Autonomic Wireless Sensor Networks: A Systematic Literature Review

Autonomic computing (AC) is a promising approach to meet basic requirements in the design of wireless sensor networks (WSNs), and its principles can be applied to efficiently manage nodes operation and optimize network resources. Middleware for WSNs supports the implementation and basic operation of such networks. In this systematic literature review (SLR) we aim to provide an overview of existing WSN middleware systems that address autonomic properties. The main goal is to identify which development approaches of AC are used for designing WSN middleware system, which allow the self-management of WSN. Another goal is finding out which interactions and behavior can be automated in WSN components. We drew the following main conclusions from the SLR results: (i) the selected studies address WSN concerns according to the self-* properties of AC, namely, self-configuration, self-healing, self-optimization, and self-protection; (ii) the selected studies use different approaches for managing the dynamic behavior of middleware systems for WSN, such as policy-based reasoning, context-based reasoning, feedback control loops, mobile agents, model transformations, and code generation. Finally, we identified a lack of comprehensive system architecture designs that support the autonomy of sensor networking

Design abstraction for autonomous adaptive hardware systems on FPGAs

Adaptive hardware is gaining importance with the emergence of more autonomous systems that must process large volumes of sensor data and react within tight deadlines. To support such computation within the constraints of embedded deployments, a blend of high throughput hardware processing and adaptive control is required. FPGAs offer an ideal platform for implementing such systems by virtue of their hardware flexibility and sensor interfacing capabilities. FPGA SoCs are specifically well suited offering capable embedded processors that are tightly coupled with a flexible high performance FPGA fabric. This paper explores existing work on adaptive hardware systems before proposing a general model and implementation approach tailored towards these modern FPGA architectures, concluding with pointers for research in this emerging field

QoS Challenges and Opportunities in Wireless Sensor/Actuator Networks

A wireless sensor/actuator network (WSAN) is a group of sensors and actuators that are geographically distributed and interconnected by wireless networks. Sensors gather information about the state of physical world. Actuators react to this information by performing appropriate actions. WSANs thus enable cyber systems to monitor and manipulate the behavior of the physical world. WSANs are growing at a tremendous pace, just like the exploding evolution of Internet. Supporting quality of service (QoS) will be of critical importance for pervasive WSANs that serve as the network infrastructure of diverse applications. To spark new research and development interests in this field, this paper examines and discusses the requirements, critical challenges, and open research issues on QoS management in WSANs. A brief overview of recent progress is given.Comment: 12 pages, 1 figure; revie

A Declarative Goal-oriented Framework for Smart Environments with LPaaS

Smart environments powered by the Internet of Things aim at improving our daily lives by automatically tuning ambient parameters (e.g. temperature, interior light) and by achieving energy savings through self-managing cyber-physical systems. Commercial solutions, however, only permit setting simple target goals on those parameters and do not consider mediating conflicting goals among different users and/or system administrators, and feature limited compatibility across different IoT verticals. In this article, we propose a declarative framework to represent smart environments, user-set goals and customisable mediation policies to reconcile contrasting goals encompassing multiple IoT systems. An open-source Prolog prototype of the framework is showcased over two lifelike motivating examples

Internet of robotic things : converging sensing/actuating, hypoconnectivity, artificial intelligence and IoT Platforms

The Internet of Things (IoT) concept is evolving rapidly and influencing newdevelopments in various application domains, such as the Internet of MobileThings (IoMT), Autonomous Internet of Things (A-IoT), Autonomous Systemof Things (ASoT), Internet of Autonomous Things (IoAT), Internetof Things Clouds (IoT-C) and the Internet of Robotic Things (IoRT) etc.that are progressing/advancing by using IoT technology. The IoT influencerepresents new development and deployment challenges in different areassuch as seamless platform integration, context based cognitive network integration,new mobile sensor/actuator network paradigms, things identification(addressing, naming in IoT) and dynamic things discoverability and manyothers. The IoRT represents new convergence challenges and their need to be addressed, in one side the programmability and the communication ofmultiple heterogeneous mobile/autonomous/robotic things for cooperating,their coordination, configuration, exchange of information, security, safetyand protection. Developments in IoT heterogeneous parallel processing/communication and dynamic systems based on parallelism and concurrencyrequire new ideas for integrating the intelligent “devices”, collaborativerobots (COBOTS), into IoT applications. Dynamic maintainability, selfhealing,self-repair of resources, changing resource state, (re-) configurationand context based IoT systems for service implementation and integrationwith IoT network service composition are of paramount importance whennew “cognitive devices” are becoming active participants in IoT applications.This chapter aims to be an overview of the IoRT concept, technologies,architectures and applications and to provide a comprehensive coverage offuture challenges, developments and applications

