Showing papers on "Reference architecture published in 2014"
TL;DR: A two-layer architecture is proposed, consisting of a radio network and a network cloud, integrating various enablers such as small cells, massive MIMO, control/user plane split, NFV, and SDN, to address the challenges placed on 5G mobile networks.
Abstract: This article presents an architecture vision to address the challenges placed on 5G mobile networks. A two-layer architecture is proposed, consisting of a radio network and a network cloud, integrating various enablers such as small cells, massive MIMO, control/user plane split, NFV, and SDN. Three main concepts are integrated: ultra-dense small cell deployments on licensed and unlicensed spectrum, under control/user plane split architecture, to address capacity and data rate challenges; NFV and SDN to provide flexible network deployment and operation; and intelligent use of network data to facilitate optimal use of network resources for QoE provisioning and planning. An initial proof of concept evaluation is presented to demonstrate the potential of the proposal. Finally, other issues that must be addressed to realize a complete 5G architecture vision are discussed.
553 citations
06 May 2014
TL;DR: RISC-V (pronounced risk-five) is a new instruction set architecture (ISA) that was originally designed to support computer architecture research and education, but which it is hoped will become a standard open architecture for industry implementations.
Abstract: : RISC-V (pronounced risk-five) is a new instruction set architecture (ISA) that was originally designed to support computer architecture research and education, but which we now hope will become a standard open architecture for industry implementations. The RISC-V manual is structured in two volumes. This volume covers the user-level ISA design, including optional ISA extensions. The second volume provides examples of supervisor-level ISA design.
233 citations
TL;DR: This work proposes a scalable and self-configuring peer-to-peer (P2P)-based architecture for large-scale IoT networks, aiming at providing automated service and resource discovery mechanisms, which require no human intervention for their configuration.
Abstract: The Internet of Things (IoT) aims at connecting billions of devices in an Internet-like structure. This gigantic information exchange enables new opportunities and new forms of interactions among things and people. A crucial enabler of robust applications and easy smart objects’ deployment is the availability of mechanisms that minimize (ideally, cancel) the need for external human intervention for configuration and maintenance of deployed objects. These mechanisms must also be scalable, since the number of deployed objects is expected to constantly grow in the next years. In this work, we propose a scalable and self-configuring peer-to-peer (P2P)-based architecture for large-scale IoT networks, aiming at providing automated service and resource discovery mechanisms, which require no human intervention for their configuration. In particular, we focus on both local and global service discovery (SD), showing how the proposed architecture allows the local and global mechanisms to successfully interact, while keeping their mutual independence (from an operational viewpoint). The effectiveness of the proposed architecture is confirmed by experimental results obtained through a real-world deployment.
213 citations
01 Jan 2014
TL;DR: This paper presents a generic and flexible architecture for emotional agents, with what it considers to be the minimum set of functionalities that allows us to implement and compare different appraisal theories in a given scenario.
Abstract: This paper presents a generic and flexible architecture for emotional agents, with what we consider to be the minimum set of functionalities that allows us to implement and compare different appraisal theories in a given scenario. FAtiMA Modular, the architecture proposed is composed of a core algorithm and by a set of components that add particular functionality (either in terms of appraisal or behaviour) to the architecture, which makes the architecture more flexible and easier to extend.
209 citations
31 Dec 2014
TL;DR: This book comprises four research roadmaps, written by the original participants of the Dagstuhl Seminar over the course of two years following the seminar, and seven research papers from experts in the area that provide insights to key features of the use of runtime models.
Abstract: Traditionally, research on model-driven engineering (MDE) has mainly focused on the use of models at the design, implementation, and verification stages of development. This work has produced relatively mature techniques and tools that are currently being used in industry and academia. However, software models also have the potential to be used at runtime, to monitor and verify particular aspects of runtime behavior, and to implement self-* capabilities (e.g., adaptation technologies used in self-healing, self-managing, self-optimizing systems). A key benefit of using models at runtime is that they can provide a richer semantic base for runtime decision-making related to runtime system concerns associated with autonomic and adaptive systems. This book is one of the outcomes of the Dagstuhl Seminar 11481 on models@run.time held in November/December 2011, discussing foundations, techniques, mechanisms, state of the art, research challenges, and applications for the use of runtime models. The book comprises four research roadmaps, written by the original participants of the Dagstuhl Seminar over the course of two years following the seminar, and seven research papers from experts in the area. The roadmap papers provide insights to key features of the use of runtime models and identify the following research challenges: the need for a reference architecture, uncertainty tackled by runtime models, mechanisms for leveraging runtime models for self-adaptive software, and the use of models at runtime to address assurance for self-adaptive systems.
