Juha-Pekka Soininen

Semantic Interoperability Architecture for Pervasive Computing and Internet of Things

Pervasive computing and Internet of Things (IoTs) paradigms have created a huge potential for new business. To fully realize this potential, there is a need for a common way to abstract the heterogeneity of devices so that their functionality can be represented as a virtual computing platform. To this end, we present novel semantic level interoperability architecture for pervasive computing and IoTs. There are two main principles in the proposed architecture. First, information and capabilities of devices are represented with semantic web knowledge representation technologies and interaction with devices and the physical world is achieved by accessing and modifying their virtual representations. Second, global IoT is divided into numerous local smart spaces managed by a semantic information broker (SIB) that provides a means to monitor and update the virtual representation of the physical world. An integral part of the architecture is a resolution infrastructure that provides a means to resolve the network address of a SIB either using a physical object identifier as a pointer to information or by searching SIBs matching a specification represented with SPARQL. We present several reference implementations and applications that we have developed to evaluate the architecture in practice. The evaluation also includes performance studies that, together with the applications, demonstrate the suitability of the architecture to real-life IoT scenarios. In addition, to validate that the proposed architecture conforms to the common IoT-A architecture reference model (ARM), we map the central components of the architecture to the IoT-ARM.

Enabling Semantic Technology Empowered Smart Spaces

It has been proposed that Semantic Web technologies would be key enablers in achieving context-aware computing in our everyday environments. In our vision of semantic technology empowered smart spaces, the whole interaction model is based on the sharing of semantic data via common blackboards. This approach allows smart space applications to take full advantage of semantic technologies. Because of its novelty, there is, however, a lack of solutions and methods for developing semantic smart space applications according to this vision. In this paper, we present solutions to the most relevant challenges we have faced when developing context-aware computing in smart spaces. In particular the paper describes (1) methods for utilizing semantic technologies with resource restricted-devices, (2) a solution for identifying real world objects in semantic technology empowered smart spaces, (3) a method for users to modify the behavior of context-aware smart space applications, and (4) an approach for content sharing between autonomous smart space agents. The proposed solutions include ontologies, system models, and guidelines for building smart spaces with the M3 semantic information sharing platform. To validate and demonstrate the approaches in practice, we have implemented various prototype smart space applications and tools.

Knowledge Sharing Protocol for Smart Spaces

In this paper we present a novel knowledge sharing protocol (KSP) for semantic technology empowered ubiquitous computing systems. In particular the protocol is designed for M3 which is a blackboard based semantic interoperability solution for smart spaces. The main difference between the KSP and existing work is that KSP provides SPARQL-like knowledge sharing mechanisms in compact binary format that is designed to be suitable also for resource restricted devices and networks. In order to evaluate the KSP in practice we implemented a case study in a prototype smart space, called Smart Greenhouse. In the case study the KSP messages were on average 70.09% and 87.08% shorter than the messages in existing M3 communication protocols. Because the KSP provides a mechanism for automating the interaction in smart spaces it was also possible to implement the case study with fewer messages than with other M3 communication protocols. This makes the KSP a better alternative for resource restricted devices in semantic technology empowered smart spaces.

Advertising semantically described physical items with Bluetooth Low Energy beacons

Enabling smart applications to access information about the physical world in a machine interpretable format is a high priority in the Internet of Things (IoT) related research. In this paper, we present a novel approach for advertising information related to physical objects in the user vicinity. There are three distinctive features in our approach. First, ubiquitous codes (ucodes) are used for providing globally unique identifiers for the physical objects. Second, we use Bluetooth Low Energy beacons for broadcasting the identifiers of the physical objects. Third, the information related to the physical object is represented with semantic technologies. In order to verify our approach we have developed an example application for iPhone 4S. The application presents the current physical objects in the user vicinity and shows selected information about these objects.

