Development of Mobile IoT Terminal with Video Cache for Smart Transportation

The Internet of Things (IoT) technology stands at the forefront of the fourth industrial revolution which brings the era of connectivity, advanced data collection and analytics, and automation technology. However, there are challenges that arise, particularly the data reliability during poor network conditions. Loss of data can lead to costly errors or delays in applications where real-time decisions are important, such as in autonomous vehicles and smart urban infrastructure. Nevertheless, data caching at edge networks or devices can be used to mitigate the impact of poor network connectivity. This paper presents the development of a mobile IoT terminal using an ESP32 microcontroller, designed to enhance the resilience and efficiency of IoT systems. The terminal can facilitate wireless communication, process and store data from the sensor locally. The data caching process involves a data placement strategy that refers to the mechanism to store data and a data replacement strategy that caters for the eviction of cache from the storage. Moreover, the terminal can be remotely accessed by using different communication protocols, enhancing the versatility of the terminal in the IoT architecture. The designed terminal has local 4 GB cache storage that can store approximately 600 min of HD-resolution videos. Once the storage threshold is reached, the old data will be evicted based on the first-in-first-out (FIFO) and sampling method. Moreover, it supports file transfer protocol (FTP) and hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) for the data to be retrieved and modified via the network. The outcome of the work demonstrates the potential of localized data processing and storage in supporting e-mobility operations and smart living applications.