Enabling Machine Understandable Exchange of Energy Consumption Information in Intelligent Domotic Environments

In the 21st century, all the major countries around the world are coming together to reduce the impact of energy generation and consumption on the global environment. Energy conservation and its efficient usage has become a top agenda on the desks of many governments. In the last decade, the drive to make homes automated and to deliver a better assisted living picked pace and the research into home automation systems accelerated, usually based on a centralized residential gateway. However most devised solutions fail to provide users with information about power consumption of different house appliances. The ability to collect power consumption information can lead us to have a more energy efficient society. The goal addressed in this paper is to enable residential gateways to provide the energy consumption information, in a machine understandable format, to support third party applications and services. To reach this goal, we propose a Semantic Energy Information Publishing Framework. The proposed framework publishes, for different appliances in the house, their power consumption information and other properties, in a machine understandable format. Appliance properties are exposed according to the existing semantic modeling supported by residential gateways, while instantaneous power consumption is modeled through a new modular Energy Profile ontolog

Rewiring strategies for changing environments

A typical pervasive application executes in a changing environment: people, computing resources, software services and network connections come and go continuously. A robust pervasive application needs adapt to this changing context as long as there is an appropriate rewiring strategy that guarantees correct behavior. We combine the MERODE modeling methodology with the ReWiRe framework for creating interactive pervasive applications that can cope with changing environments. The core of our approach is a consistent environment model, which is essential to create (re)configurable context-aware pervasive applications. We aggregate different ontologies that provide the required semantics to describe almost any target environment. We present a case study that shows a interactive pervasive application for media access that incorporates parental control on media content and can migrate between devices. The application builds upon models of the run-time environment represented as system states for dedicated rewiring strategies

Ubiquitous Computing

The aim of this book is to give a treatment of the actively developed domain of Ubiquitous computing. Originally proposed by Mark D. Weiser, the concept of Ubiquitous computing enables a real-time global sensing, context-aware informational retrieval, multi-modal interaction with the user and enhanced visualization capabilities. In effect, Ubiquitous computing environments give extremely new and futuristic abilities to look at and interact with our habitat at any time and from anywhere. In that domain, researchers are confronted with many foundational, technological and engineering issues which were not known before. Detailed cross-disciplinary coverage of these issues is really needed today for further progress and widening of application range. This book collects twelve original works of researchers from eleven countries, which are clustered into four sections: Foundations, Security and Privacy, Integration and Middleware, Practical Applications

An Ontology Based Approach Towards A Universal Description Framework for Home Networks

Current home networks typically involve two or more machines sharing network resources. The vision for the home network has grown from a simple computer network, to every day appliances embedded with network capabilities. In this environment devices and services within the home can interoperate, regardless of protocol or platform. Network clients can discover required resources by performing network discovery over component descriptions. Common approaches to this discovery process involve simple matching of keywords or attribute/value pairings. Interest emerging from the Semantic Web community has led to ontology languages being applied to network domains, providing a logical and semantically rich approach to both describing and discovering network components. In much of the existing work within this domain, developers have focused on defining new description frameworks in isolation from existing protocol frameworks and vocabularies. This work proposes an ontology-based description framework which takes the ontology approach to the next step, where existing description frameworks are in- corporated into the ontology-based framework, allowing discovery mechanisms to cover multiple existing domains. In this manner, existing protocols and networking approaches can participate in semantically-rich discovery processes. This framework also includes a system architecture developed for the purpose of reconciling existing home network solutions with the ontology-based discovery process. This work also describes an implementation of the approach and is deployed within a home-network environment. This implementation involves existing home networking frameworks, protocols and components, allowing the claims of this work to be examined and evaluated from a ‘real-world’ perspective