Opening information of low capacity embedded systems for Smart Spaces

Smart Spaces are an emerging computing paradigm in which various devices of our everyday environment share information autonomously with each other in order to provide services to people in the environment. Achieving reliable way to share information between heterogeneous devices is not an easy process however. Solutions that are independent of application domain and that provide interoperability for the devices of the Smart Space are needed. This paper presents a new application domain independent approach for low capacity embedded systems to be part of applications and use cases based on semantic information interoperability. The approach uses NoTA and Smart-M3 solutions to open embedded information for devices in the Smart Space. A reference implementation of smart greenhouse is used to demonstrate the approach in practice.

Enabling End-Users to Configure Smart Environments

Our everyday living environments are inhabited by a huge and constantly increasing number of electronic devices. Smart Environment is a common name for a physical place where these various devices interact with each other in order to provide useful services for the end-user. Because different people usually have different kind of needs it is important that the user is able to configure the Smart Environment so that the services provided to individual user are in fact useful. In this paper, we present an approach for enabling end-user to configure how the Smart Environments functions. In our approach we utilize Semantic Web technologies and publish/subscribe based architecture for providing semantic interoperability in the Smart Environment. As a proof of concept, we present a reference implementation of a tool that can be used to configure Smart Environments and a case study in a smart greenhouse domain.

Open-M3: smart space with COTS devices

Support of legacy devices and services is crucial for the adoption of new smart space technologies. We present two technologies which enable the formation of local ad-hoc smart spaces with commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) devices. First of these technologies is NoTA, which is a service oriented architecture enabling networks of devices with different physical transports. Second one is Smart-M3, which is a semantic information sharing architecture for smart spaces. It aims at opening physical world information for the use of services and applications in the information world, thus enabling new types of mash-up applications. In our demonstration - Open-M3 - we show how these technologies are used to build a small, yet extendable smart space for sensor monitoring using COTS devices.

Virtual Prototypes in Developing Mobile Software Applications and Devices

The goal of this paper is to study how software based virtual prototypes and hardware simulation tools can be combined. By combining these tools and techniques we can shorten the time to market with parallel concurrent design and more importantly, we can provide a real-time simulation environment for virtual prototypes. Application designers get access to a simulated realistic real-time mobile device well before the first prototypes are available from the device manufacturer. The research work was done in two cases. In the first case the virtual prototypes were used to illustrate and help to select new mobile application concepts and to test new applications usability. In the second case the virtual prototypes were used for modelling the product platforms, e.g. the computer system and the simulation of the complete system including both hardware and software. Our approach facilitates early simulation and testing of the final user experience and system behaviour in cases where they are heavily dependent on the characteristics and performance of the underlying computer platform.

Demo abstract: low capacity devices with semantic interfaces

In this paper, we describe a demonstration of a semantic data interface implemented into a low capacity, battery operated wireless sensor. The demonstration scenario is a home greenhouse application where plant jars are equipped with plant sticks that contain moisture sensors. The gardener is provided with alarms that help caring for the plants properly. The alarm is given both as a visual LED blinking at the plant stick as well as shown at the UI of a smart phone. The overall solution is based on M3 Smart Space architecture. In addition, ucode technology in combination with NFC and optical tag technologies is utilized for configuring the smart space.

Application Workload Modelling via Run-Time Performance Statistics

Modern mobile nomadic devices for example internet tablets and high end mobile phones support diverse distributed and stand-alone applications that were supported by single devices a decade back. Furthermore the complex heterogeneous platforms supporting these applications contain multi-core processors, hardware accelerators and IP cores and all these components can possibly be integrated into a single integrated circuit chip. The high complexity of both the platform and the applications makes the design space very complex due to the availability of several alternatives. Therefore the system designer must be able to quickly evaluate the performance of different application architectures and implementations on potential platforms. The most popular technique employed nowadays is termed as system-level-performance evaluation which uses abstract workload and platform capacity models. The platform capacity models and application workload models reside at a higher abstraction-level. The platform and application workload models can be instantiated with reduced modeling effort and also operate at a higher simulation speed. This article presents a novel run-time statistics based application workload model extraction and platform configuration technique. This technique is called platform COnfiguration and woRkload generatIoN via code instrumeNtation and performAnce counters CORINNA which offers several advantages over compiler based technique called ABSINTH, and also provides automatic configuration of the platform processor models for example cache-hits and misses obtained during the application execution.