Showing papers on "Systems architecture published in 2011"

SenGuard: Passive user identification on smartphones using multiple sensors

Abstract: User identification and access control have become a high demand feature on mobile devices because those devices are wildly used by employees in corporations and government agencies for business and store increasing amount of sensitive data. This paper describes SenGuard, a user identification framework that enables continuous and implicit user identification service for smartphone. Different from traditional active user authentication and access control, SenGuard leverages availability of multiple sensors on today's smartphones and passively use sensor inputs as sources of user authentication. It extracts sensor modality dependent user identification features from captured sensor data and performs user identification at background. SenGuard invokes active user authentication when there is a mounting evidence that the phone user has changed. In addition, SenGuard uses a novel virtualization based system architecture as a safeguard to prevent subversion of the background user identification mechanism by moving it into a privileged virtual domain. An initial prototype of SenGuard was created using four sensor modalities including, voice, location, multitouch, and locomotion. Preliminary empirical studies with a set of users indicate that those four modalities are suited as data sources for implicit mobile user identification.

Cognitive Radio Network for the Smart Grid: Experimental System Architecture, Control Algorithms, Security, and Microgrid Testbed

Abstract: This paper systematically investigates the novel idea of applying the next generation wireless technology, cognitive radio network, for the smart grid. In particular, system architecture, algorithms, and hardware testbed are studied. A microgrid testbed supporting both power flow and information flow is also proposed. Control strategies and security considerations are discussed. Furthermore, the concept of independent component analysis (ICA) in combination with the robust principal component analysis (PCA) technique is employed to recover data from the simultaneous smart meter wireless transmissions in the presence of strong wideband interference. The performance illustrates the gain of bringing the state of the art mathematics to smart grid.

Toward Self-Reconfiguration of Manufacturing Systems Using Automation Agents

Abstract: The reconfiguration of control software is regarded as an important ability to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency in future manufacturing systems. Agent technology is considered as a promising approach to provide reconfiguration abilities, but existing work has been focused mainly on the reconfiguration of higher layers concerned with production scheduling and planning. In this paper, we present an automation agent architecture for controlling physical components that integrates “on the fly” reconfiguration abilities on the low-level layer. Our approach is combined with an ontological representation of the low-level functionality at the high-level control layer, which is able to reason and initiate reconfiguration processes to modify the low-level control (LLC). As current control systems are mostly based on standards and principles that do not support reconfiguration, leading to rigid control software architectures, we base our approach on the promising Standard IEC 61499 for the LLC, extended by an innovative reconfiguration infrastructure. We demonstrate this approach with a case study of a reconfiguration process that modifies the LLC functionality provided by the automation agent of a physical component. Thereby, we obtain the ability to support numerous different LLC configurations without increasing the LLC's complexity. By applying our automation agent architecture, we enhance not only the flexibility of each component's control software, but also achieve the precondition for reconfiguring the entire manufacturing system.

Interactive virtual display system for ubiquitous devices

Abstract: An “Interactive Virtual Display,” as described herein, provides various systems and techniques that facilitate ubiquitous user interaction with both local and remote heterogeneous computing devices. More specifically, the Interactive Virtual Display uses various combinations of small-size programmable hardware and portable or wearable sensors to enable any display surface (e.g., computer display devices, televisions, projected images/video from projection devices, etc.) to act as a thin client for users to interact with a plurality heterogeneous computing devices regardless of where those devices are located relative to the user. The Interactive Virtual Display provides a flexible system architecture that enables communication and collaboration between a plurality of both local and remote heterogeneous computing devices. This communication and collaboration enables a variety of techniques, such as adaptive screen compression, user interface virtualization, real-time gesture detection to improve system performance and overall user experience, etc.

Account opening computer system architecture and process for implementing same

Abstract: The present invention provides, in alternative embodiments, a computer architecture and/or computer implemented methods for account opening. In some embodiments, the invention provides an integrated, component-based technology platform in which globally standardized, business configurable account opening processes are separate and decoupled from the user interface screens and are directly manageable by business functionality and/or personnel. In various embodiments, the invention provides pause and resume, save and retrieve, cross-channel, metrics, audit tracking, data logging, and/or straight-through processing capabilities for account opening.

P-Sense: A participatory sensing system for air pollution monitoring and control

Abstract: This article presents P-Sense, a participatory sensing application for air pollution monitoring and control. The paper describes in detail the system architecture and individual components of a successfully implemented application. In addition, the paper points out several other research-oriented problems that need to be addressed before these applications can be effectively implemented in practice, in a large-scale deployment. Security, privacy, data visualization and validation, and incentives are part of our work-in-progress activities

Design and architectures for dependable embedded systems

Abstract: The paper presents an overview of a major research project on dependable embedded systems that has started in Fall 2010 and is running for a projected duration of six years. Aim is a ‘dependability co-design’ that spans various levels of abstraction in the design process of embedded systems starting from gate level through operating system, applications software to system architecture. In addition, we present a new classification on faults, errors, and failures.