Towards adaptive multi-robot systems: self-organization and self-adaptation

Dieser Beitrag ist mit Zustimmung des Rechteinhabers aufgrund einer (DFG geförderten) Allianz- bzw. Nationallizenz frei zugänglich.This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively.The development of complex systems ensembles that operate in uncertain environments is a major challenge. The reason for this is that system designers are not able to fully specify the system during specification and development and before it is being deployed. Natural swarm systems enjoy similar characteristics, yet, being self-adaptive and being able to self-organize, these systems show beneficial emergent behaviour. Similar concepts can be extremely helpful for artificial systems, especially when it comes to multi-robot scenarios, which require such solution in order to be applicable to highly uncertain real world application. In this article, we present a comprehensive overview over state-of-the-art solutions in emergent systems, self-organization, self-adaptation, and robotics. We discuss these approaches in the light of a framework for multi-robot systems and identify similarities, differences missing links and open gaps that have to be addressed in order to make this framework possible

06031 Abstracts Collection -- Organic Computing -- Controlled Emergence

Organic Computing has emerged recently as a challenging vision for future information processing systems, based on the insight that we will soon be surrounded by large collections of autonomous systems equipped with sensors and actuators to be aware of their environment, to communicate freely, and to organize themselves in order to perform the actions and services required. Organic Computing Systems will adapt dynamically to the current conditions of its environment, they will be self-organizing, self-configuring, self-healing, self-protecting, self-explaining, and context-aware. From 15.01.06 to 20.01.06, the Dagstuhl Seminar 06031 ``Organic Computing -- Controlled Emergence\u27\u27 was held in the International Conference and Research Center (IBFI), Schloss Dagstuhl. The seminar was characterized by the very constructive search for common ground between engineering and natural sciences, between informatics on the one hand and biology, neuroscience, and chemistry on the other. The common denominator was the objective to build practically usable self-organizing and emergent systems or their components. An indicator for the practical orientation of the seminar was the large number of OC application systems, envisioned or already under implementation, such as the Internet, robotics, wireless sensor networks, traffic control, computer vision, organic systems on chip, an adaptive and self-organizing room with intelligent sensors or reconfigurable guiding systems for smart office buildings. The application orientation was also apparent by the large number of methods and tools presented during the seminar, which might be used as building blocks for OC systems, such as an evolutionary design methodology, OC architectures, especially several implementations of observer/controller structures, measures and measurement tools for emergence and complexity, assertion-based methods to control self-organization, wrappings, a software methodology to build reflective systems, and components for OC middleware. Organic Computing is clearly oriented towards applications but is augmented at the same time by more theoretical bio-inspired and nature-inspired work, such as chemical computing, theory of complex systems and non-linear dynamics, control mechanisms in insect swarms, homeostatic mechanisms in the brain, a quantitative approach to robustness, abstraction and instantiation as a central metaphor for understanding complex systems. Compared to its beginnings, Organic Computing is coming of age. The OC vision is increasingly padded with meaningful applications and usable tools, but the path towards full OC systems is still complex. There is progress in a more scientific understanding of emergent processes. In the future, we must understand more clearly how to open the configuration space of technical systems for on-line modification. Finally, we must make sure that the human user remains in full control while allowing the systems to optimize

