Reducing complexity in developing wireless sensor network systems using model-driven development

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is a collection of small and low-powered gadgets called sensor nodes (motes), which are capable of sensing the environment, collecting and processing the sensed data, and communicating with each other to accomplish a specific task. Moreover, all sensed and processed data are finally handed over to a central gathering point called a base station (sink), where all collected data are stored and can be reviewed by the user. Most of the current methods concerning WSN development are application or platform-dependent; hence it is not a trivial task to reuse developed applications in another environment. Therefore, WSN application development is a challenging and complex task because of the low-level technical details and programming complexity. Furthermore, most WSN development projects are managed by software engineers, not application field experts or WSN end users. Consequently, WSN solutions are considered expensive, due to the amount of effort that has to be put into these projects. This research project aims to reduce the complexity in developing WSN applications, by abstracting the low-level technical and programming details for average developers and domain experts. In this research, we argue that reducing complexity can be achieved by defining a new Domain-Specific Language (DSL) as a new application development and programming abstraction, which supports multi-levels modelling (i.e. network, group, and node-level). The outcome of this work is the definition of a new language called SenNet, which is an open source DSL programming abstraction that enables application developers to concentrate on the high-level application logic rather than the low-level complex details. SenNet was developed using the principles of Model-Driven Development (MDD) and macro-programming. Developers can use SenNet as a high-level programming abstraction to auto-generate a ready-to-deploy single node nesC code for all sensor nodes that comprise the SenNet application. SenNet gives developers the flexibility they need by offering them a broad range of predefined monitoring tasks and activities, enabling developers to develop different application types such as Sense-Forward (SF), and Event-Triggered (ET); besides providing a set of node-level and in-network data processing tasks. The current SenNet version is configured to generate nesC code, yet SenNet can be set up to produce and generate any programming language such as Java, or C++, by reconfiguring the code generator to produce the new language format, without changing the language design and produced semantics. Various tests and user study have been used to evaluate SenNet’s usability and functional suitability. Evaluation results found that SenNet could save 88.45% of the LOC required to be programmed by a developer, and 87.14% of the required vocabularies. Furthermore, results showed that SenNet could save 92.86% and 96.47% of the program length and volume respectively. Most of the user study participants (96%) found SenNet to be usable and helps to achieve the required WSN application with reduced development effort. Moreover, 82% of the participants believe that SenNet is functionally suitable for WSN application development. Two real-world business case studies developed were used to assess SenNet’s appropriateness to develop WSN real applications, and how it can be used to develop applications related to data processing tasks. Based on the final evaluation results, it can be concluded that our research has been successful in introducing SenNet as a new abstraction to reduce complexity in the WSN application development process

Enabling High-Level Application Development for the Internet of Things

Application development in the Internet of Things (IoT) is challenging because it involves dealing with a wide range of related issues such as lack of separation of concerns, and lack of high-level of abstractions to address both the large scale and heterogeneity. Moreover, stakeholders involved in the application development have to address issues that can be attributed to different life-cycles phases. when developing applications. First, the application logic has to be analyzed and then separated into a set of distributed tasks for an underlying network. Then, the tasks have to be implemented for the specific hardware. Apart from handling these issues, they have to deal with other aspects of life-cycle such as changes in application requirements and deployed devices. Several approaches have been proposed in the closely related fields of wireless sensor network, ubiquitous and pervasive computing, and software engineering in general to address the above challenges. However, existing approaches only cover limited subsets of the above mentioned challenges when applied to the IoT. This paper proposes an integrated approach for addressing the above mentioned challenges. The main contributions of this paper are: (1) a development methodology that separates IoT application development into different concerns and provides a conceptual framework to develop an application, (2) a development framework that implements the development methodology to support actions of stakeholders. The development framework provides a set of modeling languages to specify each development concern and abstracts the scale and heterogeneity related complexity. It integrates code generation, task-mapping, and linking techniques to provide automation. Code generation supports the application development phase by producing a programming framework that allows stakeholders to focus on the application logic, while our mapping and linking techniques together support the deployment phase by producing device-specific code to result in a distributed system collaboratively hosted by individual devices. Our evaluation based on two realistic scenarios shows that the use of our approach improves the productivity of stakeholders involved in the application development

Could tierless languages reduce IoT development grief?

