Interim research assessment 2003-2005 - Computer Science

This report primarily serves as a source of information for the 2007 Interim Research Assessment Committee for Computer Science at the three technical universities in the Netherlands. The report also provides information for others interested in our research activities

Distributed tuplespace and location management - an integrated perspective using Bluetooth

Location based or "context aware" computing is becoming increasingly recognized as a vital part of a mobile computing environment. As a consequence, the need for location-management middleware is widely recognized and actively researched. Location management is frequently offered to the application through an API where the location is given in the form of coordinates. It is the opinion of the authors that a localization API should offer localized data (e.g. direction to the nearest pharmacy) directly through a transparent and integrated API. Our proposed middleware for location and context management is built on top of Mobispace. Mobispace is a distributed tuplespace made for J2me units where replication between local replicas takes place with a central server (over GPRS) or with other mobile units (using Bluetooth). Since a Bluetooth connection indicates physical proximity to another node, a set of stationary nodes may distribute locality information over Bluetooth connections, and this information may be retrieved through the ordinary tuplespace AP

Energieeffiziente Anpassung des Arbeitszyklus in drahtlosen Sensornetzen

Drahtlose Sensornetze können Zustände physikalischer Größen messen und an eine Basisstation (Datensenke) melden. Durch die geographische Verteilung der Sensorknoten und die Bedingungen bei der Mehrwegeausbreitung kann die Situation auftreten, dass nicht alle Sensorknoten direkten Kontakt zur Basisstation aufbauen können. Sie müssen andere Sensorknoten als Vermittlungsstation in Anspruch nehmen, um die Nachrichten an die Basisstation zu befördern. Um den Energieverbrauch zu verringern, werden Nachrichten zum einen ereignisbasiert generiert und zum anderen zeitbasiert vermittelt. Dabei beschreibt der Arbeitszyklus den Anteil der Vermittlungsaktivität am Gesamtzyklus. Derzeit verfügbare Methoden berücksichtigen allerdings nicht die Verknüpfung zwischen dem von der Anwendung generierten Verkehr und der Vermittlungshäufigkeit. In der vorliegenden Arbeit wird ein Verfahren vorgeschlagen, mit dem der Arbeitszyklus zur Laufzeit automatisch eingestellt werden kann. Dafür wird in der Vermittlungsstation die Verkehrscharakteristik gemessen und für die Einstellung des Arbeitszyklus benutzt. Die Leistungsfähigkeit der Anpassung des Arbeitszyklus wird mit Simulationen untersucht. Sie zeigen, wie sich der Ansatz bei verschiedener Parametrierung in statischen und dynamischen Szenarien verhält. Um dem späteren Anwender der Anpassung eine Abschätzung des Verhaltens zu ermöglichen, werden zusätzlich analytische Modelle für die Analyse des statischen und dynamischen Verhaltens entwickelt. Ferner wird gezeigt, dass der entwickelte Ansatz für etablierte Standardtechniken (z. B. IEEE 802.15.4) eingesetzt werden kann.Wireless Sensor Networks support flexible measuring of physical values. Due to the geographical distribution and multipath scattering the base station in such a network might not be reached by all sensors. Hence, other sensor nodes have to work as relay stations. At the same time, each sensor node is forced to consume as low energy as possible. In order to save energy the messages are generated event based in each sensor node and forwarded with a time triggered approach. Thereby, the duty cycle describes the portion of the relay activities in relation to the overall cycle. Currently available approaches do not properly adapt these two paradigms, event and time triggered, to each other. In this work a method to adapt the duty cycle according to the traffic is proposed. Therefore, the traffic is monitored and evaluated for traffic adaptation. Furthermore, the performance of the duty cycle adaptation is assessed using simulations. They show the behavior of the adaptation algorithm in static and dynamic scenarios with different parametrizations. The supplemental analytical models enable to easily estimate the behavior of the adaptation, in static as well as in dynamic scenarios. Also, it is shown how the duty cycle adaptation can be deployed for standard technologies like IEEE 802.15.4

