TONTA: Trend-based Online Network Traffic Analysis in ad-hoc IoT networks

Internet of Things (IoT) refers to a system of interconnected heterogeneous smart devices communicatingwithout human intervention. A significant portion of existing IoT networks is under the umbrella of ad-hoc andquasi ad-hoc networks. Ad-hoc based IoT networks suffer from the lack of resource-rich network infrastructuresthat are able to perform heavyweight network management tasks using, e.g. machine learning-based NetworkTraffic Monitoring and Analysis (NTMA) techniques. Designing light-weight NTMA techniques that do notneed to be (re-) trained has received much attention due to the time complexity of the training phase. In thisstudy, a novel pattern recognition method, called Trend-based Online Network Traffic Analysis (TONTA), isproposed for ad-hoc IoT networks to monitor network performance. The proposed method uses a statisticallight-weight Trend Change Detection (TCD) method in an online manner. TONTA discovers predominant trendsand recognizes abrupt or gradual time-series dataset changes to analyze the IoT network traffic. TONTA isthen compared with RuLSIF as an offline benchmark TCD technique. The results show that TONTA detectsapproximately 60% less false positive alarms than RuLSIF.publishedVersio

Performance characterization of multi-container deployment schemes for online learning inference

Online machine learning (ML) inference services provide users with an interactive way to request for predictions in realtime. To meet the notable computational requirements of such services, they are increasingly being deployed in the Cloud. In this context, the efficient provisioning and optimization of ML inference services in the Cloud is critical to achieve the required performance and meet the dynamic queries by end-users. Existing provisioning solutions focus on framework parameter tuning and infrastructure resources scaling, without considering deployments based on containerization technologies. The latter promises reproducibility and portability features for ML inferences services. There is limited knowledge about the impact of distinct deployment schemes at the container-level on the performance of online ML inference services, particularly on how to exploit multi-container deployments and its relation with processor and memory affinity. In light of this, in this paper we investigate experimentally the containerization of ML inference services and analyze the performance of multi-container deployments that partition the threads belonging to an online learning application into multiple containers in each node. This paper shares the findings and lessons learned from conducting realistic client patterns on an image classification model across numerous deployment configurations, especially including the impact of container granularity and its potential to exploit processor and memory affinity. Our results indicate that fine-grained multi-container deployments and affinity are useful for improving performance (both throughput and latency). In particular, our experiments on single-node and four-node clusters show up to 69% and 87% performance improvement compared to the single-container deployment, respectively.This work was partially supported by Lenovo as part of Lenovo-BSC collaboration agreement, by the Spanish Government under contract PID2019-107255GB-C22, and by the Generalitat de Catalunya under contract 2021-SGR-00478 and under grant 2020 FI-B 00257.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

A Survey and Future Directions on Clustering: From WSNs to IoT and Modern Networking Paradigms

Many Internet of Things (IoT) networks are created as an overlay over traditional ad-hoc networks such as Zigbee. Moreover, IoT networks can resemble ad-hoc networks over networks that support device-to-device (D2D) communication, e.g., D2D-enabled cellular networks and WiFi-Direct. In these ad-hoc types of IoT networks, efficient topology management is a crucial requirement, and in particular in massive scale deployments. Traditionally, clustering has been recognized as a common approach for topology management in ad-hoc networks, e.g., in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). Topology management in WSNs and ad-hoc IoT networks has many design commonalities as both need to transfer data to the destination hop by hop. Thus, WSN clustering techniques can presumably be applied for topology management in ad-hoc IoT networks. This requires a comprehensive study on WSN clustering techniques and investigating their applicability to ad-hoc IoT networks. In this article, we conduct a survey of this field based on the objectives for clustering, such as reducing energy consumption and load balancing, as well as the network properties relevant for efficient clustering in IoT, such as network heterogeneity and mobility. Beyond that, we investigate the advantages and challenges of clustering when IoT is integrated with modern computing and communication technologies such as Blockchain, Fog/Edge computing, and 5G. This survey provides useful insights into research on IoT clustering, allows broader understanding of its design challenges for IoT networks, and sheds light on its future applications in modern technologies integrated with IoT.acceptedVersio

An architecture for using commodity devices and smart phones in health systems

The potential of patient-centred care and a connected eHealth ecosystem can be developed through socially responsible innovative architectures. The purpose of this paper is to define key innovation needs. This is achieved through conceptual development of an architecture for common information spaces with emergent end-user applications by supporting intelligent processing of measurements, data and services at the Internet of Things (IoT) integration level. The scope is conceptual definition, and results include descriptions of social, legal and ethical requirements, an architecture, services and connectivity infrastructures for consumer-oriented healthcare systems linking co-existing healthcare systems and consumer devices. We conclude with recommendations based on an analysis of research challenges related to how to process the data securely and anonymously and how to interconnect participants and services with different standards and interaction protocols, and devices with heterogeneous hardware and software configurations

