skip to main content
research-article
Public Access

Persistent Clocks for Batteryless Sensing Devices

Published:02 August 2016Publication History
Skip Abstract Section

Abstract

Sensing platforms are becoming batteryless to enable the vision of the Internet of Things, where trillions of devices collect data, interact with each other, and interact with people. However, these batteryless sensing platforms—that rely purely on energy harvesting—are rarely able to maintain a sense of time after a power failure. This makes working with sensor data that is time sensitive especially difficult. We propose two novel, zero-power timekeepers that use remanence decay to measure the time elapsed between power failures. Our approaches compute the elapsed time from the amount of decay of a capacitive device, either on-chip Static Random-Access Memory (SRAM) or a dedicated capacitor. This enables hourglass-like timers that give intermittently powered sensing devices a persistent sense of time. Our evaluation shows that applications using either timekeeper can keep time accurately through power failures as long as 45s with low overhead.

References

  1. 2011. An Introduction to the Architecture of Moo 1.0. (May 2011). https://spqr.cs.umass.edu/moo/Documents/Moo_01242011.pdf.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  2. Abracon Real time clock 2015. Abracon Corporation AB08X5 Real-Time Clock Family. (2015). Retrieved December 10, 2015 from http://abracon.com/Precisiontiming/AB08X5-RTC.PDF.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  3. Ross Anderson and Markus Kuhn. 1996. Tamper resistance: A cautionary note. In Proceedings of the 2nd USENIX Workshop on Electronic Commerce. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  4. Gildas Avoine. 2012. Personal communication on French passports. (2012).Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  5. Gildas Avoine, Kassem Kalach, and Jean-Jacques Quisquater. 2008. ePassport: Securing international contacts with contactless chips. In Financial Cryptography and Data Security, Gene Tsudik (Ed.). Springer-Verlag, 141--155. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  6. Steve Bono. 2012. Personal communication. (February 2012).Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  7. Stephen C. Bono, Matthew Green, Adam Stubblefield, Ari Juels, Aviel D. Rubin, and Michael Szydlo. 2005. Security analysis of a cryptographically-enabled RFID device. In Proceedings of the 14th USENIX Security Symposium. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  8. Isidor Buchmann. 2001. Batteries in a Portable World. Cadex Electronics Richmond.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  9. Michael Buettner, Ben Greenstein, David Wetherall, and Joshua R. Smith. 2008. Revisiting smart dust with RFID sensor networks. In Proceedings of ACM HotNets 2008.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  10. Tom Chothia and Vitaliy Smirnov. 2010. A traceability attack against e-passports. In 14th International Conference on Financial Cryptography and Data Security. Springer. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  11. Ahmad H. Dehwah, Mustafa Mousa, and Christian G. Claudel. 2015. Lessons learned on solar powered wireless sensor network deployments in urban, desert environments. Ad Hoc Networks 28 (2015), 52--67. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  12. Conrad Donovan, Alim Dewan, Deukhyoun Heo, and Haluk Beyenal. 2008. Batteryless, wireless sensor powered by a sediment microbial fuel cell. Environmental Science & Technology 42, 22 (2008), 8591--8596.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  13. EPCglobal. 2012. EPC Radio-Frequency Identity Protocols Class-1 Generation-2 UHF RFID Protocol for Communication at 860 MHZ--960 MHZ, Version 1.2.0.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  14. Krisztián Flautner, Nam Sung Kim, Steve Martin, David Blaauw, and Trevor Mudge. 2002. Drowsy caches: Simple techniques for reducing leakage power. In Proceedings of the 29th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Computer Architecture. 148--157. DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ISCA.2002.1003572 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  15. Saurabh Ganeriwal, Srdjan Čapkun, Chih-Chieh Han, and Mani B. Srivastava. 2005. Secure time synchronization service for sensor networks. In Proceedings of the 4th ACM Workshop on Wireless Security (WiSe’05). 97--106. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  16. Flavio D. Garcia, P. van Rossum, R. Verdult, and R. W. Schreur. 2009. Wirelessly pickpocketing a MIFARE classic card. In IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy. 3--15. DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/SP.2009.6 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  17. Ian Goldberg and Marc Bricenco. 1999. GSM cloning. (1999). Retrieved February 19, 2012 from http://www.isaac.cs.berkeley.edu/isaac/gsm-faq.html.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  18. Jorge Guajardo, Sandeep S. Kumar, Geert-Jan Schrijen, and Pim Tuyls. 2007. FPGA intrinsic PUFs and their use for IP protection. In Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems (CHES). 86--80. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  19. Peter Gutmann. 1996. Secure deletion of data from magnetic and solid-state memory. In Proceedings of the 6th USENIX Security Symposium. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  20. Josiah Hester, Timothy Scott, and Jacob Sorber. 2014. Ekho: Realistic and repeatable experimentation for tiny energy-harvesting sensors. In Proceedings of the 12th ACM Conference on Embedded Network Sensor Systems (SenSys’14). ACM, New York, NY, 330--331. DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2668332.2668382 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  21. Josiah Hester, Lanny Sitanayah, and Jacob Sorber. 