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Effectively Collecting Data for the Location-Based

Authentication in Internet of Things
Yuichi Kawamoto, Student Member, IEEE, Hiroki Nishiyama, Senior Member, IEEE, Nei Kato, Fellow, IEEE,
Yoshitaka Shimizu, Atsushi Takahara, Member, IEEE, and Tingting Jiang, Student Member, IEEE

AbstractThe concept of Internet of things (IoT) has attracted

attention as a key technology for realizing future industrial society.
In the future society, numerous things with sensors are deployed
and connected to networks, and data collected from these devices
are used for a wide variety of industrial applications. In this paper,
we focus on data collection for location-based authentication system as an application of industrial IoT. The authentication system
uses ambient information, which is collected from the devices as
unique information at a certain place and a certain time. However,
since the ambient information changes continuously, it is required
to collect it in real time from multipoint. Thus, we propose an
efficient data collection method considering the requirements from
the authentication system. The key point is to regulate the network
performance for data collection by considering the application
requirements. Since the location-based authentication system can
be used in many situations and has large expansivity, the proposed
work is considered to significantly contribute to the future industrial IoT society. In addition, we demonstrate how to optimize
the operation of our proposal by using mathematical analysis.
Moreover, the efficiency of our proposed method is validated
through numerical results.
Index TermsAmbient information, authentication, Carrier
Sense Multiple Access/Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA), data collection, Internet of things (IoT).

I. I NTRODUCTION

ECENTLY, many kinds of applications using collected

information from diverse devices via wireless networks
have started to appear in our daily life [1][7]. On that topic, the
concept of Internet of things (IoT) has attracted a lot of attention
as a key technology, which makes innovative applications in
future industrial society [8], [9]. In particular, the research on
authentication and management of IoT devices is one of the hot
topics in IoT research area [10], [11]. In this paper, we focus
on the location-based authentication system [12][14] as an

Manuscript received December 15, 2014; revised May 25, 2015; accepted
June 28, 2015. This work was supported in part by the project, Cognitive
Security: A New Approach to Securing Future Large Scale and Distributed
Mobile Applications, of Japan-US Network Opportunity: R&D for Beyond
Trillions of Objects supported by the National Institute of Information and
Communications Technology (NICT), Japan, and in part by the U.S. National
Science Foundation Grant CNS-1405747.
Y. Kawamoto, H. Nishiyama, and N. Kato are with the Graduate School
of Information Sciences, Tohoku University, Sendai 980-8577, Japan (e-mail:
youpsan@it.ecei.tohoku.ac.jp; hiroki.nishiyama.1983@ieee.org; kato@it.ecei.
tohoku.ac.jp).
Y. Shimizu with the NTT Network Innovation Laboratories, NTT Corporation, Yokosuka 239-0847, Japan (e-mail: shimizu.yoshitaka@lab.ntt.co.jp).
A. Takahara with NTT Electronics Corporation, Yokohama 243-0032, Japan
(e-mail: takahara-atsushi@ntt-el.com).
T. Jiang with Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg,
VA 24061 USA (e-mail: virjtt03@vt.edu).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JSYST.2015.2456878

example of an industrial IoT application. In location-based authentication systems, ambient information is collected from
a significant number of diverse devices, which are deployed in
an IoT society. The ambient information is taken as unique data
and a certain time at a certain place that varies along with the
surrounding network environment. By using the unique ambient
information, the authentication system can guarantee the users
location. The authentication system is considered to be used
by many other location-based applications in the industrial
society. For example, an application can require transmission of
confidential data to only some limited users in predetermined
areas, such as military facilities or a conference room for a
secret meeting. Additionally, it is possible to use this system for
couponing to limited people inside a shop. As just described,
a location-based authentication system can be used in many
situations and has large expansivity for the future industrial IoT
society.
However, a location-based authentication system requires
continuous collection of ambient information from numerous
devices because the ambient information is always changing.
However, due to the limitation of network resources, it is difficult to collect data from numerous devices in real time. Thus,
it is necessary to control the data collection in order to improve
the performance of the authentication system. Therefore, in this
paper, we propose a novel data collection method for authentication systems. In this proposal, the data collection is controlled
according to requirements from the system. Although there are
many previous researches on data collection from sensors, mobile terminals, and so on, to improve the network performance,
as for the novelty of our research, the proposed method dynamically controls its parameters according to the surrounding
environment and the requirements from the application side. In
this proposal, the freshness and the number of the collected data
is controlled to satisfy the requirements. As a result, it improves
the performance of the authentication system while using the
network resources efficiently.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. The
authentication system using ambient information that we focus
on in this paper is introduced in Section II. In addition, the
requirements from the authentication system to the network
side are presented. In Section III, the supposed system model
is constructed. Additionally, a model to evaluate the accuracy
of the authentication system is introduced. Section IV describes
our proposed method to effectively collect data from numerous
devices in real time. Section V contains the results of the
numerical analysis. Finally, concluding remarks are provided
in Section VI.

