
edge security. The MCU is based on Nordic nRF52840, which is an
f) Cloud connection module: There are multiple IoT con- advanced and high-performance SOC supporting multiple
nection techniques that can be utilized to transfer the data from wireless protocols. BLE 5 is selected as the embedded wireless
the gateway to the cloud, such as MQTT and CoAP. They are protocol, which features long-range, high data rate (2 Mb/s),
both specially designed for machine-to-machine (M2M) com- high transmission power (+8 dBm), −95 dBm sensitivity, and
munication. MQTT requires only limited network BW. It is low current transmission during TX and RX mode. The LoRa

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WU et al.: EDGE-BASED HYBRID SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION FOR LONG-RANGE SAFETY AND HEALTHCARE IoT APPLICATIONS 9975

Fig. 6. Wearable sensor node for safety monitoring.

Fig. 5. System architecture of the wearable safety monitoring sensor network.

TABLE II
H ARDWARE I MPLEMENTATION OF U SE C ASE 1 response from the router or gateway. Second, the network can
cover a large area with the help of the router. The hybrid
network architecture with BLE and LoRa can significantly
improve the network coverage and reduce the need for multiple
gateway implementations.
1) Hardware Implementation: The wearable sensor node
utilized in this work is an improved version of our previous
work [34]. A higher performance, BLE embedded, and lower
power consumption MCU (nRF52840), and a new power man-
agement circuit are implemented in the wearable node as
demonstrated in Fig. 6. Apart from the BLE network, a long-
range and low-power LoRa module (RFM95) is also included
module (RFM95) supports long-distance data transmission. in the wearable sensor node. Therefore, the sensed data not
There is an onboard environmental sensor BME280 for sensing only can be transmitted via BLE network but also by the
the temperature and relative humidity near the router location. LoRa network to reduce the dependency on multiple gateways.
Therefore, the router itself can be used as an environmental The power management circuit includes an energy harvest-
sensor node to detect the environments. ing unit (ADP5090) and an ultralow-power boost regulator
(MAX17222), which can harvest the energy from solar and
C. Overview of Case Studies With the Proposed Architecture provide enough power for the rest of the circuit with low power
The proposed edge architecture can be integrated with consumption.
different IoT applications. Three use cases are studied to 2) Experimental Implementation: During the test, two
demonstrate how the proposed system can benefit differ- wearable sensor nodes are worn by two subjects. The gate-
ent IoT applications. Different aspects, experiments, and way is installed near the window inside a laboratory that is
results are evaluated and discussed, demonstrating the edge on the second floor. A router node is installed off the campus
system’s promising capabilities to benefit IoT applications and to help route the data packet from wearable sensor nodes to
heterogeneity. the gateway. It is installed at a location where it can directly
connect to the gateway without additional hops.
For network configuration, sensor nodes can communicate
IV. C ASE S TUDY 1—W EARABLE N ETWORK FOR S AFETY
with a router via either BLE or LoRa network or directly with
M ONITORING A PPLICATION
a gateway via the LoRa network. Therefore, if the sensor node
A. System Implementation is within the BLE network range of a router, the data are trans-
The first case study is a wearable safety monitoring appli- mitted via the BLE. After data are received by the router, the
cation, which must be capable of measuring safety-related router will forward this information to the gateway via LoRa.
environments, transmitting data reliably to the gateway and If it is outside the BLE range, the data will be transmitted
the cloud server, and performing some edge tasks to pro- via LoRa, and these data can also be received by the gate-
vide low-latency decision making. The system architecture is way. Therefore, the data processing module of the gateway is
presented in Fig. 5. The hardware implementation is presented required to filter out all the duplicated data transmitted from
in Table II. The network is tested in a campus environ- the same nodes.
ment to monitor some safety-related environments, such as
temperature, humidity, and ultraviolet (UV) index.
The safety monitoring application has two main require- B. Experimental Evaluation and Discussion
ments: 1) short response time and 2) long-range data transmis- 1) Network Testing: LoRa should be configured to transmit
sion, which can be realized by the proposed edge system. First, data at a relatively long-range while maintaining data rate and
with the integration of the router and gateway, the network average transmission time. Higher spreading factor (SF) results
system can detect and trigger an alarm for the safety work- in longer range but lower data rate and longer transmission
ers as soon as any emergency detected. This is demonstrated time. An increase in BW will reduce the receiver sensitivity
by measuring the time delay that the system requires to get a and lower the transmission time. Lower coding rate (CR) is

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9976 IEEE INTERNET OF THINGS JOURNAL, VOL. 8, NO. 12, JUNE 15, 2021

Fig. 8. System architecture of the wearable remote healthcare monitoring

system.

