Johannes M. Schleicher

LEONORE -- Large-Scale Provisioning of Resource-Constrained IoT Deployments

Internet of Things (IoT) devices are usually considered as external dependencies that only provide data, or process and execute simple instructions. Recently, IoT devices with embedded execution environments emerged that allow practitioners to deploy and execute custom application logic on the device. This approach fundamentally changes the overall process of designing, developing, deploying and managing IoT systems. However, these devices exhibit significant differences in available execution environments, processing, and storage capabilities. To accommodate this diversity, a structured approach is needed to uniformly and transparently deploy application components onto a large number of heterogeneous devices. This is especially important in the context of current large-scale IoT systems, such as in the smart city domain. In this paper, we present LEONORE, a service oriented infrastructure that provides elastic provisioning of application components on resource-constrained and heterogeneous edge devices in large-scale IoT deployments. LEONORE supports push-based as well as pull-based deployments and we show that our solution is able to elastically provision large numbers of devices using a testbed based on a real-world industry scenario.

A Scalable Framework for Provisioning Large-Scale IoT Deployments

Internet of Things (IoT) devices are usually considered external application dependencies that only provide data or process and execute simple instructions. The recent emergence of IoT devices with embedded execution environments allows practitioners to deploy and execute custom application logic directly on the device. This approach fundamentally changes the overall process of designing, developing, deploying, and managing IoT systems. However, these devices exhibit significant differences in available execution environments, processing, and storage capabilities. To accommodate this diversity, a structured approach is needed to uniformly and transparently deploy application components onto a large number of heterogeneous devices. This is especially important in the context of large-scale IoT systems, such as in the smart city domain. In this article, we present LEONORE, an infrastructure toolset that provides elastic provisioning of application components on resource-constrained and heterogeneous edge devices in large-scale IoT deployments. LEONORE supports push-based as well as pull-based deployments. To improve scalability and reduce generated network traffic between cloud and edge infrastructure, we present a distributed provisioning approach that deploys LEONORE local nodes within the deployment infrastructure close to the actual edge devices. We show that our solution is able to elastically provision large numbers of devices using a testbed based on a real-world industry scenario.

DIANE - Dynamic IoT Application Deployment

Applications in the Internet of Things (IoT) domain need to manage and integrate huge amounts of heterogenous devices. Usually these devices are treated as external dependencies residing at the edge of the infrastructure mainly transmitting sensed data or reacting to their environment. Recently however, a fundamental shift in the basic nature of these devices is taking place. More and more IoT devices emerge that are not simple sensors or transmitters, but provide limited execution environments. This opens up a huge opportunity to utilize these previously untapped processing power in order to offload custom application logic directly to these edge devices. To effectively exploit this new type of device the design of IoT applications needs to change to also consider devices that are deployed on the edge of the infrastructure. The deployment of parts of the applications business logic on the device will not only increase the overall robustness of the application, but can also reduce communication overhead. To allow for flexible provisioning of applications whose deployment topology evolves over time, a clear separation of independently executable application components is needed. In this paper, we present DIANE, a framework for the dynamic generation of optimized deployment topologies for IoT cloud applications that are tailored to the currently available physical infrastructure. Based on a declarative, constraint-based model of the desired application deployment, our approach enables flexible provisioning of application components on edge devices deployed in the field. DIANE supports different IoT application topologies and we show that our solution elastically provisions application deployment topologies using a cloud-based test bed.

Towards the Internet of Cities: A Research Roadmap for Next-Generation Smart Cities

In this paper we outline the long-term vision for an Internet of Cities infrastructure, an interdisciplinary effort towards creating the scientific underpinnings for designing, developing, and managing next-generation smart city applications. Due to the large number of involved stakeholders and their possibly conflicting requirements, along with limited available knowledge and data, effective and efficient creation and subsequent operation of smart city applications is currently not possible. By holistically approaching the challenges of creating and operating such applications, we will create methodologies, frameworks, and approaches to enable the Internet of Cities, a global network of smart cities and their applications that securely and collaboratively work together to improve the quality of life of their citizens, as well as greatly improve cost and energy efficiency of city operation and infrastructure.

