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

Pervasive computing reference architecture from a software engineering perspective (PervCompRA-SE)

Pervasive computing (PervComp) is one of the most challenging research topics nowadays. Its complexity exceeds the outdated main frame and client-server computation models. Its systems are highly volatile, mobile, and resource-limited ones that stream a lot of data from different sensors. In spite of these challenges, it entails, by default, a lengthy list of desired quality features like context sensitivity, adaptable behavior, concurrency, service omnipresence, and invisibility. Fortunately, the device manufacturers improved the enabling technology, such as sensors, network bandwidth, and batteries to pave the road for pervasive systems with high capabilities. On the other hand, this domain area has gained an enormous amount of attention from researchers ever since it was first introduced in the early 90s of the last century. Yet, they are still classified as visionary systems that are expected to be woven into people’s daily lives. At present, PervComp systems still have no unified architecture, have limited scope of context-sensitivity and adaptability, and many essential quality features are insufficiently addressed in PervComp architectures. The reference architecture (RA) that we called (PervCompRA-SE) in this research, provides solutions for these problems by providing a comprehensive and innovative pair of business and technical architectural reference models. Both models were based on deep analytical activities and were evaluated using different qualitative and quantitative methods. In this thesis we surveyed a wide range of research projects in PervComp in various subdomain areas to specify our methodological approach and identify the quality features in the PervComp domain that are most commonly found in these areas. It presented a novice approach that utilizes theories from sociology, psychology, and process engineering. The thesis analyzed the business and architectural problems in two separate chapters covering the business reference architecture (BRA) and the technical reference architecture (TRA). The solutions for these problems were introduced also in the BRA and TRA chapters. We devised an associated comprehensive ontology with semantic meanings and measurement scales. Both the BRA and TRA were validated throughout the course of research work and evaluated as whole using traceability, benchmark, survey, and simulation methods. The thesis introduces a new reference architecture in the PervComp domain which was developed using a novel requirements engineering method. It also introduces a novel statistical method for tradeoff analysis and conflict resolution between the requirements. The adaptation of the activity theory, human perception theory and process re-engineering methods to develop the BRA and the TRA proved to be very successful. Our approach to reuse the ontological dictionary to monitor the system performance was also innovative. Finally, the thesis evaluation methods represent a role model for researchers on how to use both qualitative and quantitative methods to evaluate a reference architecture. Our results show that the requirements engineering process along with the trade-off analysis were very important to deliver the PervCompRA-SE. We discovered that the invisibility feature, which was one of the envisioned quality features for the PervComp, is demolished and that the qualitative evaluation methods were just as important as the quantitative evaluation methods in order to recognize the overall quality of the RA by machines as well as by human beings

Quality assessment technique for ubiquitous software and middleware

The new paradigm of computing or information systems is ubiquitous computing systems. The technology-oriented issues of ubiquitous computing systems have made researchers pay much attention to the feasibility study of the technologies rather than building quality assurance indices or guidelines. In this context, measuring quality is the key to developing high-quality ubiquitous computing products. For this reason, various quality models have been defined, adopted and enhanced over the years, for example, the need for one recognised standard quality model (ISO/IEC 9126) is the result of a consensus for a software quality model on three levels: characteristics, sub-characteristics, and metrics. However, it is very much unlikely that this scheme will be directly applicable to ubiquitous computing environments which are considerably different to conventional software, trailing a big concern which is being given to reformulate existing methods, and especially to elaborate new assessment techniques for ubiquitous computing environments. This paper selects appropriate quality characteristics for the ubiquitous computing environment, which can be used as the quality target for both ubiquitous computing product evaluation processes ad development processes. Further, each of the quality characteristics has been expanded with evaluation questions and metrics, in some cases with measures. In addition, this quality model has been applied to the industrial setting of the ubiquitous computing environment. These have revealed that while the approach was sound, there are some parts to be more developed in the future

A Multidimensional Continuous Contextual Lighting Control System Using Google Glass

