CODE: description language for wireless collaborating objects

This paper introduces CODE, a Description Language for Wireless Collaborating Objects (WCO), with the specific aim of enabling service management in smart environments. WCO extend the traditional model of wireless sensor networks by transferring additional intelligence and responsibility from the gateway level to the network. WCO are able to offer complex services based on cooperation among sensor nodes. CODE provides the vocabulary for describing the complex services offered by WCO. It enables description of services offered by groups, on-demand services, service interface and sub-services. The proposed methodology is based on XML, widely used for structured information exchange and collaboration. CODE can be directly implemented on the network gateway, while a lightweight binary version is stored and exchanged among sensor nodes. Experimental results show the feasibility and flexibility of using CODE as a basis for service management in WCO

Unified Role Assignment Framework For Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks are made possible by the continuing improvements in embedded sensor, VLSI, and wireless radio technologies. Currently, one of the important challenges in sensor networks is the design of a systematic network management framework that allows localized and collaborative resource control uniformly across all application services such as sensing, monitoring, tracking, data aggregation, and routing. The research in wireless sensor networks is currently oriented toward a cross-layer network abstraction that supports appropriate fine or course grained resource controls for energy efficiency. In that regard, we have designed a unified role-based service paradigm for wireless sensor networks. We pursue this by first developing a Role-based Hierarchical Self-Organization (RBSHO) protocol that organizes a connected dominating set (CDS) of nodes called dominators. This is done by hierarchically selecting nodes that possess cumulatively high energy, connectivity, and sensing capabilities in their local neighborhood. The RBHSO protocol then assigns specific tasks such as sensing, coordination, and routing to appropriate dominators that end up playing a certain role in the network. Roles, though abstract and implicit, expose role-specific resource controls by way of role assignment and scheduling. Based on this concept, we have designed a Unified Role-Assignment Framework (URAF) to model application services as roles played by local in-network sensor nodes with sensor capabilities used as rules for role identification. The URAF abstracts domain specific role attributes by three models: the role energy model, the role execution time model, and the role service utility model. The framework then generalizes resource management for services by providing abstractions for controlling the composition of a service in terms of roles, its assignment, reassignment, and scheduling. To the best of our knowledge, a generic role-based framework that provides a simple and unified network management solution for wireless sensor networks has not been proposed previously

SDDV: scalable data dissemination in vehicular ad hoc networks

An important challenge in the domain of vehicular ad hoc networks (VANET) is the scalability of data dissemination. Under dense traffic conditions, the large number of communicating vehicles can easily result in a congested wireless channel. In that situation, delays and packet losses increase to a level where the VANET cannot be applied for road safety applications anymore. This paper introduces scalable data dissemination in vehicular ad hoc networks (SDDV), a holistic solution to this problem. It is composed of several techniques spread across the different layers of the protocol stack. Simulation results are presented that illustrate the severity of the scalability problem when applying common state-of-the-art techniques and parameters. Starting from such a baseline solution, optimization techniques are gradually added to SDDV until the scalability problem is entirely solved. Besides the performance evaluation based on simulations, the paper ends with an evaluation of the final SDDV configuration on real hardware. Experiments including 110 nodes are performed on the iMinds w-iLab.t wireless lab. The results of these experiments confirm the results obtained in the corresponding simulations

A Formal Framework for Modeling Trust and Reputation in Collective Adaptive Systems

Trust and reputation models for distributed, collaborative systems have been studied and applied in several domains, in order to stimulate cooperation while preventing selfish and malicious behaviors. Nonetheless, such models have received less attention in the process of specifying and analyzing formally the functionalities of the systems mentioned above. The objective of this paper is to define a process algebraic framework for the modeling of systems that use (i) trust and reputation to govern the interactions among nodes, and (ii) communication models characterized by a high level of adaptiveness and flexibility. Hence, we propose a formalism for verifying, through model checking techniques, the robustness of these systems with respect to the typical attacks conducted against webs of trust.Comment: In Proceedings FORECAST 2016, arXiv:1607.0200

An Emergent Architecture for Scaling Decentralized Communication Systems (DCS)