1932-8184 2015 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.

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B. Requirements From the Authentication System to the

Network Side

Fig. 1. Example of the system architecture.

II. L OCATION -BASED AUTHENTICATION

Here, we introduce the location-based authentication system
based on ambient information collected from the devices. Additionally, the authentication systems requirements are described
as the demands from application side to network side.

A. Location-Based Authentication System Using

Ambient Information
Here, we introduce the assumed location-based authentication system. Fig. 1 shows an example of the system architecture.
In this system, ambient information is used as the unique data
at a certain place and a certain time to validate the system users.
In [12][14], as the ambient information, some elements such
as service set identifier (SSID), received signal strength (RSS),
sequence numbers, and media access control addresses of the
packets are introduced. Since such information changes place to
place and time to time, it can be unique at a certain place and a
certain time. For example, where access points (APs), including
mobile ones such as tethering devices and portable WiFi routers
share the same field, the collected ambient information such
as RSS and the list of SSIDs of the APs changes with their
movement. In this paper, we do not specifically take into
account the ambient information elements, but the key point is
that the collected ambient information can be unique, which is
used for the authentication system. In the system, it is assumed
that many devices with sensors collect the ambient information
and send the data to the authentication server via network.
The server constructs a database with the received data, which
shows the collected ambient information of each point at the
time when the data is collected by the devices.
On the other hand, the system users send the observed
ambient information at their current place and time to the server
when the authentication is required. Here, although we simply
call them users, it could also refer to mobile devices, not only
humans. The server checks both the data from the user and the
database of the ambient information. If there is a successful
match, the presence of the user is guaranteed.

As aforementioned, the database of ambient information

is used for the matching the data received from the users.
However, the ambient information such as the observed list of
SSIDs of APs changes continuously due to their movement.
Thus, to ensure the accuracy of the matching in the server,
real-time data collection is needed. However, it is impossible to
collect data from numerous devices at the same time due to the
limitation of the network resources. Thus, it is required to keep
the database as fresh as possible by collecting data efficiently.
On the other hand, the density of the collecting points is also
important to validate the accuracy of the authentication. Only
in very few cases, the data from the user match the database
perfectly because the ambient information collected by the
users and by the devices are usually different in some factors. It
is because the ambient information is unique at a certain place
and a certain time. Thus, the density of the data collection points
has a large effect on the accuracy of the authentication. Data
collection from many devices makes it possible to construct the
database with ambient information from many points.
Therefore, the key requirements from the authentication system are to collect ambient information in real time from as
many devices as possible. However, the network resources to
collect the data are limited, whereas the number of devices is
assumed to be huge. Thus, it is required to regulate the data collection by considering the requirements from the authentication
system and the limited network resources.
III. S UPPOSED AUTHENTICATION S YSTEM M ODEL
Here, the supposed system model is constructed by using mathematical expressions. To describe the model, network model is
defined first. Second, the data collection method, which is used
in the network, is introduced. At this time, envisioned delay
and throughput in the network is also described. Finally, the
model to evaluate the accuracy of the system is defined.
A. Network Model
We will now describe the supposed network model to collect
ambient information. In this network model, many devices are
deployed and send the observed ambient information to the
nearest AP. To simplify the model, we assume that the devices
are deployed uniformly and the coverage of each AP is divided
perfectly by the coverage of the devices, as shown in Fig. 2.
Although there may be a little error because the shape of both
the APs and devices coverages is represented by a hexagonal
grid, it can be considered that the error is small enough to be
ignored due to the high number of devices covered by an AP.
Here, we represent the identification number of each AP as i
and the number of the devices, which are in the coverage of
the AP with identification number i as Ni . Additionally, we
define the identification number of each device in the coverage
of the AP with identification number i as ni (1 ni Ni ).
Moreover, the circumradius of the coverage of the AP with
identification number i and the circumradius of the devices

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KAWAMOTO et al.: EFFECTIVELY COLLECTING DATA FOR THE LOCATION-BASED AUTHENTICATION IN IoT

APs coverage (

Data at device and server

device (
User
(speed is

AP

2)

Data at device
(current)

aa

bb

cc

dd

ee

Data at server
(collected 10 units time ago)

aa

bb

cc

dd

xx

device (

device

Data at device
(current)

ff

gg

hh

ii

jj

Data at server
(collected 10 units time ago)

ff

gg

hh

yy

zz

device
Devices coverage (

Fig. 2. Considered network structure for collecting collect ambient information.

coverage in the AP are defined as Ri and ri , respectively.

