Meirong Liu

Mobile Agents for Integration of Internet of Things and Wireless Sensor Networks

We demonstrate interoperable mobile agents to integrate Internet of Things and wireless sensor networks with resource-constrained low-power embedded networked devices. We introduce adaptable composition for the mobile agent, complying with the Representational State Transfer principles, which are then used for agent migration, controlling the agent and exposing the data, system resources, tasks and services, to the Web. We gather requirements for the system and heterogeneous networked devices and present an application programming interface to enable mobile agents in these systems. The agents are demonstrated in a real-world prototype with smartphones and embedded networked devices, where we utilize a proxy component to expose system resources to the Web for human-machine interactions. Spanning over disparate networks and protocols, the proxy translates messages including the agent composition, between HTTP and Constrained Application Protocol. Lastly, we suggest an evaluation method for the agent communication and migration costs, considering the different types of system resources and utilization.

An efficient selection algorithm for building a super-peer overlay

Super-peer overlay provides an efficient way to run applications by exploring the heterogeneity of nodes in a Peer-to-Peer overlay network. Identifying nodes with high capacity as super-peers plays an important role in improving the performance of P2P applications, such as live streaming. In this paper, we present a super-peer selection algorithm (SPS) to select super-peers for quickly building a super-peer overlay. In the SPS, each peer periodically builds its set of super-peer candidates through gossip communication with its neighbors, in order to select super-peers and client peers. Simulation results demonstrate that the SPS is efficient in selecting super-peers, and in quickly building a super-peer overlay. The proposed SPS also possesses good scalability and robustness to failure of super-peers.

Distributed resource directory architecture in Machine-to-Machine communications

Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communications emerge to achieve ubiquitous communications among all the networked devices. One challenging problem in M2M applications is to discover the resources provided by the devices efficiently. This challenge arises from two perspectives: (1) a large number of heterogeneous devices co-exist and most of them are constrained devices (e.g., limited processing capability), (2) different communication protocols are utilized to get access to different types of resources provided by the devices (e.g., humidity information provided by a sensor). This paper proposes distributed resource directory architecture for M2M applications, referred to as DRD4M. The DRD4M supports heterogeneous devices using HTTP and CoAP protocols for resource registration and lookup. This enables the interoperability among heterogeneous devices and resource access to constrained devices from disparate network including the Internet. The DRD4M introduces two components: a resource registration component for registering resources and a resource lookup component with caching functionality for handling resource lookup with filtering. A peer-to-peer (P2P) overlay is introduced in DRD4M to connect resource peers to avoid single point of failure. A real-world prototype is implemented and is verified with a demo application. Preliminary performance evaluation in terms of response time of resource lookup is provided.

Mobile Agents-Based Smart Objects for the Internet of Things

We propose mobile agents for enabling interoperability and global intelligence with smart objects in the Internet of Things, with heterogeneous low-power resource-constrained devices where the systems span over disparate networks and protocols. As the Internet of Things systems are in continuous transition, requiring software adaptation and system evolution, an adaptable composition is presented for the mobile agents. The composition complies with the Representational State Transfer principles, which are then utilized in agent creation, migration and control. Moreover, the smart objects’ resources, their capabilities, their information and provided services are exposed to the Web for human-machine interactions. We consider the requirements for enabling mobile agents in the Internet of Things from multiple perspectives: the smart object, the mobile agent and the system. We present interfaces for smart object internal architecture to enable mobile agents and to enable their interactions. An application programming interface is suggested with a system reference architecture, which includes components in the information infrastructure. Lastly, an evaluation metrics for the mobile agent composition and for the smart objects’ resource utilization are suggested, taking the different types of system resources and their utilization into account, assisting in the system, application, smart object and the mobile agent design.

