Application‐specific thread schedulers for distributed applications

This paper describes our work to improve the performance of distributed applications. We aim at certain application characteristics such as balancing load, allowing separately written applications to work better together, allowing a distributed application to adapt its behavior in more flexible ways, and so on. Our approach is to write application‐specific schedulers, which can access the global state of the application in making scheduling decisions. To achieve this goal, we extended our earlier work on CATAPULTS ( C reating A nd T esting AP plication‐specific U ser L evel T hread S chedulers), a domain‐specific language for creating and testing application‐specific user‐level thread schedulers, to distributed applications by adding ‘master schedulers’ for dealing with the distributed parts of applications. This paper presents our design of, experimentation with, and implementation of distributed CATAPULTS. This paper presents several realistic examples to measure the feasibility of this approach, specifically: a website application, an embedded application, and load balancing. Each example has a scheduling goal for which we developed a customized scheduler. We measured the performance with and without the customized scheduler. The customized scheduler for each example was fairly straightforward to develop and each achieved its scheduling goal. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An approach for the systematic development of domain‐specific languages

Building tailored software systems for a particular application domain is a complex task. For this reason, domain‐specific languages (DSLs) receive a constantly growing attention in recent years. So far the main focus of DSL research is on case studies and experience reports for the development of individual DSLs, design approaches and implementation techniques for DSLs, and the integration of DSLs with other software development approaches on a technical level. In this paper, we identify and describe the different activities that we conduct when engineering a DSL, and describe how these activities can be combined in order to define a tailored DSL engineering process. Our research results are based on the experiences we gained from multiple different DSL development projects and prototyping experiments. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Capturing smart service systems: Development of a domain‐specific modelling language

Over the last years, the nature of service has changed owing to conceptual advances and developments in information technology. These developments have given rise to novel types of service and smart service systems (SSS), ie, resource configurations capable of learning, dynamic adaptation, and decision making. Currently, the internet of things (IoT) is turning physical objects into active smart things, bridging the gap between the physical and the digital world. Smart things advance SSS as they observe the physical environment, access local data, immerse into individuals' everyday lives and organizational routines. In line with the emergent nature of both phenomena, the impact of the IoT on SSS yet needs to be explored. Building the basis for explanatory and design‐led research and for the analysis and design of SSS, a means for the conceptual modelling of SSS that accounts for novel IoT‐enabled concepts is in high need. Hence, we designed, demonstrated, and evaluated a domain‐specific modelling language (DSML) for SSS. We evaluated the DSML by using it in the modelling of real‐world scenarios from all functional IoT domains, by submitting it to the scrutiny of industry experts, by discussing it against generic DSML requirements, and by analysing to what extent it meets domain‐specific design objectives compared with competing artefacts. To demonstrate the DSML, we included a complex real‐world scenario centred around the Nest Learning Thermostat.     

Designing on‐demand education for simultaneous development of domain‐specific and self‐directed learning skills

On‐demand education enables individual learners to choose their learning pathways according to their own learning needs. They must use self‐directed learning (SDL) skills involving self‐assessment and task selection to determine appropriate pathways for learning. Learners who lack these skills must develop them because SDL skills are prerequisite to developing domain‐specific skills. This article describes the design of an on‐demand learning environment developed to enable novices to simultaneously develop their SDL and domain‐specific skills. Learners received advice on their self‐assessments and their selections of subsequent learning tasks. In the domain of system dynamics – a way to model a dynamic system and draw graphs depicting the system's behaviour over time – advice on self‐assessment is provided in a scoring rubric containing relevant performance standards. Advice on task selection indicates all relevant task aspects to be taken into account, including recommendations for suitable learning tasks which meet the individual learner's needs. This article discusses the design of the environment and the learners' perceptions of its usefulness. Most of the times, the learners found the advice appropriate and they followed it in 78% of their task selections.     