Position-Based Multicast for Mobile Ad-hoc Networks

In general, routing protocols for mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs) can be classified into topology-based protocols and position-based protocols. While for unicast routing many proposals for both classes exist, the existing approaches to multicast routing basically implement topology-based algorithms and only a few of them make use of the geographic positions of the network nodes. These have in common that the sending node has to precalculate the multicast tree over which the packets are distributed and store it in each packet header. This involves two main issues: (a) These approaches are not very flexible with regard to topological changes which abandons the advantages that position-based routing has against topology-based routing, and (b) they do not scale with the number of receivers, since every one of them has to be named in the packet header. This thesis solves these issues and further advances position-based multicast routing. Position-Based Multicast (PBM) enhances the flexibility of position-based multicast routing by following the forwarding principle of position-based unicast routing. It transfers the choice of the next hops in the tree from the sender to the forwarding nodes. Based on the positions of their neighboring nodes, these are able to determine the most suitable next hop(s) at the moment when the packet is being forwarded. The scalability with respect to the number of receiving nodes in a group is solved by Scalable Position-Based Multicast (SPBM). It includes a membership management fulfilling different tasks at once. First, it administers group memberships in order to provide multicast sources with information on whether nodes are subscribed to a specific group. Second, it implements a location service providing the multicast sources with the positions of the subscribed receiver nodes. And third, it geographically aggregates membership data in order to achieve the desired scalability. The group management features two modes of operation: The proactive variant produces a bounded overhead scaling well with the size of the network. The reactive alternative, in contrast, reaches low worst-case join delays but does not limit the overhead. Contention-Based Multicast Forwarding (CBMF) addresses the problems that appear in highly mobile networks induced by outdated position information. Instead of basing forwarding decisions on a perception that may no longer be up to date, the packets are addressed only to the final destination; no explicit next hops are specified. The receiving nodes, which are candidate next hops, then decide by means of contention which of them are the most suitable next hop(s) for a packet. Not only is the decision made based on the most currently available data, but this procedure also saves the regular sending of beacon messages, thus reducing the overhead. The lack of multicast congestion control is another unsolved problem obstructing high-bandwidth data transmission. Sending out more and more packets to a multicast group lets the performance decrease. Backpressure Multicast Congestion Control (BMCC) takes care that the network does not need to handle more packets than it is able to. It achieves this by limiting the packet queues on the intermediate hops. A forwarder may not forward the next packet of a stream before it has noticed---by overhearing the transmission of the next hop---that the previous packet has succeeded. If there is congestion in an area, backpressure is implicitly built up towards the source, which then stops sending out packets until the congestion is released. BMCC takes care that every receiving node will receive packets at the same rate. An alternative mode of operation, BMCC with Backpressure Pruning (BMCC-BP) allows the cutting of congested branches for single packets, permitting a higher rate for uncongested receivers. Besides presenting protocols for multicast communication in MANETs, this thesis also describes implementations of two of the above-mentioned protocols. The first one is an implementation of SPBM for the Linux kernel that allows IP applications to send data via UDP to a group of receivers in an ad-hoc network. The implementation resides between the MAC layer and the network/IP layer of the network stack. It is compatible with unmodified standard kernels of versions 2.4 and 2.6, and may be compiled for x86 or ARM processor architectures. The second implementation is an implementation of CBMF for the ScatterWeb MSB430 sensor nodes. Due to their low-level programmability they allow an integration of the routing protocol with the medium access control. The absence of periodic beacon messages makes the protocol especially suitable for energy-constrained sensor networks. Furthermore, other constraints like limited memory and computational power demand special consideration as well

Position-Based Packet Forwarding for Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks

Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks, or MANETs, are data communication networks between (potentially) mobile computer systems equipped with wireless communication devices and — in their purest form — in complete absence of communication infrastructure. Usage scenarios for these systems include communication during disaster recovery or battlefield communications. One of the great research challenges concerning MANETs is the Packet Forwarding Problem, i.e., the question to which neighbor node a data packet should be handed over to reach non-neighboring nodes. While this problem has been previously solved by the adaption of classic routing algorithms from wired networks, the availability of GPS enables to include information about the geographic position of nodes into the routing decision, by selecting forwarders that are geographically closest to the destination. While these algorithms have been shown to improve communication performance in networks with a high degree of node mobility, they require (a) a beaconing service that allows every node to build a table of its neighbors and (b) a so-called Location Service that allows to acquire the current position of non-neighboring nodes in the network. In this thesis, we propose Contention-Based Forwarding (or CBF), a greedy routing heuristic that is no longer in need of a beaconing service. Moreover, a forwarding node running CBF does not at all select the next forwarder explicitly but broadcasts the packet containing its own position and the position of the destination. The selection of the forwarding is now done in a contention period, where every possible forwarder, i.e., every receiver of the packet, considers its own suitability to forward by calculating the geographical progress for the packet if forwarded by itself. Then it waits for a time reciprocal to this suitability before simply retransmitting. If the retransmission of a packet is overheard, the own postponed retransmission process is canceled. In this thesis, we demonstrate that CBF outperforms beacon and position-based routing by delivering packets with constant overhead, almost ignorant of mobility. Also, we introduce two strategies to cope with the problem of packet duplication. A problem left open by greedy routing heuristics is routing in the presence of local optima, or voids. Voids are node placement situations, where — in spite of an existing route — no neighboring node is geographically closer to the destination than the current forwarder. In these situations, greedy forwarding fails and standard graph-based recovery well known from classical Position-Based Forwarding cannot be applied due to the lack of the beacon-based construction of neighbor tables. As a solution, we propagate Contention-Based Distance Vector Routing, a contention-based adaption of AODV that acquires topology information in the area of the void and does contention on the topological distance to the forwarder. Besides the forwarding algorithms, we extend position-based routing by two location services. The first, the Reactive Location Service or RLS is simple, purely on-demand and very robust to mobility, the second Hierarchical Location Service, is more complex but outperforms RLS in scalability. The second big column in this thesis is ad-hoc multi-hop communication in the context of Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks , or VANET, i.e., networks where the communication system is carried by vehicles. These systems very elegantly fit into the propositions and requirements for our more general routing approaches since they have (a) easy access to position information an (b) "suffer" from high mobility. For VANETs, we separate the routing problem into highway and city scenarios and study various routing algorithms in both. In the end, we advocate the usage of position-based routing in both scenarios; moreover, the contention-based approaches are most promising. While a lot of ad-hoc research has been deemed to be theoretical, we have also built a multi-car communication system. For this system, we provided the network and system architecture and provided the communication software. In this thesis, we will describe these efforts as a proof-of-concept and provide measurement results

System support for client-server based interactive applications in ad hoc networks

With the emergence of wireless communications and mobile computing. new ways for people to interact with each other and their surrounding environment are emerging. Mobile devices, such as Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) with wireless communication interfaces are able to communicate directly with each other if they are "close enough". If such devices are also able to act as message relays (routers), then a very powerful facility in the form of a mobile ad hoc network can be made available to applications. Although present day PDAs have sufficient networking and processing capabilities to support interesting interactive applications, as yet, there is hardly any software available for constructing and maintaining ad hoc networks and not many practical interactive applications have been built and tested. Rather, much of the research work is still at simulation and modelling stage. Thus it is difficult at this stage to decide what system support (middleware) for interactive applications a PDA should contain. This work is a step in the direction of remedying the situation by considering a class of applications where interactions between users can be supported by one of the nodes in the ad hoc network acting as a server. The thesis presents the design, implementation and evaluation of three such applications on PDAs, and based on that experience, describes what system support (middleware) for such applications is required. These applications are: Auction, Bingo game and Chatting that work over ad hoc networks. The work presented here can be used as a basis for deciding how the current generation of PDA operating systems can be extended for supporting ad hoc networking and what additional services are required for interactive applications.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Automated GUI Testing Techniques for Android Applications

Mobile devices are integral parts of our daily lives; a little computer in our pocket has became a faithful assistant both for work than for amusement. The availability of mobile applications (commonly referred as apps) has made more and more useful bringing these devices with us everyday. The number of such applications in these years has faced a tremendous growth due to the market attractiveness; according to Forbes, by 2017 more than 270 billion mobile applications will be downloaded worldwide. The quality of a mobile application is a major concern for developers, users and application stores. According to a survey conducted by SmartBear from October to December 2013 nearly 50% of consumers will delete a mobile app if they encounter a bug. So, testing mobile applications to prevent the occurrence of software exceptions in production can be considered one of the key factor in uencing its quality together with the market response. As today, in literature many techniques have been presented aiming at testing mobile applications. In particular, many of them have been presented in the context of GUI Testing. The research activity described in this thesis is focused on proposing novel techniques and tools in the field of Automated GUI Testing for Mobile Applications. In particular, the work is targeted to the Android Operating System, that currently is the dominating operating system in the mobile devices market, although the results can be generalized to other mobile platforms

An architectural framework for self-configuration and self-improvement at runtime

[no abstract