Self-Reliance for the Internet of Things: Blockchains and Deep Learning on Low-Power IoT Devices

Doctoral thesis, 2022

In the early days of the Internet, the communication was done typically through a telephone line with notorious long cables and extra hardware (remember the 56k modem?). Nowadays, connecting to the Internet has become simple for daily users, especially through wireless communication directly integrated into smart devices. Even though the capabilities of our common devices have increased, being smart has nothing to do with super capabilities, nor having a supercomputer on every device in our houses, but all a smart device has to do is communicate with a large network of computers with more resources that provide more services than a single computer can do. What may not be apparent to daily users is that wireless communication is quite energy-hungry, and smart devices have a strict energy budget running sophisticated algorithms to balance their limited resources.
        Nowadays, we use the term cloud to describe the cluster of computers that appear to offer an abundance of memory and computational capabilities using the Internet. In this regard, the collection of smart devices with sensors and actuators that connect with the cloud is called the Internet of Things (IoT), and this thesis studies the small ones like the smartwatch some of us may wear right now while the cloud analyzes our health & performance. Even though the cloud provides intelligent services, it sacrifices users' privacy (does anyone read the "terms and conditions"?). Moreover, IoT applications need to store multiple interactions and agreements among devices and cloud services distributed in diverse geographical locations, owned or operated by different parties. For example, resolving the parking fee for a rental electric scooter in the city center will need several interactions with the cloud.
        Even though the cloud appears to be unlimited, IoT devices produce data at a pace that raises questions if the cloud can handle them. Moreover, IoT reliance on cloud services gives access to important personal information. This thesis explores questions about the extent to which our smartwatch can rely on its own effort and capabilities to provide intelligent services to us with reduced cloud communication and preserve our privacy. We answer by redesigning algorithms that typically run on powerful devices to small devices balancing the computational, energy, and memory resources.