14,297 research outputs found
Towards a middleware for generalised context management
It is widely accepted in the Pervasive Computing community that contextual interactions are the key to the delivery of truly calm technology. However, there is currently no easy way to incorporate contextual data into an application. If contextual data is used, it is generally in an ad hoc manner, which means that developers have to spend time on low-level details. There have been many projects investigating this area, however as yet none of them provide support for all of the key issues of dynamic composition and flexible representation of contextual information as well as the problems of scalability and adaptability to environmental changes. In this paper we present the Strathclyde Context Infrastructure (SCI), a middleware infrastructure for discovery, aggregation, and delivery of context information
A Framework for Evaluating Model-Driven Self-adaptive Software Systems
In the last few years, Model Driven Development (MDD), Component-based
Software Development (CBSD), and context-oriented software have become
interesting alternatives for the design and construction of self-adaptive
software systems. In general, the ultimate goal of these technologies is to be
able to reduce development costs and effort, while improving the modularity,
flexibility, adaptability, and reliability of software systems. An analysis of
these technologies shows them all to include the principle of the separation of
concerns, and their further integration is a key factor to obtaining
high-quality and self-adaptable software systems. Each technology identifies
different concerns and deals with them separately in order to specify the
design of the self-adaptive applications, and, at the same time, support
software with adaptability and context-awareness. This research studies the
development methodologies that employ the principles of model-driven
development in building self-adaptive software systems. To this aim, this
article proposes an evaluation framework for analysing and evaluating the
features of model-driven approaches and their ability to support software with
self-adaptability and dependability in highly dynamic contextual environment.
Such evaluation framework can facilitate the software developers on selecting a
development methodology that suits their software requirements and reduces the
development effort of building self-adaptive software systems. This study
highlights the major drawbacks of the propped model-driven approaches in the
related works, and emphasise on considering the volatile aspects of
self-adaptive software in the analysis, design and implementation phases of the
development methodologies. In addition, we argue that the development
methodologies should leave the selection of modelling languages and modelling
tools to the software developers.Comment: model-driven architecture, COP, AOP, component composition,
self-adaptive application, context oriented software developmen
A user-centric vision of service-oriented Pervasive Information Systems
International audienceInformation Systems (IS) have massively adopted service orientation by exposing their functionalities as services. With the evolution of mobile technologies (smartphones, 3G/4G networks, etc.), such systems are now confronted with a new pervasive environment for which they were not originally designed. Indeed, pervasive environments are characterized by their heterogeneity and dynamicity due to their evolving context and their need for transparency. None of these features are particularly considered in traditional IS designed for stable and controlled office environments. In our new vision for service- oriented Pervasive Information Systems (PIS), the user becomes the center of these systems. This paper presents a user-centric service-oriented vision for PIS based on a context-aware intentional approach, which considers the user intention and the context in which this intention arises as a guiding principle for service description, discovery, prediction and recommendation
Applying autonomy to distributed satellite systems: Trends, challenges, and future prospects
While monolithic satellite missions still pose significant advantages in terms of accuracy and
operations, novel distributed architectures are promising improved flexibility, responsiveness,
and adaptability to structural and functional changes. Large satellite swarms, opportunistic satellite
networks or heterogeneous constellations hybridizing small-spacecraft nodes with highperformance
satellites are becoming feasible and advantageous alternatives requiring the adoption
of new operation paradigms that enhance their autonomy. While autonomy is a notion that
is gaining acceptance in monolithic satellite missions, it can also be deemed an integral characteristic
in Distributed Satellite Systems (DSS). In this context, this paper focuses on the motivations
for system-level autonomy in DSS and justifies its need as an enabler of system qualities. Autonomy
is also presented as a necessary feature to bring new distributed Earth observation functions
(which require coordination and collaboration mechanisms) and to allow for novel structural
functions (e.g., opportunistic coalitions, exchange of resources, or in-orbit data services). Mission
Planning and Scheduling (MPS) frameworks are then presented as a key component to implement
autonomous operations in satellite missions. An exhaustive knowledge classification explores the
design aspects of MPS for DSS, and conceptually groups them into: components and organizational
paradigms; problem modeling and representation; optimization techniques and metaheuristics;
execution and runtime characteristics and the notions of tasks, resources, and constraints.
