Resource efficient processing and communication in sensor/actuator environments

The future of computer systems will not be dominated by personal computer like hardware platforms but by embedded and cyber-physical systems assisting humans in a hidden but omnipresent manner. These pervasive computing devices can, for example, be utilized in the home automation sector to create sensor/ actuator networks supporting the inhabitants of a house in everyday life. The efficient usage of resources is an important topic at design time and operation time of mobile embedded and cyber-physical systems. Therefore, this thesis presents methods which allow an efficient use of energy and processing resources in sensor/actuator networks. These networks comprise different nodes cooperating for a “smart” joint control function. Sensor/actuator nodes are typical cyber-physical systems comprising sensors/actuators and processing and communication components. Processing components of today’s sensor nodes can comprise many-core chips. This thesis introduces new methods for optimizing the code and the application mapping of the aforementioned systems and presents novel results with regard to design space explorations for energy-efficient and embedded many-core systems. The considered many-core systems are graphics processing units. The application code for these graphics processing units is optimized for a particular platform variant with the objectives of minimal energy consumption and/or of minimal runtime. These two objectives are targeted with the utilization of multi-objective optimization techniques. The mapping optimizations are realized by means of multi-objective design space explorations. Furthermore, this thesis introduces new techniques and functions for a resource-efficient middleware design employing service-oriented architectures. Therefore, a service-oriented architecture based middleware framework is presented which comprises a lightweight service orchestration. In addition to that, a flexible resource management mechanism will be introduced. This resource management adapts resource utilization and services to an environmental context and provides methods to reduce the energy consumption of sensor nodes

Context-aware adaptation in DySCAS

DySCAS is a dynamically self-configuring middleware for automotive control systems. The addition of autonomic, context-aware dynamic configuration to automotive control systems brings a potential for a wide range of benefits in terms of robustness, flexibility, upgrading etc. However, the automotive systems represent a particularly challenging domain for the deployment of autonomics concepts, having a combination of real-time performance constraints, severe resource limitations, safety-critical aspects and cost pressures. For these reasons current systems are statically configured. This paper describes the dynamic run-time configuration aspects of DySCAS and focuses on the extent to which context-aware adaptation has been achieved in DySCAS, and the ways in which the various design and implementation challenges are met

Adaptive online deployment for resource constrained mobile smart clients

Nowadays mobile devices are more and more used as a platform for applications. Contrary to prior generation handheld devices configured with a predefined set of applications, today leading edge devices provide a platform for flexible and customized application deployment. However, these applications have to deal with the limitations (e.g. CPU speed, memory) of these mobile devices and thus cannot handle complex tasks. In order to cope with the handheld limitations and the ever changing device context (e.g. network connections, remaining battery time, etc.) we present a middleware solution that dynamically offloads parts of the software to the most appropriate server. Without a priori knowledge of the application, the optimal deployment is calculated, that lowers the cpu usage at the mobile client, whilst keeping the used bandwidth minimal. The information needed to calculate this optimum is gathered on the fly from runtime information. Experimental results show that the proposed solution enables effective execution of complex applications in a constrained environment. Moreover, we demonstrate that the overhead from the middleware components is below 2%

A survey on online monitoring approaches of computer-based systems

This report surveys forms of online data collection that are in current use (as well as being the subject of research to adapt them to changing technology and demands), and can be used as inputs to assessment of dependability and resilience, although they are not primarily meant for this use

Reasoning About a Service-oriented Programming Paradigm

This paper is about a new way for programming distributed applications: the service-oriented one. It is a concept paper based upon our experience in developing a theory and a language for programming services. Both the theoretical formalization and the language interpreter showed us the evidence that a new programming paradigm exists. In this paper we illustrate the basic features it is characterized by

Towards a Security, Privacy, Dependability, Interoperability Framework for the Internet of Things

A popular application of ambient intelligence systems constitutes of assisting living services on smart buildings. As intelligence is imported in embedded equipment, the system becomes able to provide smart services (e.g. control lights, airconditioning, provide energy management services etc.). IoT is the main enabler of such environments. However, the interconnection of these cyber-physical systems and the processing of personal data raise serious security and privacy issues. In this paper we present a framework that can guarantee Security, Privacy, Dependability and Interoperability (SPDI) in IoT. Taking advantage of the underlying IoT deployment, the proposed framework not only implements the requested smart functionality but also provide modelling and administration that can guarantee those SPDI properties. Moreover, we provide an application example of the framework in a smart building scenario