An increasing number of internet-connected LED lighting fixtures and bulbs have recently become available. This development, in combination with emerging hardware and software solutions for activity recognition, establish an infrastructure for context-aware lighting. Automated lighting control could potentially provide a better user experience, increased comfort, higher productivity, and energy savings compared to static uniform illumination. The first question that comes to mind when thinking about context-aware lighting is how to determine the relevant activities and contexts. Do we need different lighting for reading a magazine and reading a book, or maybe just different lighting for reading versus talking on the phone? How do we identify the relevant situations, and what are the preferred lighting settings? In this paper we present three steps we took to answer these questions and demonstrate them via an adaptive five-channel solid-state lighting system with continuous contextual control. We implemented a multidimensional user interface for manual control as well as an autonomous solution using wearable sensors. We enable a simple set of sensors to manipulate complicated lighting scenarios by indirectly simplifying and reducing the complexity of the sensor-lighting control space using human-derived criteria. In a preliminary user study, we estimated significant energy savings of up to 52% and showed multiple future research directions, including behavioral feedback

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

Intelligent Household LED Lighting System with Autonomous Control Based On User Movement and Collective Control Using Wireless Technology

Rescuing energy has become one of the most important problems these days. The maximum waste of energy is caused by the inefficient use of the consumer appliances. Particularly, a light accounts for a huge part of the total energy consumption. There are number of light control systems introduced in today’s market, because the installed lighting systems are outdated and energy-inefficacious. However, due to architectural imperfections, the existing light control systems cannot be successfully applied to home and working places such as office buildings, laboratories. Therefore, this paper proposes an intelligent household LED lighting system considering energy efficiency and user satisfaction. The forth put system employees multi sensors and wireless communication technology in order to control an LED light according to the user’s state and the surroundings. The intended LED lighting system can autonomously adjust the minimum light intensity value to enhance both energy efficiency and user satisfaction. DOI: 10.17762/ijritcc2321-8169.150312

Intelligent Household LED Lighting System considering Energy Efficiency and User Satisfaction Based on the Technology of PoE

Now a day saving energy has become one of the most significant points. Particularly, a light accounts for a great part of the total energy consumption. Now a day market can be introduced various light control systems because the installed lighting systems are old and energy-inefficient. However, due to structural limitations, the existing light control systems cannot be successfully involved to home and office buildings. Hence, recommends of new intelligent household LED lighting system considering energy productivity and user comfort. The recommended LED lighting system can autonomously adjust the minimum light intensity value to enhance both energy productivity and user comfort. The recommended LED lighting system decreases total power consumption. The technology of Power over Ethernet can take sufficient electricity to LED lighting system. Depending on the understanding knowledge of the current illumination and the whole persons in a room, the system can automatically distinguish and utilize a predefined brightness. Therefore, it overcomes the limitations of a traditional light control system. At the same time system can transfers DCpower and data through Ethernet, reduce the power adapter failure which caused by data network failure and promotes the application of the low power network equipment

Immersive interconnected virtual and augmented reality : a 5G and IoT perspective

Despite remarkable advances, current augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) applications are a largely individual and local experience. Interconnected AR/VR, where participants can virtually interact across vast distances, remains a distant dream. The great barrier that stands between current technology and such applications is the stringent end-to-end latency requirement, which should not exceed 20 ms in order to avoid motion sickness and other discomforts. Bringing AR/VR to the next level to enable immersive interconnected AR/VR will require significant advances towards 5G ultra-reliable low-latency communication (URLLC) and a Tactile Internet of Things (IoT). In this article, we articulate the technical challenges to enable a future AR/VR end-to-end architecture, that combines 5G URLLC and Tactile IoT technology to support this next generation of interconnected AR/VR applications. Through the use of IoT sensors and actuators, AR/VR applications will be aware of the environmental and user context, supporting human-centric adaptations of the application logic, and lifelike interactions with the virtual environment. We present potential use cases and the required technological building blocks. For each of them, we delve into the current state of the art and challenges that need to be addressed before the dream of remote AR/VR interaction can become reality

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