An environment for object-oriented real-time system design

A concise object-oriented method for the development of real-time systems has been composed. Hardware components are modelled by (software) base objects; base objects are controlled by a hierarchy of coordinator objects, expressed in an organizational diagram. The behaviour of objects is specified by state transition diagrams. This approach considerably promotes requirements analysis and communication with the customer. A CASE tool has been constructed with diagram editors for graphical specifications of real-time systems. The tool can generate executable code for PLCs from these graphical specifications; reuse of previous results is supported by the repository function of the tool. Experiences attained in practice with method and tool show that time spent in system testing and installation is reduced considerabl

Interoperability standards for cloud architecture

Enabling cloud infrastructures to evolve into a transparent platform raises interoperability issues. Interoperability requires standard data models and communication technologies compatible with the existing Internet infrastructure. To reduce vendor lock-in situations, cloud computing must implement common strategies regarding standards, interoperability and portability. Open standards are of critical importance and need to be embedded into interoperability solutions. Interoperability is determined at the data level as well as the service level. Relevant modelling standards and integration solutions shall be analysed in the context of clouds

Creating Tailored and Adaptive Network Services with the Open Orchestration C-RAN Framework

Next generation wireless communications networks will leverage software-defined radio and networking technologies, combined with cloud and fog computing. A pool of resources can then be dynamically allocated to create personalized network services (NSs). The enabling technologies are abstraction, virtualization and consolidation of resources, automatization of processes, and programmatic provisioning and orchestration. ETSI's network functions virtualization (NFV) management and orchestration (MANO) framework provides the architecture and specifications of the management layers. We introduce OOCRAN, an open-source software framework and testbed that extends existing NFV management solutions by incorporating the radio communications layers. This paper presents OOCRAN and illustrates how it monitors and manages the pool of resources for creating tailored NSs. OOCRAN can automate NS reconfiguration, but also facilitates user control. We demonstrate the dynamic deployment of cellular NSs and discuss the challenges of dynamically creating and managing tailored NSs on shared infrastructure.Comment: IEEE 5G World Forum 201

COEL: A Web-based Chemistry Simulation Framework

The chemical reaction network (CRN) is a widely used formalism to describe macroscopic behavior of chemical systems. Available tools for CRN modelling and simulation require local access, installation, and often involve local file storage, which is susceptible to loss, lacks searchable structure, and does not support concurrency. Furthermore, simulations are often single-threaded, and user interfaces are non-trivial to use. Therefore there are significant hurdles to conducting efficient and collaborative chemical research. In this paper, we introduce a new enterprise chemistry simulation framework, COEL, which addresses these issues. COEL is the first web-based framework of its kind. A visually pleasing and intuitive user interface, simulations that run on a large computational grid, reliable database storage, and transactional services make COEL ideal for collaborative research and education. COEL's most prominent features include ODE-based simulations of chemical reaction networks and multicompartment reaction networks, with rich options for user interactions with those networks. COEL provides DNA-strand displacement transformations and visualization (and is to our knowledge the first CRN framework to do so), GA optimization of rate constants, expression validation, an application-wide plotting engine, and SBML/Octave/Matlab export. We also present an overview of the underlying software and technologies employed and describe the main architectural decisions driving our development. COEL is available at http://coel-sim.org for selected research teams only. We plan to provide a part of COEL's functionality to the general public in the near future.Comment: 23 pages, 12 figures, 1 tabl

Biometrics-as-a-Service: A Framework to Promote Innovative Biometric Recognition in the Cloud

Biometric recognition, or simply biometrics, is the use of biological attributes such as face, fingerprints or iris in order to recognize an individual in an automated manner. A key application of biometrics is authentication; i.e., using said biological attributes to provide access by verifying the claimed identity of an individual. This paper presents a framework for Biometrics-as-a-Service (BaaS) that performs biometric matching operations in the cloud, while relying on simple and ubiquitous consumer devices such as smartphones. Further, the framework promotes innovation by providing interfaces for a plurality of software developers to upload their matching algorithms to the cloud. When a biometric authentication request is submitted, the system uses a criteria to automatically select an appropriate matching algorithm. Every time a particular algorithm is selected, the corresponding developer is rendered a micropayment. This creates an innovative and competitive ecosystem that benefits both software developers and the consumers. As a case study, we have implemented the following: (a) an ocular recognition system using a mobile web interface providing user access to a biometric authentication service, and (b) a Linux-based virtual machine environment used by software developers for algorithm development and submission

Historical awareness support and its evaluation in collaborative software engineering

The types of awareness relevant to collaborative soft- ware engineering are identified and an additional type, "historical awareness" is proposed. This new type of awareness is the knowledge of how software artefacts re- sulting from collaboration have evolved in the course of their development. The types of awareness that different software engineer- ing environment architectures can support are discussed. A way to add awareness support to our existing OSCAR sys- tem, a component of the GENESIS software engineering platform, is proposed. Finally ways of instrumenting and evaluating the awareness support offered by the modified system are outlined