163 citations
TL;DR: This work presents a novel semantic level interoperability architecture for pervasive computing and IoTs that conforms to the common IoT-A architecture reference model (ARM), and maps the central components of the architecture to the IoT-ARM.
Abstract: Pervasive computing and Internet of Things (IoTs) paradigms have created a huge potential for new business. To fully realize this potential, there is a need for a common way to abstract the heterogeneity of devices so that their functionality can be represented as a virtual computing platform. To this end, we present novel semantic level interoperability architecture for pervasive computing and IoTs. There are two main principles in the proposed architecture. First, information and capabilities of devices are represented with semantic web knowledge representation technologies and interaction with devices and the physical world is achieved by accessing and modifying their virtual representations. Second, global IoT is divided into numerous local smart spaces managed by a semantic information broker (SIB) that provides a means to monitor and update the virtual representation of the physical world. An integral part of the architecture is a resolution infrastructure that provides a means to resolve the network address of a SIB either using a physical object identifier as a pointer to information or by searching SIBs matching a specification represented with SPARQL. We present several reference implementations and applications that we have developed to evaluate the architecture in practice. The evaluation also includes performance studies that, together with the applications, demonstrate the suitability of the architecture to real-life IoT scenarios. In addition, to validate that the proposed architecture conforms to the common IoT-A architecture reference model (ARM), we map the central components of the architecture to the IoT-ARM.
148 citations
27 Jun 2014
TL;DR: A software architecture supporting the collection of sensor-based data in the context of the IoT is defined, which goes from the physical dimension of sensors to the storage of data in a cloud-based system.
Abstract: The Internet of Things (IoT) relies on physical objects interconnected between each others, creating a mesh of devices producing information. In this context, sensors are surrounding our environment (e.g., cars, buildings, smartphones) and continuously collect data about our living environment. Thus, the IoT is a prototypical example of Big Data. The contribution of this paper is to define a software architecture supporting the collection of sensor-based data in the context of the IoT. The architecture goes from the physical dimension of sensors to the storage of data in a cloud-based system. It supports Big Data research effort as its instantiation supports a user while collecting data from the IoT for experimental or production purposes. The results are instantiated and validated on a project named SMARTCAMPUS, which aims to equip the SophiaTech campus with sensors to build innovative applications that supports end-users.
146 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, bond graphs are used to develop models that characterize the salient transmissions of matter and energy in and between the electricity, water and wastewater systems as identified in the reference architecture, when combined, make it possible to relate a region's energy and municipal water consumption to the required water withdrawals in an input-output model.
101 citations
TL;DR: A novel architecture for the field of industrial automation is described and is able to efficiently control and monitor a real manufacturing process according to an optimized schedule with over 99% of the time spent on the manufacturing.
Abstract: A novel architecture for the field of industrial automation is described, the goals of which are: 1) computation of optimal production plans; 2) automated usage of the optimized plans; 3) flexibility and reusability at development and maintenance; and 4) seamless transition from current practice to the approach introduced herein. The architecture consists of three main components: 1) a set of OPC unified architecture (UA) servers, which are used to model the information from the device level; 2) a set of services organized into two layers (basic and complex services), which act as a link between the first and the third layer; and 3) a constraint satisfaction problem (CSP) layer for the computation of production plans. Extensive performance tests motivate the choice of the service development framework, and prove the effectiveness of the special adapter software solution for the integration of current devices and the ability of the UA server to manage a high number of UA connections. As a proof-of-concept, the architecture has been tested for a real manufacturing problem composed of four flexible manufacturing systems. The results show that the architecture is able to efficiently control and monitor a real manufacturing process according to an optimized schedule with over 99% of the time spent on the manufacturing.
91 citations
TL;DR: A new generic hybrid control architecture called ORCA (dynamic Architecture for an Optimized and Reactive Control) is first proposed, able to dynamically and partially switch between a hierarchical predictive architecture and a heterarchical reactive architecture, if an event forbidding the planned behavior to be followed occurs.
88 citations
TL;DR: This work aimed at systematically reviewing the literature on software architecture visualization to develop a classification of VTs in SA, analyze the level of reported evidence and the use of different VTs for representing SA in different application domains, and identify the gaps for future research in the area.
