ECo-IoT: An Architectural Approach for Realizing Emergent Configurations in the Internet of Things

Abstract

The rapid proliferation of the Internet of Things (IoT) is changing the way we live our everyday life and the society in general. New devices get connected to the Internet every day and, similarly, new IoT services and applications exploiting them are developed across a wide range of domains. The IoT environment typically is very dynamic, devices might suddenly become unavailable and new ones might appear. Similarly, users enter and/or leave the IoT environment while being interested in fulfilling their individual needs. These key aspects must be considered while designing and realizing IoT systems. In this paper we propose ECo-IoT, an architectural approach to enable the automated formation and adaptation of Emergent Configurations (ECs) in the IoT. An EC is formed by a set of things, with their services, functionalities, and applications, to realize a user goal. ECs are adapted in response to (un)foreseen context changes e.g., changes in available things or due to changing or evolving user goals. In the paper, we describe: (i) an architecture and a process for realizing ECs; and (ii) a prototype we implemented for (iii) the validation of ECo-IoT through an IoT scenario that we use throughout the paper.

Enabling Emergent Configurations in the Industrial Internet of Things for Oil and Gas Explorations: A Survey

“…The concept of EC is presented in [61] for engineering the design of IoT systems. EC can be define as "a set of things with their functionalities and services that connect and cooperate temporarily to achieve a goal" [61,62]. A "thing" on the other hand, is defined as any smart connected device (or object) with its functionalities and services or applications.…”

“…The architecture of an EC process is refined in [62] as diagrammatically illustrated in Figure 5. A detailed description is as well presented for all components in the refined architecture for realizing EC in the IoT (Eco-IoT), in addition to their interaction with the IoT platform.…”

“…A first prototype is developed using Java programming language, while performance is evaluated to validate the feasibility of EC in some key components of the refined architecture. Interested readers are referred to [62], for more information on the refined Eco-IoT architecture.…”

“…This paradigm also known as ambient intelligence or pervasive computing is supported by some fundamental IoT enabling technologies such as sensors, actuators, microprocessors, internet connectivity and numerous specialised application layer protocols. Motivated by the works done in [62,71], we propose an EC architecture for monitoring the operations of nautical explorations as illustrated in Figure 7 in such a way that the onshore marine users exploit the benefits of ubiquitous computing and SDN technology in order to satisfy user standards. In this architecture, the interaction between the seashore located marine user (i.e., UA) and an ECM is managed by an efficient ubiquitous computing service system (UCSS) that is based on matchmaking and rule-based algorithms, where the UA of the EC network tries to exchange dynamic information to perform network diagnosis and high-quality evaluations for the improving the communication efficiency and throughput of the entire marine networks.…”

Lidando com Componentes Resistentes a Mudanças no Contexto de Internet das Coisas

“…Neste trabalho, um componente observadoré usado para assistir e enviar comandos de adaptação, diferentemente do que se encontra no estudo de Nascimento e Lucena (2016), que utilizam um agente, também chamado de observador, mas queé responsável por gerenciar e controlar cada dispositivo. Alkhabbas et al (2018) utilizam o conceito de Configuração Emergente (Emergent Configuration -EC) e, a partir disso, propõem uma ferramenta que permite uma formação e adaptação automatizadas de ECs, chamada de ECo-IoT. A ação do ECo-IoT requer uma interferência humana na realização da adaptação, pois sua abordagem aguarda aprovação humana.…”