Mobile agent based framework for mobile ubiquitous application development

Ubiquitous computing which enabled by the availability of mobile, heterogeneous devices that supply context information, is currently not matured by the lack of programming support for the design and development of context-aware applications. Especially, ubiquitous computing environment is not static which can be compensable dynamically according to need of environment. Mobile agent is a very efficient framework applications can cooperative in heterogeneous environment. Therefore, we have developed a mobile agent based framework that significantly eases the development of mobile, context-aware applications. The framework allows developers to fuse data from disparate sensors, represent application context, and reason efficiently about context, without the need to write complex code. An event based communication paradigm designed specifically for ad-hoc wireless environments is incorporated, which supports loose coupling between sensors, actuators and application components.     

WComp middleware for ubiquitous computing: Aspects and composite event-based Web services

After a survey of the specific features of ubiquitous computing applications and corresponding middleware requirements, we list the various paradigms used in the main middlewares for ubiquitous computing in the literature. We underline the lack of works introducing the use of the concept of Aspects in middleware dedicated to ubiquitous computing, in spite of them being used for middleware improvement in other domains. Then, we introduce our WComp middleware model, which federates three main paradigms: event-based Web services, a lightweight component-based approach to design dynamic composite services, and an adaptation approach using the original concept called Aspect of Assembly. These paradigms lead to two ways to dynamically design ubiquitous computing applications. The first implements a classical component-based compositional approach to design higher-level composite Web Services and then allow to increment the graph of cooperating services for the applications. This approach is well suited to design the applications in a known, common, and usual context. The second way uses a compositional approach for adaptation using Aspect of Assembly, particularly well-suited to tune a set of composite services in reaction to a particular variation of the context or changing preferences of the users. Having detailed Aspect of Assembly concept, we finally comment on results indicating the expressiveness and the performance of such an approach, showing empirically that principles of aspects and program integration can be used to facilitate the design of adaptive applications.     

Multimodal and ubiquitous computing systems: supporting independent-living older users

We document the rationale and design of a multimodal interface to a pervasive/ubiquitous computing system that supports independent living by older people in their own homes. The Millennium Home system involves fitting a resident's home with sensors--these sensors can be used to trigger sequences of interaction with the resident to warn them about dangerous events, or to check if they need external help. We draw lessons from the design process and conclude the paper with implications for the design of multimodal interfaces to ubiquitous systems developed for the elderly and in healthcare, as well as for more general ubiquitous computing applications.     

A taxonomy of ubiquitous computing applications

Ubiquitous computing is emerging as a new paradigm in next-generation information technology. This new paradigm has been embodied into tremendous business models and applications through lots of ubiquity-related technologies. In this study, a new taxonomy for these business applications and technologies is suggested. In order to prove the practical values, two case applications of the taxonomy are conducted. In the cases, 24 ubiquitous computing services and 19 ubiquitous computing projects are classified so that the status quo of ubiquitous computing is analyzed.     

A Middleware Architecture for Securing Ubiquitous Computing Cyber Infrastructures

Ubiquitous computing is revolutionizing the way applications, users, resources, and physical spaces interact. Securing cyber infrastructures for ubiquitous computing environments, such as smart buildings and campuses, can be challenging. A critical cyber infrastructure is necessary that can combine networks, processors, and devices with mechanisms, protocols, and services to offer reliable, fault-tolerant, available, and secure operations. Existing CCI implementations create statically configured, confined networked subsystems that are isolated from the public Internet and are context insensitive. This leads to multiple, incompatible subsystems incapable of interoperating, thus making operations, management, and trust difficult. The Heterogeneous Survivable Trusted Information-Assurance Architecture addresses the problem of securing critical information services in large-scale ubiquitous computing environments. Hestia is a programmable middleware solution implemented as a network of middleboxes. These middleboxes form protective layers that isolate CCI services and mediate authorized access to Hestia’s services. They also provide a programmable, distributed, object-oriented framework that enables the integration of security, privacy, and reliability mechanisms in service-access interfaces and implementations.     

Smart Identification Frameworks for Ubiquitous Computing Applications

We present our results of the conceptual design and the implementation of ubiquitous computing applications using smart identification technologies. First, we describe such technologies and their potential application areas, then give an overview of some of the applications we have developed. Based on the experience we have gained from developing these systems, we point out design concepts that we have found useful for structuring and implementing such applications. Building upon these concepts, we have created two frameworks based on Jini (i.e., distributed Java objects) and Web Services to support the development of ubiquitous computing applications that make use of smart identification technology. We describe our prototype frameworks, discuss the underlying concepts and present some lessons learned.     