Self-managed Workflows for Cyber-physical Systems

Workflows are a well-established concept for describing business logics and processes in web-based applications and enterprise application integration scenarios on an abstract implementation-agnostic level. Applying Business Process Management (BPM) technologies to increase autonomy and automate sequences of activities in Cyber-physical Systems (CPS) promises various advantages including a higher flexibility and simplified programming, a more efficient resource usage, and an easier integration and orchestration of CPS devices. However, traditional BPM notations and engines have not been designed to be used in the context of CPS, which raises new research questions occurring with the close coupling of the virtual and physical worlds. Among these challenges are the interaction with complex compounds of heterogeneous sensors, actuators, things and humans; the detection and handling of errors in the physical world; and the synchronization of the cyber-physical process execution models. Novel factors related to the interaction with the physical world including real world obstacles, inconsistencies and inaccuracies may jeopardize the successful execution of workflows in CPS and may lead to unanticipated situations. This thesis investigates properties and requirements of CPS relevant for the introduction of BPM technologies into cyber-physical domains. We discuss existing BPM systems and related work regarding the integration of sensors and actuators into workflows, the development of a Workflow Management System (WfMS) for CPS, and the synchronization of the virtual and physical process execution as part of self-* capabilities for WfMSes. Based on the identified research gap, we present concepts and prototypes regarding the development of a CPS WFMS w.r.t. all phases of the BPM lifecycle. First, we introduce a CPS workflow notation that supports the modelling of the interaction of complex sensors, actuators, humans, dynamic services and WfMSes on the business process level. In addition, the effects of the workflow execution can be specified in the form of goals defining success and error criteria for the execution of individual process steps. Along with that, we introduce the notion of Cyber-physical Consistency. Following, we present a system architecture for a corresponding WfMS (PROtEUS) to execute the modelled processes-also in distributed execution settings and with a focus on interactive process management. Subsequently, the integration of a cyber-physical feedback loop to increase resilience of the process execution at runtime is discussed. Within this MAPE-K loop, sensor and context data are related to the effects of the process execution, deviations from expected behaviour are detected, and compensations are planned and executed. The execution of this feedback loop can be scaled depending on the required level of precision and consistency. Our implementation of the MAPE-K loop proves to be a general framework for adding self-* capabilities to WfMSes. The evaluation of our concepts within a smart home case study shows expected behaviour, reasonable execution times, reduced error rates and high coverage of the identified requirements, which makes our CPS~WfMS a suitable system for introducing workflows on top of systems, devices, things and applications of CPS.:1. Introduction 15 1.1. Motivation 15 1.2. Research Issues 17 1.3. Scope & Contributions 19 1.4. Structure of the Thesis 20 2. Workflows and Cyber-physical Systems 21 2.1. Introduction 21 2.2. Two Motivating Examples 21 2.3. Business Process Management and Workflow Technologies 23 2.4. Cyber-physical Systems 31 2.5. Workflows in CPS 38 2.6. Requirements 42 3. Related Work 45 3.1. Introduction 45 3.2. Existing BPM Systems in Industry and Academia 45 3.3. Modelling of CPS Workflows 49 3.4. CPS Workflow Systems 53 3.5. Cyber-physical Synchronization 58 3.6. Self-* for BPM Systems 63 3.7. Retrofitting Frameworks for WfMSes 69 3.8. Conclusion & Deficits 71 4. Modelling of Cyber-physical Workflows with Consistency Style Sheets 75 4.1. Introduction 75 4.2. Workflow Metamodel 76 4.3. Knowledge Base 87 4.4. Dynamic Services 92 4.5. CPS-related Workflow Effects 94 4.6. Cyber-physical Consistency 100 4.7. Consistency Style Sheets 105 4.8. Tools for Modelling of CPS Workflows 106 4.9. Compatibility with Existing Business Process Notations 111 5. Architecture of a WfMS for Distributed CPS Workflows 115 5.1. Introduction 115 5.2. PROtEUS Process Execution System 116 5.3. Internet of Things Middleware 124 5.4. Dynamic Service Selection via Semantic Access Layer 125 5.5. Process Distribution 126 5.6. Ubiquitous Human Interaction 130 5.7. Towards a CPS WfMS Reference Architecture for Other Domains 137 6. Scalable Execution of Self-managed CPS Workflows 141 6.1. Introduction 141 6.2. MAPE-K Control Loops for Autonomous Workflows 141 6.3. Feedback Loop for Cyber-physical Consistency 148 6.4. Feedback Loop for Distributed Workflows 152 6.5. Consistency Levels, Scalability and Scalable Consistency 157 6.6. Self-managed Workflows 158 6.7. Adaptations and Meta-adaptations 159 6.8. Multiple Feedback Loops and Process Instances 160 6.9. Transactions and ACID for CPS Workflows 161 6.10. Runtime View on Cyber-physical Synchronization for Workflows 162 6.11. Applicability of Workflow Feedback Loops to other CPS Domains 164 6.12. A Retrofitting Framework for Self-managed CPS WfMSes 165 7. Evaluation 171 7.1. Introduction 171 7.2. Hardware and Software 171 7.3. PROtEUS Base System 174 7.4. PROtEUS with Feedback Service 182 7.5. Feedback Service with Legacy WfMSes 213 7.6. Qualitative Discussion of Requirements and Additional CPS Aspects 217 7.7. Comparison with Related Work 232 7.8. Conclusion 234 8. Summary and Future Work 237 8.1. Summary and Conclusion 237 8.2. Advances of this Thesis 240 8.3. Contributions to the Research Area 242 8.4. Relevance 243 8.5. Open Questions 245 8.6. Future Work 247 Bibliography 249 Acronyms 277 List of Figures 281 List of Tables 285 List of Listings 287 Appendices 28

makeSense: Simplifying the Integration of Wireless Sensor Networks into Business Processes

A wide gap exists between the state of the art in developing Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) software and current practices concerning the design, execution, and maintenance of business processes. WSN software is most often developed based on low-level OS abstractions, whereas business process development leverages high-level languages and tools. This state of affairs places WSNs at the fringe of industry. The makeSense system addresses this problem by simplifying the integration of WSNs into business processes. Developers use BPMN models extended with WSN-specific constructs to specify the application behavior across both traditional business process execution environments and the WSN itself, which is to be equipped with application-specific software. We compile these models into a high-level intermediate language—also directly usable by WSN developers—and then into OS-specific deployment-ready binaries. Key to this process is the notion of meta-abstraction, which we define to capture fundamental patterns of interaction with and within the WSN. The concrete realization of meta-abstractions is application-specific; developers tailor the system configuration by selecting concrete abstractions out of the existing codebase or by providing their own. Our evaluation of makeSense shows that i) users perceive our approach as a significant advance over the state of the art, providing evidence of the increased developer productivity when using makeSense; ii) in large-scale simulations, our prototype exhibits an acceptable system overhead and good scaling properties, demonstrating the general applicability of makeSense; and, iii) our prototype—including the complete tool-chain and underlying system support—sustains a real-world deployment where estimates by domain specialists indicate the potential for drastic reductions in the total cost of ownership compared to wired and conventional WSN-based solutions