Apostolos Meliones

A Connected Home Platform and Development Framework for smart home control applications

Smart home automation technologies have been commercially available already, however the interoperability problems of different hardware and software components, the limited service scalability and the complexity of configuration and use prevent their mass adoption. In this paper we present a Connected Home Platform and Development Framework for easy design, development and deployment of smart home services offering a wealth of new exciting smart home experience on top of existing broadband service bundles. The Home Controller is used to integrate connectivity with home devices of various home control technologies. The Service Platform embeds the use of OSGi technology in the Home Controller that enables the OSGi-literate engineer to quickly develop and deploy home services utilising the widely adopted automation technologies. The different home network subsystems are interfaced in a common way through the Network Adaptation Layer, a set of OSGi components known as ROCob. Following the ROCob API Specification, a developer may build various applications, such as presentation layer applications (e.g. a web based UI), monitoring applications that collect data and send them to a backbone server, and other home control and pervasive applications.

ATRACO: Adaptive and Trusted Ambient Ecologies

ATRACO is an EU funded R&D project that considers ambient ecologies consisting of people, context-aware artefacts and digital commodities (e.g., services and content). Members of the ecology are able to adapt to each other and form trusted ad hoc collaborations to achieve specific tasks resulting from the need to serve specific human goals. Our aim is to research the factors and develop the technologies that will lead to the realisation of such ecologies, following an interdisciplinary effort which involves Computer Science, HCI, AI, Control Theory and Sociology. Key factors of the ATRACO problem space to be examined include adaptation, interoperability, user interaction and dynamicity of trust. We focus our efforts on seeking abstractions and mechanisms for establishing trust relationships between its members and on devising adaptation mechanisms based on system behaviour modelling, supervisory control theory of discrete event systems and type-2 fuzzy systems.

Speech codecs for high-quality voice over ZigBee applications: Evaluation and implementation challenges

The ZigBee standard is designed to enable the deployment of low-cost, low-power wireless sensor and control networks based on the IEEE 802.15.4 physical radio standard. Despite the low data rates of ZigBee, its use for transmission of voice has been proven to be feasible. This article presents the evaluation and implementation of a voice codec performed in the framework of the Z-Phone project, which targeted the development of a low-cost, ultra-low-power, long-range, ergonomic wireless headset using ZigBee technology to transmit voice in full-duplex mode for use with leading PC VoIP programs. In particular, it presents all the criteria taken into account in selecting the most suitable codec, and also the details and performance of its implementation.

Implementation and evaluation of a voice codec for ZigBee

The Z-Phone project goal is to develop a low cost, ultra low-power, long range, ergonomic wireless headset using ZigBee Technology to transmit voice in full-duplex mode for use with leading PC VoIP programs, gaining significant communication autonomy and distance compared with Bluetooth, while DECT and WiFi consume much more power and cannot be integrated into small devices. This paper presents in a methodological way the details and performance of a voice codec implementation for Voice-over-ZigBee technology.

The internals of advanced interrupt handling techniques: Performance optimization of an embedded Linux network interface

Linux over the past few years has gained in popularity as the OS fit for embedded networking equipment. Its reliability, low cost and undisputed networking capabilities made it one of the most popular choices for the networking market. As access interfaces become faster and network applications more sophisticated, a lot of effort has been focused on the improvement of Linux networking performance. This paper analyzes the routing performance improvement of an embedded communications processor by endorsing advanced interrupt handling techniques. Even though these techniques are well known and are popular on a variety of networking hardware, their combination is not so often used. Moreover, their performance evaluation is poorly analyzed and documented. Even though the analysis is based on an embedded Linux system, these techniques are not hardware specific, and can be applied to a wide variety of networking systems.

A Distributed Vision Network for Industrial Packaging Inspection

A distributed vision network is proposed to tackle industrial packaging inspection. The system consists of independent networked inspection stations able to address efficiently parallel inspection tasks such as product identification, character verification, tag inspection and content & packaging quality control at a high production speed. Existing and innovative inspection algorithms such as synergetic classification have been adapted on the smart camera technology of the inspection stations. We present the benefits of the deployment of the system in the production lines of a pharmaceutical packaging facility.

A Pervasive System Architecture That Supports Adaptation Using Agents and Ontologies

In the context of the EU funded R&D project ATRACO we are developing a conceptual framework and a system architecture that will support the realization of adaptive and trusted ambient intelligent systems. Our approach is based on a number of well established engineering principles, such as the distribution of control and the separation of service interfaces from the service implementation, adopting a SOA model combined with intelligent agents and ontologies. Agents support adaptive task realization and enhanced human-machine interaction while ontologies provide knowledge representation, management of heterogeneity, semantically rich resource discovery and adaptation. ATRACO systems are dynamic compositions of distributed, loosely-coupled and highly cohesive components that operate in dynamic environments.

Efficient Distributed Execution of Computationally Intensive Tasks

Recent advances in computer and network technology have made distributed systems appropriate for the provision of high quality services in many application areas, especially when execution time is the critical factor. Many modern problems are extremely computationally intensive, leading to an unavoidable compromise to the quality of the generated results in order to best fit time and budgetary restrictions. This paper reports on the implementation of a distributed architecture, suitable for the efficient execution of computationally intensive parallel jobs that may require/generate large volume of data. A cluster of networked computing nodes as a physical layer to the distributed architecture is considered. We present a job model for the submitted tasks that is derived from real-life application areas. Overlapping techniques are proposed as a method of reducing network delays. We prove that the proposed distribution of work over the nodes of the execution network is optimal, in terms of minimizing the execution time, with respect to the availability of resources. Certain configuration and implementation details are discussed, mainly in the job management and submission and delivery manager layers. We conclude by presenting our experience of testing the environment for computing-intensive 3D rendering jobs derived from the ESPRIT project EROPPA.

Distributed Audio-Visual Content Development

In the recent years the importance of the European audio-visual industry has become apparent and actions have been initiated to strengthen its actors, especially in film making and video production. European companies in the sector assess ways to improve their performance and productivity and become more competitive against American and Asian companies. Most such companies have heavily invested in modern digital technologies and often very powerful HPC systems are found even in small production facilities across Europe. Until today, though, little effort has been used to implement activities other than production/post-production and even less, to integrate the whole cycle of content development and creation within a networked collaborative environment. This resulted in an inconsistency in the efficiency of the content creation cycle as the benefits of HPC were exploited solely in the production phases and the benefits of HPN were exploited only as a means to transfer portions of work to be performed at a remote site, while intermediate phases were still undertaken with conventional, inefficient ways. This paper reports the experience of the DAVID project in establishing a way to interact and collaborate also during the pre-production phases. Several benefits have been demonstrated, such as reduction of the overall production cost, increased productivity, as well as increased ability to execute complex, multi-company productions in shorter times and lower budgets.

Adaptation of the E-model for satellite internet protocol radio calls in air traffic control

This paper proves that voice over Internet protocol (IP) technology can be combined with satellite transmission in air traffic control (ATC) applications provided that the systems used to implement this approach have been meticulously designed to meet the end-to-end delay requirements and to certify the quality of service they offer under strenuous conditions.We propose a modified E-model and prove it can be used as a radio network planning tool, because once the requirements that were drawn from it were fulfilled, the users of the resulting service accepted it as sufficient in terms of call quality. The approach has been applied on the SATWAYS system, cofunded by the European Space Agency, and designed and implemented to extend the coverage of radio frequencies within airspaces when the commonly used landline communication infrastructure is either too costly or impossible to install and maintain. The paper provides evidence that the way to an all-IP ATC network is wide open.