An Elastic Hybrid Sensing Platform: Architecture and Research Challenges

© 2016 Published by Elsevier B.V. The dynamic provisioning of hybrid sensing services that integrates both WSN and MPS is a promising, yet challenging concept. It does not only widen the spatial sensing coverage, but it also enables different types of sensing nodes to collaboratively perform sensing tasks and complement each other. Furthermore, it allows for the provisioning of a new category of services that was not possible to implement in pure WSN or MPS networks. Offering a hybrid sensing platform as a service results in several benefits including, but no limited to, efficient sharing and dynamic management of sensing nodes, diversification and reuse of sensing services, as well as combination of many sensing paradigms to enable data to be collected from different sources. However, many challenges need to be resolved before such architecture can be feasible. Currently, the deployment of sensing applications and services is a costly and complex process, which also lacks automation. This paper motivates the need for hybrid sensing, sketches an early architecture, and identifies the research issues with few hints on how to solve them. We argue that a sensing platform that reuses the virtualization and cloud computing concepts will help in addressing many of these challenges, and overcome the limitations of today\u27s deployment practices

A multilayer architecture for wireless sensor network virtualization,”

Abstract-Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have become pervasive and are used for a plethora of applications and services. They are usually deployed with specific applications and services; thereby precluding their re-use when other applications and services are contemplated. This can inevitably lead to the proliferation of redundant WSN deployments. Virtualization is a technology that can aid in tackling this issue. It enables the sharing of resources/infrastructures by multiple independent entities. This position paper proposes a novel multi-layer architecture for WSN virtualization and identifies the research challenges. Related work is also discussed. We illustrate the potential of the architecture by applying it to a scenario in which WSNs are shared for fire monitoring

Overlay virtualized wireless sensor networks for application in industrial internet of things : a review

Abstract: In recent times, Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are broadly applied in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) in order to enhance the productivity and efficiency of existing and prospective manufacturing industries. In particular, an area of interest that concerns the use of WSNs in IIoT is the concept of sensor network virtualization and overlay networks. Both network virtualization and overlay networks are considered contemporary because they provide the capacity to create services and applications at the edge of existing virtual networks without changing the underlying infrastructure. This capability makes both network virtualization and overlay network services highly beneficial, particularly for the dynamic needs of IIoT based applications such as in smart industry applications, smart city, and smart home applications. Consequently, the study of both WSN virtualization and overlay networks has become highly patronized in the literature, leading to the growth and maturity of the research area. In line with this growth, this paper provides a review of the development made thus far concerning virtualized sensor networks, with emphasis on the application of overlay networks in IIoT. Principally, the process of virtualization in WSN is discussed along with its importance in IIoT applications. Different challenges in WSN are also presented along with possible solutions given by the use of virtualized WSNs. Further details are also presented concerning the use of overlay networks as the next step to supporting virtualization in shared sensor networks. Our discussion closes with an exposition of the existing challenges in the use of virtualized WSN for IIoT applications. In general, because overlay networks will be contributory to the future development and advancement of smart industrial and smart city applications, this review may be considered by researchers as a reference point for those particularly interested in the study of this growing field

Wireless Sensor Network Virtualization: A Survey

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are the key components of the emerging Internet-of-Things (IoT) paradigm. They are now ubiquitous and used in a plurality of application domains. WSNs are still domain specific and usually deployed to support a specific application. However, as WSN nodes are becoming more and more powerful, it is getting more and more pertinent to research how multiple applications could share a very same WSN infrastructure. Virtualization is a technology that can potentially enable this sharing. This paper is a survey on WSN virtualization. It provides a comprehensive review of the state-of-the-art and an in-depth discussion of the research issues. We introduce the basics of WSN virtualization and motivate its pertinence with carefully selected scenarios. Existing works are presented in detail and critically evaluated using a set of requirements derived from the scenarios. The pertinent research projects are also reviewed. Several research issues are also discussed with hints on how they could be tackled.Comment: Accepted for publication on 3rd March 2015 in forthcoming issue of IEEE Communication Surveys and Tutorials. This version has NOT been proof-read and may have some some inconsistencies. Please refer to final version published in IEEE Xplor