However, for LoRa-based wireless links between the router

Fig. 7. LoRa network coverage. (a) Wearable sensor transmits data directly and gateway, it mainly depends on the Time on Air (ToA) of
to the gateway. (b) Wearable sensor transmits data to the router, then to the
gateway.
a LoRa wireless packet. The ToA varies according to differ-
ent modem configurations, such as SF, BW, and CR. Since
TABLE III BW (125 kHz) and CR (4/7) are fixed in our experimental
C OMPARISON OF RTT D ELAY F ROM D IFFERENT E DGE D EVICES AND setup, three different SFs are considered to calculate the RTT
C LOUD P LATFORM from the sensor node to the router or gateway. As can be
seen from Table III, with SF configured as 9, it takes the sen-
sor node 316 ms to receive an acknowledgment from a router
or gateway if the data are directly transmitted to the router
or gateway. The time will double if the acknowledgment is
sending from the gateway through the router and then reach
sensors. Since the ToA of LoRa transm
ission will change according to different configurations of
SF, and CR, for different applications that require shorter
response time, these parameters can be modified accordingly.
For example, by increasing the BW to 250 kHz and reducing
the SF to 7, the RTT delay can be reduced to only 44 ms
when transmitting the same packet. However, this will reduce
more tolerant to interference but will result in a longer trans- the transmission range.
mission time. In this work, SF 9, CR 4/7, BW 125 kHz are MQTT protocol is used to upload the data from the gateway
selected as the LoRa modem configuration to achieve a better to the cloud. In this work, the cloud is an Ubuntu server at
tradeoff between transmission time, transmission range, and DigitalOcean. With QoS1 setting, which transmits at least one
tolerance to interference. packet to the cloud and requires an acknowledgment from the
Fig. 7 presents the network coverage with the aforemen- cloud, the RTT is 83 ms. It can be clearly concluded that by
tioned LoRa configuration. Fig. 7(a) presents the network processing data at the edge level, the RTT can be reduced by
coverage without the hybrid router. As can be seen from the at least 83 ms. Therefore, some decision-making tasks can be
figure, LoRa network can only cover 400 m with stable trans- lowered to the edge devices such as a router to reduce the delay
mission using 2-dBi chip antenna. This result is not promising from the cloud. If there is an emergency condition, the system
because such implementation will require multiple gateways delay can be reduced compared to cloud-based applications,
to receive the sensors’ data. To improve the network coverage, and the whole system can remain normal operation without an
a hybrid router is installed off the campus, which is approx- IP network.
imately 2 km away from the gateway, as shown in Fig. 7(b).
The router can maintain a stable wireless link with the gate-
V. C ASE S TUDY 2—W EARABLE R EMOTE H EALTH
way by using a higher gain antenna (3.5 dBi). With the help
M ONITORING S YSTEM
of the router, the network coverage is extended to 2.4 km from
the original 400 m. A. System Implementation
2) Round Trip Time Delay Test: The round trip time (RTT) The second use case studied is a wearable healthcare system
between sensor nodes, the edge devices, and the cloud server is for remote cardiac activity monitoring, which is illustrated in
measured and discussed. The results are presented in Table III. Fig. 8. Heart rate, as one of the vital signs, is the most direct
The RTT delay is the length of time it takes from the sensor sign of our heart health. Long-term and continuous heart rate
node transmits a fixed-length packet (10 B) until it receives monitoring is essential to early diagnosis of heart disease.
an acknowledgment from the router, gateway, or cloud. When With the proposed router and gateway architecture, both short-
the sensor node can directly communicate with the router with distance and long-distance remote healthcare monitoring can
BLE network, the delay is only 11.5 ms. be achieved. Shorter response time can also be realized.

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WU et al.: EDGE-BASED HYBRID SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION FOR LONG-RANGE SAFETY AND HEALTHCARE IoT APPLICATIONS 9977

Fig. 9. Healthcare sensor node.

Fig. 11. Website hosted on the local gateway demonstrating the heart rate
data.

