Enabling pervasive computing with smart phones

Mobile telephony's technical and market success in Europe attracted researchers' interest in mobile systems. Some researchers began investigating appropriate architectures for providing information services to cellular mobile telephony users, and the quest for the "killer" third-generation (3G) mobile telephony application dominated the EU Information Society Technology research program. Dozens of projects launched to pursue this aim, and we were intimately involved in several of them. We report here on lessons learned during our involvement in this research and suggest how pervasive computing might benefit from this experience. Although some business and practical challenges exist, mobile phones could serve as information service end points, control devices for ubiquitous systems, network hubs for personal and body area networks, and ID tokens.     

Universal interactions with smart spaces

A critical challenge facing the pervasive computing research community is the need to manage complex interactions among numerous interconnected computers and devices. In such a pervasive space, a given application's functionalities are partitioned and distributed across several computing devices that are spontaneously discovered and used. In recent years, researchers have devoted much attention to universal interactions with diverse devices in richly networked settings. We can categorize the numerous approaches explored into two groups: universal user interface languages and user interface remoting. We review recent noteworthy efforts for universal interactions using these two approaches. Such efforts aim to raise interoperability in interactive smart spaces by standardizing user interface languages or communication protocols.     

Enabling distributed Corba access to smart card applications

The OrbCard framework uses Corba wrapper technology to extend smart card services to a distributed computing environment     

Nomadic computing and smart spaces

Currently, most users think of their computers as associated with their desktop appliances or with a server located in a dungeon in some mysterious basement. However, many of those same users can be considered nomads, in that they carry computers and communication devices with them in their travels between office, home, airport, hotel, automobile, and so on. Access to the Internet is necessary not only from one's “home base”, but also while in transit and after reaching one's destination. A number of capabilities must be put in place to support this new paradigm of nomadicity. Among these, we can include independence of location, motion, platform, and, with widespread presence, of access to remote files, systems, and services. Essentially, one seeks to provide the illusion of connectivity even when the nomad is disconnected and to provide seamless access to Internet services wherever the nomad travels. To achieve this, not only must the infrastructure be enhanced to provide these capabilities, but applications must become nomadically enabled as well. These ideas form the essence of the major shift to nomadic computing. But nomadic computing is merely the first step of the vision foreseen by the author. The next step will take us out of the netherworld of cyberspace and into the physical world of smart spaces. Environments will come alive with embedded technology, so that no longer will we see Internet services as coming to us from the screen on a computer, but rather those services will be embedded in the environment     

Design Scenarios: Enabling transparent parametric design spaces

This paper presents a novel methodology called Design Scenarios (DSs) intended for use in conceptual design of buildings. DS enables multidisciplinary design teams to streamline the requirements definition, alternative generation, analysis, and decision-making processes by providing a methodology for building and managing requirements driven design spaces with parametric Computer Aided Design (CAD) tools. DS consists of four interdependent models: (1) Requirements Model – stakeholders and designers explicitly define and prioritize context specific design requirements; (2) Scenarios Model (SM) – designers formally transform these requirements into actions necessary to achieve them, and determine the geometric and material parameters, interrelationships, and potential conflicts; (3) Parametric Process Model (PPM) – CAD experts build and represent the technical implementation of a SM in a parametric model to enable design teams to manage and communicate its CAD models; (4) Alternative Analysis Model – analyze and visually report performance back to the designers and stakeholders. This paper motivates the need for the DS methodology thorough an industry case study, and establishes points of departure for the methodology through literature review. Next, the paper details the elements and methods in the methodology, describes its implementation into a software prototype, provides an illustrative example to explain, and an industry test case to validate how DS can potentially enable multidisciplinary teams to generate and communicate larger and better performing design spaces more efficiently than with traditional methods.     

基于OSGi家庭网关和Web Service技术的智能家庭系统

基于开放服务网关规范（OSGi）的家庭网关技术可以向用户提供各种具体的服务，如智能家居管理、远程监控等，通过Web Service技术则可以实现让任何应用系统在任何地方动态访问各种应用服务的功能。目前的智能家庭解决方案大都基于家庭网关技术，没有考虑到将Web Service技术引入其中。提出了一种将OSGi家庭网关技术和Web Service技术相结合的智能家庭系统的设计和实现方案，充分利用两种技术的优势。在对系统各功能模块进行详细设计的基础上，给出了在PDA上调用基于OSGi家庭网关的Web服务来监控家中各电器状态的实现结果。     

Security benchmarks of OSGi platforms: toward Hardened OSGi

OSGi platforms are extensible component platforms, i.e. they support the dynamic and transparent installation of components that are provided by third party providers at runtime. This feature makes systems built using OSGi extensible and adaptable, but opens a dangerous attack vector that has not been considered as such until recently. Performing a security benchmark of the OSGi platform is therefore necessary to gather knowledge related to the weaknesses it introduces as well as to propose enhancements. A suitable Vulnerability Pattern is defined. The attacks that can be performed through malicious OSGi components are identified. Quantitative analysis is then performed so as to characterize the origin of the vulnerabilities and the target and consequences of the attacks. The assessment of the security status of the various implementations of the OSGi platform and of existing security mechanisms is done through a metric we introduce, the Protection rate (PR). Based on these benchmarks, OSGi‐specific security enhancements are identified and evaluated. First recommendations are given. Then evaluation is performed through the PR metric and performance analysis. Lastly, further requirements for building secure OSGi platforms are identified. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Semantic Space: an infrastructure for smart spaces

Semantic Space is a pervasive computing infrastructure that exploits semantic Web technologies to support explicit representation, expressive querying, and flexible reasoning of contexts in smart spaces.     

