Citation: Aume, C.; Andrews, K.; Pal,
S.; James, A.; Seth, A.;
Mukhopadhyay, S. TrackInk: An
IoT-Enabled Real-Time Object
Tracking System in Space. Sensors
2022, 22, 608. https://doi.org/
10.3390/s22020608
Academic Editors: Daniele Giusto
and Matteo Anedda
Received: 14 December 2021
Accepted: 11 January 2022
Published: 13 January 2022
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Article
TrackInk: An IoT-Enabled Real-Time Object Tracking System
in Space
Cameron Aume
1
, Keith Andrews
1
, Shantanu Pal
2,
* , Alice James
1
, Avishkar Seth
1
and Subhas Mukhopadhyay
1
1
Faculty of Science and Engineering, School of Engineering, Macquarie University,
Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia; cameron-brooks.aume@students.mq.edu.au (C.A.);
keith.andrews@students.mq.edu.au (K.A.); alice.james@mq.edu.au (A.J.); avishkar.seth@mq.edu.au (A.S.);
subhas.mukhopadhyay@mq.edu.au (S.M.)
2
Faculty of Science, School of Computer Science, Queensland University of Technology,
Brisbane, QLD 4000, Australia
* Correspondence: shantanu.pal@qut.edu.au; Tel.: +61-7-3138-2419
Abstract:
Nowadays, there is tremendous growth in the Internet of Things (IoT) applications in our
everyday lives. The proliferation of smart devices, sensors technology, and the Internet makes it
possible to communicate between the digital and physical world seamlessly for distributed data
collection, communication, and processing of several applications dynamically. However, it is a
challenging task to monitor and track objects in real-time due to the distinct characteristics of the
IoT system, e.g., scalability, mobility, and resource-limited nature of the devices. In this paper, we
address the significant issue of IoT object tracking in real time. We propose a system called ‘TrackInk’
to demonstrate our idea. TrackInk will be capable of pointing toward and taking pictures of visible
satellites in the night sky, including but not limited to the International Space Station (ISS) or the
moon. Data will be collected from sensors to determine the system’s geographical location along with
its 3D orientation, allowing for the system to be moved. Additionally, TrackInk will communicate
with and send data to ThingSpeak for further cloud-based systems and data analysis. Our proposed
system is lightweight, highly scalable, and performs efficiently in a resource-limited environment.
We discuss a detailed system’s architecture and show the performance results using a real-world
hardware-based experimental setup.
Keywords: Internet of Things; access control; policy management; security; architecture
1. Introduction
With the development of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), cel-
lular networks [
1
], Internet of Things (IoT) applications [
2
–
4
], and the developments
towards the space sciences, there is an increasing demand towards the innovation of satel-
lite design, tracking systems, and their orchestrations at scale [
5
–
11
]. As illustrated in
Figure 1, it can be seen that the number of satellites launched into orbit has increased
in recent years. It highlights the demand for satellite constellations for various upfront
technologies, e.g., for Global Positioning Systems (GPS) [
12
], global integrated terrestrial-
satellite network
coverage [13,14]
, as well as satellite internet [
15
–
17
]. The information
provided by these satellites is useful and facilitates our daily life in many ways. For ex-
ample, these satellites can provide data for real-time monitoring of weather patterns [
18
],
GPS for navigation, advanced alarms for natural disasters [
19
,
20
], or even monitoring
and predicting crops production by delivering a platform for productive, profitable, and
sustainable farming [21–27].
Sensors 2022, 22, 608. https://doi.org/10.3390/s22020608 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sensors
