Sensors (Oct 2021)

Internet of Things Based Contact Tracing Systems

  • Peng Hu,
  • Philippe Lamontagne

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/s21217124
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 21, no. 21
p. 7124

Abstract

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The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly threatened the health and well-being of humanity. Contact tracing (CT) as an important non-pharmaceutical intervention is essential to containing the spread of such an infectious disease. However, current CT solutions are fragmented with limited use of sensing and computing technologies in a scalable framework. These issues can be well addressed with the use of the Internet of Things (IoT) technologies. Therefore, we need to overview the principle, motivation, and architecture for a generic IoT-based CT system (IoT-CTS). A novel architecture for IoT-CTS solutions is proposed with the consideration of peer-to-peer and object-to-peer contact events, as well as the discussion on key topics, such as an overview of applicable sensors for CT needs arising from the COVID-19 transmission methods. The proposed IoT-CTS architecture aims to holistically utilize essential sensing mechanisms with the analysis of widely adopted privacy-preserving techniques. With the use of generic peer-to-peer and object-to-peer sensors based on proximity and environment sensing mechanisms, the infectious cases with self-directed strategies can be effectively reduced. Some open research directions are presented in the end.

Keywords