Andrea Buda

Universal Messaging Standards for the IoT From a Lifecycle Management Perspective

According to our original vision of the Internet of Things (IoT), it should be possible to create ad hoc and loosely coupled information flows between any kinds of products, devices, computers, users, and information systems in general when and as needed. However, this is still challenging to achieve in practice due to the lack of sufficiently generic and standardized interfaces for creating the needed information flows between all devices and systems that the IoT is composed of. The paper presents necessary requirements for such interfaces, as well as proposed interface standards that fulfill those requirements. The paper describes the design principles and provides a high-level description of the proposed standards, followed by real-life implementations that illustrate why such standards are needed and how they are applied.

3+1 SysML view model for IEC61499 Function Block control systems

The International Electrotechnical Commission has defined the IEC61499 Function Block model to address the challenges in the development of industrial automation systems. It is an attempt to exploit in this domain successful software engineering practices such as component and model driven development. However, for the development of this kind of systems, which are characterized as Mechatronics, there is a need for an integrated framework that will address the synergistic integration of its constituent parts, i.e. mechanics, electronics and software. In this paper, the System Modeling Language (SysML) is adopted and a framework is proposed for the synergistic integration of the three disciplines. The IEC61499 is used to model the software part while the Modelica modeling language is used to model the mechanics. The Festo MPS example application is used as case study to illustrate the applicability of the proposed framework. The whole framework is considered as a realization of the Model Integrated Mechatronics (MIM) paradigm.

A standardized approach to deal with firewall and mobility policies in the IoT

Internet of Things (IoT) is intended to provide a network where information flows could easily be set up between any kinds of products, devices, users and information systems in general. This vision is getting closer to become real due to the continuous development of new information system concepts and technologies. Nonetheless, this new reality requires special attention on particular aspects of the IoT such as security and mobility. First, people and companies want to secure their assets/data using firewalls, which inevitably leads to a challenging conflict between data security and usability. Second, products are becoming increasingly mobile, operating in environments where it can be difficult to contact them directly using their IP address (e.g., due to the presence of NAT or to access restrictions). It might therefore be necessary in some IoT applications to enable two-way communications through any type of firewall, e.g. to enable real-time control and maintenance. Quantum Lifecycle Management (QLM) messaging standards have been designed to provide generic and standardized application-level interfaces for the IoT that make it possible, among other things, to achieve such two-way communication. This paper provides a high-level description of QLM messaging standards with a particular focus on this QLM feature, along with proofs-of-concept through real-life implementations in building and automotive domains. A high-level description of new IoT standard named QLM ?is introduced.The QLM piggybacking property to deal with firewall and mobility policies is presented.A home automation case study dealing with firewall policies and using QLM is presented.A car automation case study dealing with mobility policies and using QLM is presented.

QLM messaging standards: introduction and comparison with existing messaging protocols

Recent advancement in web technology enabled the development of new Business-to-Business (B2B) infrastructures, e.g. based on the concept of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). These infrastructures enable seamless information exchange among different stakeholders and complex business procedures. However, there is still a lack of sufficiently generic and standardized application-level interfaces for exchanging the kind of information required by such infrastructures. These interfaces must be as complete and flexible as possible to support changing organization needs and structures. Their development is an essential step to design future SOA services and to enhance product lifecycle management. The Quantum Lifecycle Management (QLM) messaging standards are proposed as a standard application-level interface that would fulfil such requirements. This standard is introduced in this paper and compared to existing ones. Several real-life implementations are presented to show why such messaging standards are needed and how flexible QLM messaging standards are.

Towards data exchange interoperability in building lifecycle management

Building Information Management systems have started to leverage new kinds of digital information infrastructures that integrate activities related to design, budgeting, scheduling, analysis, material management, and human resources. Companies implementing such systems have no other option today than exchanging information among themselves in a proper and efficient way. Industry foundation classes (IFCs) provide useful information structures for such a data sharing. However they do not specify how to capture, exchange and synchronize the information between distinct entities (i.e. information systems like sensors, servers, smart products...) throughout the building lifecycle. Accordingly, this paper investigates existing messaging protocols in order to identify which one is the most appropriate for supporting building lifecycle management; i.e a flexible protocol that provides sufficiently generic communication interfaces. A platform set up on a university campus based on the selected messaging protocol is then presented. Within this context, the research agenda that should be pursued to develop new techniques and algorithms for optimizing the building energy management is announced.