Interoperable domain‐specific languages families for code generation

This paper has been motivated by experience gained with specification and code generation of control elements for a software component platform and general‐purpose programming language like Java and C. The problem to be addressed is two‐fold: first, several domain‐specific languages (DSL) are to be employed to express different element concerns (architecture, deployment context, code pattern) and second, porting to another general‐purpose language should avoid modification of the specification and related code generation process as much as possible. In both respects, the classical template‐based code generation technique proved to be inflexible, requiring the code generator to be blurred with ad hoc encoded DSL facets. The paper addresses the problem by introducing the concept of interoperable DSL family. Each member of the family is built around its core language, which can be further specialized by embedding into a target programming language. Interoperability of these DSLs is achieved at the level of abstract syntax trees (ASTs) with help of queries. As a proof of the concept, we have implemented the queries via the AST transformation rules of the Stratego/XT framework. In the evaluation, we provide a comparison with the original template‐based implementation, which clearly indicates the DSL family and AST transformation benefits. We also provide examples of application areas where the concept of interoperable DSL family can be employed (and also indicate how this can be accomplished). Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

AR-Room: a rapid prototyping framework for augmented reality applications

This paper presents a novel software framework called AR-Room for fast prototyping of a variety of augmented reality applications. AR-Room consists of a lot of deployable components for core augmented reality technologies, modules for hardware abstraction, and an authoring toolkit for the rapid content design. On the AR-Room, application developers are only required to describe their content scenarios together with a configuration of software components. A content scenario is represented by a set of event-action pairs. Four major procedures in an augmented reality application are an image analyzer, an interaction handler, a rendering engine and an image synthesizer. According to the provided scenarios the designated components cooperatively provide real-time analysis and synthesis of input video frames. Several augmented reality applications are implemented on the AR-Room to show how the framework can be efficiently used for the fast prototyping of applications.     

An open framework for translating portable applications into operating system‐specific wireless sensor networks applications

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are distributed systems integrated by tiny devices, called sensor nodes, with capabilities to monitor the environment and forward their measurements to a special node, the sink, where the results can be collected and further processed. The trend in WSN is moving towards heterogeneous networks that will contain different sensor nodes running different instances of custom operating systems. Given the growing demand of new hardware platforms and operating systems specifically designed for sensor nodes, the applications programming for sensor nodes is becoming a challenging process that needs to be alleviated. Currently, application programming for sensor nodes is a complex, ad hoc, and error‐prone process where the portability among different platforms has been sacrificed. In this paper, we propose an open framework aimed to achieve application portability in heterogeneous sensor networks. Our approach provides the programming abstractions needed to support the application development process for sensor nodes. We have implemented an open framework that provides a set of tools on top of the most popular WSN operating systems to translate portable applications to the native operating system in an automatic, simple, and transparent way for developers. We have also evaluated the applications thus generated in terms of productivity and overhead, by comparing their footprint to those originally developed in each specific operating system. The results show that the overhead is minimal—4% in the worst case—and in some cases, it was even possible to reduce the footprint by using code optimizations. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Frameworks compiled from declarations: a language‐independent approach

Programming frameworks are an accepted fixture in the object‐oriented world, motivated by the need for code reuse, developer guidance and restriction. A new trend is emerging where frameworks require domain experts to provide declarations using a domain‐specific language, influencing the structure and behaviour of the resulting application. These mechanisms address concerns such as user privacy. Although many popular open platforms such as Android are based on declaration‐driven frameworks, current implementations provide ad hoc and narrow solutions to concerns raised by their openness to non‐certified developers. Most widely used frameworks fail to address serious privacy leaks and provide the user with little insight into application behaviour. To address these shortcomings, we show that declaration‐driven frameworks can limit privacy leaks, as well as guide developers, independently from the underlying programming paradigm. To do so, we identify concepts that underlie declaration‐driven frameworks and apply them systematically to an object‐oriented language, Java and a dynamic functional language, Racket. The resulting programming framework generators are used to develop a prototype mobile application, illustrating how we mitigate a common class of privacy leaks. Finally, we explore the possible design choices and propose development principles for developing domain‐specific language compilers to produce frameworks, applicable across a spectrum of programming paradigms. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A framework for efficient and rapid development of cross-platform audio applications

In this article, we present CLAM, a C++ software framework, that offers a complete development and research platform for the audio and music domain. It offers an abstract model for audio systems and includes a repository of processing algorithms and data types as well as all the necessary tools for audio and control input/output. The framework offers tools that enable the exploitation of all these features to easily build cross-platform applications or rapid prototypes for media processing algorithms and systems. Furthermore, included ready-to-use applications can be used for tasks such as audio analysis/synthesis, plug-in development, feature extraction or metadata annotation. CLAM represents a step forward over other similar existing environments in the multimedia domain. Nevertheless, it also shares models and constructs with many of those. These commonalities are expressed in the form of a metamodel for multimedia processing systems and a design pattern language.     