ICO: A Platform for Optimizing Highly Configurable Systems

International audienceDealing with large configuration spaces is a complex task for developers, especially when manually searching for the configuration that best suits both their functional and performance requirements. Indeed, a well-performing configuration may not fit developers' needs because of conflicting functional requirements, or vice-versa. In this paper, we propose ICO, a lightweight, domain-agnostic platform that supports multiobjective optimization for configurable software. The purpose of ICO is to provide the developer with the best-performing configuration by altering as little as possible the initial one, in order to remain as close as possible to the developer's functional requirements. We explain the foundations of ICO, describe its architecture, and explain how it can be used either through a command-line client or an Eclipse plugin. Finally, we assess ICO by evaluating its execution time and the time saved to users compared to a manual optimization

DEEPMATCH2: A comprehensive deep learning-based approach for in-vehicle presence detection

The accurate detection of the mobile context information of public transportation vehicles and their passengers is a key feature to realize intelligent transportation systems. A topical example is in-vehicle presence detection that can, e.g., be used to ticket passengers automatically. Unfortunately, most existing solutions in this field suffer from low spatiotemporal accuracy which impedes their use in practice. In previous work, we addressed this challenge through a deep learning-based framework, called DeepMatch, that allows us to detect in-vehicle presence with a high degree of accuracy. DeepMatch utilizes the smartphone of a passenger to analyse and match the event streams of its own sensors with the event streams of counterpart sensors provided by a reference unit that is installed inside the vehicle. This is achieved through a new learning model architecture using Stacked Convolutional Autoencoders to compress sensor input streams by feature extraction and dimensionality reduction as well as a deep convolutional neural network to match the streams of the user phone and the reference device. The sensor stream compression is offloaded to the smartphone, while the matching is performed in a server. In this paper, we introduce DeepMatch2. It is an amended version of DeepMatch that reduces the amount of data to be transferred from the user and reference devices to the server by the factor of four. Further, DeepMatch2 improves the already good accuracy of DeepMatch from 97.81% to 98.51%. Moreover, we propose a travel inference algorithm, based on DeepMatch2, to detect the duration of whole passenger trips in public transport vehicles with a high degree of precision. This is needed to create intelligent and highly reliable auto-ticketing systems. Thanks to the high accuracy of 98.51% by DeepMatch2, the inferences can be carried out with a negligible error rate

DEEPMATCH2: A comprehensive deep learning-based approach for in-vehicle presence detection

The accurate detection of the mobile context information of public transportation vehicles and their passengers is a key feature to realize intelligent transportation systems. A topical example is in-vehicle presence detection that can, e.g., be used to ticket passengers automatically. Unfortunately, most existing solutions in this field suffer from low spatiotemporal accuracy which impedes their use in practice. In previous work, we addressed this challenge through a deep learning-based framework, called DeepMatch, that allows us to detect in-vehicle presence with a high degree of accuracy. DeepMatch utilizes the smartphone of a passenger to analyse and match the event streams of its own sensors with the event streams of counterpart sensors provided by a reference unit that is installed inside the vehicle. This is achieved through a new learning model architecture using Stacked Convolutional Autoencoders to compress sensor input streams by feature extraction and dimensionality reduction as well as a deep convolutional neural network to match the streams of the user phone and the reference device. The sensor stream compression is offloaded to the smartphone, while the matching is performed in a server. In this paper, we introduce DeepMatch2. It is an amended version of DeepMatch that reduces the amount of data to be transferred from the user and reference devices to the server by the factor of four. Further, DeepMatch2 improves the already good accuracy of DeepMatch from 97.81% to 98.51%. Moreover, we propose a travel inference algorithm, based on DeepMatch2, to detect the duration of whole passenger trips in public transport vehicles with a high degree of precision. This is needed to create intelligent and highly reliable auto-ticketing systems. Thanks to the high accuracy of 98.51% by DeepMatch2, the inferences can be carried out with a negligible error rate

Digital Twins for Manufacturing Using UML and Behavioral Specifications

Using digital twins, physical manufacturing objects can be virtualized and represented as digital models which are seamlessly integrated in both the physical and the digital space. This allows to simulate, verify and optimize production systems, from the logistical aspects to the manufacturing process and the involved components. A key challenge, in this area, is how to describe digital twins in complex manufacturing systems such that all physical details, processes, and verification needs are modeled at an appropriate and efficient abstraction level, e.g., modeling and detecting divers faults in production processes. To address this challenge, in this paper we present our work on modeling digital twins of manufacturing facilities using UML. UML class diagrams are used to describe static dependencies between entities, as well as to monitor and analyze the dynamic verification and quality aspects of manufacturing such as fault detection and consistency checks. Utilizing the key relevant features of UML in our approach, the designed class diagrams are used and enriched with behavioral models serving as digital twins which can be updated by live data from the manufacturing plant. We present a small example based on simulation programs and a demonstrator. The presented modeling approach and example provide useful insights to UML-based design of digital twins in complex manufacturing systems.Peer reviewe