With recent technological advancements now accelerating the mobile and wireless Internet solution space, a ubiquitous computing Internet is well within the research and industrial community's design reach - a decentralized system design, which is not solely driven by static physical models and sound engineering principals, but more dynamically, perhaps sub-optimally at initial deployment and socially-influenced in its evolution. To complement today's Internet system, this thesis proposes a Decentralized Communication System (DCS) architecture with the following characteristics: flat physical topologies with numerous compute oriented and communication intensive nodes in the network with many of these nodes operating in multiple functional roles; self-organizing virtual structures formed through alternative mobility scenarios and capable of serving ad hoc networking formations; emergent operations and control with limited dependency on centralized control and management administration. Today, decentralized systems are not commercially scalable or viable for broad adoption in the same way we have to come to rely on the Internet or telephony systems. The premise in this thesis is that DCS can reach high levels of resilience, usefulness, scale that the industry has come to experience with traditional centralized systems by exploiting the following properties: (i.) network density and topological diversity; (ii.) self-organization and emergent attributes; (iii.) cooperative and dynamic infrastructure; and (iv.) node role diversity. This thesis delivers key contributions towards advancing the current state of the art in decentralized systems. First, we present the vision and a conceptual framework for DCS. Second, the thesis demonstrates that such a framework and concept architecture is feasible by prototyping a DCS platform that exhibits the above properties or minimally, demonstrates that these properties are feasible through prototyped network services. Third, this work expands on an alternative approach to network clustering using hierarchical virtual clusters (HVC) to facilitate self-organizing network structures. With increasing network complexity, decentralized systems can generally lead to unreliable and irregular service quality, especially given unpredictable node mobility and traffic dynamics. The HVC framework is an architectural strategy to address organizational disorder associated with traditional decentralized systems. The proposed HVC architecture along with the associated promotional methodology organizes distributed control and management services by leveraging alternative organizational models (e.g., peer-to-peer (P2P), centralized or tiered) in hierarchical and virtual fashion. Through simulation and analytical modeling, we demonstrate HVC efficiencies in DCS structural scalability and resilience by comparing static and dynamic HVC node configurations against traditional physical configurations based on P2P, centralized or tiered structures. Next, an emergent management architecture for DCS exploiting HVC for self-organization, introduces emergence as an operational approach to scaling DCS services for state management and policy control. In this thesis, emergence scales in hierarchical fashion using virtual clustering to create multiple tiers of local and global separation for aggregation, distribution and network control. Emergence is an architectural objective, which HVC introduces into the proposed self-management design for scaling and stability purposes. Since HVC expands the clustering model hierarchically and virtually, a clusterhead (CH) node, positioned as a proxy for a specific cluster or grouped DCS nodes, can also operate in a micro-capacity as a peer member of an organized cluster in a higher tier. As the HVC promotional process continues through the hierarchy, each tier of the hierarchy exhibits emergent behavior. With HVC as the self-organizing structural framework, a multi-tiered, emergent architecture enables the decentralized management strategy to improve scaling objectives that traditionally challenge decentralized systems. The HVC organizational concept and the emergence properties align with and the view of the human brain's neocortex layering structure of sensory storage, prediction and intelligence. It is the position in this thesis, that for DCS to scale and maintain broad stability, network control and management must strive towards an emergent or natural approach. While today's models for network control and management have proven to lack scalability and responsiveness based on pure centralized models, it is unlikely that singular organizational models can withstand the operational complexities associated with DCS. In this work, we integrate emergence and learning-based methods in a cooperative computing manner towards realizing DCS self-management. However, unlike many existing work in these areas which break down with increased network complexity and dynamics, the proposed HVC framework is utilized to offset these issues through effective separation, aggregation and asynchronous processing of both distributed state and policy. Using modeling techniques, we demonstrate that such architecture is feasible and can improve the operational robustness of DCS. The modeling emphasis focuses on demonstrating the operational advantages of an HVC-based organizational strategy for emergent management services (i.e., reachability, availability or performance). By integrating the two approaches, the DCS architecture forms a scalable system to address the challenges associated with traditional decentralized systems. The hypothesis is that the emergent management system architecture will improve the operational scaling properties of DCS-based applications and services. Additionally, we demonstrate structural flexibility of HVC as an underlying service infrastructure to build and deploy DCS applications and layered services. The modeling results demonstrate that an HVC-based emergent management and control system operationally outperforms traditional structural organizational models. In summary, this thesis brings together the above contributions towards delivering a scalable, decentralized system for Internet mobile computing and communications

Forum Session at the First International Conference on Service Oriented Computing (ICSOC03)

The First International Conference on Service Oriented Computing (ICSOC) was held in Trento, December 15-18, 2003. The focus of the conference ---Service Oriented Computing (SOC)--- is the new emerging paradigm for distributed computing and e-business processing that has evolved from object-oriented and component computing to enable building agile networks of collaborating business applications distributed within and across organizational boundaries. Of the 181 papers submitted to the ICSOC conference, 10 were selected for the forum session which took place on December the 16th, 2003. The papers were chosen based on their technical quality, originality, relevance to SOC and for their nature of being best suited for a poster presentation or a demonstration. This technical report contains the 10 papers presented during the forum session at the ICSOC conference. In particular, the last two papers in the report ere submitted as industrial papers