Establishing Peer-to-Peer Distributed File Sharing System With Mobile Host

Viimase kümne aasta jooksul on mobiilsed seadmed nagu näiteks nutitelefonid, sülearvutid, pihuarvutid jne saanud lahutamatuks osaks igapäeva elust. See aga on tekitanud nõudluse võimsamate, kiiremate ja energiasäästlikumate seadmete järgi. Lisaks on iOSi ja Androidi operatsioonisüsteemide väljalaske tõttu suurenenud nii mobiilirakenduste arv kui ka keerukus. Sarnane areng on toimunud ka veebiteenuste valdkonnas ja nutitelefonides on ligi-pääs veebiteenustele muutunud elementaarseks. See aga on viinud järgmise sammuni – veebiteenuste pakkumine otse nutitelefonidest. See kontseptsioon pole uus ja seda on põh-jalikult uurinud S. N. Srirama, kes pakkus välja Mobile Host (Mobiilne Veebiteenuse Pak-kuja) lahenduse 2006. aastal, ning mida on C. Paniagua uuendanud Android OS’ile aastal 2012 kasutades REST arhitektuuri ja OSGi’t. P2P (Peer-to-Peer ehk partnervõrk) põhinevad programmid nagu näiteks failide jagamine ja sõnumite saatmine on tänapäeval arvutikasutajate seas laialdaselt levinud. Ar-vutid üle maailma on ühendatud omavahel ja jagavad ressursse selles süsteemis ilma keskse serverita. Iga arvuti selles võrgus on võrdne sel moel, et on võimeline ligi pääsema ja alla laadima ressursse teistest masinatest selles süsteemis. Töö kirjeldab põgusalt Mobile Hosti, P2P arhitektuuri, valitud P2P BitTorrenti pro-tokolli ja kuidas neid tehnoloogiaid kasutati P2P hajusa failide jagamise süsteemi loomi-seks. Uurimuse käigus arendati välja hajus failide jagamise süsteem Mobile Hosti lisana kasutades BitTorrenti protokollil põhinevat C++ keeles kirjutatud Libtorrenti teeki. Valmi-nud programm on võimeline looma torrent faili, avama ja laadima ning jagama vastavaid faile. Lisaks on võimalik muuta failide hoiustamise asukohta ja määrata mõningaid ses-siooni seadeid nagu näiteks alla ja üles laadimise kiirust piirata ning porti määrata. Failide jagamise teenust pakkuvate seadmete otsingu lihtsustamiseks seati üles Apache SOLR 4.2.0 veebiteenus mcrlabs.net serverisse millega suhtlus käib automaatselt.Mobile devices such as tablets, PDAs, mobile phones etc. have developed rapidly during last decade and become inseparable part of people’s everyday life. These devices are equipped with embedded sensors, camera, touchscreen, more memory, powerful processor, mobile 3G and 4G networks and Wi-Fi capability as well as efficient power consumption mechanisms. These improvements have led to mobile devices being able to perform tasks that usually personal computers are capable of. What is more due to release of Android OS and iOS applications for such mobile devices have increased as well as their complexity. Being online has become ubiquitous as Wi-Fi and mobile data networks are available in most of the places. For example over 45% of world’s population is covered by 3G mobile network [2]. Needlessly to say that makes using web services form mobile devices a com-mon thing. Such improvements lead to next generation of services which can be provided not only from dedicated servers but also from mobile phones. The concept of mobile web services provisioning is not new and has been in the ground for some time. Srirama et al. proposed the concept of Mobile Host [3] in 2006 where the mobile device acts as service provider. Mobile Host enables seamless integration of user specific services to the enterprise by following web service standards, also on the radio link and via resources constrained smart phones. Moreover Mobile Host fosters the new generation of ubiquitous and context-aware applications enabling the consumption of web services anywhere at any time from the handset. Mobile Host has been updated to latest technologies like for example REST archi-tecture which replaced SOAP so web services would be focused on systems resources. Early versions of Mobile Host were developed in PersonalJava and J2ME and meant for Symbian devices but as now the biggest share in smart phones market is held by Android then Mobile Host was upgraded for that platform by Paniagua [4] in 2012. Contribution of this thesis was to develop Peer-to-Peer (P2P) distributed file shar-ing system to Mobile Host for Android. This feature comes in handy when we talk about services that enables file sharing. As Mobile Host by its nature can join or leave network at any moment then accessing files that client is interested in becomes critical as file to be downloaded would be offered only by one provider as in regular client-server architecture. P2P distributed file sharing capability for Mobile Host provides users more reliable file sharing environment in distributed manner as files are downloaded as pieces from all the online peers who have pieces of desired file. What is more, small metadata torrent files are hosted by Mobile Hosts and published as a service. This setup assures the independency from other platforms and hosts

Efficient service discovery in wide area networks

Living in an increasingly networked world, with an abundant number of services available to consumers, the consumer electronics market is enjoying a boom. The average consumer in the developed world may own several networked devices such as games consoles, mobile phones, PDAs, laptops and desktops, wireless picture frames and printers to name but a few. With this growing number of networked devices comes a growing demand for services, defined here as functions requested by a client and provided by a networked node. For example, a client may wish to download and share music or pictures, find and use printer services, or lookup information (e.g. train times, cinema bookings). It is notable that a significant proportion of networked devices are now mobile. Mobile devices introduce a new dynamic to the service discovery problem, such as lower battery and processing power and more expensive bandwidth. Device owners expect to access services not only in their immediate proximity, but further afield (e.g. in their homes and offices). Solving these problems is the focus of this research. This Thesis offers two alternative approaches to service discovery in Wide Area Networks (WANs). Firstly, a unique combination of the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and the OSGi middleware technology is presented to provide both mobility and service discovery capability in WANs. Through experimentation, this technique is shown to be successful where the number of operating domains is small, but it does not scale well. To address the issue of scalability, this Thesis proposes the use of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) service overlays as a medium for service discovery in WANs. To confirm that P2P overlays can in fact support service discovery, a technique to utilise the Distributed Hash Table (DHT) functionality of distributed systems is used to store and retrieve service advertisements. Through simulation, this is shown to be both a scalable and a flexible service discovery technique. However, the problems associated with P2P networks with respect to efficiency are well documented. In a novel approach to reduce messaging costs in P2P networks, multi-destination multicast is used. Two well known P2P overlays are extended using the Explicit Multi-Unicast (XCAST) protocol. The resulting analysis of this extension provides a strong argument for multiple P2P maintenance algorithms co-existing in a single P2P overlay to provide adaptable performance. A novel multi-tier P2P overlay system is presented, which is tailored for service rich mobile devices and which provides an efficient platform for service discovery