User Experience in Added Value Location-Based Mobile Music Service

In this paper, the user experience in added value location-based mobile music service called the City Night Life (CNL) is evaluated and analyzed. The CNL service provides recommendations about entertainment premises in the proximity by matching their music styles with the user’s personal music preferences. Entertainment premises are shown on a map interface and are marked with colors according to their match. The paper presents the components of the CNL service, the music profile, matching algorithm and the map-based user interface in a web browser. The user evaluation with 53 test users assessed the feasibility and business potential of the CNL service. Data was collected with both quantitative questionnaires and short interviews. The results indicate that the CNL service will be most useful in relatively large, unfamiliar cities. Furthermore, the matching algorithm was perceived to perform quite well.

Distributed Resource Discovery in the Machine-to-Machine Applications

One challenging problem in Machine-to-Machine (M2M) applications is to efficiently discover the resources provided by a huge number of heterogeneous devices. This paper proposes distributed resource discovery architecture (DRD) for M2M applications. The DRD supports heterogeneous devices in resource description registration and discovery of resource value. It achieves interoperability among heterogeneous devices in disparate networks and enables resource access from the Internet. In the DRD, a resource registration component is designed for storing resource descriptions, a resource discovery component is designed to retrieve resource values on behalf of clients after getting address information by looking up resource descriptions. The DRD utilizes a peer-to-peer overlay to distribute workload and avoid single point of failure. A real-world prototype is implemented and verified with a simple demo. Preliminary evaluation on response time of resource discovery is provided.

Super-peer-based coordinated service provision

Leveraging P2P technologies for Web service provision attracts considerable research interests. One of the challenges is how to enable the service providers to adapt themselves in response to dynamic service demand. More specifically, one interesting research issue is coordinating the service groups in order to enable inter-group collaboration and resource sharing. In this paper, we propose a super-peer-based coordinated service provision framework (SCSP), consisting of an S-labor-market model (super-peer-based labor-market model), a recruiting protocol based on a weighting mechanism, and an optimal dispatch algorithm. In the SCSP, the S-labor-market model is designed to build the coordination among service groups by employing the proposed recruiting protocol. The optimal dispatch algorithm is designed to select the optimal service peers within a service group to process service requests. Finally, we perform simulations to evaluate the SCSP with four application scenarios. The experimental results show that our SCSP is efficient in coordinating the service groups, and possess good scalability and robustness.

PSC-RM: Reference Model for Pervasive Service Composition

Pervasive Service Composition (PSC) incorporates service composition and pervasive computing into managing users everyday activities. A generic Reference Model of Pervasive Service Composition (PSC-RM) is needed for guiding PSC architecture design and implementation. To design PSC-RM, we first investigate and present a users generic activity model. Then we analyze characteristics of PSC and envision PSC applications. Based on these applications we present requirements and initial design of PSC-RM.

An efficient collaborative mechanism for enterprise cloud applications

Cloud computing has become a popular high performance computing model to provide services over the Web. Meanwhile, enterprise cloud applications are attracting more research attention, which consists of a large scale of inter-connected computing nodes and virtualized computers distributed over multiple enterprise domains. Driven by the resource demand and less cooperation among applications, some set of resources in the enterprise clouds could take heavy burden and degrade the overall performance of enterprise cloud systems dramatically. Thus, how to enable enterprise clouds to work collaboratively for resource sharing to meet the dynamic application requirement is one important issue. In this paper, we present a super-peer-overlay based collaborative mechanism (SPCM). The super-peers manage the resources of enterprise clouds and enable enterprise clouds to collaborate with each other for resource sharing. The SPCM introduces a weighting mechanism to increase effectiveness of the collaboration among enterprise clouds. Simulations are carried out to evaluate the performance of the SPCM with two application scenarios. The results demonstrate that the SPCM enables enterprise clouds to collaborate with each other effectively and possess good scalability.

Sensor Information Representation for the Internet of Things

Internet of Things integrates wireless sensor networks into the Internet, and paves the way to help people live seamlessly in both physical and cyber worlds. In a synergizing Internet of Things application, various types of sensors will communicate and exchange information for achieving user tasks across heterogeneous wireless sensor networks. This application needs an information representation for uniformly developing and managing sensor data. The information representation thus accelerates data integration and increases Internet of Things application interoperability. In this paper, we present an overview on existing technical solutions for representing sensor information.