Swarm intelligence‐based anycast routing protocol in ubiquitous networks

As digital devices with communication capability become more pervasive, we are entering the era of ubiquitous computing, as predicted by Mark Weiser. In ubiquitous environments, distributed context management servers are deployed everywhere to provide information and computing resources for users anytime and anywhere. Smart handheld computing devices with context‐aware applications may retrieve context information from the nearest server. This study investigates the problem of routing packets to the nearest server in a ubiquitous environment. An anycast routing protocol based on swarm intelligence, referred to as ARPSI, is proposed to route packets dynamically to a nearby server in a mobile, ad hoc, wireless network. Based on swarm intelligence, ARPSI is able to find a short path to a neighboring server efficiently and quickly. Simulations are conducted to evaluate the performance of ARPSI and our simulation results show that ARPSI achieves a higher packet delivery ratio, shorter routing path to anycast servers, and lower control packet overhead than the AODV‐based anycast protocol (A‐AODV) protocol. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

大数据时代电信运营商的机遇

移动互联网的兴起加速大数据时代到来,电信运营商面临重大机遇。文章在综述大数据时代电信运营商所面临主要机遇的基础上,深入剖析电信运营商在大数据应用方面的比较优势,概述电信运营商具备的独特数据资源和掌握的核心技术能力,提出以云计算为支撑、以智能普适服务为目标、面向电信运营商的大数据技术引入的战略路线图,并就电信运营商引入大数据技术的具体策略、构建大数据应用的最佳实践提出了一系列建设性意见。     

AeDEn: An adaptive framework for dynamic distribution over mobile environments

Mobile computing is a domain in great expansion. Wireless networks (gsm, satellite, etc) and Portable Information Appliances pias (laptops, PDAs, cellular phones, etc) are developing very rapidly. More and more mobile users would like to execute their applications with the same quality of service as on their desktop station, whatever their needs in memory and computing power. Using such applications in a mobile environment raises new challenges. Some of these applications are extremely costly in system and network resources, whereas pias resources are poor and wireless networks offer a very variable quality of connection. In this paper we propose an adaptive and dynamic distribution of applications on the local environment to overcome the poorness of available resources on pias, and to reduce and regulate variability effects. Moreover, due to the variety of distribution policies, we propose a framework providing adaptive distribution policies.     

Supporting Service Discovery,Querying and Interaction in Ubiquitous Computing Environments

In this paper, we contend that ubiquitous computing environments will be highly heterogeneous, service rich domains. Moreover, future applications will consequently be required to interact with multiple, specialised service location and interaction protocols simultaneously. We argue that existing service discovery techniques do not provide sufficient support to address the challenges of building applications targeted to these emerging environments.This paper makes a number of contributions. Firstly, using a set of short ubiquitous computing scenarios we identify several key limitations of existing service discovery approaches that reduce their ability to support ubiquitous computing applications. Secondly, we present a detailed analysis of requirements for providing effective support in this domain. Thirdly, we provide the design of a simple extensible meta-service discovery architecture that uses database techniques to unify service discovery protocols and addresses several of our key requirements. Lastly, we examine the lessons learnt through the development of a prototype implementation of our architecture.     

SARIF: A novel framework for integrating wireless sensor and RFID networks

Radio frequency identification (RFID) is a promising technology for ubiquitous computing. When we embed RFID tags into environment-sensitive objects, RFID networks must be integrated with wireless sensor networks (WSNs). In this article, we first identify key requirements for designing an efficient and flexible integration framework. Based on the requirements, we propose a sensor and an RFID integration framework (SARIF). As middleware that operates on top of RFID networks and WSNs, SARIF enables the design of diverse applications flexibly and manages network resources efficiently. We also demonstrate the effectiveness of SARIF by implementing a prototype.     

Middleware: Context Management in Heterogeneous, Evolving Ubiquitous Environments

Mobile computing environments are characterized by heterogeneity—systems consisting of different device types, operating systems, network interfaces, and communication protocols. In a realistic scenario of context-aware computing, we should be able to deploy context management middleware throughout the distributed system at every device, despite its resource limitations, and the developer should be able to evolve the context model whenever new context-aware applications or context providers are introduced. This article presents a middleware architecture and design strategies that address these requirements without compromising efficiency.     

Drone services: issues in drones for location-based services from human-drone interaction to information processing

Recently, drones (or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)) are getting increasing attention and taking mobile computing to a new era. Due to the support of highly advanced technologies, soon they might be ubiquitous and networks of drones might be used in providing civilian drone services. In this paper, we provide a survey of drone services and applications, data management for drones, data services using drones, distributed computing trends fuelled by drones and a range of human-drone interaction research which is useful if drones are to regularly serve non-technical users, while highlighting the specific concerns in data management and airborne Internet-of-Things (IoT) computing infrastructure. We present concepts such as drones-as-a-service and fly-in, fly-out computing infrastructure, and note data management and system design issues that arise in these situations. Issues of Big Data arising from such applications, optimising the configuration of airborne and ground infrastructure to provide the best QoS and QoE, situation-awareness, scalability, reliability, scheduling for efficiency, interaction with users and drones using different methods are noted.     