1) Long-Range Connected Health: The router is located in

Fig. 10. Filtered ECG signal. the center of the office ceiling to maximize the BLE cover-
age. The experimental measurement runs for 30 min. During
the experiment, an office staff is sitting on a chair and per-
The system is tested in an office to monitor the heart rate forming word typing. The raw ECG data are sent by the
of an office worker. The Electrocardiogram (ECG) signal is wearable sensor node to the router for data processing and
acquired by the wearable sensor node and then sent to the heart rate computation. The heart rate data are then trans-
router through the BLE network. The signal processing and ferred to the remotely located gateway via LoRa and cloud
heart rate computation algorithms are performed in the router; server. Fig. 11 demonstrates the 30-min heart rate data on the
then the heart rate data are forwarded to the remote gateway Web-based GUI. With the proposed hybrid edge architecture
and cloud server. Since the data are processed in the router, the system, fundamental data processing tasks are distributed to
workload of the gateway and cloud server has been reduced. the router, which helps to reduce the burdensome workload
Furthermore, the local router and gateway can provide a faster on the cloud server. Long-range connected health monitoring
response if any emergency is detected. The edge system can is also realized, which reduces the need for multiple gate-
still provide services offline even if the IP connection to the way infrastructure. Local health data visualization, storage,
cloud is lost. and cloud connection are achieved with the help of the IoT
1) Hardware Implementation: Fig. 9 shows the design of gateway.
the wearable healthcare sensor node. The wearable sensor 2) Emergency Situations: In an emergency situation, such
employs the AD8232 ECG front end to measure the ECG as sudden cardiac arrest, immediate emergency medical
signal of the heart. Three printed dry electrodes are attached services are required. An alarm system that can provide fastest
to the chest with conductive gel to detect the electrical activ- response is essential. In our system, an emergency alarm will
ity of heartbeats. The analog ECG signal is sampled at the be triggered if the router does not detect a heartbeat within 2 s,
frequency of 250 Hz in this experimental testing and is trans- that is, when the heart rate is below 30 bpm or cardiac arrest
mitted from the wearable sensor node to the router in real time occurs. The maximum response time is the 2-s threshold in
via BLE. The data received by the router are filtered by a high- addition to the BLE transmission delay from the sensor node
pass digital filter at 0.5 Hz, which follows a low-pass digital to the local router.
filter at 35 Hz to remove the noise such as motion artifacts. In this case study, we demonstrate the advantages of using
The ECG R-peak is identified afterward, which represents a this edge architecture to realize long-range connected health-
single heartbeat. The time interval between two consecutive care monitoring. The health sensor node can also connect
ECG R-peaks is used to compute the heart rate, as shown in with the gateway via BLE network that supports a higher
Fig. 10. data rate than LoRa. Since the gateway has a better computa-
tion power, more advanced functionalities of the gateway can
be utilized. For instance, heart rate variability (HRV) can be
B. Experimental Implementation and Discussion analyzed and processed at the gateway. PPG and ECG biosig-
During the test, the sensor node is attached to the chest of nals can be monitored and analyzed in real time together at
a subject. The device is placed near the heart. Thus, strong the gateway to gain a better understanding of personal health
cardiac signals can be obtained. conditions.

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9978 IEEE INTERNET OF THINGS JOURNAL, VOL. 8, NO. 12, JUNE 15, 2021

Fig. 13. (a) DER versus number of nodes with fixed spreading factor.
(b) DER versus number of nodes with 5 min transmitting interval.

Fig. 12. Contact tracing and hand hygiene activities monitoring in smart
hospital applications. messages over a period of time, which can be used to present
the network scalability and packet delivery rate. Here, we
configure the LoRa modem the same as case study 1 with
VI. C ASE S TUDY 3—S MART H OSPITAL FOR C ONTACT different transmitting intervals, number of nodes, and SFs.
T RACING AND H AND H YGIENE M ONITORING The results are presented in Fig. 13. As can be seen from
A. System Implementation Fig.13(a), the DER increases as the transmitting interval
increases and decreases with the increasing number of nodes.
The third case study is a smart hospital application tar-
The DER is still higher than 0.97 when there are 50 LoRa
geting contact tracing and hand hygiene monitoring. The
nodes. Higher SF increases the time of air, which will result
system architecture with single ward scenario is presented
in higher packet collision and lower DER. With SF 12, the
in Fig. 12 [35], which consists of wearable BLE devices,
DER reduces significantly to approximately 0.82 compared
two smart hand-washing dispensers, a hybrid router, an IoT
to SF 7 and 9 as demonstrated in Fig.13(b).
gateway, and a cloud server. Within a hospital ward, when a
A further field test involving ten LoRa routers (SF 9, CR
health professional wearing a wearable BLE device enters the
4/7, and BW 125 kHz) to simulate a 10-ward hospital envi-
room, his/her ID information and present time can be con-
ronment has been tested with the gateway. Routers are placed
stantly monitored and recorded by smart dispensers as well as
in a building where the furthest one is 130 m from the gate-
any hand-washing activities. The monitored information will
way. Each router is configured to transmit data to the gateway
be forwarded to the gateway and cloud server. Therefore, the
at an interval of 5 min. Over a period of 10 h, 1200 LoRa
health professional’s close contacts as well as places he/she
packets are transmitted, and 1190 packets are successfully
has been to can be recorded for contact tracing purposes. The
received. The DER is 0.991. From the above results, the
hand-washing information recorded by smart dispensers can
proposed edge architecture is cable of covering a small-sized
also be utilized to improve hand hygiene compliance rates.
hospital and providing a reliable network solution. Since the
Our edge architecture can play important roles in reliable
router is responsible for each ward’s data collection and pro-
wireless data collection and edge computing tasks for this
viding any feedback if necessary, the BLE network coverage
smart hospital application. In a multiple wards scenario, each
is greatly enhanced by LoRa and the system’s response time
ward can be regarded as an isolated edge system. Only the
can be further shortened by local data processing capabili-
router collects, manages, and forwards any data from dis-
ties at the router and the gateway. Furthermore, the private
pensers and wearable IDs to the gateway via a private LoRa
and encrypted LoRa network does not rely on any commer-
network. The private network only covers targeted hospital
cial LoRa networks, which can address better the privacy and
buildings, which is secure, reliable and can protect better the
security concerns in the smart hospital settings.
privacy of healthcare works as all the data are encrypted dur-
ing the transmission and only accessible by authorized people.
Data storage, analysis, security, and cloud connection func-
tions can be performed to support the contact tracing and hand VII. C ONCLUSION
hygiene monitoring. Such usage of the proposed edge archi- In this article, we have introduced the design of an edge
tecture reduces the requirement of a gateway in each ward, architecture consisting of a hybrid router and a gateway that
improves the network coverage, and supports several edge can be used for various IoT applications. The IoT gateway
computing tasks. has been designed to support multiple protocols and perform
some higher level edge computing tasks, for instance, local
data storage, cloud connection, data processing, local UI, and
B. Experimental Results and Discussion data filtering. The hybrid router can extend the range of short-
An open-source LoRa network simulator named range wireless protocols such as BLE to a remote location
LoRaSim [36] is utilized to test the network scalability. via a LoRa network. It can also perform some fundamental
In this simulator, users can define the number of nodes, edge tasks, for example, preliminary data filtering, data stor-
average sending interval, simulation time, and LoRa modem age, and prompt response. The system has been verified and
configuration to simulate the data extraction rate (DER). DER studied with three practical IoT applications to demonstrate
is defined as the ratio of received messages to transmitted its feasibility. Such a system architecture can be integrated