MaD‐WiSe: a distributed stream management system for wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSN) are composed of several sensors having limited memory, processing power, communication bandwidth, and energy, which cooperate in performing a given task. The use of the database paradigm has emerged in the last few years as a viable solution to manage data in such a context. In this paper we present the MaD‐WiSe system, a distributed query processing framework that moves the processing of the query into the network. MaD‐WiSe reconsiders various aspects related to database system design and it reinterprets them according to the WSN constraints and requirements. In particular it considers the aspects related to the definition of a query language to formalize the queries, a stream model to manage data acquired by the sensors, a query algebra to define the operators that actually perform the query, and energy efficiency and query optimization strategies for saving energy. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Implementing a generic component‐based framework for telecontrol applications

The rapid growth of telecontrol systems is one of the major trends in today's network‐oriented community. The implementation of generic frameworks, consisting of reusable components that can form the basis for the development of such systems, is a necessity. There is a plethora of associated applications that can be developed in a distributed environment, such as audio/video teleconferencing, groupware and collaborative computing environments, remote controlled services, etc. In this paper we design and implement a generic framework of components that can be used for the realization of telecontrol applications. This category of applications focuses primarily on the issues of managing distributed units on remote end‐systems. Such applications contain remote units and administrators that are connected and exchange data and control messages. We analyse the outlined architecture of our framework and the most important system operations. We also describe the communication protocol used in message exchanges between the constituent components. Finally, we illustrate the usefulness of our framework by presenting two applications that were created by extending the basic software infrastructure. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Grammar‐driven generation of domain‐specific language debuggers

Domain‐specific languages (DSLs) assist a software developer (or end‐user) in writing a program using idioms that are similar to the abstractions found in a specific problem domain. Tool support for DSLs is lacking when compared with the capabilities provided for standard general‐purpose languages (GPLs), such as Java and C++. For example, support for debugging a program written in a DSL is often non‐existent. The lack of a debugger at the proper abstraction level limits an end‐user's ability to discover and locate faults in a DSL program. This paper describes a grammar‐driven technique to build a debugging tool generation framework from existing DSL grammars. The DSL grammars are used to generate the hooks needed to interface with a supporting infrastructure constructed for an integrated development environment that assists in debugging a program written in a DSL. The contribution represents a coordinated approach to bring essential software tools (e.g. debuggers) to different types of DSLs (e.g. imperative, declarative, and hybrid). This approach hides from the end‐users the accidental complexities associated with expanding the focus of a language environment to include debuggers. The research described in this paper addresses a long‐term goal of empowering end‐users with development tools for particular DSL problem domains at the proper level of abstraction without depending on a specific GPL. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Circular ring structured ultra‐wideband antenna for wearable applications

This article explores the design and analysis of a novel ultra‐wideband (UWB) antenna for body‐centric applications. The designed antenna consists of circular ring structured radiating element with 24 spokes, which resembles the shape of Ashoka chakra (Indian National flag emblem). The antenna placed on the semi flexible RT/Duroid 5880 with dielectric constant of 2.2 and occupying the dimension of 30 × 25 × 0.8 mm³. The present design aims at optimizing the antenna structure to cater UWB operating spectrum (3.1‐10.6 GHz) with a novel patch shape, which looks like the Ashoka chakra. The proposed antenna is analyzed by placing on three‐layered human phantom model and examined on head, arm at three of its operating frequencies. The maximum specific absorption rate (SAR) is found to be 1.23 W/kg and 1.29 W/kg when computed at arm and head of the human body respectively. The SAR values are observed under those conditions are satisfying the international safety standards such as FCC & IEEE C95.1:2005 & ICNIPR. Analysis of system savant (ANSYS Savant) radiation performance characteristics are also studied by placing the proposed antenna on virtual human body environment.     