Internet of Things (IoT) software is notoriously complex, conventionally comprising multiple tiers. Traditionally an IoT developer must use multiple programming languages and ensure that the components interoperate correctly. A novel alternative is to use a single tierless language with a compiler that generates the code for each component and ensures their correct interoperation. We report a systematic comparative evaluation of two tierless language technologies for IoT stacks: one for resource-rich sensor nodes (Clean with iTask), and one for resource-constrained sensor nodes (Clean with iTask and mTask). The evaluation is based on four implementations of a typical smart campus application: two tierless and two Python-based tiered. (1) We show that tierless languages have the potential to significantly reduce the development effort for IoT systems, requiring 70% less code than the tiered implementations. Careful analysis attributes this code reduction to reduced interoperation (e.g. two embedded domain-specific languages (DSLs) and one paradigm versus seven languages and two paradigms), automatically generated distributed communication, and powerful IoT programming abstractions. (2) We show that tierless languages have the potential to significantly improve the reliability of IoT systems, describing how Clean iTask/mTask maintains type safety, provides higher order failure management, and simplifies maintainability. (3) We report the first comparison of a tierless IoT codebase for resource-rich sensor nodes with one for resource-constrained sensor nodes. The comparison shows that they have similar code size (within 7%), and functional structure. (4) We present the first comparison of two tierless IoT languages, one for resource-rich sensor nodes, and the other for resource-constrained sensor nodes

Integrated Toolset for WSN Application Planning, Development, Commissioning and Maintenance: The WSN-DPCM ARTEMIS-JU Project

In this article we present the main results obtained in the ARTEMIS-JU WSN-DPCM project between October 2011 and September 2015. The first objective of the project was the development of an integrated toolset for Wireless sensor networks (WSN) application planning, development, commissioning and maintenance, which aims to support application domain experts, with limited WSN expertise, to efficiently develop WSN applications from planning to lifetime maintenance. The toolset is made of three main tools: one for planning, one for application development and simulation (which can include hardware nodes), and one for network commissioning and lifetime maintenance. The tools are integrated in a single platform which promotes software reuse by automatically selecting suitable library components for application synthesis and the abstraction of the underlying architecture through the use of a middleware layer. The second objective of the project was to test the effectiveness of the toolset for the development of two case studies in different domains, one for detecting the occupancy state of parking lots and one for monitoring air concentration of harmful gasses near an industrial site

Modelo de privacidad digital en inteligencia ambiental basado en sistemas multiagente

