System-in-the-loop Design Space Exploration for Efficient Communication in Large-scale IoT-based Warehouse Systems

TL;DR

This paper introduces a system-in-the-loop approach combining real hardware testing and simulation to optimize communication protocols in large-scale IoT warehouse systems, focusing on energy efficiency and scalability.

Contribution

It presents a multi-methodological model integrating testbed experiments and simulations for system design space exploration in IoT warehouses, with a case study on energy-efficient radio communication.

Findings

Modified backoff time reduces energy and latency by about 50%.

Combines real hardware testing with large-scale simulation for system optimization.

Demonstrates scalable, energy-efficient communication strategies for IoT warehouses.

Abstract

Instead of treating inventory items as static resources, future intelligent warehouses will transcend containers to Cyber Physical Systems (CPS) that actively and autonomously participate in the optimization of the logistical processes. Consequently, new challenges that are system-immanent for the massive Internet of Things (IoT) context, such as channel access in a shared communication medium, have to be addressed. In this paper, we present a multi-methodological system model that brings together testbed experiments for measuring real hardware properties and simulative evaluations for large-scale considerations. As an example case study, we will particularly focus on parametrization of the 802.15.4-based radio communication system, which has to be energy-efficient due to scarce amount of harvested energy, but avoid latencies for the maintenance of scalability of the overlaying warehouse system. The results show, that a modification of the initial backoff time can lead to both, energy and time savings in the order of 50% compared to the standard.