Additionally, since ri depends on the number of devices, which
send data, our assumptions result in the following expression:
SAPi = Ni Sdi

(1)

where SAPi and Sdi represent the dimension of the APs and the
devices coverage, respectively, where the AP has identification
number i. Additionally, SAPi and Sdi are expressed as follows:

3 3
SAPi =
Ri2
(2)
2

3 3 2
ri .
Sd i =
(3)
2
Thus, from (1)(3), ri is expressed as follows:
Ri
ri = .
Ni

(4)

B. CAMA/CA-Based Data Collection Model

Second, the data collection method, which is used in the
supposed network, is represented. Additionally, expected delay
and throughput, when the supposed data collection method is
used, are introduced. In this paper, it is assumed that each
AP collects data from the devices by using the data collection
method based on carrier sense multiple access/collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) [15]. Due to the numerous number of devices
in the coverage of each AP, it is impossible to collect the data
from all devices at the same time. Thus, as the data collection
method, it is introduced that the data are collected from limited
number of devices in a cyclic fashion.
First, to decide the number of devices to send data, the length
of the data collecting interval and the ratio of devices to send
data among all devices is determined. Here, the interval length
and the ratio are defined as Ti and i , respectively. Then, the
number of devices to send data in an interval is expressed as
Ni i . At this time, the value of ri in the interval is represented
as follows:
Ri
.
ri =
i Ni

(5)

Additionally, the devices, which decide to send data set

one more parameter, namely, wni , which denotes the waiting
period before sending data at the interval. The device with
identification number i starts its data sending process when wni
seconds have passed after the interval had started. This way,
each device decides when it starts its data sending process randomly during the interval by setting the value of wni between
0 and Ti .
After setting these parameters, each device starts its data
sending process according to wni during time period Ti . Additionally, in the data sending process, CSMA/CA is used as
the access control scheme. Here, we assume that the devices
covered by the same AP are close enough to each other to
perform carrier sensing successfully. In the process of the data
sending, each device checks the usage condition of the channel
and starts sending data if it does not sense the usage of the
channel by other devices for a random period called backoff
time. In this process, the backoff time, BT , is calculated as
the following expression:
BT = z l

(6)

where z and l represent a random number and the length of a

time slot, respectively. Additionally, the value of z is chosen
from the range between 0 and CW , which is called contention
window. The backoff time counts down, whereas the device
does not sense the usage of the channel, and when the backoff
time reaches 0, the device starts to send data. However, since
each device sets the value of wni randomly between 0 and Ti
in our proposal, sometimes another device may be using the
channel already. If the device senses the other devices usage
of the channel, it stops counting down the backoff time and
waits for a certain period of time. After waiting, the device
starts to count down the backoff time again, whereas the device
does not sense the usage of the channel and starts to send
data when the backoff time reaches 0. On the other hand, if
the data collision occurs due to multiple devices sending data
at the same time, the devices choose the backoff time again
from the range between 0 and CW . At this time, the value
of CW is set to longer than that of the previous selection
in order to decrease the probability that the data collision

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occurs again. The value of CW is decided from the following

expression:
CW = (CWmin + 1) 2m 1

(7)

where CWmin and m show the minimum size of the contention

window and the number of retransmissions, respectively. The
size of the contention window increases along with the number
of retransmission, as shown in (7), and stops when the value
exceeds the value of CWmax , which shows the maximum size
of the contention window. After that, z is chosen randomly from
the range between 0 and CWmax repeatedly. This way, each
device sends data to the server via the nearest AP.
At this time, the expectation waiting time until each device
starts the data sending process is also calculated by using
the models we constructed earlier. In the aforementioned data
collection method, each device starts the data sending process
randomly during the interval, Ti . Thus, the expectation waiting
time until it starts the data sending process after the interval
has started is expressed as Ti /2. Additionally, the expectation
value of the required time when the data transmission fails and
the retransmission is carried out in several occasions, , is
expressed as follows:

1


pi (1 pi )m

m=0

2m CWmin l
2

pi (1 pi )m

m=

CWmax l
2

(8)

where pi represents the probability that the data transmission

from a device succeeds and denotes the number of retransmissions when the size of the contention window reaches CWmax .
Using (7), the value of can be calculated as follows:


1
CWmax + 1
=
log
.
(9)
log 2
CWmin + 1
Thus, the expectation value of the waiting time until the data
sending is finished is expressed as (Ti /2) + .
Next, we describe the model to calculate the throughput in
the supposed network. When Ti and i are set, since each
device starts the data sending process randomly during the
interval, the rate data received from the devices at the AP, Gi
(packets/slot), is expressed as follows:
Gi =

i Ni l
.
Ti

(10)