2015. Tragedy of the Coulombs: Federating energy storage for tiny, intermittently-powered sensors. In Proceedings of the 13th ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (SenSys’15). ACM, New York, NY, 5--16. DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2809695.2809707 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  22. Thomas S. Heydt-Benjamin, Dan V. Bailey, Kevin Fu, Ari Juels, and Tom O’Hare. 2007. Vulnerabilities in first-generation RFID-enabled credit cards. In Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Financial Cryptography and Data Security, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 4886. 2--14. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  23. Daniel E. Holcomb, Wayne P. Burleson, and K. Fu. 2009. Power-up SRAM state as an identifying fingerprint and source of true random numbers. IEEE Transactions on Computers 58, 9 (2009), 1198--1210. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  24. Daniel E. Holcomb, Amir Rahmati, Mastooreh Salajegheh, Wayne P. Burleson, and Kevin Fu. 2012. DRV-fingerprinting: Using data retention voltage of SRAM cells for chip identification. In RFIDSec’12: Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Radio Frequency Identification: Security and Privacy Issues. Springer-Verlag. https://spqr.eecs.umich.edu/papers/holcomb-rfidsec12.pdf. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  25. Ari Juels. 2005. Minimalist cryptography for low-cost RFID tags (extended abstract). In Security in Communication Networks, Carlo Blundo and Stelvio Cimato (Eds.). Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 3352. Springer, 149--164. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  26. Ari Juels. 2006. RFID security and privacy: A research survey. IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications 24, 2 (February 2006), 381--394. DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/JSAC.2005.861395 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  27. Joseph M. Kahn, Randy Katz, and Kristofer Pister. 1999. Next century challenges: Mobile networking for “smart dust”. In Proceedings of the 5th Annual ACM/IEEE International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (MobiCom’99). ACM, New York, NY, 271--278. DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/313451.313558 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  28. Daniel Hsing Po Kang, Mengjun Chen, and Oladele A. Ogunseitan. 2013. Potential environmental and human health impacts of rechargeable lithium batteries in electronic waste. Environmental Science & Technology 47, 10 (2013), 5495--5503.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  29. Leslie Lamport. 1978. Time, clocks, and the ordering of events in a distributed system. Communications of the ACM 21, 7 (1978), 558--565. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  30. Dominique Larcher and Jean-Marie Tarascon. 2015. Towards greener and more sustainable batteries for electrical energy storage. Nature Chemistry 7, 1 (Jan. 2015), 19--29. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nchem.2085Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  31. Yu-Shiang Lin, Dennis Sylvester, and David Blaauw. 2007. A sub-pW timer using gate leakage for ultra low-power sub-Hz monitoring systems. Custom Integrated Circuits Conference (2007).Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  32. Wenbo Mao. 2001. Timed-release cryptography. In Selected Areas in Cryptography VIII (SAC’01). Prentice Hall, 342--357. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  33. Masateru Minami, Takashi Morito, and Hiroyuki Morikawa. 2005. Biscuit: A battery-less wireless sensor network system for environmental monitoring applications. In Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Networked Sensing Systems. Citeseer.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  34. Sydney Newman, C. E. Webber, and Donald Wilson. 1963. Doctor Who. (November 1963). Premiered on British Broadcasting Channel One.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  35. NXP Semiconductors MIFARE Classic. 2012. NXP Semiconductors MIFARE Classic. (2012). Retrieved February 18, 2012 from http://www.nxp.com/products/identification_and_security/smart_card_ics/mifare_smart_card_ics/mifare_classic/.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  36. NXP Semiconductors SPI Real time clock/calendar. 2012. NXP Semiconductors SPI Real time clock/calendar. (2012) Retrieved February 18, 2012 from http://www.nxp.com/documents/data_sheet/PCF2123.pdf.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  37. Inc. Omega Engineering. 2007. OSXL450 Infrared Non-Contact Thermometer Manual.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  38. Yossef Oren and Adi Shamir. 2007. Remote password extraction from RFID tags. IEEE Transactions on Computers 56, 9 (Sept. 2007), 1292--1296. DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TC.2007.1050 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  39. David Oswald and Christof Paar. 2011. Breaking MIFARE DESFire MF3ICD40: Power analysis and templates in the real world. In Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems (CHES). 207--222. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  40. Hulfang Qin, Yu Cao, D Markovic, A. Vladimirescu, and J. Rabaey. 2004. SRAM leakage suppression by minimizing standby supply voltage. In Proceedings of the 5th International Symposium on Quality Electronic Design. 55--60. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  41. Amir Rahmati, Mastooreh Salajegheh, Dan Holcomb, Jacob Sorber, Wayne P. Burleson, and Kevin Fu. 2012. TARDIS: Time and remanence decay in SRAM to implement secure protocols on embedded devices without clocks. In 21st USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security 12), 221--236. https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity12/technical-sessions/presentation/rahmati. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  42. Murugavel Raju. 2000. UltraLow Power RC Timer Implementation Using MSP430. Texas Instruments Application Report SLAA119.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  43. Damith C. Ranasinghe, Roberto L. Shinmoto Torres, Alanson P. Sample, Joshua R. Smith, Keith Hill, and Renuka Visvanathan. 2012. Towards falls prevention: A wearable wireless and battery-less sensing and automatic identification tag for real time monitoring of human movements. In 2012 Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC). 6402--6405. DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/EMBC.2012.6347459Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  44. Benjamin Ransford, Shane Clark, Mastooreh Salajegheh, and Kevin Fu. 2008. Getting things done on computational RFIDs with energy-aware checkpointing and voltage-aware scheduling. In USENIX Workshop on Power Aware Computing and Systems (HotPower’08). Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  45. Ronald L. Rivest, Adi Shamir, and David A. Wagner. 1996. Time-Lock Puzzles and Timed-Release Crypto. Technical Report. Cambridge, MA. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  46. Ludovic Rousseau. 2001. Secure time in a portable device. In Gemplus Developer Conference.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  47. Alanson P. Sample, Daniel J. Yeager, Pauline S. Powledge, Alexander V. Mamishev, and Joshua R. Smith. 2008. Design of an RFID-based battery-free programmable sensing platform. IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement 57, 11 (Nov. 2008), 2608--2615.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  48. Nitesh Saxena and Jonathan Voris. 2009. We can remember it for you wholesale: Implications of data remanence on the use of RAM for true random number generation on RFID tags. In Proceedings of the Conference on RFID Security.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  49. Sergei Skorobogatov. 2002. Low Temperature Data Remanence in Static RAM. Technical Report UCAM-CL-TR-536. University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  50. Kun Sun, Peng Ning, and Cliff Wang. 2006. TinySeRSync: Secure and resilient time synchronization in wireless sensor networks. In Proceedings of the 13th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS’06). 264--277. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  51. Sun Electronic Systems Inc. 2011. Model EC1X Environmental Chamber User and Repair Manual.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  52. Richard M. Swanson and James D. Meindl. 1972. Ion-implanted complementary MOS transistors in low-voltage circuits. International Solid-State Circuits Conference (May 1972).Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  53. Robert Szewczyk, Joseph Polastre, Alan Mainwaring, and David Culler. 2004. Lessons from a sensor network expedition. In Wireless Sensor Networks, Holger Karl, Adam Wolisz, and Andreas Willig (Eds.). Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 2920. Springer, Berlin, 307--322. DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-24606-0_21Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  54. Russell Tessier, David Jasinski, Atul Maheshwari, Aiyappan Natarajan, Weifeng Xu, and Wayne Burleson. 2005. An energy-aware active smart card. IEEE Transaction on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems (2005). Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  55. Texas Instruments Inc. 2011. MSP430F21x1 Mixed Signal Microcontroller. Texas Instruments Application Report SLAS439F (revised Aug. 2011).Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  56. ThingMagic Inc. 2007. Mercury 4/MERCURY 5 User Guide.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  57. Tim Tuan, Tom Strader, and Steve Trimberger. 2007. Analysis of data remanence in a 90nm FPGA. Custom Integrated Circuits Conference.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  58. Stefan Van Der Walt, S. Chris Colbert, and Gael Varoquaux. 2011. The numpy array: A structure for efficient numerical computation. Computing in Science & Engineering 13, 2 (2011), 22--30. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  59. Vishay. 2008. HPC0402B/C - High Performance, High Precision Wire-Bondable 0402 Capacitor for Smartcard, High-Frequency and Substrate-Embedded Applications. http://www.vishay.com/docs/10120/hpc0402b.pdf.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  60. Eric Vittoz. 1994. Low-power design: Ways to approach the limits. International Solid-State Circuits Conference.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  61. Daniel Yeager, Fan Zhang, Azin Zarrasvand, Nicole T. George, Thomas Daniel, and Brian P. Otis. 2010. A 9 μA, addressable gen2 sensor tag for biosignal acquisition. IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits 45, 10 (Oct. 2010), 2198--2209.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  62. Xianlai Zeng, Lixia Zheng, Henghua Xie, Bin Lu, Kai Xia, Kuoming Chao, Weidong Li, Jianxin Yang, Szuyin Lin, and Jinhui Li. 2012. Current status and future perspective of waste printed circuit boards recycling. Procedia Environmental Sciences 16 (2012), 590--597.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  63. Hong Zhang, Jeremy Gummeson, Benjamin Ransford, and Kevin Fu. 2011. Moo: A Batteryless Computational RFID and Sensing Platform. Technical Report UM-CS-2011-020. Department of Computer Science, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar

Index Terms

  1. Persistent Clocks for Batteryless Sensing Devices

        Recommendations

        Comments

        Login options

        Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

        Sign in

        Full Access

        PDF Format

        View or Download as a PDF file.

        PDF

        eReader

        View online with eReader.

        eReader
        About Cookies On This Site

        We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website.

        Learn more

        Got it!