Date of Submission
Spring 5-5-2016
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science in Computer Science (MSCS)
Department
Computer Science
Committee Chair/First Advisor
Jing (Selena) He
Chair
Jing (Selena) He
Committee Member
Hisham M. Haddad
Committee Member
Ying Xie
Committee Member
Ken Hoganson
Abstract
Internet of Things (IoT) is a novel paradigm that is gaining ground in the Computer Science field. There’s no doubt that IoT will make our lives easier with the advent of smart thermostats, medical wearable devices, connected vending machines and others. One important research direction in IoT is Resource Management Systems (RMS). In the current state of RMS research, very few studies were able to take advantage of indoor localization which can be very valuable, especially in the context of smart classrooms. For example, indoor localization can be used to dynamically generate seat map of students in a classroom. Indoor localization is not the only concept which was not thoroughly researched in RMS. Another valuable proposition is to treat physical chairs as “smart” devices, which can report their occupancy, user information, and duration of presence to a cloud data store. Interconnected smart chairs consisting of pressure sensors, RFID readers, wireless communication capabilities, indoor localization and useful mobile application can serve as a powerful tool for instructors and other stakeholders. In this thesis we propose a complete smart classroom system consisting of smart chairs, anchor nodes, cloud storage and Android application. Implementation of indoor localization is a challenging and intricate task. Furthermore, since GPS chips cannot be used indoors, different and more challenging techniques have to be used. We developed a special protocol to handle communication and data flow of localization between smart chairs and the master node. Finally, the system was evaluated and special algorithm was developed to improve the accuracy of indoor localization in the context of smart classroom.