01 May 2014
TL;DR: The eSourcing Reference Architecture eSRA is presented, which enables a quick evaluation of not only research-based B2B-architectures but also of industry application suits and shows the usability and applicability in that with the help of eS RA, system designers directly establish a comprehensive understanding of fundamental B 2B concepts and develop higher-quality domain-specific architectures.
Abstract: For improving the efficiency and effectiveness of business collaboration, the need emerges to inter-organizationally match e-business services. Recent research activities show heightened attention into that direction with the ecosystems-emergence of service-oriented computing clouds. As this increases the business-, conceptual-, and technical governance complexity, a need exists for using a reference architecture to evaluate and design standard-, and concrete architectures for business-to-business (B2B) collaboration. In this paper, we fill that gap by presenting the eSourcing Reference Architecture eSRA that emerges from B2B-research projects and we check this with a scenario-based validation method. We demonstrate how eSRA enables a quick evaluation of not only research-based B2B-architectures but also of industry application suits. That way, we show the usability and applicability in that with the help of eSRA, system designers directly establish a comprehensive understanding of fundamental B2B concepts and develop higher-quality domain-specific architectures.
31 May 2014
TL;DR: A travelogue recounts the history of the field, its current state of practice and research, and speculates on some of the important emerging trends, challenges, and aspirations of software architecture.
Abstract: Over the past two and a half decades software architecture has emerged as an important subfield of software engineering. During that time there has been considerable progress in developing the technological and methodological base for treating architectural design as an engineering discipline. However, much still remains to be done to achieve that. Moreover, the changing face of technology raises a number of challenges for software architecture. This travelogue recounts the history of the field, its current state of practice and research, and speculates on some of the important emerging trends, challenges, and aspirations.
01 Jan 2014
TL;DR: A reference architecture is proposed, indicating how GPU acceleration can be integrated in existing DBMSs, and key properties, important trade-offs and typical challenges of GPU-aware database architectures are presented.
Abstract: The vast amount of processing power and memory bandwidth provided by modern graphics cards make them an interesting platform for data-intensive applications. Unsurprisingly, the database research community identified GPUs as effective co-processors for data processing several years ago. In the past years, there were many approaches to make use of GPUs at different levels of a database system. In this paper, we explore the design space of GPU-accelerated database management systems. Based on this survey, we present key properties, important trade-offs and typical challenges of GPU-aware database architectures, and identify major open challenges. Additionally, we survey existing GPU-accelerated DBMSs and classify their architectural properties. Then, we summarize typical optimizations implemented in GPU-accelerated DBMSs. Finally, we propose a reference architecture, indicating how GPU acceleration can be integrated in existing DBMSs.
TL;DR: This validation considers the development of two ITS applications using CAM and DENM functionalities for tracking vehicles and disseminating traffic incidences and demonstrates both facilities to be able to offer all the necessary functionality for the study case.
Abstract: The Cooperative Awareness Basic Service and Decentralized Environmental Notification Basic Service have been standardized by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) to support vehicular safety and traffic efficiency applications needing continuous status information about surrounding vehicles and asynchronous notification of events, respectively. These standard specifications detail not only the packet formats for both the Cooperative Awareness Message (CAM) and Decentralized Environmental Notification Message (DENM), but also the general message dissemination rules. These basic services, also known as facilities, have been developed as part of a set of standards in which both ISO and ETSI describe the Reference Communication Architecture for future Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). By using a communications stack that instantiates this reference architecture, this paper puts in practice the usage of both facilities in a real vehicular scenario. This research work details implementation decisions and evaluates the performance of CAM and DENM facilities through a experimental testbed deployed in a semi-urban environment that uses IEEE 802.11p (ETSI G5-compliant), which is a WiFi-like communication technology conceived for vehicular communications. On the one hand, this validation considers the development of two ITS applications using CAM and DENM functionalities for tracking vehicles and disseminating traffic incidences. In this case, CAM and DENM have demonstrated to be able to offer all the necessary functionality for the study case. On the other hand, both facilities have been also validated in a extensive testing campaign in order to analyze the influence in CAM and DENM performance of aspects such as vehicle speed, signal quality or message dissemination rules. In these tests, the line of sight, equipment installation point and hardware capabilities, have been found as key variables in the network performance, while the vehicle speed has implied a slight impact.
14 Jun 2014
TL;DR: CODOMs (COde-centric memory DOMains), a novel architecture that can provide finer-grained isolation between software components with effectively zero run-time overhead, all at a fraction of the complexity of other approaches is presented.
