A Unified Communication Architecture for Smart Locker Networks and Mobile Access

E-commerce has seen considerable growth, mainly driven by the COVID-19 pandemic. As life returns to normal, challenges with scheduling home deliveries have become more frequent, resulting in a surge in the use of Pick-Up Drop-Off (PUDO) solutions. Smart lockers stand out among these, as they are unattended and allow extended use hours. This work examines various communication strategies between smart-phones, local lockers, and a central server that can support multiple locker hardware and environment configurations. By implementing and testing various approaches, this research aims to identify the advantages and disadvantages of each approach in terms of convenience, reliability, security, compatibility and locker hardware cost. The conclusions of this work help deter-mine, among a set of approaches, which is the most cost-efficient approach, presents advantages and disadvantages depending on environmental conditions, while contributing to the advancement of loT-based cyber-physical systems in the smart locker ecosys-tem. To validate and test these approaches, a mobile application was developed, and the existing backend(local locker and central system) was modified to support the different communication strategies. This work was carried out in collaboration with CTT, a Portuguese postal company.