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WU et al.: EDGE-BASED HYBRID SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION FOR LONG-RANGE SAFETY AND HEALTHCARE IoT APPLICATIONS 9979

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9980 IEEE INTERNET OF THINGS JOURNAL, VOL. 8, NO. 12, JUNE 15, 2021

[35] F. Wu et al., “An autonomous hand hygiene tracking sensor system Taiyang Wu (Member, IEEE) received the B.E.
for prevention of hospital associated infections,” IEEE Sensors J., early degree from Southeast University, Nanjing, China,
access, Nov. 30, 2020, doi: 10.1109/JSEN.2020.3041331. in 2014, and the Ph.D. degree from the Department
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wide-area networks scale?” in Proc. 19th ACM Int. Conf. Model. Anal. Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia, in
Simulat. Wireless Mobile Syst., 2016, pp. 59–67. 2019.
His main areas of research interest are wire-
less sensor network, wearable biomedical sensors,
IoT-connected healthcare applications, and energy
harvesting techniques.

Fan Wu (Member, IEEE) received the B.E. and

Ph.D. degrees from Monash University, Melbourne,
VIC, Australia, in 2015 and 2020, respectively.
He is currently a Research Fellow with Monash Mehmet Rasit Yuce (Senior Member, IEEE)
University, where he was a Research Assistant with received the M.S. degree in electrical and com-
the Engineering Department from 2015 to 2017. His puter engineering from the University of Florida,
main areas of research interest are wireless sen- Gainesville, FL, USA, in 2001, and the Ph.D. degree
sor networks, wearable sensors, energy harvesting, in electrical and computer engineering from North
triboelectric nanogenerator, and IoT innovations. Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA, in
December 2004.
He is an Associate Professor with the Department
of Electrical and Computer Systems Engineering,
Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia. His
research interests include wearable devices, Internet-
of-Things for healthcare, wireless implantable telemetry, wireless body area
Chunkai Qiu (Graduate Student Member, IEEE)
network, bio-sensors, integrated circuit technology for wireless, biomedical,
received the B.E. degree from Monash University,
and RF applications. He has published more than 180 technical articles in the
Melbourne, VIC, Australia, in 2017, where he
above areas.
is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree with the
Dr. Yuce received the NASA Group Achievement Award in 2007 for
Department of Electrical and Computer Systems
developing an SOI transceiver. He received the Best Journal Paper Award
Engineering.
in 2014 from the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society. He
His main area of research interest is wearable
received a Research Excellence Award in the Faculty of Engineering and
devices and triboelectric nanogenerator.
Built Environment, University of Newcastle in 2010. He is a Topical Editor
for IEEE S ENSORS J OURNAL, the Editor-in-Chief for Sensors, and a guest
editor for several IEEE journals.

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