UbiXML: programmable management of ubiquitous computing resources

XML technologies provide proven benefits for the configuration management of complex heterogeneous multi‐vendor networks. These benefits have been recently manifested in numerous research, industrial and standardization efforts, including the XMLNET architecture. In this paper we present UbiXML, a system for programmable management of ubiquitous computing resources. UbiXML extends the benefits of XML technologies in the broader class of ubiquitous computing environments, which are inherently complex distributed heterogeneous and multi‐vendor. In UbiXML management applications are structured as XML documents that incorporate programming constructs. Thus, UbiXML allows administrators to build sophisticated management applications with little or no programming effort. While UbiXML builds on several XMLNET concepts, it significantly augments XMLNET to handle management of sensors, perceptual components and actuating devices. Moreover, UbiXML is extensible towards additional ubiquitous computing elements. UbiXML has been exploited in implementing realistic management applications for a smart space. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A multi-layered policy generation and management engine for semantic policy mapping in clouds

The long awaited cloud computing concept is a reality now due to the transformation of computer generations. However, security challenges have become the biggest obstacles for the advancement of this emerging technology. A well-established policy framework is defined in this paper to generate security policies which are compliant to requirements and capabilities. Moreover, a federated policy management schema is introduced based on the policy definition framework and a multi-level policy application to create and manage virtual clusters with identical or common security levels. The proposed model consists in the design of a well-established ontology according to security mechanisms, a procedure which classifies nodes with common policies into virtual clusters, a policy engine to enhance the process of mapping requests to a specific node as well as an associated cluster and matchmaker engine to eliminate inessential mapping processes. The suggested model has been evaluated according to performance and security parameters to prove the efficiency and reliability of this multi-layered engine in cloud computing environments during policy definition, application and mapping procedures.     

Multilayer context cloud framework for mobile Web 2.0: a proposed infrastructure

Existing context‐aware systems focus only on characterizing the situation of an entity to exhibit the advantage of contextual information association, but they have no mechanism to facilitate the interoperation and reuse of contextual information. Cloud computing offers an adaptable and flexible solution for existing context‐aware applications, integrating Mobile Web 2.0 technologies. This work presents a multilayer context cloud framework (MCCF) that integrates Web 2.0 technologies into a mobile context‐aware system for use in a cloud computing environment. The proposed MCCF includes a context sensor layer, a context information layer, a context service layer, a context representation layer, a cloud computing layer, and a mobile Web 2.0 context‐aware Software as a Service layer. To demonstrate the feasibility of this approach, a Mobile Web 2.0‐based context‐aware Software as a Service platform, which is a cloud computing application based on MCCF, is implemented to provide continuous and context‐aware monitoring of a specific application. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Brokering Positioning Data From Heterogeneous Infrastructures

Over the last years, cellular operators, service and content providers, have been trying to identify the needs of a fully connected user, facilitating pervasiveness communications and ubiquitous computing concepts. One of the most promising directions is the so-called context-aware environment. Positioning is an essential component for the deployment of the evolving context-aware concepts. This article introduces a unified positioning component (POS), which establishes a generic, open, modular, and efficient quality of service (QoS) enabled framework, offering independence from the underlying heterogeneous network infrastructures and positioning techniques. The design objectives of POS are presented, as well as its functionality, the technical specifications and the prototype implementation of the POS component, elaborating on the features and services that it offers to the PoLoS platform and middleware location brokering applications.     

基于客户满意度模型的情景感知旅程规划系统研究

With the development of communication and ubiquitous computing technologies, context-aware services, which acquire contextual information of users and environ-ment, have become critical applications providing customization in mobile commerce. Meanwhile, tourism has attracted increasing attention as a high value-added service and a hot academic topic. However, the research on how to provide tour services based on con-text-aware services is in fact still at an early stage, limited to concept elaboration, service framework discussion, prototype system de-velopment etc. In this paper, we summarized the previous researches on context-aware ser-vices to establish the research foundation, put forward a way of analyzing a tour planning problem with a modified model of Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) and Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP), and we applied an innovated Resource Constrain Project Scheduling Prob-lem (RCPSP) mathematical model to solve the tour planning problem based on context information. The simulation under branch and bound algorithm evaluated the validity of our solution.     

A Novel Shopping Protocol for Ubiquitous Commerce

Due to the prosperity of ubiquitous computing and mobile communication technologies, the traditional commerce will start changing drastically. A shopping model has shown how the customers make a purchase from before-shopping to post-shopping through a ubiquitous device. However, the ubiquitous computing system gathers the sensitive personal information such as location and credit card information. Therefore, security and privacy have become important issues which should be taken into account in the system. In order to solve these problems, this paper tries to design a helpful and secure ubiquitous shopping protocol which is combined with the shopping model to make it practical, secure, and convenient.     

Multicore compilation strategies and challenges

To overcome challenges stemming from high power densities and thermal hot spots in microprocessors, multicore computing platforms have emerged as the ubiquitous computing platform from servers down through embedded systems. Unfortunately, providing multiple cores does not directly translate into increased performance or better energy efficiency for most applications. The burden is placed on software developers and tools to find and exploit coarse-grain parallelism to effectively make use of the abundance of computing resources provided by these systems. Concurrent applications are much more complex to develop than their single-threaded ancestors, thus software development tools will be critical to help programmers create both high performance and correct software. This article provides an overview of parallelism and compiler technology to help the community understand the software development challenges and opportunities for multicore signal processors.