Abstract: Today's complex software systems are neither secure nor reliable. The rudimentary software protection primitives provided by current hardware forces systems to run many distrusting software components (e.g., procedures, libraries, plugins, modules) in the same protection domain, or otherwise suffer degraded performance from address space switches.We present CODOMs (COde-centric memory DOMains), a novel architecture that can provide finer-grained isolation between software components with effectively zero run-time overhead, all at a fraction of the complexity of other approaches. An implementation of CODOMs in a cycle-accurate full-system x86 simulator demonstrates that with the right hardware support, finer-grained protection and run-time performance can peacefully coexist.
11 Nov 2014
TL;DR: This tool demo will illustrate the tool---Titan---that supports a new architecture model: design rule spaces (DRSpaces) and show how Titan can capture both architecture and evolutionary structure and help to bridge the gap between architecture and defect prediction.
Abstract: In this tool demo, we will illustrate our tool---Titan---that supports a new architecture model: design rule spaces (DRSpaces). We will show how Titan can capture both architecture and evolutionary structure and help to bridge the gap between architecture and defect prediction. We will demo how to use our toolset to capture hundreds of buggy files into just a few architecturally related groups, and to reveal architecture issues that contribute to the error-proneness and change-proneness of these groups. Our tool has been used to analyze dozens of large-scale industrial projects, and has demonstrated its ability to provide valuable direction on which parts of the architecture are problematic, and on why, when, and how to refactor. The video demo of Titan can be found at https://art.cs.drexel.edu/~lx52/titan.mp4
TL;DR: This article proposes a reverse engineering process for producing a variability model (i.e., a feature model) of a plugin-based architecture, and develops automated techniques to extract and combine different variability descriptions, including a hierarchical software architecture model, a plugin dependency model and the software architect knowledge.
Abstract: Variability management is a key issue when building and evolving software-intensive systems, making it possible to extend, configure, customize and adapt such systems to customers' needs and specific deployment contexts. A wide form of variability can be found in extensible software systems, typically built on top of plugin-based architectures that offer a (large) number of configuration options through plugins. In an ideal world, a software architect should be able to generate a system variant on-demand, corresponding to a particular assembly of plugins. To this end, the variation points and constraints between architectural elements should be properly modeled and maintained over time (i.e., for each version of an architecture). A crucial, yet error-prone and time-consuming, task for a software architect is to build an accurate representation of the variability of an architecture, in order to prevent unsafe architectural variants and reach the highest possible level of flexibility. In this article, we propose a reverse engineering process for producing a variability model (i.e., a feature model) of a plugin-based architecture. We develop automated techniques to extract and combine different variability descriptions, including a hierarchical software architecture model, a plugin dependency model and the software architect knowledge. By computing and reasoning about differences between versions of architectural feature models, software architect can control both the variability extraction and evolution processes. The proposed approach has been applied to a representative, large-scale plugin-based system (FraSCAti), considering different versions of its architecture. We report on our experience in this context.
07 Apr 2014
TL;DR: This paper extends the foundation of software architecture styles for self-adaptive systems to arrive at a new principled approach for architecting self-aware systems and demonstrates the added value and applicability of the approach in the context of service provisioning to cloud-reliant service-based applications.
Abstract: Contemporary software systems are becoming increasingly large, heterogeneous, and decentralised. They operate in dynamic environments and their architectures exhibit complex trade-offs across dimensions of goals, time, and interaction, which emerges internally from the systems and externally from their environment. This gives rise to the vision of self-aware architecture, where design decisions and execution strategies for these concerns are dynamically analysed and seamlessly managed at run-time. Drawing on the concept of self-awareness from psychology, this paper extends the foundation of software architecture styles for self-adaptive systems to arrive at a new principled approach for architecting self-aware systems. We demonstrate the added value and applicability of the approach in the context of service provisioning to cloud-reliant service-based applications.
27 Jun 2014
TL;DR: This paper presents a reference software architecture for building cloud-enabled IoT applications in support of collaborative pervasive systems aimed at achieving trustworthiness among end-users in IoT scenarios and presents a case study that leverages this reference architecture to protect sensitive user data in an IoT application implementation.
Abstract: As the promise of the Internet of Things (IoT) materializes in our everyday lives, we are often challenged with a number of concerns regarding the efficacy of the current data privacy solutions that support the pervasive components at play in IoT. The privacy and security concerns surrounding IoT often manifests themselves as a treat to end-user adoption and negatively impacts trust among end-users in these solutions. In this paper, we present a reference software architecture for building cloud-enabled IoT applications in support of collaborative pervasive systems aimed at achieving trustworthiness among end-users in IoT scenarios. We present a case study that leverages this reference architecture to protect sensitive user data in an IoT application implementation and evaluate the response of an end-user study accomplished through a survey.