Development of a self-adapting intelligent system for building energy saving and context-aware smart services

Abstract: Recent advances in ubiquitous technologies facilitate context-aware systems which can offer situation-based services. Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have become increasingly important in recent years due to their ability to monitor and manage situational information for various intelligent services in ubiquitous environments. However, existing energy management systems are not effectively implemented in home and building environments due to their architectural limitations, such as static system architecture and a finite battery lifetime. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a Self-adapting intelligent system used for providing building control and energy saving services in buildings. Our system consists of a gateway (selfadapting intelligent gateway) and a sensor (self-adapting intelligent sensor). In addition, we also propose an energy-efficiency self-clustering sensor network (ESSN) and a node type indicator based routing (NTIR) protocol that considers the requirements of WSNs, such as network lifetime and system resource management. In order to verify the efficiency of our system, we implemented our system in real test bed and conducted experiments. The results show that autonomous power saving using our system is approximately 16-24% depending on the number of SIS.

View Consistency in Architectures for Cyber-Physical Systems

Abstract: Current methods for modeling, analysis, and design of cyber-physical systems lack a unifying framework due to the complexity and heterogeneity of the constituent elements and their interactions. Our approach is to define relationships between system models at the architectural level, which captures the structural interdependencies and some semantic interdependencies between representations without attempting to comprehend all of the details of any particular modeling formalism. This paper addresses the issue of defining and evaluating consistency between architectural views imposed by various heterogeneous models and a base architecture (BA) for the complete system. This notion of structural consistency ensures that the model elements adhere to the cyber and physical types and the connections between components present in the BA, which serves as the unifying framework for model-based development. Consistency checking between a model and the underlying system architecture is formulated as a typed graph matching problem between the connectivity graphs of the corresponding architectural view and the system's BA. The usefulness of the approach to check system modeling assumptions is illustrated in the context of two heterogeneous views of a quad rotor air vehicle.

Synthesis of Static Communication Schedules for Mixed-Criticality Systems

Abstract: Throughout many application areas of embedded and cyber-physical systems there is a demand to integrate more and more applications such that they share common resources. These applications may have different levels of criticality with respect to temporal or fault-tolerance properties and we call the result of their integration a mixed-criticality system. The communication network is a resource of particular importance and nowadays the system architecture is highly determined by a network's capabilities. A network for mixed-criticality systems has to establish partitioning such that the influence of messages from different applications on each other is bounded and the impact of low-critical messages on high-critical ones is minimized or removed at all. A straight forward way to establish network-wide partitioning is the time-triggered communication paradigm in which the communication schedule on the network is defined at design time and executed with respect to a globally synchronized time base. In this paper we discuss static scheduling methods for time-triggered traffic such that it can co-exist with non-time-triggered traffic. We introduce the concept of "schedule porosity'' and show the impact of time-triggered traffic on unsynchronized traffic as a function of schedule porosity.

Using a "codelet" program execution model for exascale machines: position paper

Abstract: As computing has moved relentlessly through giga-, tera-, and peta-scale systems, exa-scale (a million trillion operations/sec.) computing is currently under active research. DARPA has recently sponsored the "UHPC" [1] --- ubiquitous high-performance computing --- program, encouraging partnership with academia and industry to explore such systems. Among the requirements are the development of novel techniques in "self-awareness"in support of performance, energy-efficiency, and resiliency.Trends in processor and system architecture, driven by power and complexity, point us toward very high-core-count designs and extreme software parallelism to solve exascaleclass problems. Our research is exploring a fine-grain, event-driven model in support of adaptive operation of these machines. We are developing a Codelet Program Execution Model which breaks applications into codelets (small bits of functionality) and dependencies (control and data) between these objects. It then uses this decomposition to accomplish advanced scheduling, to accommodate code and data motion within the system, and to permit flexible exploitation of parallelism in support of goals for performance and power.

Design of an Internet of Things-based smart home system

Abstract: With more and more applications of Internet of Things in many domains, it also steps into Smart Homes. In this paper, we propose an Internet of Things-based smart home system for home comfort, leisure and safety. This system uses embedded system, 3G, and ZIGBEE technologies to overcome the drawbacks of current smart home systems such as discrete functions, poor portability, weak updating capability, and personal computer dependence. Moreover, the system architecture is presented, and the design of its gateway is shown in detail from hardware to software.