Here, we assume that each device sends only one packet to the
AP through its data sending process. Additionally, the traffic
arrival rate at the AP can be assumed to follow the Poisson
distribution because each device waits a random period before
sending the data. At this time, since CSMA/CA is supposed
to be used as the access control scheme in this proposal, the
probability that the data transmission from a device succeeds,
pi , is expressed as follows [16]:
pi =

eaGi
Gi (1 + 2a) + eaGi

where a denotes the ratio of propagation delay to packet transmission time. Moreover, the throughput, i.e., i (packets/slot),
is expressed as follows:

(11)

i = Gi pi =

Gi eaGi
.
Gi (1 + 2a) + eaGi

(12)

C. Accuracy of the Authentication System

Here, the model to evaluate the accuracy of the system is
constructed. First, the definition of the accuracy is defined.
Second, the model to calculate the accuracy is constructed with
some mathematical expressions.
1) Definition: To evaluate the accuracy, two metrics are used
in consideration of the system requirements mentioned in the
previous section. The first metric is the freshness of the database. We define the freshness, namely, f , as the concordance
rate between the data of ambient information in the database
of the server and the ambient information, which is observed
in real time at the same point. As shown in Fig. 2, if the
ambient information observed from the device with identification number ni is 20% different from the data saved in the
server observed previously at the same device, the freshness
of the data in the server is expressed as fni = 0.8. Since the
ambient information is considered to change over time, the
value of f decreases with time. We define changing rate of
the freshness of the ambient information observed at the device
with identification number ni as xni . The changing rate shows
the degree of change in the observed ambient information per
unit time. From the definition, the average value of xni in
the 10 units time is described as 0.02 in Fig. 2, whereas the
average value of xni+1 in the 10 units time is 0.04, which
means the changing rate at the device with identification number ni+1 is larger than that of the device with identification
number ni .
As the second metric, we consider the amount of data collected at the same time. The amount of data collecting points
has an effect on the accuracy of the authentication system. We
call it the density of data collection. When a user attempts to
authenticate with the server by sending the observed ambient
information, the matching protocol between the sent data and
the database in the server is executed. The server then matches
the similarity of the data received from the devices to the data
received from the users. From the result of the matching, the
cell that the users are located in can be determined. At that time,
since the maximum error of the users point is represented by ri ,
small values of ri can provide a higher accuracy to the system.
Thus, high density of data collecting points provides a larger
amount of data collected simultaneously, resulting in a higher
accuracy to the system.
As aforementioned, the two metrics, freshness and density
of data collection, are used to evaluate the accuracy of the
authentication system. However, high density of data collection
means collecting data from many devices, which causes a
decrease in real-time performance of the data collection due
to the limitation of network resources. Thus, there is a tradeoff relationship between the freshness and density of data
collection. Hence, it is required to control the data collection

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by considering both metrics at the same time to improve the

performance of the system.
However, since the freshness changes as time goes by,
whereas the density guarantees the accuracy of distance between the user and the device collecting the ambient information, a method to evaluate the system by using both metrics
at the same time is needed. For such occasions, we use the
movement of system users to evaluate the density. Here, we
define the average moving speed of users inside the coverage of
an AP with identification number i as vi . As aforementioned,
the density of data collection affects the maximum error in
precising the users location, which is represented as ri . By
considering the movement of the user, the reliability of the data,
which is guaranteed to have a maximum error of ri + vi is the
same as the reliability of the data with a guaranteed maximum
error of ri after a unit of time has passed. That is because
ri + vi is actually the size of the area where the user can be in
a unit of time after the data guaranteeing the maximum error
as ri is collected. Thus, it can be defined that the freshness
degradation per second is equal to the degradation level of the
guaranteed maximum error of the measured distance. Therefore, by evaluating these two metrics, we can regulate the data
collection to achieve high accuracy of the system.
2) Evaluation Model: Finally, we describe the model to
evaluate the accuracy of the authentication system. We define
Ani as the accuracy when a user close to the device with
identification number ni uses the authentication system. When
the data are received by the server, the value of Ani is equal to
1 and it decrease as time goes by. Here, we denote the value of
Ani after t have passed as Ani (t). In this paper, the accuracy is
defined with the freshness and the guaranteed maximum error
of the users point. The freshness f changes as time goes by.
Thus, the freshness after t passed, namely, fni (t), is expressed
as follows:
fni (t) = 1 t xni .