El gran desarrollo de las Tecnologías de la Información y la Comunicación utilizadas en los dominios de aplicación de la Inteligencia Ambiental (AmI), ocurrido en la última década, nos sitúa inmersos en los llamados entornos inteligentes, rodeados de una extensa variedad de dispositivos y tecnologías con capacidad de adquirir, almacenar y transmitir nuestra información personal. La complejidad y volumen de los sistemas involucrados en las aplicaciones desarrolladas en Inteligencia Ambiental hacen que seamos incapaces de conocer y controlar toda la información que estos sistemas son capaces de adquirir y transmitir, tanto si esta información ha sido proporcionada por nosotros directamente, como si ha sido adquirida de forma indirecta por otros sistemas sin nuestro conocimiento; lo que pone en riesgo la protección de nuestro derecho a la privacidad. Considerando que, el principal objetivo de la Inteligencia Ambiental es el de ofrecernos diferentes tipos de servicios personalizados en cualquier lugar y en todo momento, facilitándonos así la realización de nuestras actividades cotidianas, se ha llevado a cabo un estudio sobre las aplicaciones desarrolladas en AmI, que ha revelado la necesidad de incluir las cuestiones de tipo social y ético en el diseño del AmI, destacando entre ellas la privacidad por ser uno de los derechos fundamentales de las personas, como así queda reflejado en la Declaración Universal de los Derechos Humanos (Artículo 12). Por ello, para el verdadero desarrollo y aceptación de la Inteligencia Ambiental deberá considerarse no solo los aspectos tecnológicos, sino que, resulta fundamental tener en cuenta las implicaciones sociales y éticas. Esta es la idea del concepto “Design by Privacy” que se ha utilizado en la investigación realizada. En base a este concepto, se han establecido las políticas de privacidad del usuario según los dominios de aplicación del AmI. Partiendo de la base de que sean las propias técnicas utilizadas en AmI las que ayuden a proteger nuestra información personal, se han utilizado los agentes de los modelos de confianza como herramienta para determinar los derechos de privacidad que deben cumplir los agentes en sus comunicaciones, y que ha servido para decidir con quién compartimos nuestras opiniones privadas, minimizando de esta forma los riesgos de la privacidad de nuestra información al interaccionar con los servicios ofrecidos por las aplicaciones del AmI. Así pues, el motivo de investigación de esta tesis es el de presentar un Modelo de Privacidad Digital basado en Sistemas Multiagente, que nos ayudará a decidir en quién confiar a la hora de compartir nuestras opiniones privadas. Este modelo ha sido implementado para su validación en el entorno de experimentación del ART testbed (Agent Reputation and Trust), en el que el dominio de aplicación del AmI es el relacionado con la tasación de cuadros o pinturas de arte. Una vez implementada la manera de decidir con quién compartimos nuestra información privada, y con el fin de controlar el cumplimiento de los derechos de privacidad que se han establecido en las comunicaciones entre los agentes, se han formalizado las posibles infracciones sobre los derechos de privacidad utilizando la Institución Electrónica “Islander” como herramienta de especificación de las normas y sanciones correspondientes que deben cumplir los agentes en sus comunicaciones.The great development of Information and Communication Technologies used in the domains of application of Ambient Intelligence, which has taken place in the last decade, places us immersed in intelligent environments surrounded by a wide variety of devices and Technologies with the ability to acquire, store and transmit our personal information. The complexity and volume of the systems involved in the applications developed in Environmental Intelligence mean that we are unable to know and control all the information that these systems are able to acquire and transmit, whether this information has been provided by us directly, or whether it has Been acquired indirectly by other systems without our knowledge; Which puts at risk the protection of our right to privacy. Considering that the main objective of Environmental Intelligence is to offer different types of personalized services in any place and at all times, facilitating us to carry out our daily activities, a study has been carried out on the applications developed in AmI, which has revealed the need to take into account social and ethical issues in the design of the AmI, highlighting among them the privacy as one of the fundamental rights of the people, as reflected in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 12). For that reason, for the true development and acceptance of Ambient Intelligence, not only the technological aspects must be taken into account, but it is fundamental to consider the social and ethical implications. This is the idea of the concept "Design by Privacy" that has been used on the research carried out. Based on this concept, user privacy policies have been established and should be taken into account in the AmI application domains. Based on the idea that the techniques used in AmI are those that help protect our personal information, the agents with a trust model have been used as a tool to determine the privacy rights that agents must comply with in their communications, and that has served to decide with whom we share our private opinions, thus minimizing the risks of privacy of our information when interacting with the services offered by AmI applications. Therefore, the aim of the research of this thesis is to present a Digital Privacy Model based on Multi-Agent Systems, which will help us to decide who to trust when sharing our private opinions. This model has been implemented for validation in the experimental environment of the ART testbed (Agent Reputation and Trust), in which the domain of the AmI application, is the one related with the evaluation of art pictures. Once the way to decide with whom we share our private information has been implemented, and in order to control the compliance with the privacy rights established in the communications between the agents, possible violations of privacy rights have been formalized using the Electronic Institution "Islander" as a tool for specifying the standards and corresponding sanctions that agents must comply with in their communications.Programa Oficial de Doctorado en Ciencia y Tecnología InformáticaPresidente: Jesús García Herrero.- Secretario: Clara Benac Earle.- Vocal: Ana María Bernardos Barboll

Systematic and automatic verification of sensor networks

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

Model Checking and Model-Based Testing : Improving Their Feasibility by Lazy Techniques, Parallelization, and Other Optimizations

This thesis focuses on the lightweight formal method of model-based testing for checking safety properties, and derives a new and more feasible approach. For liveness properties, dynamic testing is impossible, so feasibility is increased by specializing on an important class of properties, livelock freedom, and deriving a more feasible model checking algorithm for it. All mentioned improvements are substantiated by experiments