Equipment management trial : final report

Executive Summary The Equipment Management (EM) trial was one of the practical initiatives conceived and implemented by members of The Application Home Initiative (TAHI) to demonstrate the feasibility of interoperability between white and brown goods, and other domestic equipment. The trial ran from October 2002 to June 2005, over which period it achieved its core objectives through the deployment in early 2005 of an integrated system in trials in 15 occupied homes. Prior to roll out into the field, the work was underpinned by soak testing, validation, laboratory experiments, case studies, user questionnaires, simulations and other research, conducted in a single demonstration home in Loughborough, as well as in Universities in the East Midlands and Scotland. Throughout its life, the trial faced significant membership changes, which had a far greater impact than the technical issues that were tackled. Two blue chip companies withdrew at the point of signing the collaborative agreement; another made a major change in strategic direction half way through and withdrew the major portion of its backing; another corporate left at this point, a second one later; one corporate was a late entrant; the technical leader made a boardroom decision not to do the engineering work that it had promised; one company went into liquidation; another went up for sale whilst others reorganised. The trial was conducted against this backdrop of continual commercial change. Despite this difficult operating environment, the trial met its objectives, although not entirely as envisaged initially – a tribute to the determination of the trial’s membership, the strength of its formal governance and management processes, and especially, the financial support of the dti. The equipment on trial featured a central heating/hot water boiler, washing machine, security system, gas alarm and utility meters, all connected to a home gateway, integrated functionally and presented to the users via a single interface. The trial met its principal objective to show that by connecting appliances to each other and to a support system, benefits in remote condition monitoring, maintenance, appliance & home controls optimisation and convenience to the customer & service supplier could be provided. This is one of two main reports that form the trial output (the other, the Multi Home Trial Report, is available to EM Trial members only as it contains commercially sensitive information). A supporting library of documents is also available and is held in the virtual office hosted by Loughborough University Centre for the Integrated Home Environment

Equipment management trial : TAHI summary

The Equipment Management (EM) trial was one of the practical initiatives conceived and implemented by members of The Application Home Initiative (TAHI) with strong support from the DTI, to demonstrate the feasibility of interoperability between white and brown goods, and other domestic equipment. The trial ran from October 2002 to June 2005, over which period it achieved its core objectives through the deployment in early 2005 of an integrated system in trials in 15 occupied homes. Prior to roll out into the field, the work was underpinned by soak testing, validation, laboratory experiments, case studies, user questionnaires, simulations and other research, conducted in a single demonstration home in Loughborough, as well as in Universities in the East Midlands and Scotland. The trial was conducted against a backdrop of continual commercial change. Despite this difficult operating environment, the trial met its objectives, although not entirely as envisaged initially – a tribute to the determination of the trial’s membership, the strength of its formal governance and management processes, and especially, the financial support of the dti. The equipment on trial featured a central heating/hot water boiler, washing machine, security system, gas alarm and utility meters, all connected to a home gateway, integrated functionally and presented to the users via a single interface. The trial met its principal objective to show that by connecting appliances to each other and to a support system, benefits in remote condition monitoring, maintenance, appliance & home controls optimisation and convenience to the customer & service supplier could be provided. The EM trial identified exciting opportunities for the UK’s domestic white and brown goods manufacturing sector. Despite the relative immaturity of some of the enabling technologies people seem interested in the use of smart home devices to improve their quality of life or just generally make things easier at home in their busy schedules. Whilst the enabling technology behind future smart homes is being developed at a rapid pace, it is the intelligent application and integration of this technology that will make the difference to the home consumer. Just because the technology provider can make a ‘useful’ device it does not necessarily mean that the consumer actually wants to buy the ‘new’ invention. The EM trial has successfully shown where certain technology can be deployed successfully and also identified areas where further work is required

P2P service exposer

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia Electrotécnica e de ComputadoresSmart homes were developed to improve inhabitants comfort by integrating electronic devices that perform the control of domestic activities, such as home entertainment systems, yard watering, house cleaning, etc. They are equipped with sensors and actuators that rely on P2P networking to share services and resources amongst them. To perform home management, inhabitants want to access their homes, from anywhere in the world using everyday devices, like smartphones. These devices aren’t peers of the network. They are outsiders that use a technology different, accessing the in-house P2P networks through Service Exposers, a special set of peers that expose the services available in the P2P network. Expose the services is challenging, because services in the network are always changing, new services can appear and the existing can change their locations and methods. These peers use a different technology; non-standard and inaccessible by devices like smartphones. For this, a P2P Service Exposer architecture is proposed, that indexes all the services available in the network, expose them to clients in a standardized platform, such as Web Services, and perform translations between the two different technological environments

Implementation of a building automation system based on semantic modeling

This paper presents an Ontology-Based multi-technology platform designed to avoid some issues of Building Automation Systems. The platform allows the integration of several building automation protocols, eases the development and implementation of different kinds of services and allows sharing information related to the infrastructure and facilities within a building. The system has been implemented and tested in the Energy Efficiency Research Facility at CeDInt-UPM