(13)

The guaranteed maximum error of the measured users location is expressed as ri . Additionally, the error of the users
calculated position is turned into a metric with a time unit
by considering the average moving speed of the users inside
the coverage of the AP. Thus, maximum accuracy degradation
level, which is related to the maximum error of the users calculated position is expressed as ri /vi . Therefore, the minimum
accuracy t units time after the data was collected at a user close
to the device with identification number as ni is expressed as
follows:
ri
xni .
(14)
Ani (t) = fni (t)
vi
To improve the accuracy of the authentication system, each
AP collects data to maximize the average value of Ani of all
devices under the APs coverage. Here, the average value of
Ani (t) of all the devices under its coverage at arbitrary timing
is defined as Ai (t), which is expressed as follows:
Ai (t) =

Ni
1 
ri

fni (t) xi
Ni n =1
vi
i

(15)

Procedure 1 Parameters adjustment mechanism

1: Calculate Ti and i to maximize Ai (Ti ) at the server
2: Set i according to the configuration in the previous interval
3: Each AP broadcasts the values of Ti and i to devices
inside its coverage
4: Each device decides whether to send data or not according
to i
5: Each device sets wni randomly between 0 and Ti
6: / Start data sending process during time period Ti /
7: Devices that decide to send data start data sending
processes
8: Server counts the amount of data received from each AP
9: / After the time period Ti /
10: if The amount of collected data is smaller than i Ni
then
11: i = i
12: else
13: i = i +
14: end if
where xi denotes the average changing rate of the freshness of
the ambient information at the users in the coverage of the AP.
This way, the model to evaluate the accuracy is constructed.

IV. P ROPOSED DATA C OLLECTION M ETHOD

Here, first, we introduce the procedure of the proposed data
collection method. Second, the way to maximize the accuracy
of the authentication system is described.

A. Procedure of the Proposed Data Collection Method

In the proposed method, the density and the freshness of
the collected data is considered to improve the accuracy of the
authentication system. To improve the density of the collected
data, it is controlled how many devices data are collected
within a determined interval. To decide the number of devices, the length of the interval and the throughput of the
data collection are controlled. To collect data from as many
devices as possible, the number of devices to send its data in
the determined interval is controlled in order to achieve the
highest throughput as possible. At the same time, the length
of the interval is also controlled to achieve high accuracy of
the authentication system. Additionally, it is also controlled
which devices data is collected within a determined interval. In
this selection of the devices, the changing rate of the freshness
of ambient information at the devices is taken into account.
Since the changing rate is different for each device due to the
difference of the surrounding network environment, the devices
with higher changing rate are selected on a priority basis in
the proposed method. By selecting the devices with higher
changing rate, we can avoid a bigger drop in the freshness of
the specified device.
The procedure is summarized in Procedure 1. In this proposal, as aforementioned, we control how many devices and

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6

which devices send the data to maximize the accuracy of the

authentication system.
First, to decide the optimal number of devices to send data,
the length of the data collecting interval, i.e., Ti , and the ratio
of devices to send data among all devices, i , are calculated
at the authentication server. A large interval decreases the data
freshness, but it allows a larger number of devices to send
data in an interval. Thus, the values of these parameters are
decided to maximize the accuracy of the authentication system.
A detailed description of this maximization is in the next
section. Additionally, devices whose ambient information has a
fast changing rate have priority in sending data in this proposal.
To control it, a threshold is introduced to decide whether to send
data or not at each device. In our proposal, each device decides
to send data in the interval when fni falls below the threshold,
denoted by i (0 i 1), at the start of the interval. The value
of i is set for each AP and reconfigured at every interval
according to the results of the data collection. Additionally,
in this procedure, the initial value of i is set temporarily. By
adjusting the value of i , the number of devices to send data in
the interval is controlled to achieve data collection from i Ni
devices. The values of Ti and i are broadcasted from each AP
to the devices inside its coverage. The devices receiving the
parameters decide whether to send data or not according to i .
After that, the devices which decide to send data set the waiting
period before sending data at the interval, i.e., wni , randomly
between 0 and Ti . After setting these parameters, each device
starts its data sending process. During the interval Ti , the server
calculates the amount of data received from each AP. After
the time period Ti , if the amount of data collected from the
AP with identification number i is smaller or larger than the
optimal number of devices to send data, which is expressed
as i Ni , the value of i is reconfigured in a way that only
i Ni devices participate in the data collection. If the amount
of collected data is smaller, is subtracted from i to increase
the number of devices that send data in that interval. However,
if the amount of collected data is too big, is added to i to
decrease the number of devices that send data in that interval.
The value of has an effect on the capability of staying close
to the optimal value of in the proposal, but we use it as
a constant value in this paper. This way, the amount of collected data is controlled to achieve data collection from i Ni
devices.
By executing this procedure repeatedly while dynamically
controlling the parameters to adequately collect data from the
devices in the network, the accuracy of the authentication
system is maximized. This way, we can collect data as fresh as
possible from as many devices as possible, which improves the
accuracy of the authentication system under the limited network
resources. Thus, it contributes to the development of locationbased authentication systems. Moreover, the proposal is also
applicable to existing network infrastructure by introducing
minor parameters adjustment to the server and authentication
application. Furthermore, the basic procedure of the data collection method can be applied to various kinds of systems, which
use data collection by considering the requirements from the
application side.

