14,203 research outputs found
spChains: A Declarative Framework for Data Stream Processing in Pervasive Applications
Pervasive applications rely on increasingly complex streams of sensor data continuously captured from the physical world. Such data is crucial to enable applications to ``understand'' the current context and to infer the right actions to perform, be they fully automatic or involving some user decisions. However, the continuous nature of such streams, the relatively high throughput at which data is generated and the number of sensors usually deployed in the environment, make direct data handling practically unfeasible. Data not only needs to be cleaned, but it must also be filtered and aggregated to relieve higher level algorithms from near real-time handling of such massive data flows. We propose here a stream-processing framework (spChains), based upon state-of-the-art stream processing engines, which enables declarative and modular composition of stream processing chains built atop of a set of extensible stream processing blocks. While stream processing blocks are delivered as a standard, yet extensible, library of application-independent processing elements, chains can be defined by the pervasive application engineering team. We demonstrate the flexibility and effectiveness of the spChains framework on two real-world applications in the energy management and in the industrial plant management domains, by evaluating them on a prototype implementation based on the Esper stream processo
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
Building distributed heterogeneous smart phone Java applications an evaluation from a development perspective
The advances in mobile phone technology have enabled such
devices to be programmed to run general-purpose applications
using a special edition of the Java programming language. Java is designed to be a heterogeneous programming language targeting different platforms. Such ability when coupled with the provision of high-speed mobile Internet access would open the door for a new breed of distributed mobile applications. This paper explores the capabilities and limitations of this technology and addresses the considerations that must be taken when designing and developing such distributed applications. Our findings are
verified by building a test client-server system where the clients in this system are mobile phones behaving as active processing elements not just mere service requesters
Mobile support in CSCW applications and groupware development frameworks
Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) is an established subset of the field of Human Computer Interaction that deals with the how people use computing technology to enhance group interaction and collaboration. Mobile CSCW has emerged as a result of the progression from personal desktop computing to the mobile device platforms that are ubiquitous today.
CSCW aims to not only connect people and facilitate communication through using computers; it aims to provide conceptual models coupled with technology to manage, mediate, and assist collaborative processes. Mobile CSCW research looks to fulfil these aims through the adoption of mobile technology and consideration for the mobile user. Facilitating collaboration using mobile devices brings new challenges. Some of these challenges are inherent to the nature of the device hardware, while others focus on the understanding of how to engineer software to maximize effectiveness for the end-users. This paper reviews seminal and state-of-the-art cooperative software applications and development frameworks, and their support for mobile devices
Security in Pervasive Computing: Current Status and Open Issues
Million of wireless device users are ever on the move, becoming more dependent on their PDAs, smart phones, and other handheld devices. With the advancement of pervasive computing, new and unique capabilities are available to aid mobile societies. The wireless nature of these devices has fostered a new era of mobility. Thousands of pervasive devices are able to arbitrarily join and leave a network, creating a nomadic environment known as a pervasive ad hoc network. However, mobile devices have vulnerabilities, and some are proving to be challenging. Security in pervasive computing is the most critical challenge. Security is needed to ensure exact and accurate confidentiality, integrity, authentication, and access control, to name a few. Security for mobile devices, though still in its infancy, has drawn the attention of various researchers. As pervasive devices become incorporated in our day-to-day lives, security will increasingly becoming a common concern for all users - - though for most it will be an afterthought, like many other computing functions. The usability and expansion of pervasive computing applications depends greatly on the security and reliability provided by the applications. At this critical juncture, security research is growing. This paper examines the recent trends and forward thinking investigation in several fields of security, along with a brief history of previous accomplishments in the corresponding areas. Some open issues have been discussed for further investigation
Enabling High-Level Application Development for the Internet of Things
Application development in the Internet of Things (IoT) is challenging
because it involves dealing with a wide range of related issues such as lack of
separation of concerns, and lack of high-level of abstractions to address both
the large scale and heterogeneity. Moreover, stakeholders involved in the
application development have to address issues that can be attributed to
different life-cycles phases. when developing applications. First, the
application logic has to be analyzed and then separated into a set of
distributed tasks for an underlying network. Then, the tasks have to be
implemented for the specific hardware. Apart from handling these issues, they
have to deal with other aspects of life-cycle such as changes in application
requirements and deployed devices. Several approaches have been proposed in the
closely related fields of wireless sensor network, ubiquitous and pervasive
computing, and software engineering in general to address the above challenges.
However, existing approaches only cover limited subsets of the above mentioned
challenges when applied to the IoT. This paper proposes an integrated approach
for addressing the above mentioned challenges. The main contributions of this
paper are: (1) a development methodology that separates IoT application
development into different concerns and provides a conceptual framework to
develop an application, (2) a development framework that implements the
development methodology to support actions of stakeholders. The development
framework provides a set of modeling languages to specify each development
concern and abstracts the scale and heterogeneity related complexity. It
integrates code generation, task-mapping, and linking techniques to provide
automation. Code generation supports the application development phase by
producing a programming framework that allows stakeholders to focus on the
application logic, while our mapping and linking techniques together support
the deployment phase by producing device-specific code to result in a
distributed system collaboratively hosted by individual devices. Our evaluation
based on two realistic scenarios shows that the use of our approach improves
the productivity of stakeholders involved in the application development
Exploring Bluetooth based Mobile Phone Interaction with the Hermes Photo Display
One of the most promising possibilities for supporting user interaction with public displays is the use of personal mobile phones. Furthermore, by utilising Bluetooth users should have the capability to interact with displays without incurring personal financial connectivity costs. However, despite the relative maturity of Bluetooth as a standard and its widespread adoption in todayâs mobile phones, little exploration seems to have taken place in this area - despite its apparent significant potential. This paper describe the findings of an exploratory study nvolving our Hermes Photo Display which has been extended to enable users with a suitable phone to both send and receive pictures over Bluetooth. We present both the technical challenges of working with Bluetooth and, through our user study, we present initial insights into general user acceptability issues and the potential for such a display to facilitate notions of community
Mobile application platform heterogeneity: Android vs Windows phone vs iOS vs Firefox OS
Modern smartphones have a rich spectrum of increasingly sophisticated features, opening opportunities for software-led innovation. Of the large number of platforms to develop new software on, in this paper we look closely at three platforms identified as market leaders for the smartphone market by Gartner Group in 2013 and one platform, Firefox OS, representing a new paradigm for operating systems based on web technologies. We compare the platforms in several different categories, such as software architecture, application development, platform capabilities and constraints, and, finally, developer support. Using the implementation of a mobile version of the tic-tac-toe game on all the four platforms, we seek to investigate strengths, weaknesses and challenges of mobile application development on these platforms. Big differences are highlighted when inspecting community environments, hardware abilities and platform maturity. These inevitably impact upon developer choices when deciding on mobile platform development strategies
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