01 May 2014
TL;DR: A development process that defines how reference architectures can be exploited for building robotic applications, and the HyperFlex software toolchain, which has been developed for supporting the design and the reuse of reference architectures are provided.
Abstract: During the last years robotic researchers have been able of developing extremely complex applications. The complexity of these applications is reflected by the variety of functionalities involved, which are provided by a significant number of components. Although the reuse of software components is becoming a best-practice, the reuse of reference architectures, which model sub-systems providing functionalities common to a great number of applications, is still uncommon. This paper provides two contributions to this topic: (a) a development process that defines how reference architectures can be exploited for building robotic applications, (b) the HyperFlex software toolchain, which has been developed for supporting the design and the reuse of reference architectures. The idea presented in this paper is simple yet powerful: instead of building complex applications by reusing single components, even more complex applications can be developed by reusing reference architectures of mature sub-systems.
07 Apr 2014
TL;DR: Results achieved through the use of ProSA-RA have showed that it is a viable, efficient process and, as a consequence, it could contribute to the reuse of knowledge in several applications domains, by promoting the establishment of new reference architectures.
Abstract: Reference architectures have emerged as a special type of software architecture that achieves well-recognized understanding of specific domains, promoting reuse of design expertise and facilitating the development, standardization, and evolution of software systems. Because of their advantages, several reference architectures have been proposed and have been also successfully used, including in the industry. However, the most of these architectures are still built using an ad-hoc approach, lacking of a systematization to their construction. If existing, these approaches could motivate and promote the building of new architectures and also support evolution of existing ones. In this scenario, the main contribution of this paper is to present the evolution of ProSA-RA, a process that systematizes the design, representation, and evaluation of reference architectures. ProSA-RA has been already applied in the establishment of reference architectures for different domains and this experience was used to evolve our process. In this paper, we illustrate an application of ProSA-RA in the robotics domain. Results achieved through the use of ProSA-RA have showed us that it is a viable, efficient process and, as a consequence, it could contribute to the reuse of knowledge in several applications domains, by promoting the establishment of new reference architectures.
01 Oct 2014
TL;DR: This paper proposes a novel satellite network architecture: software defined satellite networks (SDSN), based on the central control patten of software defined networks (SDN), and takes full use of the inter-satellite links (ISLs) forwarding and GEO broadcasting for rapid network deployment.
Abstract: To date, traditional satellite systems are contained-designed and inflexible for configuration update, space systems interconnections and providing fine-grained services. In this paper, we propose a novel satellite network architecture: software defined satellite networks (SDSN) to solve these problems. The new architecture is based on the central control patten of software defined networks (SDN), and takes full use of the inter-satellite links (ISLs) forwarding and GEO broadcasting for rapid network deployment. With global network view and central control ability, SDSN can (1) balance the flexibility and controllability of space dynamic routing algorithms, (2) rapidly deploy flexible and fine-grained network management strategies, (3) reduce the system cost, and (4) improve the collaboration between satellites and the compatibility of heterogeneous space systems. Meanwhile, the challenges are also introduced in designing and deploying the new architecture. Finally, the performance of the new SDSN architecture is validated in this paper.
TL;DR: This paper describes an approach for planning and reasoning about architecture evolution, and focuses on providing architects with the means to model prospective evolution paths and supporting analysis to select among these candidate paths.
Abstract: As new market opportunities, technologies, platforms, and frameworks become available, systems require large-scale and systematic architectural restructuring to accommodate them. Today's architects have few techniques to help them plan this architecture evolution. In particular, they have little assistance in planning alternative evolution paths, trading off various aspects of the different paths, or knowing best practices for particular domains. In this paper, we describe an approach for planning and reasoning about architecture evolution. Our approach focuses on providing architects with the means to model prospective evolution paths and supporting analysis to select among these candidate paths. To demonstrate the usefulness of our approach, we show how it can be applied to an actual architecture evolution. In addition, we present some theoretical results about our evolution path constraint specification language.
11 Mar 2014
TL;DR: A reference architecture that mitigates the Low and Slow Distributed Denial of Service attacks by utilizing Software Defined Infrastructure capabilities is proposed and the Shark Tank concept is introduced, a cluster under detailed monitoring that has full application capabilities and where suspicious requests are redirected for further filtering.