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TABLE I
PARAMETER S ETTINGS

B. Maximization of the Accuracy

Here, how to maximize the accuracy of the authentication
system is represented through a mathematical analysis on the
data collection based on the constructed model, which is shown
in Section III. Since the objective of the data collection is to
maximize the accuracy of the authentication system, the authentication server calculates it at the start of the every intervals,
which is denoted by Ai (Ti ). In this analysis, it is assumed
that the number of devices to start the data sending process is
perfectly controlled by an adequate value of i , which means
that the number of devices to start the data sending process in
the proposed procedure is equal to i Ni . Then, the objective
function of the maximization is expressed by using (5) and (15)
as follows:
Ai (Ti ) =

Ni
1 
Ri
1

fn (Ti )

xi .
Ni n =1 i
Ni vi

(16)

In the aforementioned expression, fni (Ti ) and i are controlled

by the proposed method to improve the density of the collected data.
At this time, from (10), the relationship between Ti and i is
expressed as follows:
i =

Gi Ti
.
Ni l

(17)

From the analysis on the throughput in previous researches

[17], [18], it is shown that the function of i , which is described
as (12), is convex upward with the value of Gi . Thus, there
is a value of Gi that achieves maximum throughput. Since the
value of a in (12) is a constant value depending on the network
environment, Gi is calculated from (12). Thus, by using (17),
the value of i can be controlled only by Ti .
On the other hand, the value of fni (Ti ) shows the expected
freshness of the collected data at the end of the interval. Since
the freshness of the data collected from the devices with a
successful transmission to the AP is expected to decrease during
(Ti /2) and the freshness of the data of other devices with
a failed transmission decreases during Ti , fni (Ti ) is expressed
as follows:




Ti
fni (Ti ) = 1
xni i pi
2
+ (fni (0) Ti xni ) (1 i pi )

(18)

where fni (0) shows the value of fni (t) at the start of the
interval. As shown in this expression, the value of fni (Ti ) is
also controlled by Ti .

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KAWAMOTO et al.: EFFECTIVELY COLLECTING DATA FOR THE LOCATION-BASED AUTHENTICATION IN IoT

Fig. 3. Existence of the maximized accuracy and the tradeoff relationship between the freshness and density of the collected data. (a) fi (Ti ). (b) D(Ti ).
(c) Ai (Ti ).

Therefore, by controlling the value of Ti , the objective function can be maximized. Thus, the value of Ti , which maximizes
the objective function, i.e., Tiopt , is expressed as follows:
Tiopt = arg max Ai (Ti ).

(19)

Ti

V. P ERFORMANCE E VALUATION
Here, the existence of the optimal value of Ti to maximize the
accuracy of the authentication system is described. Additionally, the effectiveness of the proposed method is also presented.
The mathematical results are provided by using the analysis in
previous sections.
A. Parameter Settings
The parameter settings are summarized in Table I. In this
numerical analysis, the accuracy of the authentication system
constructed by devices under an APs coverage is evaluated.
The radius of the coverage of the AP is set to 30 m. Additionally, we assume that the users and the devices are deployed
randomly in the coverage of the AP. The users average moving
speed is set to 1 m/s. The number of devices in the coverage
of the AP is set to 1000. As the parameters used in the process
of the data collection, the length of a time slot and the ratio of
propagation delay to packet transmission time are set to 50 s
and 10, respectively.
B. Existence of the Optimal Value of Ti
First, the existence of an optimal value of Ti , which maximizes the accuracy of the authentication system is proved.
Fig. 3(a) and (b) shows the change in the freshness and density
of the collected data to the value of the interval, respectively.
Here, as the index to evaluate the density of the collected data,
the value, which is equal to (ri /vi ) xni that is the second
term of (16) is used. Additionally, we express the index as
D(Ti ) in this evaluation. Moreover, Fig. 3(c) shows the change
in accuracy when the value of the interval is varied. From
Fig. 3(c), it is clearly shown that there is an optimal value of
Ti , which maximizes the accuracy of the authentication system.
This is because there is a tradeoff relationship between the
freshness and density of the collected data with different values
of the interval that can be confirmed from Fig. 3(a) and (b). A

Fig. 4. Change in the accuracy when the value of the changing rate of the
freshness of the ambient information is varied.

large interval causes the freshness of each data to decrease, but

it allows a larger number of devices to send data in the interval.
Thus, the optimal value of Ti to maximize the accuracy exists.