Open Wonderland: An Extensible Virtual World Architecture

Abstract: Open Wonderland is a toolkit for building 3D virtual worlds. The system architecture, based entirely on open standards, is highly modular and designed with a focus on extensibility. In this article, the authors articulate design goals related to collaboration, extensibility, and federation and describe the Open Wonderland architecture, including the design of the server, the client, the communications layer, and the extensibility mechanisms. They also discuss the trade-offs made in implementing the architecture.

Deploying secure multi-party computation for financial data analysis.

Abstract: In this paper we describe a secure system for jointly collecting and analyzing financial data for a consortium of ICT companies. To guarantee each participant’s privacy, we use secret sharing and secure multi-party computation (MPC) techniques. While MPC has been used to solve real-life problems beforehand, this is the first time where the actual MPC computation on real data was done over the internet with computing nodes spread geographically apart. We describe the system architecture, security considerations and implementation details. We also present the user feedback analysis revealing that secure multi-party computation techniques give sufficient assurance for data donors to submit their sensitive information, and act as a critical enabling feature for privacy-preserving data mining.

Latency for Real-Time Machine-to-Machine Communication in LTE-Based System Architecture

Abstract: Machine-to-machine communication has attracted a lot of interest in the mobile communication industry and is under standardization process in 3GPP. Of particular interest is LTE-Advanced support for various M2M service requirements and efficient management and handling of a huge number of machines as mobile subscribers. In addition to the higher throughput, one of the main advantages of LTE/LTE-A in comparison with the previous cellular networks is the reduced transmission latency, which makes this type of networks very attractive for real-time mobile M2M communication scenarios. This paper presents a M2M system architecture based on LTE/LTE-A and highlights the delays associated with each part of the system. Three real-time M2M applications are analyzed and the main latency bottlenecks are identified. Proposals on how the latency can be further reduced are described.

Leveraging software architectures to guide and verify the development of sense/compute/control applications

Abstract: A software architecture describes the structure of a computing system by specifying software components and their interactions. Mapping a software architecture to an implementation is a well known challenge. A key element of this mapping is the architecture's description of the data and control-flow interactions between components. The characterization of these interactions can be rather abstract or very concrete, providing more or less implementation guidance, programming support, and static verification. In this paper, we explore one point in the design space between abstract and concrete component interaction specifications. We introduce a notion of interaction contract that expresses allowed interactions between components, describing both data and control-flow constraints. This declaration is part of the architecture description, allows generation of extensive programming support, and enables various verifications. We instantiate our approach in an architecture description language for Sense/Compute/Control applications, and describe associated compilation and verification strategies

The research and implement of smart home system based on Internet of Things

Abstract: With the rapid development of Internet of Things, smart home which regarded as one of the main application domains, obtained more and more people's attention. In this paper, the characteristics and disadvantages of smart home system are analyzed. Then a smart home system based on B/S(Browse/Server) module is introduced. Through publishing the household wireless sensor network data to the web page of a remote server, users can control the household devices conveniently and remotely. Its system architecture, hardware design and implementation approach are given. This system provides a more flexible and more convenient control for smart home system and is beneficial for the popularity and promotion of smart home system.

Mobile cloud computing educational tool for image/video processing algorithms

Abstract: This paper shows the importance and benefit of coupling cloud computing with mobile especially due to power limitations that mobile devices exhibit. Moreover, the work done shows that mobile computing can be applied for educational purposes, where a tool for students termed Mobi4Ed is presented. This educational tool aims at exploiting the concept of cloud computing in the context of image and video processing, where students can assess several algorithms in real-time. Two possible system architectures are detailed, where one uses the cellular channel and the other uses the data channel. Consequently, one of the approaches is adopted and a detailed simulation is done where an Android client device is shown communicating with a server running openCV and using the Haar face-detection algorithm. The work assures the credibility of the adopted system architecture, in terms of deployment, and several future lines of work are proposed.

Programming micro-aerial vehicle swarms with karma

Abstract: Research in micro-aerial vehicle (MAV) construction, control, and high-density power sources is enabling swarms of MAVs as a new class of mobile sensing systems. For efficient operation, such systems must adapt to dynamic environments, cope with uncertainty in sensing and control, and operate with limited resources. We propose a novel system architecture based on a hive-drone model that simplifies the functionality of an individual MAV to a sequence of sensing and actuation commands with no in-field communication. This decision simplifies the hardware and software complexity of individual MAVs and moves the complexity of coordination entirely to a central hive computer. We present Karma, a system for programming and managing MAV swarms. Through simulation and testbed experiments we demonstrate how applications in Karma can run on limited resources, are robust to individual MAV failure, and adapt to changes in the environment.

