Middleware for Wireless Sensor Networks: An Outlook

In modern distributed computing, applications are rarely built directly atop operating system facilities, e.g., sockets. Higher-level middleware abstractions and systems are often employed to simplify the programmer’s chore or to achieve interoperability. In contrast, real-world wireless sensor network (WSN) applications are almost always developed by relying directly on the operating system. Why is this the case? Does it make sense to include a middleware layer in the design of WSNs? And, if so, is it the same kind of software system as in traditional distributed computing? What are the fundamental concepts, reasonable assumptions, and key criteria guiding its design? What are the main open research challenges, and the potential pitfalls? Most importantly, is it worth pursuing research in this field? This paper provides a (biased) answer to these and other research questions, preceded by a brief account on the state of the art in the field

SAMP, the Simple Application Messaging Protocol: Letting applications talk to each other

SAMP, the Simple Application Messaging Protocol, is a hub-based communication standard for the exchange of data and control between participating client applications. It has been developed within the context of the Virtual Observatory with the aim of enabling specialised data analysis tools to cooperate as a loosely integrated suite, and is now in use by many and varied desktop and web-based applications dealing with astronomical data. This paper reviews the requirements and design principles that led to SAMP's specification, provides a high-level description of the protocol, and discusses some of its common and possible future usage patterns, with particular attention to those factors that have aided its success in practice.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figures. Accepted for Virtual Observatory special issue of Astronomy and Computin

Cloud computing services: taxonomy and comparison

Cloud computing is a highly discussed topic in the technical and economic world, and many of the big players of the software industry have entered the development of cloud services. Several companies what to explore the possibilities and benefits of incorporating such cloud computing services in their business, as well as the possibilities to offer own cloud services. However, with the amount of cloud computing services increasing quickly, the need for a taxonomy framework rises. This paper examines the available cloud computing services and identifies and explains their main characteristics. Next, this paper organizes these characteristics and proposes a tree-structured taxonomy. This taxonomy allows quick classifications of the different cloud computing services and makes it easier to compare them. Based on existing taxonomies, this taxonomy provides more detailed characteristics and hierarchies. Additionally, the taxonomy offers a common terminology and baseline information for easy communication. Finally, the taxonomy is explained and verified using existing cloud services as examples

PRISE: An Integrated Platform for Research and Teaching of Critical Embedded Systems

In this paper, we present PRISE, an integrated workbench for Research and Teaching of critical embedded systems at ISAE, the French Institute for Space and Aeronautics Engineering. PRISE is built around state-of-the-art technologies for the engineering of space and avionics systems used in Space and Avionics domain. It aims at demonstrating key aspects of critical, real-time, embedded systems used in the transport industry, but also validating new scientific contributions for the engineering of software functions. PRISE combines embedded and simulation platforms, and modeling tools. This platform is available for both research and teaching. Being built around widely used commercial and open source software; PRISE aims at being a reference platform for our teaching and research activities at ISAE

Smart City Digital Twin Framework for Real-Time Multi-Data Integration and Wide Public Distribution

Digital Twins are digital replica of real entities and are becoming fundamental tools to monitor and control the status of entities, predict their future evolutions, and simulate alternative scenarios to understand the impact of changes. Thanks to the large deployment of sensors, with the increasing information it is possible to build accurate reproductions of urban environments including structural data and real-time information. Such solutions help city councils and decision makers to face challenges in urban development and improve the citizen quality of life, by ana-lysing the actual conditions, evaluating in advance through simulations and what-if analysis the outcomes of infrastructural or political chang-es, or predicting the effects of humans and/or of natural events. Snap4City Smart City Digital Twin framework is capable to respond to the requirements identified in the literature and by the international forums. Differently from other solutions, the proposed architecture provides an integrated solution for data gathering, indexing, computing and information distribution offered by the Snap4City IoT platform, therefore realizing a continuously updated Digital Twin. 3D building models, road networks, IoT devices, WoT Entities, point of interests, routes, paths, etc., as well as results from data analytical processes for traffic density reconstruction, pollutant dispersion, predictions of any kind, what-if analysis, etc., are all integrated into an accessible web interface, to support the citizens participation in the city decision processes. What-If analysis to let the user performs simulations and observe possible outcomes. As case of study, the Digital Twin of the city of Florence (Italy) is presented. Snap4City platform, is released as open-source, and made available through GitHub and as docker compose