C. Accuracy of the Authentication System

Second, we evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed
method by contrasting it with the case where the proposed
method is not used. In this numerical analysis, the case where
the proposed method is not used is defined as the case where all
devices in the coverage of the AP try to send data in an interval.
In that case, the interval is set to the same value of the proposal.
Fig. 4 shows the change in the accuracy when the value of the
changing rate of the freshness of the ambient information is
varied. From the result, it is shown that the proposed data collection method achieved higher values of accuracy than the case
where the proposed method is not used at all times. The reason
why the accuracy decreases with the increase of the average
value of changing rate of the freshness is that a large value of
the changing rate of the freshness causes an increase in the
degradation level of the freshness in an interval. However,
it is understood that the proposed data collection achieved
higher accuracy whenever the value of the changing rate of the
freshness changes.
Additionally, Fig. 5 shows accuracy in each case where the
value of fni (0) is set to 0.6, 0.7, and 0.8, respectively. From the
result, it can be seen that the proposed method always achieves
higher accuracy than the case where the proposal is not used.
Therefore, it is confirmed that the proposed data collection

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8

IEEE SYSTEMS JOURNAL

0.9

With proposal

Without proposal

Ai (Ti )

0.8
0.7
0.6
0.5

fni (0) = 0.8

fni (0) = 0.7

fni (0) = 0.6

Fig. 5. Accuracy in each case where the value of fni (0) is set to 0.6,
0.7, and 0.8.

method achieves to improve accuracy of the location-based

authentication system efficiently.
VI. C ONCLUSION
In order to make the future industrial IoT possible, many
kinds of industrial IoT applications have been developed, and
the collaboration with network systems becomes essential.
In this vein, we focused on data collection for a locationbased authentication system as an application for the industrial
society. Since the authentication system requires collection
of data called ambient information from numerous devices
in a real-time basis, an efficient data collection method to
satisfy the requirements from the application side with the
limited network resources is necessary. Thus, we proposed a
novel data collection method for location-based authentication
systems. In this proposal, to improve the performance of the
system, some parameters for the network control were adjusted
dynamically according to requirements from the system and
the surrounding network environment. Therefore, our proposed
method resulted in an improved accuracy of the locationbased authentication system by using the network resources
efficiently.
As for the future works, we aim to consider the inhomogeneous devices distribution. Since inhomogeneous devices
distribution causes the collected ambient information to have
different density, a method to control the distribution of devices data transmission is necessary. Additionally, another
interesting research area is on the characteristic features of the
ambient information, which can improve the performance of the
authentication method in various applications.
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Yuichi Kawamoto (S12) received the B.E. degree

in information engineering from Tohoku University,
Sendai, Japan, in 2011 and the M.S. degree from
the Graduate School of Information Science (GSIS),
Tohoku University, in 2013, where he is currently
working toward the Ph.D. degree.
Dr. Kawamoto was the recipient of the Best
Paper Awards in some international conferences,
including IEEEs flagship events, namely, the International Wireless Communications and Mobile
Computing Conference (IWCMC13) and the IEEE
Global Communications Conference in 2013 (GLOBECOM13). In addition,
he was the recipient of the Satellite Communications Research Award in the
fiscal year of 2011 from the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers. He is the recipient of Japan Society for the Promotion of
Science (JSPS) in 2013.

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KAWAMOTO et al.: EFFECTIVELY COLLECTING DATA FOR THE LOCATION-BASED AUTHENTICATION IN IoT

Hiroki Nishiyama (SM13) received the M.S. and

Ph.D. degrees in information science from Tohoku
University, Sendai, Japan, in 2007 and 2008, respectively.
He is currently an Associate Professor with the
Graduate School of Information Sciences, Tohoku
University. He has authored or coauthored over 140
peer-reviewed papers, including many high-quality
publications in prestigious IEEE journals and conferences. His research interests cover a wide range of
areas, including satellite communications, unmanned
aircraft system networks, wireless and mobile networks, ad hoc and sensor
networks, green networking, and network security. One of his outstanding
achievements is relay-by-smartphone, which makes it possible to share information among many people by using only WiFi functionality of smartphones.
Dr. Nishiyama is a member of the Institute of Electronics, Information
and Communication Engineers (IEICE). He served as a Cochair for Selected
Areas in Communications Symposium of IEEE International Conference on
Communications 2014 (ICC14) and a Cochair for Cognitive Radio and Networks Symposium of IEEE ICC15. He currently serves as an Associate Editor
of the IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, an Associate Editor for
Springer Peer-to-Peer Networking and Applications journal, and the Secretary
of the IEEE Communications Society Sendai Chapter. He was a recipient of
the best paper awards from many international conferences, including IEEEs
flagship events, such as the IEEE Global Communications Conference in 2010
(GLOBECOM10), GLOBECOM13, and GLOBECOM14 and the IEEE
Wireless Communications and Networking Conference in 2012 (WCNC12)
and WCNC14. He was also a recipient of the 2009 FUNAI Foundations
Research Incentive Award for Information Technology, the IEICE Communications Society Academic Encouragement Award 2011, the IEEE Communications Society Asia-Pacific Board Outstanding Young Researcher Award 2013,
and the Special Award of the 29th Advanced Technology Award for Creativity
in 2015.

