M.E.M. Lijding

Towards smart surroundings: enabling techniques and technologies for localization

In this paper we identify the common techniques and technologies that are enabling location identification in a ubiquitous computing environment. We also address the important parameters for evaluating such systems. Through this survey, we explore the current trends in commercial products and research in the area of localization. Although localization is an old concept, further research is needed to make it really usable for ubiquitous computing. Therefore, we indicate future research directions and address localization in the framework of our Smart Surroundings project.

SensorScheme: Supply chain management automation using Wireless Sensor Networks

The supply chain management business can benefit greatly from automation, as recent developments with RFID technology shows. The use of Wireless Sensor Network technology promises to bring the next leap in efficiency and quality of service. However, current WSN system software does not yet provide the required functionality, flexibility and safety. This paper discusses a scenario showing how WSN technology can benefit supply chain management, and presents SensorScheme, a platform for realizing the scenario. SensorScheme is a general purpose WSN platform, providing a safe execution environment for dynamically loaded programs. It uses high level programming primitives like marshalled communication, automatic memory management, and multiprocessing facilities. SensorScheme makes efficient use of the little available memory present in WSN nodes, to allow larger and more complex programs than the state of the art. We present a SensorScheme implementation and provide experimental results to show its compactness, speed of operation and energy efficiency.

WLAN Location Sharing through a Privacy Observant Architecture

In the last few years, WLAN has seen immense growth and it will continue this trend due to the fact that it provides convenient connectivity as well as high speed links. Furthermore, the infrastructure already exists in most public places and is cheap to extend. These advantages, together with the fact that WLAN covers a large area and is not restricted to line of sight, have led to developing many WLAN localization techniques and applications based on them. In this paper we present a novel calibration-free localization technique using the existing WLAN infrastructure that enables conference participants to determine their location without the need of a centralized system. The evaluation results illustrate the superiority of our technique compared to existing methods. In addition, we present a privacy observant architecture to share location information. We handle both the location of people and the resources in the infrastructure as services, which can be easily discovered and used. An important design issue for us was to avoid tracking people and giving the users control over who they share their location information with and under which conditions

Scheduling of early quantum tasks

An Early Quantum Task (EQT) is a Quantum EDF task that has shrunk its first period into one quantum time slot. Its purpose is to be executed as soon as possible, without causing deadline overflow of other tasks. We derive the conditions under which an EQT can be admitted and can have an immediate start. The advantage of scheduling EQTs is shown by its use in a buffered multimedia server. The EQT is associated with a multimedia stream and it will use its first invocation to fill the buffer, such that a client can start receiving data immediately.

A Flexible Real-Time Hierarchical Multimedia Archive

We present a hierarchical multimedia archive that can serve complex multimedia requests from tertiary storage. Requests can consist of multiple request units of streamed and non-streamed data. The request units can have arbitrary synchronization patterns.Our scheduler Promote-IT promotes data from tertiary to secondary storage with real-time guarantees. Promote-IT uses an on-line heuristic algorithm to compute feasible schedules and a separate ASAP dispatcher to increase the efficiency of the resource usage. The heuristic algorithm runs in polynomial time. Schedules are optimized to give short response times to incoming requests.Three major problems complicate this scheduling problem. First, the fragments of requested real-time data and their synchronization are unpredictable. Second, the medium switching times in tertiary storage are high, and the number of drives and robots is low compared to the number of removable media. Third, the shared resources in the tertiary storage system create resource contention problems.

Implementing and evaluating jukebox schedulers using JukeTools

Scheduling jukebox resources is important to build efficient and flexible hierarchical storage systems. JukeTools is a toolbox that helps in the complex tasks of implementing and evaluating jukebox schedulers. It allows the fast development of jukebox schedulers. The schedulers can be tested in numerous environments, both real and simulated types. JukeTools helps the developer to easily detect errors in the schedules. Analyzer tools create detailed reports on the behavior and performance of any of the scheduler, and provide comparisons between different schedulers. This paper describes the functionality offered by JukeTools, with special emphasis on how the toolbox can be used to develop jukebox schedulers.

Smart Sensing and Contex, First European Conference, EuroSSC 2006

Intelligent Sensors and Sensor Network.- Multi-channel Support for Dense Wireless Sensor Networking.- Data Aggregation for Target Tracking in Wireless Sensor Networks.- A Zone-Based Clustering Method for Ubiquitous Robots Based on Wireless Sensor Networks.- Context Awareness and Architectures.- A Simulation Study of Integrated Service Discovery.- Context Dissemination and Aggregation for Ambient Networks: Jini Based Prototype.- Discovery and Composition of Services for Context-Aware Systems.- Infrastructural Support for Dynamic Context Bindings.- Adding Context Awareness to C#.- Toward Wide Area Interaction with Ubiquitous Computing Environments.- Maintaining a World Model in a Location-Aware Smart Space.- Privacy, Application and Test Beds.- Shadow: A Middleware in Pervasive Computing Environment for User Controllable Privacy Protection.- Auditing and Inference Control for Privacy Preservation in Uncertain Environments.- Developing a Context-Aware System for Providing Intelligent Robot Services.- Music for My Mood: A Music Recommendation System Based on Context Reasoning.- WLAN Location-Aware Application Based on Accumulated Orientation Strength Algorithm.- Posters: Short Papers.- Context Delivery in Ad Hoc Networks Using Enhanced Gossiping Algorithms.- An Attribute-Based Naming Architecture for Wireless Sensor Networks Using a Virtual Counterpart Overlay Network.- A Sensor Platform for Sentient Transportation Research.- Attention-Based Information Composition for Multicontext-Aware Recommendation in Ubiquitous Computing.- Context-Aware Trust Domains.- An Evaluation Framework for Disseminating Context Information with Gossiping.- Dynamic Bayesian Networks for Visual Surveillance with Distributed Cameras.- Embedded Intelligence: Enabling In-Situ Power Management for Wireless Sensor Networks.- Proximity Sensing Using IEEE 802.15.4 Radios.- Towards Hovering Information.- Balancing Smartness and Privacy for the Ambient Intelligence.- Energy Conservation with EDFI Scheduling.- RuleCaster: A Programming System for Wireless Sensor Networks.- Losing Control in Pro-active Home Environments.This volume contains the papers and posters selected for presentation at the First European Conference on Smart Sensing and Context (EuroSSC 2006) in Enschede, The Netherlands. EuroSSC 2006 was the first conference of a series aiming at bringing together designers, engineers and researchers to explore two complementary viewpoints: – A device-centric, technology-driven view: concerning intelligent sensors, sensor networks and information processing for a new generation of networked devices and environments. – A service-centric, user-driven view: exploring architectures, techniques, and algorithms for context-aware and pro-active applications made possible by the diffusion of ambient communication, cooperating objects, and interaction technologies. These subjects are active and relevant research areas in themselves, and there are several conferences that address them separately. EuroSSC 2006, however, considered them both, and especially the symbiosis between them, which we expect to result in very inspiring and interesting discussions, as well as new research ideas on how to combine them. The conference was organized in single tracks covering various issues ranging from intelligent sensors, sensor networks, context management and context awareness, and privacy, to applications and test beds. Organizing a conference for the first time requires lots of preparations, such as finding a publisher, sponsoring organizations, and TPC members and most importantly attracting potential submitters. Fortunately, the amount and quality of the submissions were such that we were in the luxurious position to be able to accept only high quality and relevant papers. The conference attracted world wide attention and submissions came from five continents. A total of 15 accepted full papers and 14 accepted posters came from Asia, North America and Europe.