This paper concludes by proposing future strands of work devoted to study the trade-offs of
autonomy in large-scale, highly dynamic and heterogeneous networks through frameworks that
consider some of the limitations of small spacecraft technologies.Postprint (author's final draft
Distributed Hybrid Simulation of the Internet of Things and Smart Territories
This paper deals with the use of hybrid simulation to build and compose
heterogeneous simulation scenarios that can be proficiently exploited to model
and represent the Internet of Things (IoT). Hybrid simulation is a methodology
that combines multiple modalities of modeling/simulation. Complex scenarios are
decomposed into simpler ones, each one being simulated through a specific
simulation strategy. All these simulation building blocks are then synchronized
and coordinated. This simulation methodology is an ideal one to represent IoT
setups, which are usually very demanding, due to the heterogeneity of possible
scenarios arising from the massive deployment of an enormous amount of sensors
and devices. We present a use case concerned with the distributed simulation of
smart territories, a novel view of decentralized geographical spaces that,
thanks to the use of IoT, builds ICT services to manage resources in a way that
is sustainable and not harmful to the environment. Three different simulation
models are combined together, namely, an adaptive agent-based parallel and
distributed simulator, an OMNeT++ based discrete event simulator and a
script-language simulator based on MATLAB. Results from a performance analysis
confirm the viability of using hybrid simulation to model complex IoT
scenarios.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1605.0487
Towards a Tool-based Development Methodology for Pervasive Computing Applications
Despite much progress, developing a pervasive computing application remains a
challenge because of a lack of conceptual frameworks and supporting tools. This
challenge involves coping with heterogeneous devices, overcoming the
intricacies of distributed systems technologies, working out an architecture
for the application, encoding it in a program, writing specific code to test
the application, and finally deploying it. This paper presents a design
language and a tool suite covering the development life-cycle of a pervasive
computing application. The design language allows to define a taxonomy of
area-specific building-blocks, abstracting over their heterogeneity. This
language also includes a layer to define the architecture of an application,
following an architectural pattern commonly used in the pervasive computing
domain. Our underlying methodology assigns roles to the stakeholders, providing
separation of concerns. Our tool suite includes a compiler that takes design
artifacts written in our language as input and generates a programming
framework that supports the subsequent development stages, namely
implementation, testing, and deployment. Our methodology has been applied on a
wide spectrum of areas. Based on these experiments, we assess our approach
through three criteria: expressiveness, usability, and productivity
Model-Driven Methodology for Rapid Deployment of Smart Spaces based on Resource-Oriented Architectures
Advances in electronics nowadays facilitate the design of smart spaces based on physical mash-ups of sensor and actuator devices. At the same time, software paradigms such as Internet of Things (IoT) and Web of Things (WoT) are motivating the creation of technology to support the development and deployment of web-enabled embedded sensor and actuator devices with two major objectives: (i) to integrate sensing and actuating functionalities into everyday objects, and (ii) to easily allow a diversity of devices to plug into the Internet. Currently, developers who are applying this Internet-oriented approach need to have solid understanding about specific platforms and web technologies. In order to alleviate this development process, this research proposes a Resource-Oriented and Ontology-Driven Development (ROOD) methodology based on the Model Driven Architecture (MDA). This methodology aims at enabling the development of smart spaces through a set of modeling tools and semantic technologies that support the definition of the smart space and the automatic generation of code at hardware level. ROOD feasibility is demonstrated by building an adaptive health monitoring service for a Smart Gym
Smart objects as building blocks for the internet of things
The combination of the Internet and emerging technologies such as nearfield communications, real-time localization, and embedded sensors lets us transform everyday objects into smart objects that can understand and react to their environment. Such objects are building blocks for the Internet of Things and enable novel computing applications. As a step toward design and architectural principles for smart objects, the authors introduce a hierarchy of architectures with increasing levels of real-world awareness and interactivity. In particular, they describe activity-, policy-, and process-aware smart objects and demonstrate how the respective architectural abstractions support increasingly complex application
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