Nei Kato (F13) received the B.S. degree from Polytechnic University, Tokyo, Japan, in 1986, and the
M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in information engineering
from Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan, in 1988 and
1991, respectively.
He joined the Computer Center of Tohoku University as an Assistant Professor in 1991, and was
promoted to Full Professor position with the Graduate School of Information Sciences, Tohoku University, in 2003. He became a Strategic Adviser to the
President of Tohoku University in 2013. He has been
engaged in research on computer networking, wireless mobile communications,
satellite communications, ad hoc & sensor & mesh networks, smart grid, and
pattern recognition. He has published more than 300 papers in peer-reviewed
journals and conference proceedings.
Dr. Kato currently serves as a Member-at-Large on the Board of Governors,
IEEE Communications Society, the Chair of IEEE Ad Hoc & Sensor Networks
Technical Committee, the Chair of IEEE ComSoc Sendai Chapter, the Editorin-Chief of IEEE Network Magazine, the Associate Editor-in-Chief of IEEE
Internet of Things Journal, and an Area Editor of IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON
V EHICULAR T ECHNOLOGY. He has served as the Chair of IEEE ComSoc
Satellite and Space Communications Technical Committee (20102012), the
Chair of IEICE Satellite Communications Technical Committee (20112012).
He was the recipient of the Minoru Ishida Foundation Research Encouragement Prize(2003), the Distinguished Contributions to Satellite Communications
Award from the IEEE Communications Society, Satellite and Space Communications Technical Committee (2005), the FUNAI information Science
Award (2007), the TELCOM System Technology Award from Foundation
for Electrical Communications Diffusion (2008), the IEICE Network System
Research Award (2009), the IEICE Satellite Communications Research Award
(2011), the KDDI Foundation Excellent Research Award (2012), and the IEICE
Communications Society Distinguished Service Award (2012), Distinguished
Contributions to Disaster-resilient Networks R&D Award from Ministry of
Internal Affairs and Communications, Japan (2014), seven Best Paper Awards
from IEEE GLOBECOM/WCNC/VTC, and IEICE Communications Society
Best Paper Award (2012). Aside from his academic activities, he also serves
on the Expert Committee of Telecommunications Council, Ministry of Internal
Affairs and Communications, and as the chairperson of ITU-R SG4 and SG7,
Japan. He is a Distinguished Lecturer of IEEE Communications Society and
Vehicular Technology Society. He is a Fellow of Institute of Electronics,
Information and Communication Engineers.

Yoshitaka Shimizu received the B.E. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from Tokyo Institute
of Technology, Yokohama, Japan, in 1995 and 1997,
respectively.
He joined NTT Wireless Systems Laboratories in
1997. He is currently engaged in the research and development of wireless access systems with the NTT
Network Innovation Laboratories, NTT Corporation.

Atsushi Takahara (M12) received the B.S., M.S.,

and Dr. Eng. degrees from Tokyo Institute of Technology, Yokohama, Japan, in 1983, 1985, and 1988,
respectively.
In 1988, he joined NTT LSI Laboratories, where
he researched formal methods of very large scale integration design, reconfigurable architectures, and IP
processing. From 2003 to 2008, he was the Director
of Service Development and Operations Department,
Visual Communications Division, NTT Bizlink, Inc.,
where he developed and operated an IP-based visual
communication service. From 2008 to 2011, he was the Executive Manager
of Media Innovation Laboratory with NTT Network Innovation Laboratories.,
where he became the Director from 2011 to 2015. Since 2015, he has been the
Senior Vice President for the Sales and Marketing Group with NTT Electronics
Corporation, Yokosuka, Japan. His current research interests are IP networking
for real-time communication applications, IP infrastructure technologies, and
optical transport technologies.
Dr. Takahara is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery; the
Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers; and the
Information Processing Society of Japan.

Tingting Jiang (S11) received the B.S. degree

(summa cum laude) in computer science from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), Blacksburg, VA, USA, in 2007. She is
currently working toward the Ph.D. degree in computer science at Virginia Tech. She is also currently
a Full-Time Software Engineer with Virginia Tech
University Libraries.
During 20072009, she was a Software Engineer
with Intrexon Corporation, Blacksburg. Her research
areas are in wireless networking and cyber security.
Ms. Jiang was a recipient of a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (20112014) and a Microsoft Research Graduate Womens
Scholarship (2011).