Abstract: Distributed Denial of Service attacks are a growing threat to organizations and, as defense mechanisms are becoming more advanced, hackers are aiming at the application layer. For example, application layer Low and Slow Distributed Denial of Service attacks are becoming a serious issue because, due to low resource consumption, they are hard to detect. In this position paper, we propose a reference architecture that mitigates the Low and Slow Distributed Denial of Service attacks by utilizing Software Defined Infrastructure capabilities. We also propose two concrete architectures based on the reference architecture: a Performance Model-Based and Off-The-Shelf Components based architecture, respectively. We introduce the Shark Tank concept, a cluster under detailed monitoring that has full application capabilities and where suspicious requests are redirected for further filtering.
06 Jan 2014
TL;DR: Findings suggest that the method designed and previously used to reveal the hidden internal architectural structure of software applications could be effective in uncovering the hidden structure of an enterprise application architecture.
Abstract: We test a method for visualizing and measuring enterprise application architectures. The method was designed and previously used to reveal the hidden internal architectural structure of software applications. The focus of this paper is to test if it can also uncover new facts about the applications and their relationships in an enterprise architecture, i.e., if the method can reveal the hidden external structure between software applications. Our test uses data from a large international telecom company. In total, we analyzed 103 applications and 243 dependencies. Results show that the enterprise application structure can be classified as a core-periphery architecture with a propagation cost of 25%, core size of 34%, and architecture flow through of 64%. These findings suggest that the method could be effective in uncovering the hidden structure of an enterprise application architecture.
TL;DR: Softwarenaut is presented - a tool which supports architecture recovery through interactive exploration and visualization which allows sharing and discovering the results of previous analysis sessions through a global repository of architectural views indexed by systems.
13 May 2014
TL;DR: An SLR was carried out to discover the existing traceability approaches and tools between software architecture and source code, as well as the empirical evidence for these approaches, their benefits and liabilities, their relations to software architecture understanding, and issues, barriers, and challenges of the approaches.
Abstract: The links between the software architecture and the source code of a software system should be based on solid traceability mechanisms in order to effectively perform quality control and maintenance of the software system. There are several primary studies on traceability between software architecture and source code but so far no systematic literature review (SLR) has been undertaken. This study presents an SLR which has been carried out to discover the existing traceability approaches and tools between software architecture and source code, as well as the empirical evidence for these approaches, their benefits and liabilities, their relations to software architecture understanding, and issues, barriers, and challenges of the approaches. In our SLR the ACM Guide to Computing Literature has been electronically searched to accumulate the biggest share of relevant scientific bibliographic citations from the major publishers in computing. The search strategy identified 742 citations, out of which 11 have been included in our study, dated from 1999 to July, 2013, after applying our inclusion and exclusion criteria. Our SLR resulted in the identification of the current state-of-the-art of traceability approaches and tools between software architecture and source code, as well as gaps and pointers for further research. Moreover, the classification scheme developed in this paper can serve as a guide for researchers and practitioners to find a specific approach or set of approaches that is of interest to them.
TL;DR: Four potential existing platforms, all targeted at the embedded domain, are evaluated against the identified quality attributes to see how they could serve as a basis for an open software ecosystem platform with the conclusion that while none of them is a perfect fit they all have fundamental mechanisms necessary for anopen software ecosystem approach.
01 Jan 2014
TL;DR: This work considers the requirements for enabling mobile agents in the Internet of Things from multiple perspectives: the smart object, the mobile agent and the system, and presents interfaces for smart object internal architecture to enable mobile agents and to enable their interactions.
Abstract: We propose mobile agents for enabling interoperability and global intelligence with smart objects in the Internet of Things, with heterogeneous low-power resource-constrained devices where the systems span over disparate networks and protocols. As the Internet of Things systems are in continuous transition, requiring software adaptation and system evolution, an adaptable composition is presented for the mobile agents. The composition complies with the Representational State Transfer principles, which are then utilized in agent creation, migration and control. Moreover, the smart objects’ resources, their capabilities, their information and provided services are exposed to the Web for human-machine interactions. We consider the requirements for enabling mobile agents in the Internet of Things from multiple perspectives: the smart object, the mobile agent and the system. We present interfaces for smart object internal architecture to enable mobile agents and to enable their interactions. An application programming interface is suggested with a system reference architecture, which includes components in the information infrastructure. Lastly, an evaluation metrics for the mobile agent composition and for the smart objects’ resource utilization are suggested, taking the different types of system resources and their utilization into account, assisting in the system, application, smart object and the mobile agent design.