Towards reliable osgi operating framework and applications

2013 5th International Workshop on Principles of Engineering Service-Oriented Systems (PESOS), 2013

Service platforms emphasize dynamism and flexibility, at the cost of very little control over applications execution. Indeed, service platforms like OSGi do not provide an application concept or any structuring concept; they only support a flat space of services and a low-level run-time protocol. This was acceptable because, so far, a single application made of wellknown services was running inside a platform. This was convenient because, in ubiquitous and dynamic environments, the available services and their dynamic behavior are not known in advance, eliminating the possibility to define an application by the list of its components. In the near future, service platform will support many shared services from independent providers and many applications managing critical services, like home security applications. Although, in this context, the lack of control cannot be tolerated, but on the other side, the large range of possible contexts in which these applications will execute still require dynamism, flexibility and still defeats the possibility to define an application by the list of its components. The challenge we face is to find a new way to define applications such that they can fit in a large range of unknown contexts, capable to adapt themselves to multitude of environments and to unknown competing applications, but still with execution strictly controlled and strong properties enforced. The paper describes the Apam platform, its way to describe applications, and the way they are executed. We show how Apam reconciles the two, apparently conflicting, requirements: flexibility and strong control; both at compile and execution time

Computer Communications, 2008

The home IT environment is one the most promising areas for telecom operators. Nowadays, home area networks (HAN) are composed of a variety of heterogeneous devices, such as computers, webcams, sensors, set-top-boxes, etc. A key element in a HAN is the home gateway: a device managing the different networks in the home environment. But the management of this environment is a complex task, with an increasing number of heterogeneous devices interconnected. This paper proposes the application of the ''autonomic communications" paradigm to this problem. Under this paradigm, each device has the intelligence for accomplishing the self-* functionalities: self-configuration, self-optimization, self-healing and self-protection.

2009 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, 2009

This paper introduces MyHome, a framework of smart home by which household information is all at a finger tip. Through adopting Message Oriented Middleware (MOM) and Open Service Gateway Initiative (OSGi) technologies, MyHome offers reliable automatic operations, fault tolerant and configurable home automation, high extensibility and large scalability. In its design, MyHome system is composed of a residential gateway MyServer and Internet accessible GUI MyIcon and MyMobile. MyServer is used to provide services regarding home security, inventory tracking, facility management, GPS location recording and family care. Inherently an interactive and multitasking system driven by peripherals connected through wireless sensor networks, the overall MyServer architecture is designed with six core service modules operating on a MOM. Each of these modules is designed as an OSGi bundles and is implemented by a programming template utilizing event publish/subscribe messaging mechanism. To facilitate program demonstration, simulator and scenario editor are also developed. A successful implementation of the proposed MyServer is also demonstrated in an emulated home environment where peripherals are connected through ZigBee wireless sensor network with data integrated into a database. With these clearly defined service modules and pertinent infrastructure to integrate household peripherals, this paper presents a practical approach to the implementation of a smart home.

2009

The OSGi Service Platform defines a framework for the deployment of extensible and downloadable Java applications. Many of the application areas for OSGi have significant dependability requirements. This paper presents and evaluates FT-OSGi, a set of extensions to the OSGi Service Platform that allow to replicate OSGi services.

Pervasive computing is converging with cloud computing as with the development of smart cities. There arise the complexities from this convergence, like unprecedented large number of computing devices, flexibilities and adaptation of services for fitting personalization requirements from end users, expectations of powerful computing and storage capabilities of handhold devices, and so on. Therefore, a supporting infrastructure that can handle big data arisen from large number of devices, and can flexibly switch services at run time, is needed. Henceforth, in this paper, we propose an OSGi based pervasive cloud (OSGi-PC) infrastructure which can make use both of the cloud computing capabilities and component flexibilities from OSGi. We have evaluated the OSGi-PC in terms of performance and power consumption to show its usability.

The connected-home ecosystem is currently one of the highly discussed applications of Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm. Usually, this scenario is based on a center-point (so called smart home gateway) which provides the bridging connectivity inside (with the sensors) and outside (with the remote applications) the home. Such gateway is usually a restricted device running on Linux-based operating system (e.g. OpenWRT) including required applications on the top of it. In this paper, we focus on OSGi framework as currently very preferable platform for IoT services in combination with Raspberry Pi embedded hardware board which is also very popular for assuring the gateway features in the smart home. The performance analysis of three selected OSGi frameworks is provided with the aim to critically evaluate the most suitable candidate to become a solid enabler for the connected-home. Since HTTP is the most frequently applied communication protocol for data exchange between smart home gateway and any remote (cloud) application, a particular focus is given to the testing of three implementations of HTTP servers running as OSGi bundles on the gateway. All the obtained results including practical outputs are concluded at the end of our paper.

2014

Smart environments will consist of a large number of heterogeneous devices that communicate to collaboratively perform various tasks for users. We propose a novel dependability framework to increase availability and reliability of smart environment applications. We argue that the key step in achieving high dependability is to predict faults before they occur. Many statistical fault prediction techniques have been proposed for smart environment applications. Selecting the best one among these techniques involves performance assessment and detailed comparison on given metrics. We present a linear regressionbased prediction model to predict the remaining battery lifetime of a device to prevent faults due to low battery. Further, we discuss the proposed dependability framework, the basic approaches and the corresponding mechanisms to achieve our long-term research goal. We envision that dependability framework will reduce maintenance costs of large-scale smart environments and increase the dependability of smart environment applications.

2004

Abstract The number of various kinds of everyday objects that contain embedded computers is increasing due to the popularity of ubiquitous computing. While component-based software development becomes common in a variety of application domains, ubiquitous computing requires component frameworks that offer more advanced features than the current component frameworks. This paper explores a component framework in the context of a ubiquitous computing system.

International Journal of Ambient Computing and Intelligence, 2011

Ambient Intelligence (AmI) is the emerging computing paradigm used to build next-generation smart environments. It provides services in a flexible, transparent, and anticipative manner, requiring minimal skills for human-computer interaction. Recently, AmI is being adapted to build smart systems to guide human activities in critical domains, such as, healthcare, ambient assisted living, and disaster recovery. However, the practical application to such domains generally calls for stringent dependability requirements, since the failure of even a single component may cause dangerous loss or hazard to people and machineries. Despite these concerns, there is still little understanding on dependability issues in Ambient Intelligent systems and on possible solutions. This paper provides an analysis of the AmI literature dealing with dependability issues and to propose an innovative architectural solution to such issues, based on the use of runtime verification techniques.

With the perspective of ubiquitous computing becoming more common form of technology in our everyday lives, our increasing dependency on these systems will require them to be always available, failure-free, fully operational and safe. They will also enable more activities to be carried out and provide new opportunities for solving problems. In view of the potential offered by ubiquitous computing and the challenges it raises, this work proposes a self-healing architecture to support ubiquitous applications aimed at healthcare The goal is to continuously provide reliable services to meet their requirements despite changes in the environment. We outline the application scenario and proposed architecture, as well as giving a detailed account of its main modules with particular emphasis on the fault detector.