Building Lifecycle Management System for Enhanced Closed Loop Collaboration

In the past few years, the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry has carried out efforts to develop BIM (Building Information Modelling) facilitating tools and standards for enhanced collaborative working and information sharing. Lessons learnt from other industries and tools such as PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) – established tool in manufacturing to manage the engineering change process – revealed interesting potential to manage more efficiently the building design and construction processes. Nonetheless, one of the remaining challenges consists in closing the information loop between multiple building lifecycle phases, e.g. by capturing information from middle-of-life processes (i.e., use and maintenance) to re-use it in end-of-life processes (e.g., to guide disposal decision making). Our research addresses this lack of closed-loop system in the AEC industry by proposing an open and interoperable Web-based building lifecycle management system. This paper gives (i) an overview of the requirement engineering process that has been set up to integrate efforts, standards and directives of both the AEC and PLM industries, and (ii) first proofs-of-concept of our system implemented on two distinct campus.

Authentication and Access Control for Open Messaging Interface Standard

The number of Internet of Things (IoT) vendors is rapidly growing, providing solutions for all levels of the IoT stack. Despite the universal agreement on the need for a standardized technology stack, following the model of the world-wide-web, a large number of industry-driven domain specific standards hinder the development of a single IoT ecosystem. An attempt to solve this challenge is the introduction of O-MI (Open Messaging Interface) and O-DF (Open Data Format), two domain independent standards published by Open Group. Despite their good compatibility, they define no specific security model. This paper takes the first step of defining a security model for these standards by proposing suitable access control and authentication mechanisms that can regulate the rights of different principles and operations defined in these standards. First, a brief introduction is provided of the O-MI and O-DF standards, including a comparison with existing standards. Second, the envisioned security model is presented, together with the implementation details of the plug-in module developed for the O-MI and O-DF reference implementation.

Developing a Campus Wide Building Information System Based on Open Standards

University campuses can significantly benefit from IoT technologies, especially from operational efficiencies and user experience perspective. Traditionally, such systems have been limited to lab based environments, where involvement of end-users is limited and the results may not reflect reality. To build IoT systems for real-world that are reliable and relevant, it is important to build experiments in real-world conditions and involve end-users. From technological perspective, there is a need for convergence of diverse fields ranging from Building Information Systems and Building Services to Building Automation Systems, IoT devices and finally the campus services that include academic and research activities.This paper outlines the efforts to develop a campus wide web based system called Otaniemi3D that provides information about energy usage, occupancy and user comfort by integrating Building Information Models and IoT devices through open messaging standards (O-MI and O-DF) and IFC models. The paper describes the design criteria and the system architecture and the workflow to generate the information needed to develop such a system.

LEAP Interoperability Standards

Abstract In the Internet of Things (IoT), it should be possible to create ad hoc and loosely coupled information flows between any kinds of products, devices, computers, users and information systems in general when and as needed. However, this is still challenging to achieve in practice due to the lack of sufficiently generic and standardized interfaces for creating the needed information flows between all of the devices and systems that form the IoT. In the LinkedDesign project, such interoperability is also needed between the different software components that are used for building the Linked Engineering and mAnufacturing Platform (LEAP). This chapter presents the two interoperability standards developed for this purpose, which are published by The Open Group: Open Messaging Interface (O-MI) and Open Data Format (O-DF). This chapter describes the design principles and provides a description of the standards, including implementation principles and examples of real-life implementations.

Two-way communications through firewalls using QLM messaging.

Nowadays, organizations make a point of protecting the confidentiality of their data and assets using firewalls, proxies and NATs, which goes against providing a high level of data usability and interoperability between distinct information systems, or “Things” in the so-called Internet of Things. Such security procedures often prevent two-way communications between nodes located on each side of the firewall. Quantum Lifecycle Management (QLM) messaging has been introduced as a messaging standard proposal that would fulfill the requirements for exchanging the kind of information required by an IoT. In this regard, the QLM piggy backing property proposed in that standard makes it possible to achieve two-way communication through a firewall. This property is introduced in this paper, along with the first proofs-of-concept.