Ambient Networks (ANs) introduce a new dynamic and flexible architecture for fixed and mobile networks. The environment is dynamic since they consist of various mobile nodes and flexible since ANs can compose and decompose dynamically and automatically with other ANs. The AN architecture must be sophisticatedly designed to support such high level of dynamicity, heterogeneity and flexibility. Composition and decomposition is performed at the network-level but since the network topology may change, the service delivery should also be adapted accordingly. Indeed, new services should be user-centric. In this paper, for delivering services adapted to the dynamically changing user and network context, we promote the use of service specific overlay networks in ANs that are created ondemand according to specific service requirements. This paper presents an autonomic approach to create, configure, adapt, contextualize, and finally teardown those context-aware overlay networks.
The paper presents the design and implementation of Ambient Service Interface (ASI) framework, which offers suitable level of flexibility and programmability to satisfy the requirements of Ambient Network applications. The direct access to ACS (Ambient Control Space) Functional Entities has been enabled by a hub-and-spoke server -ASB (ASI Switchboard), which supports required level of flexibility and programmability. The features of the proposed solution have been analyzed in context of Ambient Networks application. The Synapse-based Switchboard implementation is described. Next ASB activity scenario has been presented by simple case study, which concerns communication with context FE. The paper is ended with conclusions.
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