COLT Collaborative Delivery of Lightweight IoT Applications

Todays IoT solutions are typically delivered by domain-specific solution providers. In these solutions, components are highly customized for specific project requirements, limiting their users to the offerings of their providers. To overcome these limitations, we propose a novel mechanism that opens the market for OEMs and third-party developers. This paper introduces the IoT Application Market, where a range of stakeholders can distribute, sell, share and contribute features for lightweight device-specific IoT applications. Based on the offerings in the IoT Application Market, users can buy applications and deploy them in their environment through self-service.

Migrating Smart City Applications to the Cloud

This article discusses the intrinsic challenges of delivering applications in a smart city application ecosystem and introduces the smart city operating system (SCOS), a key element for supporting ongoing smart city application engineering as well as the foundation for enabling the future Internet of Cities.

Smart Fabric - An Infrastructure-Agnostic Artifact Topology Deployment Framework

The cloud computing paradigm enables the development of applications that can elastically react to changes in their environment by autonomously provisioning and releasing infrastructure resources. However, current applications need to be specifically tailored to a concrete cloud provider infrastructure, leading to vendor lock-in. Migrating applications to the cloud or between cloud providers is challenging due to differences in deployment directives, available services, and programming interfaces. Existing infrastructure as code approaches closely tie application artifacts to their deployment directives and do not allow for a clear separation of application artifacts from deployment infrastructure. In this paper, we present Smart Fabric, a methodology and accompanying toolset for infrastructure-agnostic deployment of application artifact topologies based on a constraint-based, declarative specification of the required deployment infrastructure. Our framework allows for seamless migration of application topologies between deployment targets and enables independent, parallel evolution of both, applications and underlying infrastructure. We discuss the feasibility of the proposed methodology and prototype implementation using representative applications from the Internet of Things and smart city domains.

Nomads - Enabling Distributed Analytical Service Environments for the Smart City Domain

The advent of the Smart City domain has led to the creation of massive amounts of diverse data. Stakeholders in this domain need to be able to analyze this data in order to make informed planning decisions. To address this complex task, Distributed Analytical Environments (DAEs) have emerged. These environments consist of different distributed analytical and data services, which are composed in a dynamic way to deliver insights that are crucial for stakeholders. Since these environments deal with business critical and sensitive information, strict compliance constraints apply. These constraints lead to situations where certain concrete services are not allowed to exchange data, even though their interaction is necessary to produce the desired results. Finding a valid solution in the space of possible instantiations is a non-trivial problem. In this paper we introduce Nomads, a framework that enables service mobility in such constrained dynamic composition environments to overcome aforementioned restrictions. The framework improves the overall satisfiability and therefore also the quality of constrained DAEs. We outline the requirements of a representative DAE scenario, provide a detailed problem formulation, and then discuss the service mobility framework along with our solution finding algorithm. The evaluation demonstrates that the Nomads framework considerably increases the number of successfully performed compositions even in highly constrained environments.

Application Architecture for the Internet of Cities: Blueprints for Future Smart City Applications

As smart cities evolve toward the Internet of Cities, its essential to consider common problems and how to address them. Three representative types of smart city applications are outlined here, identifying key requirements and architectural guidelines for implementation.

Optimizing Elastic IoT Application Deployments

Applications in the Internet of Things (IoT) domain need to integrate and manage large numbers of heterogenous devices. Traditionally, such devices are treated as external dependencies that reside at the edge of the infrastructure and mainly transmit sensed data or react to their environment. Recently however, a fundamental shift in the basic nature of these devices is taking place. More and more IoT devices emerge that are not only simple sensors or transmitters, but provide limited execution environments. This opens up an opportunity to utilize this previously untapped processing power in order to offload parts of the application logic directly to these edge devices. To effectively exploit this new type of device, the design of IoT applications needs to change to explicitly consider devices that are deployed in the edge of the infrastructure. This will not only increase the overall flexibility and robustness of IoT applications, but also reduce costs by cutting down expensive communication overhead. Therefore, to allow the flexible provisioning of applications whose deployment topology evolves over time, a clear separation of independently executable application components is needed. In this paper, we present a framework for the dynamic generation of optimized deployment topologies for IoT cloud applications that are tailored to the currently available physical infrastructure. Based on a declarative, constraint-based model of the desired application deployment, our approach enables flexible provisioning of application components on edge devices deployed in the field. Using our framework, applications can furthermore evolve their deployment topologies at runtime in order to react on environmental changes, such as changing request loads. Our framework supports different IoT application topologies and we show that our solution elastically provisions application deployment topologies using a cloud-based testbed.