Context Aware Computing for The Internet of Things: A Survey

As we are moving towards the Internet of Things (IoT), the number of sensors deployed around the world is growing at a rapid pace. Market research has shown a significant growth of sensor deployments over the past decade and has predicted a significant increment of the growth rate in the future. These sensors continuously generate enormous amounts of data. However, in order to add value to raw sensor data we need to understand it. Collection, modelling, reasoning, and distribution of context in relation to sensor data plays critical role in this challenge. Context-aware computing has proven to be successful in understanding sensor data. In this paper, we survey context awareness from an IoT perspective. We present the necessary background by introducing the IoT paradigm and context-aware fundamentals at the beginning. Then we provide an in-depth analysis of context life cycle. We evaluate a subset of projects (50) which represent the majority of research and commercial solutions proposed in the field of context-aware computing conducted over the last decade (2001-2011) based on our own taxonomy. Finally, based on our evaluation, we highlight the lessons to be learnt from the past and some possible directions for future research. The survey addresses a broad range of techniques, methods, models, functionalities, systems, applications, and middleware solutions related to context awareness and IoT. Our goal is not only to analyse, compare and consolidate past research work but also to appreciate their findings and discuss their applicability towards the IoT.Comment: IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials Journal, 201

Internet of robotic things : converging sensing/actuating, hypoconnectivity, artificial intelligence and IoT Platforms

The Internet of Things (IoT) concept is evolving rapidly and influencing newdevelopments in various application domains, such as the Internet of MobileThings (IoMT), Autonomous Internet of Things (A-IoT), Autonomous Systemof Things (ASoT), Internet of Autonomous Things (IoAT), Internetof Things Clouds (IoT-C) and the Internet of Robotic Things (IoRT) etc.that are progressing/advancing by using IoT technology. The IoT influencerepresents new development and deployment challenges in different areassuch as seamless platform integration, context based cognitive network integration,new mobile sensor/actuator network paradigms, things identification(addressing, naming in IoT) and dynamic things discoverability and manyothers. The IoRT represents new convergence challenges and their need to be addressed, in one side the programmability and the communication ofmultiple heterogeneous mobile/autonomous/robotic things for cooperating,their coordination, configuration, exchange of information, security, safetyand protection. Developments in IoT heterogeneous parallel processing/communication and dynamic systems based on parallelism and concurrencyrequire new ideas for integrating the intelligent “devices”, collaborativerobots (COBOTS), into IoT applications. Dynamic maintainability, selfhealing,self-repair of resources, changing resource state, (re-) configurationand context based IoT systems for service implementation and integrationwith IoT network service composition are of paramount importance whennew “cognitive devices” are becoming active participants in IoT applications.This chapter aims to be an overview of the IoRT concept, technologies,architectures and applications and to provide a comprehensive coverage offuture challenges, developments and applications

IoT trust and reputation: a survey and taxonomy

IoT is one of the fastest-growing technologies and it is estimated that more than a billion devices would be utilized across the globe by the end of 2030. To maximize the capability of these connected entities, trust and reputation among IoT entities is essential. Several trust management models have been proposed in the IoT environment; however, these schemes have not fully addressed the IoT devices features, such as devices role, device type and its dynamic behavior in a smart environment. As a result, traditional trust and reputation models are insufficient to tackle these characteristics and uncertainty risks while connecting nodes to the network. Whilst continuous study has been carried out and various articles suggest promising solutions in constrained environments, research on trust and reputation is still at its infancy. In this paper, we carry out a comprehensive literature review on state-of-the-art research on the trust and reputation of IoT devices and systems. Specifically, we first propose a new structure, namely a new taxonomy, to organize the trust and reputation models based on the ways trust is managed. The proposed taxonomy comprises of traditional trust management-based systems and artificial intelligence-based systems, and combine both the classes which encourage the existing schemes to adapt these emerging concepts. This collaboration between the conventional mathematical and the advanced ML models result in design schemes that are more robust and efficient. Then we drill down to compare and analyse the methods and applications of these systems based on community-accepted performance metrics, e.g. scalability, delay, cooperativeness and efficiency. Finally, built upon the findings of the analysis, we identify and discuss open research issues and challenges, and further speculate and point out future research directions.Comment: 20 pages, 5 Figures, 3 tables, Journal of cloud computin

IoT trust and reputation: a survey and taxonomy

IoT is one of the fastest-growing technologies and it is estimated that more than a billion devices would be utilized across the globe by the end of 2030. To maximize the capability of these connected entities, trust and reputation among IoT entities is essential. Several trust management models have been proposed in the IoT environment; however, these schemes have not fully addressed the IoT devices features, such as devices role, device type and its dynamic behavior in a smart environment. As a result, traditional trust and reputation models are insufficient to tackle these characteristics and uncertainty risks while connecting nodes to the network. Whilst continuous study has been carried out and various articles suggest promising solutions in constrained environments, research on trust and reputation is still at its infancy. In this paper, we carry out a comprehensive literature review on state-of-the-art research on the trust and reputation of IoT devices and systems. Specifically, we first propose a new structure, namely a new taxonomy, to organize the trust and reputation models based on the ways trust is managed. The proposed taxonomy comprises of traditional trust management-based systems and artificial intelligence-based systems, and combine both the classes which encourage the existing schemes to adapt these emerging concepts. This collaboration between the conventional mathematical and the advanced ML models result in design schemes that are more robust and efficient. Then we drill down to compare and analyse the methods and applications of these systems based on community-accepted performance metrics, e.g. scalability, delay, cooperativeness and efficiency. Finally, built upon the findings of the analysis, we identify and discuss open research issues and challenges, and further speculate and point out future research directions.Comment: 20 pages, 5 Figures, 3 tables, Journal of cloud computin