Arcademis: a framework for object‐oriented communication middleware development

This paper presents Arcademis, a Java‐based framework for communication middleware development. Arcademis consists of a set of abstract classes, interfaces and concrete components that define the general architecture of middleware systems. Its main objective is to support the implementation of non‐monolithic and easily configurable middleware platforms. Arcademis can be used by middleware developers to deploy systems that meet the requirements of a particular network or technology. Instances of Arcademis can also be customized by distributed systems engineers to meet the requirements of a particular application. For example, new transport protocols, connection management policies, authentication algorithms or invocation semantics can be easily configured in middleware platforms derived from Arcademis. In order to illustrate the use of the framework, the paper describes the RME system, a middleware derived from Arcademis that adds a remote method invocation service to the CLDC configuration of Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME). Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Seine: a dynamic geometry‐based shared‐space interaction framework for parallel scientific applications

While large‐scale parallel/distributed simulations are rapidly becoming critical research modalities in academia and industry, their efficient and scalable implementations continue to present many challenges. A key challenge is that the dynamic and complex communication/coordination required by these applications (dependent on the state of the phenomenon being modeled) are determined by the specific numerical formulation, the domain decomposition and/or sub‐domain refinement algorithms used, etc. and are known only at runtime. This paper presents Seine, a dynamic geometry‐based shared‐space interaction framework for scientific applications. The framework provides the flexibility of shared‐space‐based models and supports extremely dynamic communication/coordination patterns, while still enabling scalable implementations. The design and prototype implementation of Seine are presented. Seine complements and can be used in conjunction with existing parallel programming systems such as MPI and OpenMP. An experimental evaluation using an adaptive multi‐block oil‐reservoir simulation is used to demonstrate the performance and scalability of applications using Seine. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A dual‐band half‐mode substrate integrated waveguide‐based antenna for WLAN/WBAN applications

A dual‐band half‐mode substrate integrated waveguide (HMSIW) based cavity‐backed antenna is proposed for WLAN/WBAN applications at 5/5.8 GHz, respectively. A semi‐hexagonal slot is introduced on the top plane of the cavity primarily for radiation. This slot offers miniaturization for both the TM₂₁₀ and TM₀₂₀ modes. Later on, two rectangular slits are loaded on the open edge of the patch, to provide miniaturization and tuning mainly for the higher frequency band. The performance of the proposed antenna is investigated in free space and in proximity of the pork tissues. In free space conditions, the measured ?10 dB fractional bandwidths are 3% and 3.1% along with peak gains of 6.25 and 6 dBi for the frequency bands at 5 and 5.8 GHz, respectively. In proximity of the pork tissues, the measured fractional bandwidth is 3.2% along with the efficiency of 81.5% at 5.8 GHz. The specific absorption rate (SAR) is 0.48 mW/g averaged over 1 g of tissues with 100 mW input power.     

A component‐based framework for radio‐astronomical imaging software systems

This paper describes a component‐based framework for radio‐astronomical imaging software systems. We consider optimal re‐use strategies for packages of disparate architectures brought together within a modern component framework. In this practical case study, the legacy codes include both procedural and object‐oriented architectures. We consider also the special requirements on scientific component middleware, with a specific focus on high‐performance computing. We present an example application in this component architecture and outline future development planned for this project. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

一种便携式室内空气质量快速检测仪设计

设计一种涉及室内甲醛（ HCHO）、氨（ NH3）和苯（ C6 H6）三种有害气体浓度的便携式快速检测仪。该仪器采用新型电化学传感器与基于FPGA的新型高精度信号处理电路得到对应气体的初始浓度值,并结合室内环境气压和温湿度实时监测情况,修正初始浓度值,对浓度超标气体进行声光报警。该仪器具有检测速度快、精度高和携带方便等优点,为大众家庭实时快速检测室内空气质量提供一种简单可靠的方法与手段。     

A metamaterial hepta‐band antenna for wireless applications with specific absorption rate reduction

Present article embodies the design and analysis of slotted circular shape metamaterial loaded multiband antenna for wireless applications with declination of SAR. The electrical dimension is 0.260 λ × 0.253 λ × 0.0059 λ (35 × 34 × 0.8 mm³) of proposed design, at lower frequency of 2.23 GHz. The antenna consists of circular shape rectangular slot as the radiation element loaded with metamaterial split ring resonator (SRR) and two parallel rectangular stubs, etched rectangular single complementary split‐ring resonator (CSRR) and reclined T‐shaped slot as ground plane. Antenna achieves hepta bands for wireless standards WLAN (2.4/5.0/5.8 GHz), WiMAX (3.5 GHz), radio frequency identification (RFID) services (3.0 GHz), Upper X band (11.8 GHz—for space communication) and Lower K_U band (13.1 GHz—for satellite communication systems operating band). Stable radiation patterns are observed for the operating bands with low cross polarization. The SRR is responsible for creating an additional resonating mode for wireless application as well as provide the declination in SAR about 13.3%. Experimental characteristic of antenna shows close agreement with those obtained by simulation of the proposed antenna.