Bob Askwith

Dynamic service composition in home appliance networks

The proliferation of networked appliances and the complex functions they provide make it ever harder for a specialist, let alone an ordinary home user, to configure them to provide a given service. The use of flexible middleware architectures, combined with application level services will allow for better exploitation of these features both for the benefit of performance and simplicity. For example, a TV, DVD player and radio all have output speakers and are capable of producing sound, however there is no common framework to harness this functionality. In this paper we address this issue and propose a home network architecture that interconnects home appliances and their associated services using descriptive ontologies to guide the composition process itself. In this network, home appliances are interconnected using a Service Integration Controller (SIC), which discovers and dynamically composes the services they provide and efficiently coordinates the communications between all services independent of the protocol being used. The prototype we implemented uses a home entertainment system as a case study and shows that this framework fulfils the requirements of the system design.

Limitations of Simulation Tools for Large-Scale Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) consist of a large number of wireless sensor nodes networked together. It is a complex set of applications, link technologies, communication protocols, traffic flows and routing algorithms. Simulation is a predominant technique used to study and analyse the performance and potency of a senor network design. Since there are a huge variety of simulation tools available for WSNs, which vary in their characteristics and capabilities, it is often very difficult to decide which simulation tool to choose and which one is more appropriate for large-scale WSNs. To address this issue, in this paper, we review some of the most widely-used and state-of-the-art simulation tools for WSNs. This distinguishing feature of this paper is that we identify the key limitations of the reviewed simulation tools and inspect their suitability for large-scale WSNs. We review and investigate simulation tools based on a new set of preferred criterion, i.e. popularity, accessibility (open-source), complexity, accuracy, scalability, extensibility and availability of various models and protocols.

An extensible framework for practical secure component composition in a ubiquitous computing environment

Establishing the security properties of executable code provides an important challenge for advocates of ubiquitous computing. We provide a framework that utilises component composition techniques in order to establish such properties for a composed application in a ubiquitous environment. The framework accounts for the need to establish the properties of individual components, and draws on composition results in order to establish overall properties for composed applications. The framework utilises XML composition templates to provide extensibility, so that new composition results will further enhance its effectiveness.

A security framework for executables in a ubiquitous computing environment

The vision of ubiquitous computing presents us with unique difficulties in terms of maintaining security. Many of these relate to privacy or quality of service issues, but underpinning these is the requirement for secure execution of code. We present a novel framework for utilising a hybrid method of code analysis combined with component composition techniques. The aim has been to allow sandboxing techniques to maintain security dynamically in a ubiquitous computing environment. We argue that whilst security issues for ubiquitous computing are particularly acute, characteristics of the environment can also be harnessed advantageously to fulfil these security requirements.

Multi hop communication in global wireless framework

Mobile ad-hoc networks are infrastructure-free highly dynamic wireless networks, where central administration or configuration by the user is impractical. This paper highlights the questions of allowing all the wireless ad hoc devices to use the same network address in a global wireless framework. It presents the paradigm of using auto-assigned, private non-internet-routable IP addresses as the basis to provide anytime, anywhere services to nomadic end users in the information space. It follows on from our work on integrating personal mobility services architectures and interoperating wireless networked appliances. Providing a multi-hop communication over a series of users devices each acting as a multi-port MAC bridge constructs an interoperable, interworking domain allowing applications to run seamlessly in the upper layers. We discuss the case of the IEEE 802.11 protocol specification where we present working scenarios and protocols used to initialise and maintain the operation of its multi-hop communications. It is an attempt to provide a better range of services in an interoperable heterogeneous domain to offering the services from both the network side and the local environment by means of multi-hop ad-hoc MAC bridges.

IPMSA: integrated personal mobility services architecture

Forthcoming network computing systems are expected to provide a wide variety of services to personal mobility users anywhere anytime in the world. Personal mobility services require an advanced architecture that integrates support protocols, mechanisms and special functionality for the dynamic reconfiguration of applications and services available in new environments when users change from one terminal to another. This paper introduces an architecture, integrated personal mobility services architecture (IPMSA), that enhances personal mobility by providing access to integrated structured and unstructured services wherever they are available in a seamless manner.

Secure component composition for networked appliances

We provide a position statement on the problems of secure component composition for networked appliance systems, based on speculative research recently carried out within our research group. We highlight the problems faced by engineers of such systems and give a brief description of secure component composition techniques, and how these can be related to networked appliance systems. We conclude with a novel framework for secure component composition for networked appliances.

A wireless networked appliances interoperability architecture

In recent years, advances in multimedia applications, services and intelligent networked appliances have been making ubiquitous home environments a reality. Broadband is becoming a part of our household infrastructure, in the same way we receive water, gas and electricity. It is envisaged that every device will have a network interface that allows it to be accessed and controlled from anywhere in the world. This idea is generating a great deal of interest where sound business models are being developed to realise such applications based on market and user needs. That will map the future direction of Internet and home technologies. However, despite the long list of advantages of enabling these choices, they produced many other consequences and challenges; notably, interoperability and the difficulties associated with the integration of combined functionalities. In this paper we detail our approach in solving the interoperability problem presented in our wireless networked appliances interoperability architecture (WNAIA). We present the architecture components design and our implementation details that prove the functionality of the architecture.

MNPA: a mobile network privacy architecture

This paper presents a mobile network privacy architecture (MNPA) that enables the provision of very strong user privacy against external and internal threats within mobile networks. The MNPA extends the mobile networking model with two new components. The first, privacy routing capability, enables untraceable communications between hosts. The second, privacy token issuing authority, is a third party application that manages the flow of MNPA user authorisation tokens in the system. The operations of these two components are detailed. We follow this by demonstrating how these components can be used to implement protocols for privacy enhanced network operations. New secure methods for location registration, remote host communication and billing are presented. We finish with a discussion of issues of collusion and trust within the architecture and look briefly at public key infrastructure requirements.

Global wireless framework: one world wireless devices

We present the paradigm of using autoassigned predefined nonInternet routable IP addresses with mobile devices (global wireless framework) as the basis to provide services to nomadic end users in information spaces. As an example of how global wireless IP can be constructed as a base of services providing for personal mobility, we show working scenarios and protocols that are used to initialize the network. We also show how this global wireless IP can be integrated with structured networks. We provide a different perspective of using IP addresses with mobile devices in a personal area network and offers simultaneously services from both the infrastructure network side and ad hoc environment.