CSM-H-R: An Automatic Context Reasoning Framework for Interoperable Intelligent Systems and Privacy Protection

Automation of High-Level Context (HLC) reasoning for intelligent systems at scale is imperative due to the unceasing accumulation of contextual data in the IoT era, the trend of the fusion of data from multi-sources, and the intrinsic complexity and dynamism of the context-based decision-making process. To mitigate this issue, we propose an automatic context reasoning framework CSM-H-R, which programmatically combines ontologies and states at runtime and the model-storage phase for attaining the ability to recognize meaningful HLC, and the resulting data representation can be applied to different reasoning techniques. Case studies are developed based on an intelligent elevator system in a smart campus setting. An implementation of the framework - a CSM Engine, and the experiments of translating the HLC reasoning into vector and matrix computing especially take care of the dynamic aspects of context and present the potentiality of using advanced mathematical and probabilistic models to achieve the next level of automation in integrating intelligent systems; meanwhile, privacy protection support is achieved by anonymization through label embedding and reducing information correlation. The code of this study is available at: https://github.com/songhui01/CSM-H-R.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figures, Keywords: Context Reasoning, Automation, Intelligent Systems, Context Modeling, Context Dynamism, Privacy Protection, Context Sharing, Interoperability, System Integratio

Trust Modelling and Management for Collaborative and Composite Applications in the Internet of Things

A future Internet of Things (IoT) will feature a service-oriented architecture consisting of lightweight computing platforms offering individual, loosely coupled microservices. Often, an end-user will request a bespoke service that will require a composition of two or more microservices offered by different service providers. This architecture offers several advantages that are key to the realisation of the IoT vision, such as modularity, increased reliability and technology heterogeneity and interoperability. As a result, the adoption of this architecture in the IoT is being extensively researched. However, the underlying complexities of service compositions and the increased security risks inherent in such a massively decentralised and distributed architecture remain key problems. The use of trust management to secure the IoT remains a current and interesting topic; its potential as a basis for service compositions has not been thoroughly researched, however. Security through trust presents a viable solution for threat management in the IoT. Currently, a well-defined trust management framework for collaborative and composite applications on an IoT platform does not exist. In this thesis, a collaborative application refers to the one that enables collaboration among its users to jointly complete certain tasks, whereas a composite application is the one composed of multiple existing services to deliver integrated functionalities. To estimate reliably the trust values of nodes within a system, the trust should be measured by suitable parameters that are based on the nodes’ functional properties in the application context. Existing models do not clearly outline the parametrisation of trust. Also, trust decay is inadequately modelled in many current models. In addition, trust recommendations are usually inaccurately weighted with respect to previous trust, thereby increasing the effect of bad recommendations. This thesis focuses on providing solutions to the twin issues of trust-based security and trust-based compositions for the IoT. First, a new model, CTRUST, is proposed to resolve the above stated shortcomings of previous trust models. In CTRUST, trust is accurately parametrised while recommendations are evaluated through belief functions. The effects of trust decay and maturity on the trust evaluation process were studied. Each trust component is neatly modelled by appropriate mathematical functions. CTRUST was implemented in a collaborative download application and its performance was evaluated based on the utility derived and its trust accuracy, convergence, and resiliency. The results indicate that IoT collaborative applications based on CTRUST gain a significant improvement in performance, in terms of efficiency and security. In a second study, the trust properties of service compositions in the IoT, along with the effect of the service architecture on the security and performance of the composed service, are investigated. Novel approaches are considered in relation to trust decomposition and composition, respectively. Relevant trust evaluation functions are derived to guide the compositions, which are used to extend CTRUST into a new trust model, SC-TRUST. SC-TRUST is implemented in a suitable simulation and the results are evaluated. The model reliably guides service compositions while ensuring utility to the end-user. Overall, the analyses and evaluations support the conclusion that the trust models are effective in terms of performance gain and security. The models are scalable and lightweight such that they could be deployed to secure applications and drive meaningful services and collaborations in the envisaged IoT and Web 3.0 sphere

DevOps for Trustworthy Smart IoT Systems

ENACT is a research project funded by the European Commission under its H2020 program. The project consortium consists of twelve industry and research member organisations spread across the whole EU. The overall goal of the ENACT project was to provide a novel set of solutions to enable DevOps in the realm of trustworthy Smart IoT Systems. Smart IoT Systems (SIS) are complex systems involving not only sensors but also actuators with control loops distributed all across the IoT, Edge and Cloud infrastructure. Since smart IoT systems typically operate in a changing and often unpredictable environment, the ability of these systems to continuously evolve and adapt to their new environment is decisive to ensure and increase their trustworthiness, quality and user experience. DevOps has established itself as a software development life-cycle model that encourages developers to continuously bring new features to the system under operation without sacrificing quality. This book reports on the ENACT work to empower the development and operation as well as the continuous and agile evolution of SIS, which is necessary to adapt the system to changes in its environment, such as newly appearing trustworthiness threats