Publication
Interference-free Integration of Commercial Off-The-Shelf Components in Pervasive Computing Systems
| dc.contributor.advisor | Moreira, Rui Silva | |
| dc.contributor.advisor | Morla, Ricardo | |
| dc.contributor.author | Soares, Christophe Pinto de Almeida | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2016-03-09T13:42:57Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2016-03-09T13:42:57Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2015 | |
| dc.description | Tese apresentada à Universidade Fernando Pessoa como parte dos requisitos para obtenção do Grau de Doutor em Ciências da Informação, especialidade em Sistemas e Tecnologias da Informação | pt_PT |
| dc.description.abstract | The nineties were marked by futuristic visions of massive proliferation and interconnection of ubiquitous off-the-shelf systems. This innovation movement became known as ubicomp (ubiquitous computing). This new computing age raised new challenges in different areas, such as, ambient intelligence and applied artificial intelligence, software engineering planning, distributed systems and services, machine learning and security. These research trends gained preponderance in ubicomp but particularly the generic use of commercial off-the-shelf systems became pivotal in the massive integration and deployment of pervasive computing technology. This gains special importance when we think about device integration in the same household where unplanned interactions between users and ubicomp systems may occur (e.g., entertainment, communication, and health-related devices). Unplanned interactions are a serious concern since they may cause unsafe behavior on some of the systems. Think, for example, behavior interferences between communication or entertainment applications with health-related devices. In such ubicomp scenarios the deployed system should be aware of the surrounding context and adapt to cope with the user needs and nearby deployed systems. These systems are supposed to support and execute services for the users but are usually planned and developed independently and by different vendors. Therefore, the deployment and integration of these systems in the same environment or house are usually conducted in an unplanned manner, i.e., without a standard integration procedure that may allow inter-system connection and reconfiguration. Moreover, the traditional software development processes do not aim to avoid interference between systems during the conception stage. Furthermore, it is hard to identify and understand a priori all possible interactions between every possible system. The integration task is therefore complex since there are multiple possible systems combinations and variations. Moreover, since these systems are not usually aware of other systems in the same household, their behavior may potentially trigger a chain of unexpected reactions and jeopardize other systems operations. When these actions result in unexpected behavior, this problem is known as functional behavior interference or feature interaction. The ubicomp integration of off-the-shelf systems suffers from potential interference issues, and current deployment strategies do not cope with such problems yet. This thesis presents a novel graph-based approach for representing the expected behavior of commercial off-the-shelf devices and applications, their interactions, and for detecting interference among pervasive computing systems deployed on the same home context. A set of home care scenarios is used to assess the applicability of this approach. We consider also two setups where this approach can be applied: i) in a pre-deployment setup, where simulation is used to detect possible instances of interference, and ii) at run-time, collecting observations from devices and applications and detecting interference as it occurs. For pre-deployment and simulation, we use Opensim to recreate a household with several deployed systems. For run-time, we use Simple Network Management Protocol for systems state introspection and a sliding window mechanism to process the collected data-stream. The proposed model uses graph-analysis algorithms, which together with behavior introspection mechanisms, allow us to identify the occurrences of functional interferences, their potential sources and subjects, and the associated shared media through which such interferences may occur. The interference analysis is performed through a chain of working filters, each performing a specific check for interference. The intra-system filter provides mechanisms for identifying uncommon individual system behavior. The intersystem filter analyzes interferences between systems by inspecting if each medium is affected and shared by more than one system during their operations. A combined approach, using intra-system and inter-system outputs, allows us to identify any misbehavior and associated causing interactions and media dependencies. The detection of functional interference, both in predeployment and post-deployment scenarios, will allow defining reconfiguration or adaptation strategies, thus guaranteeing a safe integration of ubicomp systems. | pt_PT |
| dc.identifier.tid | 101342470 | pt_PT |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/10284/5220 | |
| dc.language.iso | eng | pt_PT |
| dc.publisher | [s.n.] | pt_PT |
| dc.title | Interference-free Integration of Commercial Off-The-Shelf Components in Pervasive Computing Systems | pt_PT |
| dc.type | doctoral thesis | |
| dspace.entity.type | Publication | |
| rcaap.rights | closedAccess | pt_PT |
| rcaap.type | doctoralThesis | pt_PT |