Exploiting smart spaces for interactive TV applications development

The integration of semantic technologies and TV services is a substantial innovation to improve the services to users in an environment that is extended beyond the fixed home environment. But currently, this integration is mainly limited to provide personalized recommendation services and systems by matching user static preferences. Designing and development of interactive TV (iTV) applications using semantic technologies are not realized yet. In this work, we explore the potential of introduction semantic technologies and smart spaces in design and development of iTV applications. We use an example scenario to show how future iTV applications include the mesh-up of information from different sources. We proposed a methodology and show how ontology-driven approach can help to design and develop these iTV applications. We demonstrate the suitability of our ontology-driven application development tools and rule-based approach for the development of highly dynamic context-aware iTV applications.     

Intelligent agents meet the semantic Web in smart spaces

A new smart meeting room system called EasyMeeting explores the use of multi-agent systems, Semantic Web ontologies, reasoning, and declarative policies for security and privacy. Building on an earlier pervasive computing system, EasyMeeting provides relevant services and information to meeting participants based on their situational needs. The system also exploits the context-aware support provided by the Context Broker Architecture (Cobra). Cobra's intelligent broker agent maintains a shared context model for all computing entities in the space and enforces user-defined privacy policies.     

Enhancing OSGi with real‐time Java support

OSGi was designed with embedded systems in mind, its current support is insufficient for coping with one main characteristic of many embedded systems: real‐time performance. This article analyzes different key issues in providing OSGi with real‐time Java performance covering motivational issues, and different integration ways and challenges stemming from the integration. It also contributes a general framework for introducing real‐time performance in OSGi, which is called the real‐time for OSGi framework. The framework uses real‐time Java virtual machines and the real‐time specification for Java. The adoption of this framework allows cyber‐physical systems to experience real‐time Java performance in their applications. The framework introduces several integration levels for OSGi and real‐time specification for Java, and specific real‐time OSGi services. An empirical implementation was carried out using standard software, which was extended with the new defined services. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

动态AOP与OSGi服务平台集成技术

经典的软件工程方法往往导致软件重新部署,甚至软件迁移。因此松耦合的软件设计和动态适应模型是及其重要的。动态面向方面编程(D-AOP),非常适合这种需求。本文介绍一个OSGi与D-AOP集成的框架,建立适应动态变化的核心关切面,以及横切关注点。D-AOP框架的无缝集成是通过切面映射的部署和取消部署到OSGi的bundle生命周期,而不影响原有部署模型。     

基于OSGi平台家庭网关的远程监控服务系统

针对数字家庭网络应用环境,研究远程家庭监控服务问题,将OSGi平台与Java媒体框架技术相结合,提出了一种使用方便、费用低廉的基于OSGi平台家庭网关的视频监控系统架构,描述了系统分析与设计过程,并采用Java媒体框架予以实现,实验证明该系统能够有效地实现远程监控服务,具有扩展灵活,部署方便、节约费用的特点.该架构和开发技术可应用于其它数字家庭应用系统中.     

基于OSGi的LBS终端系统

简要介绍LBS的概念与发展情况,提出研究项目,即一个能提供位置服务的移动终端系统;简单介绍OSGi规范以及这个规范的优点;之后叙述此终端系统的位置更新策略;探讨这个移动终端系统的设计与一些实现的细节问题;介绍系统的工作流程;最后说明实验结果并进行总结,得出进一步学习OSGi的必要性。     

分布式OSGi研究与发展*

OSGi分布式扩展技术将分布式计算技术与OSGi框架融合,使之能够支持跨多虚拟机的异构分布式处理,是OSGi领域的研究热点。系统地介绍了这一崭新领域的理论研究情况,分类比较了几种主流分布式扩展技术的异同,探讨了分布式扩展的性能以及应用进展情况,给出了未来研究与发展的趋势。     

OSGi(开放服务网关标准)在IA(信息家电)开发中的应用

本文在分析了IA(信息家电)良好的发展前景之后，讨论了与之密切相关的RG(家庭网关)的现状。接着在客观比较各种家庭网关标准优缺点的基础上，提出了在IA(信息家电)的开发中推广应用OSGi(开放服务网关标准)的思想，并给出了OSGi应用程序的开发实例。     

Enabling ubiquitous sensing with RFID

Radio frequency identification has attracted considerable press attention in recent years, and for good reasons: RFID not only replaces traditional barcode technology, it also provides additional features and removes boundaries that limited the use of previous alternatives. Printed bar codes are typically read by a laser-based optical scanner that requires a direct line-of-sight to detect and extract information. With RFID, however, a scanner can read the encoded information even when the tag is concealed for either aesthetic or security reasons. In the future, RFID tags will likely be used as environmental sensors on an unprecedented scale.     

一种面向OSGi的构件化软件再工程方法

面向服务的构件模型可以解决当前大型软件系统难于管理、维护困难和缺乏动态性等问题,而OSGi框架为基于构件系统的服务化开发提供了有力支持。把OSGi作为基础框架对遗留软件系统进行再工程,设计了OSGi化软件的总体框架,提出了软件系统构件化方法,并针对再工程过程中普遍存在的问题给出了相应的解决方案。最后,通过对Web容器再工程的实例研究,验证了面向OSGi的构件化软件再工程方法的有效性。