System architecture and methods for distributed multi-sensor gesture processing

Abstract: The techniques discussed herein contemplate methods and systems for providing, for example, interactive virtual experiences that are initiated or controlled using user gestures. In embodiments, the techniques provide for gestures performed by users holding devices to be recognized and processed in a cloud computing environment such that the gestures produce a predefined desired result. According to one embodiment, a server communicates with a first device in a cloud computing environment, wherein the first device can detect surrounding devices, and an application program is executable by the server, wherein the application program is controlled by the first device and the output of the application program is directed by the server to one of the devices detected by the first device.

Agent-based Resource Management for Grid Computing

Abstract: It is envisaged that the grid infrastructure will be a large-scale distributed software system that will provide high-end computational and storage capabilities to differentiated users. A number of distributed computing technologies are being applied to grid development work, including CORBA and Jini. In this work, we introduce an A4 (Agile Architecture and Autonomous Agents) methodology, which can be used for resource management for grid computing. An initial system implementation utilises the performance prediction techniques of the PACE toolkit to provide quantitative data regarding the performance of complex applications running on local grid resources. At the meta-level, a hierarchy of identical agents is used to provide an abstraction of the system architecture. Each agent is able to cooperate with other agents to provide service advertisement and discovery to schedule applications that need to utilise grid resources. A performance monitor and advisor (PMA) is in development to optimize the performance of agent behaviours.

Exploring user-centered intelligent road lighting design: a road map and future research directions

Abstract: Traditional road lighting systems are outdated and should be replaced with systems which can sense their environment, i.e., users and their consumer electronics (CE) devices, and react intelligently. Realizing such a system requires an interdisciplinary approach which analyzes the efficient system architecture and communication technology while taking into account the user needs. To understand these necessities, subjective experiments should be conducted in a practical testbed, similar to ours. In this paper, we first present the state-of-the-art solutions in the literature. Then, we describe the system architecture of our testbed deployed on a real street along with the preliminary experiments. Finally, we discuss the open challenges and research directions on designing a future intelligent road lighting system.

Real-time and synchronization Internet of things analyzer System Architecture

Abstract: The Internet of things needs using the self-configuring wireless sensors network to interconnect all things. Using a internet of things analyzer Architecture and methods, we can real time monitor and analysis the wireless network nodes, routing, coordinator to collect the information of the spectrum, the noise, the network of communication protocol, the EPC RFID data communication protocol and the states, low power states . . . . The architecture and methods will help build the high reliability, long battery life, green Internet of things and wireless sensors network.

Elastic VM for Cloud Resources Provisioning Optimization

Abstract: Rapid growth of E-Business and frequent changes in websites contents as well as customers’ interest make it difficult to predict workload surge. To maintain a good quality of service (QoS), system administrators must provision enough resources to cope with workload fluctuations considering that resources over-provisioning reduces business profits while under-provisioning degrades performance. In this paper, we present elastic system architecture for dynamic resources management and applications optimization in virtualized environment. In our architecture, we have implemented three controllers for CPU, Memory, and Application. These controllers run in parallel to guarantee efficient resources allocation and optimize application performance on co-hosted VMs dynamically. We evaluated our architecture with extensive experiments and several setups; the results show that considering online optimization of application, with dynamic CPU and Memory allocation, can reduce service level objectives (SLOs) violation and maintain application performance…

Executable system architecting using systems modeling language in conjunction with colored Petri nets in a model-driven systems development process

Abstract: This work proposes an executable system architecting paradigm for discrete-event system modeling and analysis through integration of a set of modeling tools, executable formalisms, analytical tools, and animation tools. The essential step is converting SysML-based specifications into colored Petri nets through a conversion scheme proposed here. Such a paradigm permits rigorous static and dynamic system analysis, as well as formal verification of the behavior and functionality of the SysML-based design. This paper also compares the capabilities of the proposed executable system architecting paradigm with other executable formalisms. Further, it discusses the basic principles of executable architecture specification and analysis for discrete-event system modeling. The model-driven architecture approach developed from the software engineering field is also studied here and applied in a systems engineering context to create a SysML-based modeling process that maintains a close relationships among all the SysML diagrams and indicates which diagrams to build and how to build them. This executable architecting paradigm is then integrated into the model-driven systems development process to create a structured architecture design process. This methodology is aimed at general system design. Its feasibility is demonstrated using the example of the Global Earth Observation System of Systems, which is modeled as a distributed, parallel information processing system. The simulation results are used to check the overall integrity and internal consistency of the architecture models, to refine the architecture design, and finally, to verify the behavior and functionality of the system modeled. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.