An Architecture for an Infrastructure as a Service for the Internet of Things

Internet of things (IoT) refers to things such as sensors and actuators interacting with each other to reach common goals. It enables multiple applications in sectors ranging from agriculture to health. Nowadays, applications and IoT infrastructure are tightly coupled and this may lead to the deployment of redundant IoT infrastructures, thus, cost inefficiency. Cloud computing can help in tackling the problem. It is a paradigm to quickly provision configured resources (computing, network, memory) on demand for cost efficiency. It has three layers, the infrastructure as a service (IaaS), the platform as a service (PaaS) and the software as a service (SaaS). Through the IaaS, configured hardware resources (CPU, storage, etc.) are provisioned on demand. However, designing and implementing an IoT IaaS architecture for the provisioning of IoT resource on demand remains very challenging. An example of a challenge is using the appropriate publishing and discovery mechanism suitable for IoT devices. Orchestrating a virtualized IoT device over several physical IoT devices is another challenge that needs to be addressed. The main contribution of this thesis is twofold. First, a novel IoT IaaS architecture is proposed where IoT devices can be provisioned as a configured infrastructure resource on demand via node virtualization. Second, the architecture is prototyped and evaluated using real-life sensors that support node virtualization. Node level virtualization achieves resource efficiency in contrast to middleware solutions. The essential architectural features, such as publication, discovery, and orchestration are identified and proposed. Two sets of a high-level interface are also introduced. A low-level uniform interface is suggested to decouple the IoT devices from the applications by allowing the applications to access the heterogeneous devices in a uniform way. In addition, a cloud management interface is proposed to expose the IoT IaaS to the cloud consumers (for example - the PaaS, the application, etc.) and allow them to provision the IoT resources. By allowing the capability sharing of the IoT devices using the node virtualization, the cost efficiency and energy efficiency are achieved in the proposed architecture. Addressing other challenges allowed the proposed architecture to expose the IoT devices to the IaaS in a more abstract manner. Thus allowing the application to provision the IoT resources on demand as well as handling the IoT device heterogeneity in the IaaS

Data Annotation and Ontology Provisioning for Semantic Applications in Virtualized Wireless Sensor Networks

In recent years, virtualization in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) has become very popular for many reasons including efficient resource management, proper sharing and using the same WSN physical infrastructure by multiple applications and services. Semantic applications are very much pertinent to provide situational awareness to the end-users. Incorporating semantic applications in the virtualized WSNs can play a crucial role in providing contextual information to understand the situation, increase usability and interoperability. However, provisioning of semantic applications in virtualized WSNs remains as a big challenge. The reason is the data collected by the virtual sensors needs to be annotated in-network, and the pre-requisite of the data annotation process is to have an ontology that needs to be provisioned, i.e., developed, deployed and managed. Unfortunately, annotating sensor data and ontology provisioning in virtualized WSNs is not straightforward because of limited resources of sensors, on-demand creation of virtual sensors, and unpredictable lifetime. As the existing researches do not consider data annotation in virtualized WSN infrastructure level, these solutions are domain specific and lack of providing support for multiple applications. Moreover, the major drawback of the current ontology provisioning mechanisms requires domain experts to develop, deploy, and manage the ontologies in WSNs. This thesis aims to propose a solution for provisioning of multiple semantic applications in the virtualized WSNs. The main contribution of this thesis is twofold. First, we have proposed an architecture to annotate sensor data in the virtualized WSN infrastructure and defined an ontology in sensor domain to perform data annotation. Second, we have proposed an architecture for provisioning ontology in the virtualized WSNs that consists of an ontology provisioning center, an ontology-enabled virtualized WSN, and an ontology deployment protocol. The proposed architectures use overlay network as a foundation. We have built a proof-of-concept prototype for a semantic wildfire monitoring application in the cloud environment using the Google App Engine. In order to evaluate the viability of the proposed architecture, we have made performance measurement of the implemented prototype. We ran a simulation to justify our proposed ontology provisioning protocol

A Multi-Layer Architecture for Wireless Sensor Network Virtualization

Abstract—Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have become pervasive and are used for a plethora of applications and services. They are usually deployed with specific applications and services; thereby precluding their re-use when other applications and services are contemplated. This can inevitably lead to the proliferation of redundant WSN deployments. Virtualization is a technology that can aid in tackling this issue. It enables the sharing of resources/infrastructures by multiple independent entities. This position paper proposes a novel multi-layer architecture for WSN virtualization and identifies the research challenges. Related work is also discussed. We illustrate the potential of the architecture by applying it to a scenario in which WSNs are shared for fire monitoring